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*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith
I
BABCOCK'S DISCOVERY
Something worried Babcock. One could see that from the impatient
gesture with which he turned away from the ferry window on learning
he had half an hour to wait. He paced the slip with hands deep in his
pockets, his head on his chest. Every now and then he stopped, snapped
open his watch and shut it again quickly, as if to hurry the lagging
minutes.
For the first time in years Tom Grogan, who had always unloaded his
boats, had failed him. A scow loaded with stone for the sea-wall that
Babcock was building for the Lighthouse Department had lain three
days at the government dock without a bucket having been swung
across her decks. His foreman had just reported that there was not
enough material to last the concrete-mixers two hours. If Grogan did
not begin work at once, the divers must come up.
Heretofore to turn over to Grogan the unloading of material for any
submarine work had been like feeding grist to a mill--so many tons of
concrete stone loaded on the scows by the stone crushing company had
meant that exact amount delivered by Grogan on Babcock's
mixing-platforms twenty-four hours after arrival, ready for the divers
below. This was the way Grogan had worked, and he had required no
watching.
Babcock's impatience did not cease even when he took his seat on the
upper deck of the ferry-boat and caught the welcome sound of the
paddles sweeping back to the landing at St. George. He thought of his
men standing idle, and of the heavy penalties which would be inflicted
by the Government if the winter caught him before the section of wall
was complete. It was no way to serve a man, he kept repeating to
himself, leaving his gangs idle, now when the good weather might soon
be over and a full day's work could never be counted upon. Earlier in
the season Grogan's delay would not have been so serious.
But one northeaster as yet had struck the work. This had carried away
some of the upper planking--the false work of the coffer-dam; but this
had been repaired in a few hours without delay or serious damage.
After that the Indian summer had set in--soft, dreamy days when the
winds dozed by the hour, the waves nibbled along the shores, and the
swelling breast of the ocean rose and fell as if in gentle slumber.
But would this good weather last? Babcock rose hurriedly, as this
anxiety again took possession of him, and leaned over the deck-rail,
scanning the sky. He did not like the drift of the low clouds off to the
west; southeasters began that way. It looked as though the wind might
change.
Some men would not have worried over these possibilities. Babcock
did. He was that kind of man.
When the boat touched the shore, he sprang over the chains, and
hurried through the ferry-slip.
"Keep an eye out, sir," the bridge-tender called after him,--he had been
directing him to Grogan's house,--"perhaps Tom may be on the road."
Then it suddenly occurred to Babcock that, so far as he could remember,
he had never seen Mr. Thomas Grogan, his stevedore. He knew
Grogan's name, of course, and would have recognized his signature
affixed to the little cramped notes with which his orders were always
acknowledged, but the man himself might have passed unnoticed
within three feet of him. This is not unusual where the work of a
contractor lies in scattered places, and he must often depend on
strangers in the several localities.
As he hurried over the road he recalled the face of Grogan's foreman, a
big blond Swede, and that of Grogan's daughter, a slender fair-haired
girl, who once came to the office for her father's pay; but all efforts at
reviving the lineaments of Grogan failed.
With this fact clear in his mind, he felt a tinge of disappointment. It
would have relieved his temper to unload a portion of it upon the
offending stevedore. Nothing cools a man's wrath so quickly as not
knowing the size of the head he intends to hit.
As he
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