



Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
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[Illustration: "I ain't blamin' her, nor never will"]




                       CALEB WEST, MASTER DIVER

                        BY F. HOPKINSON SMITH



                        WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

                 MALCOLM FRASER AND ARTHUR I. KELLER



                         BOSTON AND NEW YORK
                    HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

                    The Riverside Press, Cambridge
                                 1898




        COPYRIGHT, 1897 AND 1898, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND CO.
                COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY F. HOPKINSON SMITH
                         ALL RIGHTS RESERVED




CONTENTS

        I. The Cape Ann Sloop
       II. A Morning's Mail
      III. Captain Brandt at the Throttle
       IV. Among the Blackfish and Tomcods
        V. Aunty Bell's Kitchen
       VI. A Little Dinner for Five
      VII. Betty's First Patient
     VIII. The "Heave Ho" of Lonny Bowles
       IX. What the Butcher Saw
        X. Strains from Bock's 'Cello
       XI. Captain Joe's Telegram
      XII. Captain Joe's Creed
     XIII. A Shanty Door
      XIV. Two Envelopes
       XV. A Narrow Path
      XVI. Under the Willows
     XVII. The Song of the Fire
    XVIII. The Equinoctial Gale
      XIX. From the Lantern Deck
       XX. At the Pines
      XXI. The Record of Nickles, the Cook
     XXII. After the Battle
    XXIII. A Broken Draw
     XXIV. The Swinging Gate
      XXV. Under the Pitiless Stars
     XXVI. Caleb Trims His Lights




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

    "I ain't blamin' her, nor never will"
    "Swung back the gate with the gesture of a rollicking boy"
    "Helen... in white muslin--not a jewel"
    "No, it's my Betty"
    "What's she but a chit of a child that don't know no better"
    "Sanford... raised her hand to his lips"
    "Thank God, Tony! Thank God!"
    "Victory is ours!"
    "The diver knelt in a passive, listless way"
    "Ain't nothin' to skeer ye, child"




                     CALEB WEST, MASTER DIVER




CHAPTER I

THE CAPE ANN SLOOP


The rising sun burned its way through a low-lying mist that hid the
river, and flashed its search-light rays over the sleeping city. The
blackened tops of the tall stacks caught the signal, and answered in
belching clouds of gray steam that turned to gold as they floated
upwards in the morning air. The long rows of the many-eyed tenements
cresting the hill blinked in the dazzling light, threw wide their
shutters, and waved curling smoke flags from countless chimneys.

Narrow, silent alleys awoke. Doors opened and shut. Single figures
swinging dinner-pails, and groups of girls with baskets, hurried to
and fro. The rumbling of carts was heard and shrill street cries.

Suddenly the molten ball swung clear of the purple haze and flooded
the city with tremulous light. The vanes of the steeples flashed and
blazed. The slanting roofs, wet with the night dew, glistened like
silver. The budding trees, filling the great squares, flamed pink and
yellow, their tender branches quivering in the rosy light.

Now long, deep-toned whistles--reveille of forge, spindle, and
press--startled the air. Surging crowds filled the thoroughfares;
panting horses tugged at the surface cars; cabs rattled over the
cobblestones, and loaded trucks began to block the crossings.

The great city was astir.

At the sun's first gleam, Henry Sanford had waked with joyous start.
Young, alert, full of health and courage as he was, the touch of its
rays never came too early for him. To-day they had been like the hand
of a friend, rousing him with promises of good fortune.

Dressing with eager haste, he had hurried into the room adjoining his
private apartments, which served as his uptown business office.
Important matters awaited him. Within a few hours a question of vital
moment had to be decided,--one upon which the present success of his
work depended.

As he entered, the sunshine, pouring through the wide windows, fell
across a drawing-table covered with the plans of the lighthouse he was
then building; illumined a desk piled high with correspondence, and
patterned a wall upon which were hung photographs and sketches of the
various structures which had marked the progress of his engineering
career.

But it was toward a telegram lying open on his desk that Sanford
turned. He took it in his hand and read it with the quiet satisfaction
of one who knows by heart every line he studies. It was headed
Keyport, and ran as follows:--

    To Henry Sanford, C. E., Washington
    Square, New York.

    Cape Ann sloop arrived and is a corker.
    Will be at your uptown office in the morning.

                                     Joseph Bell.

"Dear old Captain Joe, he's found her at last!" he said to himself,
and laughed aloud.

With a joyous enthusiasm that lent a spring and vitality to every
movement, he stepped to the window and raised the sash to let in the
morning air.

It was a gala-day for the young engineer. For months Captain Joe had
been in search of a sloop of peculiar construction,--one of so light a
draught that she could work in a rolling surf, and yet so stanch that
she could sustain the strain of a derrick-boom rigged to her mast.
Without such a sloop the building of the lighthouse Sanford was then
constructing for the government on Shark Ledge, lying eight miles from
Keyport, and breasting a tide running six miles an hour, could not go
on. With such a sloop its early completion was assured.

The specifications for this lighthouse provided that the island which
formed its base--an artificial one made by dumping rough stones over
the sunken rock known as Shark's Ledge--should be protected not only
from sea action, but from the thrust of floating ice. This Sanford was
to accomplish by paving its under-water <DW72>s with huge granite
blocks, to form an enrockment,--each block to be bedded by a diver.

The engineer-in-chief of the Lighthouse Board at Washington had
expressed grave doubts as to the practicability of the working methods
submitted by Sanford for handling these blocks, questioning whether a
stone weighing twelve tons could be swung overboard, as suggested by
him, from the deck of a vessel and lowered to a diver while the boat
was moored in a six-mile current.