Caleb sat on the deck of the Screamer on her homeward run, his face turned toward Keyport Light, beyond which his little cabin lay. His eyes glistened, and there came a choking in his throat as he thought of meeting Betty. He could even feel her hand slipped into his, and could hear the very tones of her cheery welcome, when she met him at the gate and they walked together up the garden path to the porch.

Most of the men who had stood to the watch-tackles in the rolling surf sat beside him on the sloop. Those who were still wet, including Sanford, had gone below into the cabin, out of the cutting wind. Those who, like Caleb, had changed their clothes, sat on the after deck. Captain Joe, against Sanford’s earnest protest, had remained on the Ledge for the night. He wanted, he said, to see how the derricks would stand the coming storm.

It had been a busy month for the diver. Since the explosion he had been almost constantly in his rubber dress, working not only his regular four hours under water,—all that an ordinary man could stand,—but taking another’s place for an hour or two when some piece of submarine work at the Ledge required his more skillful eye and hand. He had set some fifty or more of the big enrockment blocks in thirty feet of water, each block being lowered into position by the Screamer’s boom, and he had prepared the anchor sockets in which to step the four great derricks. Twice he had been swept from his hold by the racing current, and once his helmet had struck a projecting rock with such force that he was deaf for days. His hands, too, had begun to blister from the salt water and hot sun. Betty, on his last Sunday at home, had split up one of her own little gloves for plasters, and tried to heal his blisters with some salve. But it had not done his bruises much good, he thought, as he probed with his stub of a thumb the deeper cracks in his tough, leathery palms.

Now that the men were convalescent he gloried more and more in his wife’s energy and capacity. To relieve a wounded man, serve him night and day, and by skill, tenderness, and self-sacrifice get him once more well and sound and on his legs, able to do a day’s work and earn a day’s pay,—this, to Caleb, was something to be proud of and to glory in. But for her nursing, he would often say, poor Billy would now be among the tombstones on the hill back of Keyport Light.

Caleb’s estimate of Betty’s efforts was not exaggerated. Her patient had been the most severely injured, and her task had therefore been longer and more severe. The cut on Lacey’s cheek and frontal bone, dividing his eyebrow like a sabre slash, had been deep and ugly and slow to heal; and the bruise on his back had developed into a wound that in its progress had sapped his youthful strength. He had been her patient from the first, and she had never neglected him an hour since the fatal night when she helped the doctor wind his bandages. When on the third day fever set in, she had taken her seat by his bedside until the delirium had passed. Mrs. Bell and Miss Peebles, the schoolmistress, had relieved each other in the care of the other wounded men,—all of them, strange to say, were single men, and all of them away from home.

Betty would go to her own cabin for an hour each day, but as soon as her work was done she would pull down the shades, lock the house door, and, with a sunbonnet on her head and some little delicacy in her hand, hurry down the shore road again to the warehouse hospital. This had been the first real responsibility of her life, the first time in which anything had been expected of her apart from the endless cooking of three meals a day, and the washing up and sweeping out that followed.

There were no more lonely hours for her now. A new tenderness, too, had been aroused in her nature because of the helplessness of the boy whose feeble, hot fingers clutched her own. The love which this curly-headed young rigger had once avowed for her when there were strength and ruggedness in every sinew of his body, when his red lips were parted over the white teeth and his eyes shone with pride, had been quite forgotten as she watched by his bed. It was this helplessness of his which was ever present in her mind, his suffering. She realized that the prostrate young fellow before her was dependent on her for his very life and sustenance, as a child might have been. It was for her he waited in the morning, refusing to touch his breakfast until she gave it to him,—unable at first, reluctant afterward. It was for her last touch on his pillow that he waited at night before he went to sleep. It was she alone who brought the smiles to his face, or inspired him with a courage he had almost lost when the pain racked him and he thought he might never be able to do a day’s work again.

The long confinement had left its mark on Lacey. He was a mere outline of himself the first day he was able to sit in the sunshine at the warehouse door. His hands were white, and his face was bleached. When he gained a little strength, Captain Joe gave him light duties about the wharf, the doctor refusing to let him go to the Ledge. But even after he was walking about, Betty felt him still under her care, and prepared dainty dishes for him. When she took them to him, she saw, with a strange sinking of her heart, that he gained but slowly, and was still weak and ill enough to need a woman’s care.

The story of her nursing and of the doctor’s constant tribute to her skill was well known, and Caleb, usually so reticent, would talk of it again and again. Most of the men liked to humor his pride in her, for Betty’s blithesome, cheery nature made her a favorite wherever she was known.

“I kind’er wish Cap’n Joe had come ashore to-night,” Caleb said, turning to Captain Brandt, who stood beside him, his hand on the tiller. “He’s been soakin’ wet all day, an’ he won’t put nothin’ dry on ef I ain’t with him. ’T warn’t for Betty I’d ’a’ stayed, but the little gal’s so lonesome ’t ain’t right to leave her. I don’ know what Lacey ’d done but for Betty. Did ye see ’er, Lonny, when she come in that night?” All the little by-paths of Caleb’s talk led to Betty.

It was the same old question, but Lonny, seated on the other side of the deck, fell in willingly with Caleb’s mood.

“See ’er? Wall, I guess! I thought she’d keel over when the doctor washed Billy’s face. He did look ragged, an’ no mistake, Caleb; but she held on an’ never give in a mite.”

Carleton sat close enough to overhear the remark.

“Why shouldn’t she?” he sneered, behind his hand, to the man next him. “Lacey’s a blamed sight better looking fellow than what she’s got. The girl knows a good thing when she sees it. If it was me, I’d”—

He never finished the sentence. Caleb overheard the remark, and rose from his seat, with an expression in his eyes that could not be misunderstood. Sanford, watching the group through the cabin window, and not knowing the cause of Caleb’s sudden anger, said afterwards that the diver looked like an old gray wolf gathering himself for a spring, as he stood over Carleton with hands tightly clinched.

The superintendent made some sort of half apology to Caleb, and the diver took his seat again, but did not forgive him; neither did the older men, who had seen Betty grow up, and who always spoke of her somehow as if she belonged to them.

“T’ain’t decent,” said Lonny Bowles to Sanford when he had joined him later in the cabin of the Screamer and had repeated Carleton’s remark, “for a man to speak agin a woman; such fellers ain’t no better ’n rattlesnakes an’ ought’er be trompled on, if they is in guv’ment pay.”

When the sloop reached Keyport harbor, the men were landed as near as possible to their several homes. Caleb, in his kindly voice, bade good-night to Sanford, to Captain Brandt, to the crew, and to the working gang. To Carleton he said nothing. He would have overlooked and forgotten an affront put upon himself, but never one upon Betty.

“She ain’t got nobody but an ol’ feller like me,” he often said to Captain Joe,—“no chillen nor nothin’, poor little gal. I got to make it up to her some way.”

As he walked up the path he was so engrossed with Carleton’s flippant remark, conning it over in his mind to tell Betty,—he knew she did not like him,—that he forgot for the moment that she was not at the garden gate.

He looked up at the house and noticed that the shades were pulled down on the garden side of the house.

“She ain’t sick, is she?” he said to himself. “I guess nussin’ Lacey’s been too much for her. I ought’er knowed she’d break down. ’Pears to me she did look peaked when I bid her good-by las’ Monday.”

“Ye ain’t sick, little woman, be ye?” he called out as he opened the door.

There was no response. He walked quickly through the kitchen, passed into the small hall, calling her as he went, mounted the narrow stairs, and opened the bedroom door softly, thinking she might be asleep. The shutters were closed, the room was in perfect order. The bed was empty. The sheet and covering were turned neatly on his side, and the bedding was clean and had not been slept in. At its foot, within reach of his hand, lay his big carpet slippers that she had made for him. He stooped mechanically, gazing at the untouched pillow, still wondering why she had turned the sheet, his mind relieved now that she was not ill.

Then he remembered that it was not yet dark, and that, on account of the coming storm, he was an hour earlier than usual in getting home. His face lightened. He saw it all now: Betty had not expected him so soon, and would be home in a little while.

When he entered the kitchen again he saw the table. There was but one plate laid, with the knife and fork beside it. This was covered by a big china bowl. Under it was some cold meat with the bread and butter. Near the table, by the stove, a freshly ironed shirt hung over a chair.

He understood it all now. She had put his supper and his shirt where he would find them, and was not coming home till late. He would “clean up” right away, so as to be ready for her.

When he had washed, dressed himself in his house clothes, and combed his big beard, he dragged a chair out on the front porch, to watch for her up and down the road.

The men going home, carrying their dinner-pails, nodded to him as they passed, and one stopped and leaned over the gate long enough to wonder whether the big August storm would break that night, adding, “We generally has a blow ’bout this time.”

While he sat waiting the butcher stopped to leave the weekly piece of meat for Sunday,—the itinerant country butcher, with his shop in one of the neighboring villages, and his customers up and down all the roads that led out of it; supplies for every household in his wagon, and the gossip of every family on his lips.

His wagon had sides of canvas painted white, with “Fish, Meat and Poultry” in a half-moon of black letters arching over the owner’s name, and was drawn by a horse that halted and moved on, not by the touch of the lines,—they were always caught to a hook in the roof of the wagon,—but by a word from the butcher, who stood at the tail-board, where the scales dangled, sorting fish, hacking off pieces of red meat, or weighing scraggly chickens proportionate to the wants and means of his various customers. He was busying himself at this tail-board, the dripping of the ice pock-marking the dusty road below, when he caught sight of Caleb.

“Wall, I kind’er hoped somebody’d be hum,” he said to himself, wrapping the six-pound roast in a piece of yellow paper. With a tuck to his blue over-sleeves, he swung open the gate. “So ye didn’t go ’long, Caleb, with Mis’ West? I see it begin to blow heavy, and was wond’rin’ whether you’d get in—best cut, you see,” opening the paper for Caleb’s inspection, “and I broke them ribs jes’ ’s Mis’ West allers wants ’em. Then I wondered agin how ye could leave the Ledge at all to-day. Mis’ Bell tol’ me yesterday the cap’n was goin’ to set them derricks. I see ’em a-layin’ on the dock ’fore that Cape Ann sloop loaded ’em, an’ they was monstrous, an’ no mistake. Have some butter? She didn’t order none this mornin’, but I got some come in this forenoon, sweet’s a nut,—four pounds for a dollar, an’”—

Caleb looked at him curiously. “Where did the wife say she was a-goin’?” he interrupted.

“Wall, she didn’t say, ’cause I didn’t ketch up to her. I was comin’ down Nollins Hill over to Noank, when I see her ahead, walkin’ down all in her Sunday rig, carryin’ a little bag like. I tho’t maybe she was over to see the Nollins folks, till I left seven pounds fresh mackerel nex’ door to Stubbins’s, an’ some Delaware eggs. Then I see my stock of ice was nigh gone, so I druv down to the steamboat dock, an’ there I catched sight of ’er agin jes’ goin’ aboard. I knowed then, of course, she was off for Greenport an’ New York, an’ was jes’ sayin’ to myself, Wall, I’ll stop an’ see if anybody’s ter hum, an’ if they’re all gone I won’t leave the meat, but”—

“Put the meat in the kitchen,” said Caleb, without rising from his chair.

When the butcher drove off, the diver had not moved. His gaze was fixed on the turn of the road. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. A faint sickness unnerved him. Had he been cross or impatient with her the last time he was at home, that she should serve him so? Then a surge of anxiety swept over him, as he thought of Betty going without letting him know. Why should she walk all the way to Noank and take the boat across the Sound, twenty miles away, if she wanted to go to New York? The railroad station was nearer and the fare through was cheaper. He would have taken her himself, if he had only known she wanted to go. He could have asked Captain Joe to give him a couple of days off, and would have gone with her. If she had only left some message, or sent some word by the men to the Ledge! Then, as his thoughts traveled in a circle, catching at straws, his brain whirling, his eye fell upon the clump of trees shading Captain Joe’s cottage. Aunty Bell would know, of course; why had he not thought of that before? Betty told Aunty Bell everything.

The busy little woman sat on the porch shelling peas, the pods popping about her bright tin pan, as Caleb came up the board walk.

“Why, ye needn’t hev give yerself the trouble, Caleb, to come all the way down!” she called out as he came within hearing. “Lonny Bowles’s jest been here and told me cap’n ain’t comin’ home till Monday. I’m ’mazin’ glad them derricks is up. He ain’t done nothin’ but worrit about ’em since spring opened, ’fraid somebody’d get hurted when he set ’em. Took a lantern, here, night ’fore last, jest as we was goin’ to bed, after he’d been loadin’ ’em aboard the Screamer all day, an’ went down to the dock to see if Bill Lacey’d shrunk them collars on tight enough. Guess Betty’s glad yer home. I ain’t see her to-day, but I don’t lay it up agin her. I knowed she was busy cleanin’ up ’gin ye come.”

Caleb’s heart leaped into his throat. If Betty had not told Aunty Bell, there was no one else who would know her movements. It was on his lips to tell her what the butcher had seen, when something in his heart choked his utterance. If Betty had not wanted any one to know, there was no use of his talking about it.

A man of different temperament, a nervous or easily alarmed or suspicious man, would have caught at every clue and followed it to the end. Caleb waited and kept still. She would telegraph or write him and explain it all, he said to himself, or send some one to see him before bedtime. So he merely answered he was glad Aunty Bell knew about Captain Joe, nodded good-night, and passed slowly down the board walk and up the road, his head on his chest, his big beard blowing about his neck in the rising wind. He kept saying to himself that Betty would telegraph or write and explain it all, or send some one to see him before bedtime.

It was dark when he reached home. He lit the kerosene lamp and pulled down the shades. He did not want passers-by to know he was alone. For an hour or more he strode up and down the kitchen, his thumbs in his suspenders, his supper untouched. Now and then he would stop as if listening for a footfall, or fix his eye minutes at a time on some crack in the floor or other object, gazing abstractedly at it, his thoughts far away. Once he drew the lamp close and picked up the evening paper, adjusting his big glasses; reading the same lines over and over, until the paper fell of itself from his hands. Soon, worn out with the hard fight of the day, he fell asleep in his chair, awaking some hours after, his mind torn with anxiety. Then he took off his shoes and crept upstairs in his stocking feet, holding to the balustrade as a tired man will do, entered his bedroom, and dropped into a chair.

All through the night he slept fitfully; waking with sudden starts, roused by the feeling that some horrible shadow had settled upon him, that something he could not name to himself was standing behind him—always there, making him afraid to turn and look. When he was quite awake, and saw the dim outlines of the untouched bed with its smooth white pillows, the undefinable fear would slowly take shape, and he would start up in his chair, and as if to convince himself he would take a long look at the bed, with the relief of one able at last to explain a horror the vagueness of which had tortured him. “Yes, I know, Betty’s gone.” Then, overcome with fatigue, he would doze again.

With the breaking of the day he sprang from his chair, half dazed, threw up the narrow sash to feel the touch of the cool, real world, and peered between the slats of the shutters, listening to the wind outside, now blowing a gale and dashing against the blinds.

None of the other houses were open yet. He was glad of that, glad of their bare, cold, indifferent exteriors, blind to the outside world. It was as though he felt his secret still safe from prying eyes, and he meant to guard it always from them; to let none of them know what his night had been, or that Betty had been away for so long without telling him. When she came home again she would help, he knew, to smooth away the marks of it all, the record of his pain. Her bright face would look up into his, her little hands pat his cheeks, and he would then know all about it, why she went and where, and he would take the little girl wife in his arms, and comfort her in the suffering that would surely come to her when she discovered that her thoughtlessness had caused him any misery.

No! He would tell no one. He would simply wait, all day if necessary, all day and another night. He could trust her. It was all right, he knew. He did not even mind the waiting.

Then while he was still thinking, still determining to keep silent, still satisfying himself that all was well, he turned rapidly and tiptoed downstairs.

With nervous, trembling fingers he took a suit of tarpaulins and a sou’wester from a hook behind the porch door, and walked down to the dock. Some early lobstermen, bailing a skiff, saw him stand for a moment, look about him, and spring aboard a flat-bottomed sharpie, the only boat near by,—a good harbor boat, but dangerous in rough weather. To their astonishment, he raised the three-cornered sail and headed for the open sea.

“Guess Caleb must be crazy,” said one man, resting his scoop for a moment, as he watched the boat dip almost bow under. “Thet sharpie ain’t no more fittin’ for thet slop sea ’n ever was. What do ye s’pose ails him, anyhow? Gosh A’mighty! see her take them rollers. If it was anybody else but him he wouldn’t git to the P’int. Don’t make no difference, tho’, to him. He kin git along under water jes’ ’s well’s on top.”

As the boat flew past Keyport Light and Caleb laid his course to the Ledge, the keeper, now that the dawn had come, was in the lantern putting out his light and drawing down his shades. Seeing Caleb’s boat tossing below him, he took down his glass.

“What blamed fool is that tryin’ to get himself measured for a coffin?” he said.

The men were still asleep when Caleb reached the Ledge and threw open the door of the shanty,—all but Nickles, who was preparing breakfast. He looked at Caleb as if he had been an apparition, and followed him to the door of Captain Joe’s cabin, a little room by itself. He wanted to hear the dreadful news he brought. Unless some one was dead or dying no man would risk such a sea alone,—not even an old sailor like the diver.

Caleb opened the door of the captain’s little room and closed it tight behind him, without a word to the cook. The captain lay asleep in his bunk, one big arm under his head, his short curly hair matted close.

“Cap’n Joe,” said Caleb, laying his hand on the sleeping man’s shoulder and shaking him gently,—“Cap’n Joe, it’s me,—Caleb.”

The captain raised his head and stared at him. Then he sat upright, trying to collect his thoughts.

“Cap’n, I had to come for ye,—I want ye.”

“It ain’t Aunty Bell, is it?” said Captain Joe, springing to the floor. The early hour, the sough of the wind and beating of the rain on the roof of the shanty, Caleb dripping wet, with white drawn face, standing over him, told him in a flash the gravity of the visit.

“No, it’s my Betty. She’s gone,—gone without a word.”

“Gone! Who with?”

Caleb sunk on Captain Joe’s sea-chest, and buried his face in his blistered hands. For a moment he dared not trust himself to answer.

“I don’t know—I don’t know”—The broken words came between his rough fingers. Big tears rolled down his beard.

“Who says so? How do you know she’s gone?”

“The butcher seen ’er goin’ ’board the boat at Noank yesterday mornin’. She fixed everythin’ at home ’fore she went. I ain’t been to bed all night. I don’t know what ye kin do, but I had to come. I thought maybe you’d go home with me.”

The captain did not answer. Little scraps of gossip that he had heard now and then among the men floated through his memory. He had never paid any attention to them, except once when he had rebuked Nickles for repeating some slurring remark that Carleton had made one night at table. But even as he thought of them Betty’s face rose before him,—her sweet, girlish face with its dimples.

“It’s a dirty lie, Caleb, whoever said it. I wouldn’t believe it if I see it myself. Ain’t no better gal ’n Betty ever breathed. Go with you! Course I will’s soon’s I get my clo’es on.” He dressed hurriedly, caught up his oilskins, flung wide the shanty door, and made his way over the platforms towards the wharf.

When they reached the little cove in the rocks below, where the smaller boats were always sheltered, and he saw the sharpie, he stopped short.

“You ain’t come out here in that, Caleb?”

“It was all I could get; there warn’t nothin’ else handy, Cap’n Joe.”

The captain looked the frail sharpie over from stem to stern, and then called to Nickles: “Bring down one ’er them empty ker’sene five-gallon cans; we got some bailin’ to do, I tell ye, ’fore we make Keyport Light. No, there ain’t nothin’ up,” noticing Nickles’s anxious face. “Caleb wants me to Keyport,—that’s all. Get breakfast, and tell the men, when they turn out, that I’ll be back to-morrow in the Screamer, if it smooths down.”

Caleb took his seat on the windward side of the tossing boat, holding the sheet. The captain sat in the stern, one hand on the tiller. The kerosene-can lay at their feet. The knees of the two men touched.

No better sailors ever guided a boat, and none ever realized more clearly the dangers of their position.

The captain settled himself in his seat in silence, his eyes watching every wave that raced by, and laid his course towards the white tower five miles away, blurred gray in the driving rain. Caleb held the sheet, his eyes facing the long, low line of hills where his cabin lay. As he hauled the sheet closer a heavy sigh broke from him. It was the first time since he had known Betty that he had set his face homeward without a thrill of delight filling his heart. Captain Joe heard the smothered sigh, and, without turning his head, laid his great hand with its stiff thole-pin fingers tenderly on Caleb’s wrist. These two men knew each other.

“I wouldn’t worry, Caleb,” he said, after a little. “That butcher sees too much, an’ sometimes he don’t know nothin’. He’s allers got some cock-an’-bull story ’bout somebody ’r other. Only las’ week he come inter Gardiner’s drug store with a yarn ’bout the old man bein’ pisened, when it warn’t nothin’ but cramps. Ease a little, Caleb—s-o. Seems to me it’s blowin’ harder.”

As he spoke, a quick slash of the cruel wind cut the top from a pursuing wave and flung it straight in Caleb’s face. The diver, with his stiffened fingers, combed the dripping spray from his beard, and without a word drew his tarpaulins closer. Captain Joe continued:—

“Wust 'r them huckster fellers is they ain’t got no better sense 'an to peddle everythin’ they know 'long with their stuff. Take in—take in, Caleb! That was a soaker.” The big wave that had broken within a foot of the rail had drenched them from head to foot. “Butcher didn’t say nobody was with Betty, did he?” he asked, with a cant of his sou’wester to free it from sea-water.

Caleb shook his head.

“No, and there warn’t nobody. I tell ye this thing’ll straighten itself out. Ye can’t tell what comes inter women’s heads sometimes. She might’er gone over to Greenport to git some fixin’s for Sunday, an’ would’er come back in the afternoon boat, but it blowed so. Does she know anybody over there?”

Caleb did not answer. Somehow since he had seen Captain Joe hope had gone out of his heart. He had understood but too clearly the doubting question that had escaped the captain’s lips, as he sprang from the bed and looked into his eyes. He was not a coward; he had faced without a quiver many dangers in his time; more than once he had cut his air-hose, the last desperate chance of a diver when his lines are fouled. But his legs had shaken as he listened to Captain Joe. There was something in the tone of his voice that had unmanned him.

For a mile or more the two men did not speak again. Wave after wave pursued them, and tossed its angry spray after them. Captain Joe now managed the sail with one hand, and steered with the other. Caleb bailed incessantly.

When they ran under the lee of the lighthouse the keeper hailed them. He had recognized Captain Joe. Indeed, he had followed the sharpie with his glass until it reached the Ledge, and had watched its return “with two fools instead of one,” he said.

“Anybody sick?” he shouted.

Captain Joe shook his head, and the sharpie plunged on and rounded the point into the perfect calm of the protecting shore.

Caleb made fast the boat when land was reached, while the captain sprang out. Then they both hurried up Caleb’s garden walk to the cabin door.

There was no change in the house. The white china bowl still lay over the supper, the newspaper on the floor; no one had entered since Caleb had left.

The captain began a close search through the rooms: inside the clock, all over the mantelpiece, and on the sitting-room table. No scrap of writing could he find that shed a ray of light on Betty’s movements. Then he walked upstairs, Caleb following him, and opened the bedroom closet door. Her dresses hung in their usual places,—all but the one she wore and her cloak, Caleb said.

“She ain’t gone for long,” said the captain thoughtfully, looking into the closet. “You wait here, Caleb, and git yerself some breakfast. I may be gone two hours, I may be gone all day. When I find out for sure I’ll come back. I’m goin’ to Noank fust, to see them hands aboard the boat. It’s Sunday, an’ she ain’t a-runnin’.”

Caleb waited by the fireless stove. Hour after hour went by. Now and then he would open the front door and peer down the road, trying to make out the captain’s burly, hurrying form. When it grew dark he put a light in the window, and raised one shade on the kitchen side of the house, that the captain might know he was still at home and waiting.

About nine o’clock Caleb heard the whistle of a tug and a voice calling for some one to catch a line. He opened the kitchen door and looked out on the wet gloom, that was broken here and there by the masthead lights rocking in the wind. Then he recognized one of the big Medford tugs lying off the dock below his garden; the hands were making fast to a dock spile. Captain Joe sprang ashore, and the tug steamed off.

The captain walked slowly towards the porch, entered the kitchen without a word, and sank heavily into a chair. Caleb made no sound; he stood beside him, waiting, one hand grasping the table.

“She’s gone, ain’t she?”

The captain nodded his head.

“Gone! Who with?” asked Caleb, unconsciously repeating the words that had rung all day in his ears.

“Bill Lacey,” said the captain, with choking voice.