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“I was on the deck of the Screamer, overhaulin’ the fall, surrounded by most of the crew, gettin’ ready to h’ist the stone, when I first saw ’em. They and the Cap’n were away up above me, leanin’ over the rail, lookin’ at the stone church that some o’ the boys was puttin’ the chains ’round. Bill Nevins was down in the fo’c’s’le, firin’ up, with the safety-valve set at 125 pounds. He had half a keg o’ rosin and a can o’ kerosene to help out with in case we wanted a few pounds extry in the middle of the tea-party. Pretty soon I heard one of ’em holler:

“‘Ahoy! Is the Captain aboard?’

“‘He is,’ I said, steppin’ out. ‘Who wants him?’

“‘Colonel Throckmorton,’ he says, ‘and Major Severn.’

“‘Come aboard, gentlemen,’ I says.

“So down they come, the Colonel first, one foot at a time touchin’ the ladder, the Major following. When he reached the deck and wheeled around to look at me you just ought to have seen his face.

“‘Are you the Captain?’ he says, and he looked me over ’bout as the admiral had done.

“‘I be,’ I said, ‘Captain Robert Brandt, of Pigeon Cove, Cape Ann, master and owner of the sloop Screamer, at your service’–I kep’ front side to him. ‘What can I do for you?’

“‘Well, Captain,’ he began, ‘perhaps it is none of our business, but the Captain of the brig here,’ and he pointed up above him, ‘has asked us to look over your tackle and see whether it is safe enough to lift this stone. He’s afraid you’ll drop it and smash his deck in. Since I’ve seen it, and what you propose to lift it with, I’ve told him there’s no danger, for you’ll never get it off the deck. We are both officers of the Engineering Corps, and it is our business to know about such things.’

“‘What makes you think the Screamer won’t lift it?’ I asked.

“‘Well,’ says the Colonel, looking aloft, ‘her boom ain’t big enough, and that Manila rope is too light. I should think it wasn’t over three and three-quarter-inch rope. We all know fifteen tons is enough weight for that size rope, even with a fourfold purchase, and we understand you say this stone weighs twenty-one.’

“‘I’m sorry, gentlemen,’ I said, ‘and if you are worried about it you’d better go ‘board the brig, for I’m about ready to pick the stone up and land her.’

“Well, the Major said he guessed he would, if I was determined to pull the mast out of my sloop, but the Colonel said he’d stay by and see it out.

“Just then Bill Nevins stuck his head out of the fo’c’s’le. He was blacker than I was; all smeared with grease and stripped to his waist. It was hot enough anywhere, but it was sizzlin’ down where he was.

“‘All ready, Cap’n,’ he says. ‘She’s got every pound she can carry.’

“I looked everything over–saw the butt of the boom was playin’ free in the wooden socket, chucked in a lot of tallow so it could move easy, give an extra twist to the end of the guy, and hollered to Bill to go ahead. She went chuckety-chuck, chuckety-chuck for half a dozen turns; then she slowed down soon as she struck the full weight, and began to pant like an old horse climbin’ a hill. All this time the Colonel was callin’ out from where he stood near the tiller: ‘She’ll never lift it, Captain–she’ll never lift it.’

“Next come a scrapin’ ‘long the deck, and the big stone swung clear with a foot o’ daylight ‘tween it and the deck. Then up she went, crawlin’ slowly inch by inch, till she reached the height of the brig’s rail.

“Now come the wust part. I knew that when I gave orders to slack away the guy-rope so as to swing the stone aboard the brig, the Screamer would list over and dip her rail in the water. So I made a jump for the rope ladder and shinned up the brig’s side so as to take a hand in landin’ the stone properly on the brig’s deck so as to save her beams and break the jar when I lowered the stone down. I had one eye now on the stone and the other on the water, which was curling over the Screamer’s rail and makin’ for the fo’c’s’le hatch. Should the water pour down this hatch, out would go my fires and maybe up would come her b’iler.