Читать книгу Caleb West, Master Diver - Francis Hopkinson Smith - Страница 7

At the depth of twenty feet he touched the tops of the sea-kelp growing on the rocks below,—he could feel the long tongues of leaves scraping his legs. Then, as he sank deeper, his shoes struck an outlying boulder. Caleb pushed himself off, floated around it, measured it with his arms, and settled to the gravel. He was now between the outlying boulder and the Ledge. Here he raised himself erect on his feet and looked about: the gravel beneath him was white and spangled with starfish; little crabs lay motionless, or scuttled away at his crunching tread; the sides of the isolated boulder were smooth and clean, the top being covered with waving kelp. In the dim, greenish light this boulder looked like a weird head,—a kind of submarine Medusa, with her hair streaming upward. The jagged rock-pile next it, its top also covered with kelp, resembled a hill of purple and brown corn swaying in the ceaseless current.

Caleb thrust his hand into his haversack, grasped his long knife, slashed at the kelp of the rock-pile to see the bottom stones the clearer, and sent a quick signal of “All right—lower away!” through the life-line, to Lacey, who stood on the sloop’s deck above him.

Almost instantly a huge square green shadow edged with a brilliant iridescent light sank down towards him, growing larger and larger in its descent. Caleb peered upward through his face-plate, followed the course of the stone, and jerked a second signal to Lacey’s wrist. This signal was repeated in words by Lacey to Captain Brandt, who held the throttle, and the shadowy stone was stopped within three feet of the gravel bottom. Here it swayed slowly, half turned, and touched on the boulder.

Caleb watched the stone carefully until it was perfectly still, crept along, swimming with one hand, and measured carefully with his eye the distance between the boulder and the Ledge. Then he sent a quick signal of “Lower—all gone,” up to Lacey’s wrist. The great stone dropped a chain’s link; slid halfway the boulder, scraping the kelp in its course; careened, and hung over the gravel with one end tilted on a point of the rocky ledge. As it hung suspended, its lower end buried itself in the gravel near the boulder, while the upper lay aslant up the slope of the rock-covered ledge.

Caleb again swam carefully around the stone, opened his arms, and inflating his dress rose five or six feet through the green water, floated over the huge stone, and grasping with his bare hand the lowering chain by which the stone hung, tested its strain. The chain was as rigid as a bar of steel. This showed that the stone was not fully grounded, and therefore dangerous, being likely to slide off at any moment. The diver now sent a telegram of short and long jerks aloft, asking for a crowbar; hooked his legs around the lowering chain and pressed his copper helmet to the chain links to listen to Captain Joe’s answer. A series of dull thuds, long and short, struck by a hammer above—a means of communication often possible when the depth of water is not great—told him that the crowbar he had asked for would be sent down at once. While he waited motionless, a blackfish pressed his nose to the glass of his face-plate, and scurried off to tell his fellows living in the kelp how strange a thing he had seen that day.

A quick jerk from Lacey, and the point of the crowbar dangled over Caleb’s head. In an instant, to prevent his losing it in the kelp, he had lashed another and smaller cord about its middle, and with the bar firmly in his hand laid himself flat on the stone. The diver now examined carefully the points of contact between the boulder and the hanging stone, inserted one end of the bar under its edge, sent a warning signal above, braced both feet against the lowering chain, threw his whole strength on the bar, and gave a quick, sharp pull. The next instant the chain tightened; the bar, released from the strain, bounded from his hand; there was a headlong surge of the huge shadowy mass through the waving kelp, and the great block slipped into its place, stirring up the bottom silt in a great cloud of water-dust.

The first stone of the system of enrockment had been bedded!

Caleb clung with both hands to the lowering chain, waited until the water cleared, knocked out the Lewis pin that held the S-hook, thus freeing the chain, and signaled “All clear—hoist.” Then he hauled the crowbar towards him by the cord, signaled for the next stone, moved away from the reach of falling bodies, and sank into a bed of sea-kelp as comfortably as if it had been a sofa-cushion.

These breathing spells rest the lungs of a diver and lighten his work. Being at rest he can manage his dress the better, inflating it so that he is able to get his air with greater ease and regularity. The relief is sometimes so soothing that in long waits the droning of the air-valve will lull the diver into a sleep, from which he is suddenly awakened by a quick jerk on his wrist. Many divers, while waiting for the movements of those above, play with the fish, watch the crabs, or rake over the gravel in search of the thousand and one things that are lost overboard and that everybody hopes to find on the bottom of the sea.

Caleb did none of these things. He was too expert a diver to allow himself to go to sleep, and he had too much to think about to play with the fish. He sat quietly awaiting his call, his thoughts on the day of the week and how long it would be before Saturday night came again, and whether, when he left that morning, he had arranged everything for the little wife, so that she would be comfortable until his return. Once a lobster moved slowly up and nipped his red fingers with its claw, thinking them some tidbit previously unknown. (The dress terminates at the wrist with a waterproof and air-tight band, leaving the hands bare.) At another time two tomcods came sailing past, side by side, flapped their tails on his helmet, and scampered off. But Caleb, sitting comfortably on his sofa-cushion of seaweed thirty feet under water, paid little heed to outside things. His eyes only saw a tossing apron and a trim little figure on a cabin porch, as she waved him a last good-by.

In the world above, a world of fleecy clouds and shimmering sea, some changes had taken place since Caleb sank out of the sunlight. Hardly had the second stone been made ready to be swung overboard, when there came a sudden uplifting of the sea. One of those tramp waves preceding a heavy storm had strayed in from Montauk and was making straight for the Ledge.

Captain Joe sprang on the sloop’s rail and looked seaward, and a shade of disappointment crossed his face.

“Stand by on that outboard ha’sser!” he shouted in a voice that was heard all over the Ledge.

The heavy outboard hawser holding the sloop whipped out of the sea with the sudden strain, thrashed the spray from its twists, and quivered like a fiddle-string. The sloop staggered for an instant, plunged bow under, careened to her rail, and righted herself within oar’s touch of the Ledge. Three feet from her bilge streak crouched a grinning rock with its teeth set!

Captain Joe smiled and looked at Captain Brandt.

“Ain’t nothin’ when ye git used to’t, Cap’n Bob. I ain’t a-goin’ ter scratch ’er paint. Got to bank yer fires. Them other two stone’ll have to wait till the tide turns.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” replied the skipper, throwing the furnace door wide open. The danger was passed for the second time, and in the final test his boat had proved herself. Yet again he did not boast. There was only a fearless ready-to-meet-anything air about him as, with shoulders squared and head up, he walked down the deck and said to Captain Joe, in a tone as if he were only asking for information, but without the slightest shade of anxiety, “If that ’ere ha’sser’d parted, Cap’n Joe, when she give that plunge, it would ’a’ been all up with us,—eh?”

“Yes,—’spec’ so,” answered the captain, his mind, now that the danger had passed, neither on the question nor on the answer. Then suddenly awakening with a look of intense interest, “That line was a new one, Cap’n Bob. I picked it out a-purpose; them kind don’t part.”

Sanford, who had been standing by the tiller, anxiously watching the conflict with the sea, walked forward and grasped the skipper’s hand.

“I want to congratulate you,” he said, “on your sloop and on your pluck. It is not every man can lie around this stone-pile for the first time and keep his head.”

Captain Brandt flushed like a bashful girl, and turned away his face. “Well, sir—ye see”—He never finished the sentence. The compliment had upset him more than the escape of the sloop.

All was bustle now on board the Screamer. The boom was swung in aboard, lowered, and laid on the deck. Caleb had been hauled up to the surface, his helmet unscrewed, and his shoes and breast-plate taken off. He still wore his dress, so that he could be ready for the other two stones when the tide turned. Meanwhile he walked about the deck looking like a great bear on his hind legs, his bushy beard puffed out over his copper collar.

During the interval of the change of tide dinner was announced, and the Screamer’s crew went below to more sizzle and doughballs, and this time a piece of corned beef, while Sanford, Captain Joe, Caleb, and Lacey sprang into the sloop’s yawl and sculled for the shanty and their dinner, keeping close to the hawser still holding the sloop.

The unexpected made half the battle at the Ledge. It was not unusual to see a southeast roll, three days old, cut down in an hour to the smoothness of a mill-pond by a northwest gale, and before night to find this same dead calm followed by a semi-cyclone. Only an expert could checkmate the consequences of weather manoeuvres like these. Before Captain Joe, sitting at the head of the table, had filled each man’s plate with his fair proportion of cabbage and pork, a whiff of wind puffed in the bit of calico that served as a curtain for the shanty’s pantry window,—the one facing east. Captain Joe sprang from his seat, and, bareheaded as he was, mounted the concrete platforms and looked seaward. Off towards Block Island he saw a little wrinkling line of silver flashing out of the deepening haze, while toward Crotch Island scattered flurries of wind furred the glittering surface of the sea with dull splotches,—as when one breathes upon a mirror. The captain turned quickly, entered the shanty, and examined the barometer. It had fallen two points.

“Finish yer dinner, men,” he said quietly. “That’s the las’ stone to-day, Mr. Sanford. It’s beginnin’ ter git lumpy. It’ll blow a livin’ gale o’ wind by sundown.”

A second and stronger puff now swayed the men’s oilskins, hanging against the east door. This time the air was colder and more moist. The sky overhead had thickened. In the southeast lay two sun-dog clouds, their backs shimmering like opals, while about the feverish eye of the sun itself gathered a reddish circle like an inflammation.

Sanford was on the platform, reading the signs of the coming gale. It was important that he should reach Keyport by night, and he had no time to spare. As the men came out one after another, each of them glanced toward the horizon, and quickening his movements fell to work putting the place in order. The loose barrow planks were quickly racked up on the shanty’s roof, out of the wash of the expected surf; an extra safety-guy was made fast to the platform holding the hoisting-engine, and a great tarpaulin drawn over the cement and lashed fast. Meanwhile Captain Joe busied himself in examining the turnbuckles of the holding-down rods, which bound the shanty to the Ledge, and giving them another tightening twist, ordering the heavy wooden shutters for the east side of the shanty to be put up, and seeing that the stove-pipe that stuck through the roof was taken down and stored inside.

All this time the Screamer tugged harder at her hawser, her bow surging as the ever-increasing swell raced past her.

Orders to man the yawl were now given and promptly obeyed.

“Keep everything snug, Caleb, while I’m gone!” Captain Joe shouted, as he stepped into the boat. “It looks soapy, but it may be out to the nor’ard an’ clear by daylight. Sit astern, Mr. Sanford. Pull away, men, we ain’t got a minute.”

When the Screamer, with two unset stones still on her deck, bore away from the Ledge with Sanford, Captain Joe, and Lacey on board, the spray was flying over the shanty roof.

Caleb stood on the platform waving his hand. He was still in his diving-dress. His helmet only had been removed, and his bushy beard was flying in the wind.

“Tell Betty I’ll be home for Sunday,” the men heard him call out, as they flew by under close reef.