Caleb shook his head inside the copper helmet. “No; don’t think so.
Guess ye thought I was a-goin’ to stay all night, didn’t ye? I had ter
crawl through two cars ’fore I got him; when I found him he was under
a tool-chest. One o’ them lower cars, I see, has got its end stove
out.”
“Jes’ ’s I told ye, Mr. Sanford,” said Captain Joe in a positive tone;
“t’other body went out with the tide.”
* * * * *
The yacht, with the rescued dead man laid on the deck and covered with
a sheet, steamed across the narrow channel, reversed her screw, and
touched the fender spiles of her wharf as gently as one would tap an
egg. Sanford, who, now that the body was found, had gone ahead in the
small boat in search of the section boss, was waiting on the wharf for
the arrival of the yacht.
“There’s more trouble, Captain Joe,” he called. “There’s a man here
that the scow saved from the wreck. Mr. Smearly thought he would pull
through, but the doctor who’s with him says he can’t live an hour. His
spine is injured. Major Slocomb and Mr. Smearly are now in Stonington
in search of a surgeon. The section boss tells me his name is
Williams, and that he works in the machine shops. Better look at him
and see if you know him.”
Captain Joe and Caleb walked toward the scow. She was moored close to
the grassy slope of the shore. On her deck stood half a dozen
men,—one a diver sent by the manager of the road, and who had arrived
with his dress and equipment too late to be of service.
The injured man lay in the centre. Beside him, seated on one of Mrs.
Leroy’s piazza chairs, was the village doctor; his hand was on the
patient’s pulse. One of Mrs. Leroy’s maids knelt at the wounded man’s
feet, wringing out cloths that had been dipped in buckets of boiling
water brought by the men servants. Mrs. Leroy and Helen and one or two
guests sat a short distance away on the lawn. Over by the stables
swinging lights could be seen glimmering here and there, as if men
were hurrying. There were lights, too, on the dock and on the scow’s
deck; one hung back of the sufferer’s head, where it could not shine
on his eyes.
The wounded man, who had been stripped of his wet clothes, lay on a
clean mattress. Over him was thrown a soft white blanket. His head was
propped up on a pillow taken from one of Mrs. Leroy’s beds. She had
begged to have him moved to the house, but the doctor would not
consent until the surgeon arrived. So he kept him out in the warm
night-air, under the stars.
Dying and dead men were no new sight to Captain Joe and Caleb. The
captain had sat by too many wounded men knocked breathless by falling
derricks, and seen their life-blood ooze away, and Caleb had dragged
too many sailors from sunken cabins. This accident was not serious;
only three killed and one wounded out of twenty. In the morning their
home people would come and take them away,—in cloth-covered boxes, or
in plain pine. That was all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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