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 slopes 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. As, however, the selection of the means to be employed lay with the contracting engineer, and not with the Board, Sanford’s working plans had finally been approved. He had lacked only a sloop to carry them out. This sloop Captain Joe had now found. No wonder, then, that the splendor of the early sunshine had seemed a harbinger of success, nor that as the minutes flew his eagerness increased to grasp the captain’s hand. At the first sound of his heavy step in the hall outside, Sanford sprang from his desk and threw the door wide open to welcome the big, burly fellow,—comrade and friend for years, as well as foreman and assistant engineer on his force. “Are you sure she’ll handle the stones?” were the first words he addressed to the captain,—there were no formalities between these men. “Nothing but a ten-horse engine, remember, will lift them from the dock. What’s the sloop’s beam?” “Thirty foot over all, an’ she’s stiff as a church,” answered Captain Joe, all out of breath with his run up the stairs,—pushing his Derby hat back from his forehead as he spoke. “An’ her cap’n ain’t no slouch, nuther. I see him yesterday ’fore I come down. Looks’s ef he hed th’ right stuff in him. Says he ain’t afeard o’ th ’Ledge, an’ don’t mind layin’ her broadside on, even ef she does git a leetle mite scraped.” “How’s her boiler?” Sanford asked, with sudden earnestness. “I ain’t looked her b’iler over yit, but her cylinders is big enough. If her steam gives out, I’ll put one of our own aboard. She’ll do, sir. Don’t worry a mite; we’ll spank that baby when we git to ’t,”—and his leathery, weather-tanned face cracked into smiles. Sanford laughed again. The cheerful humor of this man, whose judgment of men never failed him, and whose knowledge of sea-things made him invaluable, was always a tonic to him.