Tom Grogan | Page 6

pail.
"Look at him, Patsy! Git out, ye imp, or I'll hurt ye! Leave that kiver
alone!" She laughed as she struck at the goat with her empty gauntlet,
and shrank back out of the way of his horns.
There was no embarrassment over her informal dinner, eaten as she sat
squat in a fence-corner, an anchor-stone for a table, and a pile of spars
for a chair. She talked to Babcock in an unabashed, self-possessed way,
pouring out the smoking coffee in the flask cup, chewing away on the
pigs' feet, and throwing the bones to the goat, who sniffed them
contemptuously. "Yes, he's the youngest of our children, sir. He and
Jennie--that's home, and 'most as tall as meself--are all that's left. The
other two went to heaven when they was little ones."
"Can't the little fellow's leg be straightened?" asked Babcock, in a tone
which plainly showed his sympathy for the boy's suffering.
"No, not now; so Dr. Mason says. There was a time when it might have
been, but I couldn't take him. I had him over to Quarantine again two
years ago, but it was too late; it'd growed fast, they said. When he was
four years old he would be under the horses' heels all the time, and
a-climbin' over them in the stable, and one day the Big Gray fetched
him a crack, and broke his hip. He didn't mean it, for he's as dacint a
horse as I've got; but the boys had been a-worritin' him, and he let drive,
thinkin', most likely, it was them. He's been a-hoistin' all the mornin'."
Then, catching sight of Cully leading the horse back to work, she rose
to her feet, all the fire and energy renewed in her face.
"Shake the men up, Cully! I can't give 'em but half an hour to-day.
We're behind time now. And tell the cap'n to pull them macaronis out
of the hold, and start two of 'em to trimmin' some of that stone to

starboard. She was a-listin' when we knocked off for dinner. Come,
lively!"

II
A BOARD FENCE LOSES A PLANK
The work on the sea-wall progressed. The coffer-dam which had been
built by driving into the mud of the bottom a double row of heavy
tongued and grooved planking in two parallel rows, and bulkheading
each end with heavy boards, had been filled with concrete to low-water
mark, consuming not only the contents of the delayed scow, but two
subsequent cargoes, both of which had been unloaded by Tom Grogan.
To keep out the leakage, steam-pumps were kept going night and day.
By dint of hard work the upper masonry of the wall had been laid to the
top course, ready for the coping, and there was now every prospect that
the last stone would be lowered into place before the winter storms set
in.
The shanty--a temporary structure, good only for the life of the
work--rested on a set of stringers laid on extra piles driven outside of
the working-platform. When the submarine work lies miles from shore,
a shanty is the only shelter for the men, its interior being arranged with
sleeping-bunks, with one end partitioned off for a kitchen and a
storage-room. This last is filled with perishable property, extra blocks,
Manila rope, portable forges, tools, shovels, and barrows.
For this present sea-wall--an amphibious sort of structure, with one foot
on land and the other in the water--the shanty was of light pine boards,
roofed over, and made water-tight by tarred paper. The bunks had been
omitted, for most of the men boarded in the village. In this way
increased space for the storage of tools was gained, besides room for a
desk containing the government working drawings and specifications,
pay- rolls, etc. In addition to its door, fastened at night with a padlock,
and its one glass window, secured by a ten-penny nail, the shanty had a

flap-window, hinged at the bottom. When this was propped up with a
barrel stave it made a counter from which to pay the men, the
paymaster standing inside.
Babcock was sitting on a keg of dock spikes inside this working shanty
some days after he had discovered Tom's identity, watching his
bookkeeper preparing the pay-roll, when a face was thrust through the
square of the window. It was not a prepossessing face, rather pudgy and
sleek, with uncertain, drooping mouth, and eyes that always looked
over one's head when he talked. It was the property of Mr. Peter
Lathers, the yardmaster of the depot.
"When you're done payin' off maybe you'll step outside, sir," he said, in
a confiding tone. "I got a friend of mine who wants to know you. He's a
stevedore, and does the work to the fort. He's never done