Part 5

“Stop lyin' to me, Pete Lathers! If there's anythin' in this world I hate, it's a liar. Ye said it, and ye know ye said it. Ye want that drunken loafer Dan McGaw to get me work. Ye've been at it all summer, an' ye think I haven't watched ye; but I have. And ye say I don't pay full wages, and have got a lot of boys to do men's work, an' oughter be over me tubs. Now let me tell ye”--Lathers shrank back, cowering before her--“if ever I hear ye openin' yer head about me, or me teams, or me work, I'll make ye swallow every tooth in yer head. Send down somethin' with a mustache, will I? There's not a man in the yard that's a match for me, an' ye know it. Let one of 'em try that.”

Her uplifted fist, tight-clenched, shot past Lathers's ear. A quick blow, a plank knocked clear of its fastenings, and a flood of daylight broke in behind Lathers's head!

“Now, the next time I come, Pete Lathers,” she said firmly, “I'll miss the plank and take yer face.”

Then she turned, and stalked out of the yard.

III. SERGEANT DUFFY'S LITTLE GAME

The bad weather so long expected finally arrived. An afternoon of soft, warm autumn skies, aglow with the radiance of the setting sun, and brilliant in violet and gold, had been followed by a cold, gray morning. Of a sudden a cloud the size of a hand had mounted clear of the horizon, and called together its fellows. An unseen herald in the east blew a blast, and winds and sea awoke.

By nine o'clock a gale was blowing. By ten Babcock's men were bracing the outer sheathing of the coffer-dam, strengthening the derrick-guys, tightening the anchor-lines, and clearing the working-platforms of sand, cement, and other damageable property. The course-masonry, fortunately, was above the water-line, but the coping was still unset and the rubble backing of much of the wall unfinished. Two weeks of constant work were necessary before that part of the structure contained in the first section of the contract would be entirely safe for the coming winter. Babcock doubled his gangs, and utilized every hour of low water to the utmost, even when the men stood waist-deep. It was his only hope for completing the first section that season. After that would come the cold, freezing the mortar, and ending everything.

Tom Grogan performed wonders. Not only did she work her teams far into the night, but during all this bad weather she stood throughout the day on the unprotected dock, a man's sou'wester covering her head, a rubber waterproof reaching to her feet. She directed every boat-load herself, and rushed the materials to the shovelers, who stood soaking wet in the driving rain.

Lathers avoided her; so did McGaw. Everybody else watched her in admiration. Even the commandant, a bluff, gray-bearded naval officer,--a hero of Hampton Roads and Memphis,--passed her on his morning inspection with a kindly look in his face and an aside to Babcock: “Hire some more like her. She is worth a dozen men.”

Not until the final cargo required for the completion of the wall had been dumped on the platforms did she relax her vigilance. Then she shook the water from her oilskins and started for home. During all these hours of constant strain there was no outbreak of bravado, no spell of ill humor. She made no boasts or promises. With a certain buoyant pluck she stood by the derricks day after day, firing volleys of criticism or encouragement, as best suited the exigencies of the moment, now she sprang forward to catch a sagging bucket, now tended a guy to relieve a man, or handled the teams herself when the line of carts was blocked or stalled.

Every hour she worked increased Babcock's confidence and admiration. He began to feel a certain pride in her, and to a certain extent to rely upon her. Such capacity, endurance, and loyalty were new in his experience. If she owed him anything for her delay on that first cargo, the debt had been amply paid. Yet he saw that no such sense of obligation had influenced her. To her this extra work had been a duty: he was behind-hand with the wall, and anxious; she would help him out. As to the weather, she reveled in it. The dash of the spray and the driving rain only added to her enjoyment. The clatter of rattling buckets and the rhythmic movement of the shovelers keeping time to her orders made a music as dear to her as that of the steady tramp of men and the sound of arms to a division commander.

Owing to the continued bad weather and the difficulty of shipping small quantities of fuel, the pumping-engines ran out of coal, and a complaint from Babcock's office brought the agent of the coal company to the sea-wall. In times like these Babcock rarely left his work. Once let the Old Man of the Sea, as he knew, get his finger in between the cracks of a coffer-dam, and he would smash the whole into wreckage.

“I was on my way to see Tom Grogan,” said the agent. “I heard you were here, so I stopped to tell you about the coal. There will be a load down in the morning. I am Mr. Crane, of Crane & Co., coal-dealers.”

“You know Mrs. Grogan, then?” asked Babcock, after the delay in the delivery of the coal had been explained. He had been waiting for some such opportunity to discover more about his stevedore. He never discussed personalities with his men.

“Well, I should say so--known her for years. Best woman on top of Staten Island. Does she work for you?”

“Yes, and has for some years; but I must confess I never knew Grogan was a woman until I found her on the dock a few weeks ago, handling a cargo. She works like a machine. How long has she been a widow?”

“Well, come to think of it, I don't know that she is a widow. There's some mystery about the old man, but I never knew what. But that don't count; she's good enough as she is, and a hustler, too.”

Crane was something of a hustler himself--one of those busy Americans who opens his daily life with an office-key and closes it with a letter for the late mail. He was a restless, wiry, black-eyed little man, never still for a moment, and perpetually in chase of another eluding dollar,--which half the time he caught.

Then, laying his hand on Babcock's arm: “And she's square as a brick, too. Sometimes when a chunker captain, waiting to unload, shoves a few tons aboard a sneak-boat at night, Tom will spot him every time. They try to fool her into indorsing their bills of lading in full, but it don't work for a cent.”

“You call her Tom Grogan?” Babcock asked, with a certain tone in his voice. He resented, somehow, Crane's familiarity.

“Certainly. Everybody calls her Tom Grogan. It's her husband's name. Call her anything else, and she don't answer. She seems to glory in it, and after you know her a while you don't want to call her anything else yourself. It comes kind of natural--like your calling a man 'colonel' or 'judge.”

Babcock could not but admit that Crane might be right. All the names which could apply to a woman who had been sweetheart, wife, and mother seemed out of place when he thought of this undaunted spirit who had defied Lathers, and with one blow of her fist sent the splinters of a fence flying about his head.

“We've got the year's contract for coal at the fort,” continued Crane. “The quarter-master-sergeant who inspects it--Sergeant Duffy--has a friend named McGaw who wants to do the unloading into the government bins. There's a low price on the coal, and there's no margin for anybody; and if Duffy should kick about the quality of the coal,--and you can't please these fellows if they want to be ugly,--Crane & Co. will be in a hole, and lose money on the contract. I hate to go back on Tom Grogan, but there's no help for it. The ten cents a ton I'd save if she hauls the coal instead of McGaw would be eaten up in Duffy's short weights and rejections. I sent Sergeant Duffy's letter to her, so she can tell how the land lies, and I'm going up now to her house to see her, on my way to the fort. I don't know what Duffy will get out of it; perhaps he gets a few dollars out of the hauling. The coal is shipped, by the way, and ought to be here any minute.”

“Wait; I'll go with you,” said Babcock, handing him an order for more coal. “She hasn't sent down the tally-sheet for my last scow.” There was not the slightest necessity, of course, for Babcock to go to Grogan's house for this document.

As they walked on, Crane talked of everything except what was uppermost in Babcock's mind. Babcock tried to lead the conversation back to Tom, but Crane's thoughts were on something else.

When they reached the top of the hill, the noble harbor lay spread out beneath them, from the purple line of the great cities to the silver sheen of the sea inside the narrows. The clearing wind had hauled to the northwest. The sky was heaped with soft clouds floating in the blue. At the base of the hill nestled the buildings and wharves of the Lighthouse Depot, with the unfinished sea-wall running out from the shore, fringed with platforms and bristling with swinging booms--the rings of white steam twirling from the exhaust-pipes.

On either side of the vast basin lay two grim, silent forts, crouched on grassy slopes like great beasts with claws concealed. Near by, big lazy steamers, sullen and dull, rested motionless at Quarantine, awaiting inspection; while beyond, white-winged graceful yachts curved tufts of foam from their bows. In the open, elevators rose high as church steeples; long lines of canal-boats stretched themselves out like huge water-snakes, with hissing tugs for heads; enormous floats groaned under whole trains of cars; big, burly lighters drifted slowly with widespread oil-stained sails; monster derricks towered aloft, derricks that pick up a hundred-ton gun as easily as an ant does a grain of sand--each floating craft made necessary by some special industry peculiar to the port of New York, and each unlike any other craft in the harbor of any other city of the world.

Grogan's house and stables lay just over the brow of this hill, in a little hollow. The house was a plain, square frame dwelling, with front and rear verandas, protected by the arching branches of a big sycamore-tree, and surrounded by a small garden filled with flaming dahlias and chrysanthemums. Everything about the place was scrupulously neat and clean.