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But they made no protest. Such outbursts on the captain’s part were but the escaping steam from the overcharged boiler of his indignation. Underneath lay the firebox of his heart, chock full of red-hot coals glowing with sympathy for every soul who needed his help. If his safety valve let go once in a while it was to escape from greater danger.

His long range ammunition exhausted, Captain Joe turned on his heel and walked aft to where his diving gear was piled, venting his indignation at every step. This time the outburst was directed to me,–(it was my weekly inspection at the Ledge).

“Can’t jam nothin’ into his head, sir. Stubbornest mule ’round this harbor. Warn’t for that wife o’ his Abe Marrows would a-been high and dry long ago. Every time he gits something purty good he goes and fools it away;–sold his farm and bought that sloop; then he clapped a plaster on it in the bank to start a cook shop. But the wife’s all right;–only last week she come to me lookin’ like she’d bu’st out cryin’,–sayin’ the sloop was all they had, and I promised her then I’d use the Susie, but she never said nothin’ ’bout Baxter being in charge, or I’d stopped him ‘fore he loaded her. Well, there ain’t no tellin’ what nat’ral born fools like Abe Marrows’ll do, but it’s something ornery and criss-cross if Abe Marrows does it. That woman’s worked her fingers off for him, but he’ll git her in the poor-house yit,–see if he don’t.”

Marrows had heard every word of Captain Joe’s outburst, but he made no answer except to lift his thin elbows and spread his fingers in a deprecatory way, as if in protest. Baxter maintained a dogged silence;–the least said in answer the better. Captain Joe Bell was not a man either to contradict or oppose;–better let him blow it all out. Both owner and skipper determined to take the risk. The Susie Ann had been laid up all winter awaiting the opening of the spring work, and the successful carrying out of the present venture was Marrows’s only escape from financial ruin, and Baxter’s only chance of getting his back wages. There was an unpaid bill, too, for caulking, then a year old, lying in Abram’s bureau drawer, together with an account at Mike Lavin’s machine shop for a new set of grate bars, now almost worn out. Worse than all the bank’s lien on the sloop was due in a few weeks. What money the sloop earned, therefore, must be earned quickly.

And then again, Abram ruminated, Shark Ledge wasn’t the worst place on the coast,–despite Captain Joe’s warning,–especially on this particular morning, when a light wind was blowing off shore. Plenty of other sloops had delivered stone over their rails to the divers below. Marrows remembered that he had been out to the Ledge himself when the Screamer came up into the wind and crawled slowly up until her forefoot was within a biscuit toss of the stone pile.

What Marrows forgot was that Captain Bob Brandt of Cape Ann had then held the spokes of the Screamer’s wheel,–a man who knew every twist and turn of the treacherous tide.

So Baxter shook out the sloop’s jib and mainsail and started on his journey eight miles seaward, with orders to make fast on arrival to the spar buoy which lay within a few hundred yards of the Ledge, and there wait until the tide turned, when she could drop into position to unload. The tug with all of us on board would follow when we had taken on fresh water and coal.

On the run out Captain Joe watched the sloop until she had made her first tack, then he turned to his work and again busied himself in overhauling his diving dress; tightening the set-screws in his copper collar, re-cording his breastplate and putting new leather thongs in his leaden shoes. There was some stone on the sloop’s deck which was needed to complete a level down among the black fish and torn cod,–twenty-two feet down,–where the sea kelp streamed up in long blades above the top of his helmet and the rock crabs scurried out of his way. If Baxter didn’t make a “tarnel fool of himself and git into one o’ them swirl-holes,” he intended to get these stones into place before night.