Chapter XVII: Work and Worry

It was close to daybreak when the partners separated. They had planned and figured and estimated, and each now knew what his part in the great fight was to be. As he was leaving Bradley asked the Captain how, in his opinion, Obed Nickerson had learned that they had the contract.

“’Phoned the Salvage Company,” replied Captain Ezra, decidedly. “I’ll bet on it. You see, Brad, this job’s a big one and the Salvage folks might have figgered there was sugar enough in it to drop a lump in friend Obed’s teacup providin’ he stirred up their spoon. Well, good night--or good mornin’, rather. It’s double or quits with us this time, son, for sartin, but if Titcomb and Nickerson do go under it’ll be with colors flyin’.”

Within the week Setuckit Point, from a lonely, gull-haunted sand spit, inhabited only by the life saving crew and the lighthouse keeper and his family, became a small town, the population of which left each morning for the Razorback shoal and returned at night to sleep and eat in the big shanty and those surrounding it.

Captain Titcomb saw the people at the Wellmouth Bank and placed a mortgage on the _Diving Belle_. As the partners owned her free and clear, he was able to get her cost price, five thousand dollars.

Placards announcing that men were wanted at once, and at three dollars a day and board, were hung in the post-offices and railway stations in Orham, South Orham, West Harniss, Harniss Centre, Wellmouth and other towns. Also an advertisement appeared in the _Item_. The response was immediate. Work at good wages was scarce in the winter months and men came from twenty miles away to obtain it.

The _Diving Belle_ carried them down to the Point. There, under Barney Small’s supervision, some set to work building extra bunks in the big shanty, slinging hammocks, putting up stoves--the partners bought five second-hand ranges--and making three neighboring abandoned fishing huts inhabitable. The rest worked over the stranded coal barge, getting out the anchors, stripping her of all unnecessary iron work and rigging, and preparing to bring the coal from her hold and dump it overboard.

Seventy men were hired altogether, and to feed them it was necessary to buy large quantities of provisions. Captain Titcomb managed this part of the business and the bargains he made with Caleb Weeks and other storekeepers were wonderful, and, in some cases, not too profitable for the sellers. As Mr. Weeks said: “Ez Titcomb spent ha’f the forenoon with me to-day, and afore he got through talkin’ he’d tangled me up so with figgers that I don’t know whether I sold him salt at a cent a pound or corn meal at a dollar a barrel. I’ll have to put in the rest of the day cal’latin’ and addin’ up, so’s to know whether I’ve made money or lost it.”

Soon the work on the _Freedom_ was in full swing and the great hull hummed like a bee-hive. Men were standing by the hatches and by the derricks. Men were working by the rail transferring ropes and ironwork to the _Diving Belle_. Down in the hold gangs of men, with faces sooty black except where the sweat streaked them with pallid channels, were shovelling the coal into the big iron buckets that the creaking derricks lifted and swung over the side. The donkey engines puffed and whistled, the chains rattled, and ton after ton of good hard coal roared from the opening buckets and splashed into the tumbling waves of the channel.

The Captain and Bradley, together for a moment, stood in the bows, where the heavy cable led, taut and rigid, from the windlass, out to the submerged anchors. The _Freedom_ had moved slightly in the last few days and the partners were encouraged.

“By crimus, Brad!” exclaimed Captain Titcomb, pointing with a grin on his grimy face, to the stout little _Diving Belle_ just then shooting off to the Point with a load of strippings from the _Freedom_; “that’s the little critter that has made it possible for us to handle this job. I don’t know what we’d a-done if we hadn’t had her. See her go, will you? Flies ’round like a flea in a fryin’ pan, don’t she? You never put your money into anything better for the size than her, and don’t you let that fact slip your mem’ry.”

The new schooner had proved her worth twice over. Equipped as she was, with the engine, she performed the part of a steam launch, a tug and a ferry-boat. She had carried out and dropped the anchors in the channel; she took her owners and a few of the hands to and from Orham every night and morning; she was always ready and always useful. In fact, as the Captain said, they could scarcely have handled the job without her.

Bradley, dirty and bareheaded, looked at the little vessel.

“I shan’t feel easy until we pay off that mortgage,” he said. “And, another thing, you mustn’t forget to see Obed and close that insurance deal. It worries me to think she is not protected at all.”

“That’s so. Fact is, I’ve been so everlastin’ busy lately that I’d forgit to eat if I hadn’t got in the habit of it. But I must settle that right off. The only thing that’s kept it from goin’ through afore is on account of that dynamite in the hold. The papers are ready, only Obed won’t dicker until we take that stuff off; his comp’ny won’t insure against explosives.”

A little of the dynamite that they had been using in blowing up the hulk containing the tar was still stored in the _Diving Belle’s_ hold. Captain Titcomb had promised to see that it was taken ashore, but he always forgot it. Bradley would, himself, have attended to the matter, but the Captain seemed to take the offer as a personal reflection on his own management. It was the same with the insurance. Anything that the Captain undertook to do he hated to give up to another.

“Don’t you want me to attend to that dynamite?” asked the junior partner.

“No, no; I’ll ’tend to it myself. Told you I would, didn’t I?”

Bradley saw that it was time to change the subject. He looked across the ocean to the horizon. The air was clear and cold and the November sunlight lay upon the water with a steely metallic glitter that had no warmth in it.

“Wind to the south’ard,” he observed, “and seems likely to hold that way. If it only holds fair long enough we’ll win out yet.”

“Where’s that special weather bureau of ours?” asked the Captain. “Ain’t had a prophecy for two days or more.” He stepped to the hatchway. “Hi! Peleg!” he shouted. “Peleg Myrick, ahoy!”

A distant voice from the hold replied that Peleg was aboard the _Diving Belle_.

“That’s so,” said Captain Titcomb. “So he is. Well, we’ll see him later.”

When the schooner again ran alongside the barge Mr. Myrick was summoned and clambered on board. The weather prophet had coal dust in his nostrils, in his mouth, and in decorative smouches on his cheeks. As for his whiskers, the red and gray had disappeared; they were now a solid black.

“Peleg,” observed the Captain, “does Skeezicks know you when you git home nowadays?”

“Know me?” repeated the astonished owner of the dog that was just like a human. “Know _me_! Course he does.”

“Well, I didn’t know. You look so much like a cross between a darky and a Kickapoo Sagwa peddler in his war paint that I shouldn’t think your mother’d know you, let alone a dog.”

Mr. Myrick pondered. “Well, you see,” he replied slowly, “mother she’s been dead for a consider’ble spell, and Skeezicks----”

“Skeezicks ain’t. I see. That’s the best reason I know of. Say! how about gales? Got any marked on the calendar?”

The prophet’s dreamy gaze wandered mournfully to the sky.

“No,” he drawled; “I don’t cal’late there’ll be a storm for the next week. After that--wall, I don’t know. I’ve been havin’ a feelin’ that the weather’d shift, but p’raps ’twon’t. Still, I’m kind of scart--kind of scart of the week after next.”

Captain Titcomb looked troubled. “Thunder!” he muttered. “I swan I hope that ain’t so!”

Bradley looked at him in puzzled surprise.

“Now, honest, Cap’n Ez,” he exclaimed. “You aren’t worried because that half-baked chap says--here, Peleg! come back here a minute. Say, how do you get your tips on the weather?”

Mr. Myrick hesitated and looked troubled. “Wall” he replied, “I--I--you see, I don’t gin’rally tell that ’cause folks laugh at me. But, bein’ as you’re my boss, I s’pose I ought to tell you a little. You see, I jest sort of feel it in my bones.”

“Any particular bones?”

“Why, my laig bones mostly. If a no’theaster’s comin’ my right laig sort of aches, and if it’s a sou’easter it’ll fetch me in the left one. Then there’s other----”

Bradley interrupted him by a roar of laughter. The prophet looked hurt.

“There!” he sighed. “I knew you’d laff.”

“All right, Peleg; trot along. There, Cap’n Ez, does that satisfy you?”

The Captain laughed, too, but he shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Them leg bones of Peleg’s seem to have been pretty good barometers afore now. Well, what is to be will be, as the fellow with dyspepsy said when he tackled the mince pie. My! this won’t do for me, nor for you either, Brad.”

They separated to plunge again into their work. But Bradley’s hint about the dynamite still troubled Captain Titcomb’s conscience. When the _Diving Belle_ came back from her next trip to the beach he hailed Peleg, and, calling him to him, said:

“Peleg, I’ve got a job for you. I want you to git out that dynamite we’ve got in the hold for’ard, and take it ashore some’eres.”

Now, that dynamite was Mr. Myrick’s particular dread. He was more afraid of it than he was of anything else on earth. The Captain knew this, and that was why he always selected Peleg to bring up a stick of the stuff when the latter was needed. “It’s the scared man that’s always careful,” said the skipper. “Peleg hangs to them sticks like a sucker to a barn door. _He_ won’t drop ’em, unless his knee j’ints rattle loose altogether from nervousness.”

When the weather prophet heard the Captain’s order the visible parts of his countenance turned white.

“Oh, my soul and body!” he gasped. “You don’t want me to tech them pesky things, do you, Cap’n Ez? Git somebody else; do!”

“No,” replied the skipper, gravely. “I wouldn’t trust nobody else. Tumble ’em out!”

“_Tumble_ ’em out! Don’t talk in that careless kind of way, Cap’n Ez. What’ll I do with ’em?”

“Oh! dig a hole and bury ’em; put ’em under your bunk in the shanty; feed ’em to Skeezicks; only git ’em out of the schooner sometime pretty soon.”

“Will--will Sunday do?”

“Yes, yes! whenever you have the time. Hi! Sam Hammond, what are you settin’ there for? Git back to your engine.”

Mr. Hammond was still with them, although his usefulness as a diver was gone, owing to the temporary abandonment of the tar venture. But, because they anticipated returning to this work if the _Freedom_ should be floated, he was retained at his old wages and was now running one of the hoisting engines, a labor with which he was more or less familiar, although he considered it beneath him and shirked whenever he could.

This shirking irritated Captain Titcomb.

“Consarn him!” he growled. “Let him either fish or cut bait, one or t’other. If he’s too good for the job, why, then, the job’s too good for him. If I had my way we’d come to a settlement in about ha’f a shake.”

The majority of the men hired by the partners were intensely loyal and thoroughly optimistic; they knew the circumstances under which the contract had been taken and would not consider the possibility of failure for a moment. But Hammond was the head of a little coterie of pessimists, among whom were Henry Simmons and a few others from Orham, and “Lon” Clark and “Ike” Bodkin from Harniss. These croakers sneered at Captain Ezra when his back was turned and pretended to pity Bradley. When the pay envelopes were distributed they congratulated themselves loudly and wondered if this time was the last.

Bradley was aware of all this, because Barney told him, but he would not permit his partner to call Hammond to account. Sam should not have the opportunity of telling Gus that he was the victim of persecution by an unsuccessful rival; not if Bradley could help it, he shouldn’t. Captain Titcomb understood, and so Sam was not reproved and grew more and more intolerable.

All day long the _Freedom’s_ deck was a whirl of industry. The Captain and Bradley were always in the thick of it, and were dog tired when six o’clock came. Then the cable was tightened and chocked, the watch was set and most of the crews were transferred in relays to the beach, to eat supper in the shanty and shout, sing and play cards until bedtime. The partners, with Hammond, Bearse and a few others, went up to Orham in the _Diving Belle_.

The “old maids” had been very solemn of late. When Bradley first told them that his firm had secured the biggest wrecking contract ever handled by Orham men they were jubilant. But then came Miss Busteed, brimming over--like a sort of living “extra”--with exaggerated reports of village opinion concerning that contract, and the sisters began to worry. Other callers, whose views were more weighty than Melissa’s, came also, and now even Miss Prissy was nervously anxious.

Bradley went to bed early nowadays. On the night following the conversation with Peleg he took his lamp from the shelf soon after supper was cleared away. Captain Titcomb called, but remained only a little while.

As the young man rose from his chair Miss Prissy, who had been watching him over her glasses while pretending to mend some stockings, dropped the work in her lap, and asked, “Bradley, how are you gettin’ on down at the Point?”

“Tip top,” was the reply.

“Yes, you always say that; but are you gainin’ as fast as you ought to? You don’t think there’s any--any chance of your not bein’ able to git that vessel off, do you? Folks seem to think----”

Bradley laughed. “Has Melissa been here to-day?” he interrupted.

“No, she hasn’t, but Mr. Langworthy has. Oh, Bradley, we hear such dreadful things. Mr. Langworthy came here almost on purpose to try to git us to coax you to give it up ’fore it’s too late. He says the whole town thinks you can’t carry it through. Men that know all about wreckin’ say----”

“Who says--the Jeremiah Club?” The “Jeremiah Club” was Captain Titcomb’s name for the daily gathering about the stove in Weeks’ store.

“No, indeed! Men like Cap’n Jonadab Wixon and Mr. Wingate and lots more. They say that you’ve mortgaged your vessel and that if you fail you’ll be ruined--absolutely ruined. They lay it all to Cap’n Ezra. Of course Tempy and me stand up for you and the Cap’n and pretend we ain’t a mite anxious. But, oh Bradley, if any such awful thing should happen to you--to our boy--’twould break our hearts.”

Bradley felt a pang of self-reproach. Miss Prissy’s eyes were wet and the tears were running down Miss Tempy’s cheeks. He was very grave as he answered.

“Miss Prissy,” he said, “please don’t worry. I know how people are talking, but honestly and truly I think we shall succeed. If we do, it means everything to us. If we don’t--well, whatever happens, if God lets me live, you and Miss Tempy shall never suffer. I owe everything in the world to you. I’ll promise you something else, too: If we win out now, I’ll never take another contract where the risk is as big as this. Now, good night, and to please me, don’t worry any more.”

As he was leaving the room Miss Tempy said, timidly, “Bradley, you don’t go to prayer-meetin’ any more. Prissy and me pray for you every night. I hope you won’t let your bus’ness crowd out your religion.”

Bradley shook his head, answered hurriedly that he was working hard nowadays and was tired, and went up to his room. The last time he had been to prayer-meeting Gus went with him. He had no wish to go there now, and perhaps see her in Sam’s company.