When Sanford joined the group there was no general touching of hats,—outward sign of deference that a group of laborers on land would have paid their employer. In a certain sense, each man here was chief. Each man knew his duty and did it, quietly, effectually, and cheerfully. The day’s work had no limit of hours. The pay was never fixed by a board of delegates, one half of whom could not tell a marlinespike from a monkey-wrench. These men had enlisted for a war with winds and storms and changing seas, and victory meant something more to them than pay once a month and plum duff once a week. It meant hours of battling with the sea, of tugging at the lines, waist-deep in the boiling surf that rolled in from Montauk. It meant constant, unceasing vigilance day and night, in order that some exposed site necessary for a bedstone might be captured and held before a southeaster could wreck it, and thus a vantage-point be lost in the laying of the masonry. Each man took his share of wet and cold and exposure without grumbling. When, by some accident, a cowardly and selfish spirit joined the force, Captain Joe, on the first word of complaint, handed the man his money and put him ashore. The severity of the work was never resented. It was only against their common enemies, the winds and the seas, that murmurs were heard. “Drat that wind!” one would say. “Here she’s a-haulin’ to the east’rd agin, an’ we ain’t got them j’ints [in the masonry] p’inted.” Or, “It makes a man sick to see th’ way this month’s been a-goin’ on,—not a decent clay since las’ Tuesday.” Sanford liked these men. He was always at home with them. He loved their courage, their grit, their loyalty to one another and to the work itself. The absence of ceremony among them never offended him. His cheery “Good-morning” as he stepped aboard was as cheerily answered, but no other demonstration took place. Captain Joe stopped work only long enough to shake Sanford’s hand and to present him to the newcomer, Captain Bob Brandt of the Screamer. “Cap’n Bob!” he called, waving his hand. “Ay, ay, sir!” came the ready response of his early training. “Come aft, sir. Mr. Sanford wants ye.” The “sir” was merely a recognition of the captain’s rank. A tall, straight, blue-eyed young fellow of twenty-two, with a face like an open book, walked down the deck,—one of those perfectly simple, absolutely fearless, alert men found so often on the New England coast, with legs and arms of steel, body of hickory, and hands of whalebone: cabin-boy at twelve, common sailor at sixteen, first mate at twenty, and full captain the year he voted. Sanford looked him all over, from his shoes to his cap. He knew a round full man when he saw him. This one seemed to be without a flaw. Sanford saw too that he possessed that yeast of good nature without which the best of men are heavy and dull.