A builder of ships; the story of Brander Cushing's ambition

I . 1 I

CHARLES M. SHELDON

A

BUILDER OF SHIPS

The Story of Brander Cushing’s Ambition

BY

CHARLES M. SHELDON

h

AUTHOR OF “IN HIS STEPS.” “THE HIGH CALLING,” ETC

HODDER & STOUGHTON NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Contents

CHAPTEE PAGE

I. The Admiral’s Daughter .... 9

II. Brander Cushing S3

CHAPTER I THE admiral’s DAUGHTER; THE BOW OF RIBBONS

SIDNEY Cushing’s risk; the naval factory horror; FATHER AND SON.

The Secretary of War had finished his speech and turned to the contractor with a gesture that he might signal the engineer to release the locking bars which held the monster warship on the ways. Then he looked with a smile in the other direction and motioned to a young woman standing a little behind him to be ready for the christening of the vessel.

The girl stood there on the platform, whicE was built high up over the ship-yard floor, poised very erect and alert, a smile on her face and a proud look in her eyes, as she raised a bottle of champagne with a gesture of great animation. About the neck of the bottle fluttered a bow made of red, white, and blue ribbons.

On the platform with the Secretary, stood a brilliant and distinguished group : Senators and Representatives, secretaries of the cabinet, members of the Naval Board, ambassadors and members of the diplomatic corps, army and navy officers, retired

officers and famous fighters.

The sunlight struck through the openings about the immense enclosure of the ship-yard and flashed into vivid pictures the color of the uniforms and foreign dress of the representatives of other countries. There was a dazzling profusion of gold lace, plumed hats, scarlet trimmings, and gay braided adornments on breast and shoulder and headgear. Over all fluttered innumerable pennons and streamers of red, white and blue, and a great flag was hung over the bow of the warship on one side, covering several square yards of its black steel surface.

The yard below was dotted with human figures. Workmen were at their places. On both sides of the vessel along the river, thousands of spectators were gathered. The largest warship of modern times was about to be launched, and the event was memorable in the history of naval affairs.

A short, heavy-set man standing at the Secretary’s left looked over the edge of the platform and along the line of the vessel with a look of authority. His eye was steady and his appearance calm, but the moment was tense for him. This was Brander Cushing, the ship contractor.

“ Just a little to the right, please. Miss Marston,” he said, looking across the figure of the Secretary.

The girl moved forward slightly. ‘‘Yes. That’s right, thank you. Now! ”

He raised his hand for the signal to McNeil, the engineer, and the next instant the mass of 26,000 tons displacement began to move. It was hardly perceptible at first. But it was a majestic movement, that thrilled those who felt the distance widening between the platform and the smooth deck of the war monster. It was slipping down the slight incline, and the girl, with a quick glance at the Secretary that’ included an answering gesture from him and Cushing, leaned gracefully forward and threw the bottle against the bow of the ship. At that instant the band struck up “ The Star-spangled Banner,” and all hats came off, while a roar of cheers went up from the masses along the river.

The bottle broke into a spattering glitter of glass,, and the champagne fizzed down over the steel side. But the bow of ribbons, caught by a sudden strong gust of wind from below, flew up past the edge of the deck and, lifted by a capricious and vagrant zephyr, floated along down the platform past two young men who were standing together at the extreme end of the platform on the river side.

The ribbons were about five feet from the edge of the platform, but they were floating over the river, which was nearly seventy-five feet below. A chain wound about posts protected the platform at that point, and the first young man leaned out over this chain and, with more than half his body flung over the empty space below, clutched at the ribbons as they sailed by, but missed them.

His companion had already stepped over the chain, and with one foot on the edge of the platform and one hand around the chain, he reached the other hand out over the river after the bow, which seemed like an animated thing coquetting with him, as it whirled suddenly downward and away from him.

His hand seized the bunch of color and closed over it. But at the same instant his foot slipped and his hat fell off and went sailing down into the water. His hand still clung to the chain, and his face, as it turned upward while his body hung there, showed no trace of fear or even of surprise.

A dozen hands snatched at his wrist and arm. The first to get hold of him was the young man who had missed the ribbons, and his face was very pale as he helped to pull his companion up and drag him onto the platform.

An officer of the Marine Corps nearby was one of his helpers.

Young man, that was a close call,” he said, as he warned the people back from the edge of the platform.

The young man did not seem disturbed in the least. He put his hand up to his head and laughed at the loss of his hat.

The other young man looked at him soberly.

I wonder you will run such risks, Sidney.”

Do you ? I got the ribbons all right. Came near wetting them. I wonder if they are fast colors.”

They were fast enough when I tried to get them,” said the other young man. His face was still pale and his manner more agitated than even the recent narrow escape of his companion would warrant.

The people were slowly moving off the platform, and the two f^oung men walked along to the point where the Secretary was standing congratulating the contractor and shaking hands with a number o| distinguished men. The warship had floated out into the river and was coming to a stop within ten: feet of the point where the stolid McNeil had figured it would have to go.

The Secretary whirled about as the young men came up.

Your son, Cushing? ” he said, as the contractor looked at the young men in some surprise.

Yes, sir. Sidney. I think he has met you.” remember him all right,” the Secretary answered with a smile. “ I would know him anyway. You look exactly alike.” He shook hands in his hearty fashion, and Sidney seemed no more abashed than at the loss of his hat.

Speaking to his father but looking at the Secretary, he said:

I had the misfortune to lose my hat just now.”

You shouldn’t throw it up so high,” said the Secretary, laughing.

I couldn’t help it,” said the young man, and this time his glance traveled from the Secretary to the girl, who was at that moment talking to the other young man, and evidently laughing over the answer to her question about the absence of his friend’s hat.

‘^You had better go out and get another hat, Sidney,” said Brander Cushing, in a tone between disapproval of his son’s appearance and fatherly pride in him.

‘‘All right, father. But I don’t know just where I can get one short of the Avenue.”

“ Let Gordon take you up there in his auto.”

“ He has all his seats filled. I’ll go down on Moore Street and get back in time.

His father was about to remonstrate, but the crowd around the Secretary pressed up to offer congratulations and Sidney found himself close to the group surrounding the young woman who had christened the vessel.

“ I have never met Miss Marston,” he said.

Gordon Ford looked at him in surprise.

“What?”

“ No. Never had the pleasure.”

“ I thought ” his friend began, and then see-

ing Miss Marston smiling expectantly, he introduced Cushing.

“My friend Sidney Cushing, Miss Marston. I thought you had met at the Assembly last year.”

Sidney Cushing bowed very low.

“I would take off my hat. Miss Marston, but I have already done so.”

“ I see you have,” she replied, laughing frankly. “ But pardon me. According to Mr. Ford, you didn’t take it off, it was taken off for you. .You ran a great risk.”

“For a great prize,” Sidney said, placing his hand over his upper coat pocket where he had put the little bow of ribbons.

The girl blushed and looked confused, and actually stammered some low remark that Sidney did not catch.

“ Pardon me ; I didn’t catch jour word. Those whistles are mightj impolite.”

Out on the river the sirens on the yachts were still screaming around the new-comer that had just arrived among the floating palaces of the rich.

You are not going to keep that little bow of ribbons, are you? ”

“ I am, unless you will perhaps give me something better.”

He was astonished at his own unheard-of audacity and wondering at himself to be talking thus to the daughter of Rear-Admiral Mars ton, when the girl suddenly turned and touched her father’s sleeve. He had been talking earnestly with Senator Eord, Gordon’s father.

Father, will you meet Mr. Gushing.^ You were saying this morning, you know, that you wanted to meet him if he were here to-day. And here he is.”

The admiral was a small man with unusually square shoulders, and a dignified bearing, which ^ made good at least three inches which he lacked in stature. When he faced Cushing, the young man was struck at once with his mild and pleasant expression.

“Oh, yes, Pax. Of course I want to meet the young man. Do you remember, sir, a year ago when the fleet sailed for the Pacific, there was an unusual accident on one of our cruisers, the Del Monte? In swinging out from the wharf preparatory to accompanying us down the bay, one of her steel hawsers snapped and the short end of it whipped across the deck and caught a sailor who was stationed by the forward davits and flung him into the water between the cruiser and the piling. Do you recall anything like that, young man? ”

Cushing blushed and stammered something that the girl did not catch.

^‘Excuse me,” she said smiling. ‘^But those whistles are yer;g noisy. I could not hear what you said.”

I did not say anything in particular.”

But you did say you recalled the event,” the admiral smiled, and looked more keenly at the young man.

‘‘ Do you also recall the fact that a young manwho was standing on the wharf at the time jumped down into the water, and, at great risk of being crushed to death between the cruiser and the piling, rescued the sailor, who couldn’t swim, holding him up until he was hauled on deck?”

Yes, sir, I remember it.”

‘‘I’m sure you do. The sailor who couldn’t swim happened to be my nephew. Did you know that, very often, sailors are not able to swim? ”

“ Yes, sir, I know it’s often a fact.”

And is it also a fact ”

“Oh, father! Why be so slow? Cet me ask Mr. Cushing a question. Mr. Cushing, were you the young man who jumped in and rescued Cousin Ed, and if so, how did you escape getting into the papers, and being thanked by the admiralty, and medale’d as a hero, and generally acclaimed by everybody? ”

“ That is not a question.”

“ What is it? ”

^^An examination.”

The girl laughed, and Sidney Cushing again looked at her as he had looked the first time. Admiral Marston looked puzzled,

“Yes, How did you happen to escape.^^ There was a big crowd at the dock, and I made immediate inquiry. But I learned only by accident a few days ago about you.”

“I’m awfully curious, too,” said Miss Marston. “ Tell us how you escaped,”

“ It might make a long story.”

“ Then come and see us and — tell it at leisure.”

“ May I? ”

He asked the rear-admiral’s daughter, but Admiral Marston answered.

Yes, come in any evening next week.”

“ And Cousin Ed is with us then. How romantic ! He has never met you. Think of being saved from drowning and never meeting the person who saved you.”

“ Yes,” murmured Sidney. “ It must He interesting. But this is not Washington. I may not be able to get to Washington next week. We are very busy over the new warship.”

Again the girl laughed. “ I believe father thinks Dockville is Washington. I didn’t remember, either, for a minute, where we were. But can’t you call before we go back ”

She stopped suddenly and her father said gravelyl You forget. Pax, we return to Washington after the banquet. If business should call you- to Washington, don’t forget our invitation. We want to hear that story.”

He turned with his daughter and left the platform with other naval officers, and Sidney followed with his friend Gordon, who parted from him out oh the street in front of the ship-yard.

Sorry I can’t take you up town, Sid, but I promised to get these folks over to the ferry for the evening express.”

That’s all right,” said Cushing, good naturedly.

See you at the banquet to-night. I’ll have to go up to Moore Street after that hat. You know the pater always means what he says.”

He walked fast, with the athlete’s easy stride, through the maze of carts, vans, trucks, motor drays and freight wagons that jammed the river front, and entered the narrow end of Water Street.

The pater needn’t have cared about such a thing as a hat. There were half a dozen in the office that night do.” But he smiled again as he recalled his father’s precise military exactness of habit and his punctilious observance of all the exact etiquette belonging to dress, and also dwelt a second on the fact that in all his life he, Sidney, had never for a second questioned his father’s orders or asked why he was told to do a thing. His father had told him to go and buy a new hat, and he was going to get it. That was all.

It was now three o’clock. The launching had occurred at the afternoon high tide, and there was a full hour before his father would expect him back at the ship-yard. He did not want to miss the last train out and so miss the naval banquet, and he took the short cut through Water Street to Moore.

He had reached the end of Navy Lane when he was brought to a sudden stop by a tremendous concussion of sound that roared up the narrow alley he was passing, and the next instant he felt himself thrown off his balance and was flung against the building near which he was passing. The impact dazed him for a moment. Then, next, his senses cleared and he looked up. Seven stories above, in the great naval supplies factory, he saw, through the blown-out sashes and torn fragments of window casings, human heads, shoulders, arms of scores of girls and young women who were screaming madly. Next he was conscious of black smoke in round balls rolling out over the heads of the human creatures swaying up there, tearing at one another to get to the windows, appearing and disappearing. Then red and white tongues of fire shot through the black balls of smoke, and then — he stared up with death-white face as the first girl struggled out on the window-sill, seventy-five feet above the stone flagging, threw up her arms and without a second’s pause jumped out into the air. Another followed. Another, another. O God! Was there no other way? Stop I Stop! Wait! ” He knew he was shouting, but it seemed as if his throat was choked with blood and ashes. He realized that buildings were emptying around him, that hundreds of people had suddenly swarmed into go the court and alley and were looking with awful earnestness at the silent bodies falling, falling out of that furnace up there. And then his brain cleared and he began to seek a plan. His mind was made that way.

■ The alley behind the burning factory was only ten feet wide. Directly opposite the rows of shattered windows was a double-decker tenement. People were pouring out of it in streams, carrying every imaginable thing. The doorway which opened widest offered most hope. Sidney darted in and rushed up the central stairway. The clang of the fire engines sounded in his ears as he reached the top of the first landing. Still he raced on, one thought in his throbbing brain — that seventh story with its human cluster of fair-haired girls, fighting for a chance to die outside instead of inside the room where only a minute before they had been at work.

He knew, as he raced past landing after landing, that more bodies were falling, and he knew that as he ran he was crying out silently, ^^Wait! Wait!” But not out loud. He needed all his breath for what he wanted to do and hoped to do, but did not yet know how he could do it.

At last he had reached the seventh story and flung himself into what he thought was an empty room on the side opposite the terrible row of windows only ten feet away. Even as he entered the room he cast a look around with swift encircling gaze.

Over in a dark comer a human being sat up on a curiously contrived couch, staring at him.

What is the matter? What is the trouble? What do you want? ”

A board ! Something long enough to reach over ”

A board? ” The figure still sat there. But the voice was energetic. They were papering the next room this morning.” One hand pointed backwards.

Sidney flung himself out into the hall. Dim figures of crying people passed him. He threw himself against a door. He burst it in. Thank God ! The paper-hanger had left his stuff there. The board! He seized it, rushed back and thrust it through the window to the window opposite. Was it long enough? He hardly waited to see. The strange figure on the couch seemed to watch him.

The board just reached, and that was all. A few inches only to rest on the edge of the sill. A few inches only to make all the difference between living and dying.

He dared not trust his weight on this frail bit of bending wood, but he saw in an instant that he must put something on the end of it to prevent it from slipping off the precarious edge of the window sill. He tore out the lower window sash with almost one movement, jammed the end of the board hard up against the side of the casing, and then mounting on the sill himself he .braced his feet against the board, and holding on to the edge of the upper window sash with one hand flung himself out as far as he dared with arm extended to help the first one who might venture across that narrow and doubtful means of life.

Three walked over the swaying passage and another slipped and fell just as his hand was about to clutch her arm. Then through the swirling smoke he felt conscious of one face back in the opposite window, and he knew that the person was helping others up and encouraging them to go first. He called to her across the ten feet of eternity :

Push your end of the board there ! It is slipping off here!”

He could feel the end of the board under his foot moving, and he knew in a moment that she had obeyed him intelligently and instantly.

‘‘ Strong, brave girl ! ” he said to himself, and then he witnessed as wonderful a sight as he had ever seen. But then, he was young yet, only twenty-four, and he had much to see.

Two girls were standing on the board at the opposite window. Their faces were blackened and fire shreds clung to their dresses. And lo, as he looked, and leaned far out with extended arm, he saw that the first girl was a cripple, and the other, who had already helped the others, was behind her, creeping along, holding the cripple and pushing and balancing her across those few feet of life.

Quick I ” he shouted. The board is slipping ! ”

It was a thing to dream of in the years to come. He stood there, his whole figure dilated, his arm flung out with fingers agonizing to reach that human creature shuffling so slowly toward him. At last he

THE ADMIRAL’S DAUGHTER 2S

clutched her dress. Even as he did so he knew he was thinking of the other. The board could not possibly hold the two. He pulled her in through the window and she fell in a fainting heap on the floor. The other? She was just beyond his reach. He strained every muscle to reach her; caught her hand; with a last desperate pull swung her towards him, and felt the board go and the window sash above him give way.

Even then, he whirled as he fell, and the girl, who had with that last effort of his plunged through the window, turned and made a frantic ^ clutch at him.

He was hanging, by some miracle, with his hands grasping the rough bricks of the window ledge, looking up into a face blacked with smoke and blistered with fire. She had her two hands about his wrist and her lips were moving as if in a prayer. He thought even then of the incident, not more than two hours ago, when he had hung to that chain, and what he had risked it all for.

Then he felt her grasp relax and she fell back into the room.

Brave lass ! She’s fainted,” he said. He struggled to raise himself and felt his strength going, when a fireman’s head appeared at the window.

Here ! ” was all the man said. He grasped his wrists in an iron clutch. Sidney plunged up, using feet and knees and elbows.

“ That was a close call for you, young feller! ”

And then the room seemed to swarm with firemen, and he had for the next few moments a confused

M medley in his mind of shouts, of hoarse orders, of fire-hose dragged in at windows, of overturning furniture, of all the wild but systematic movements of a city fire brigade in action. The double-decker was on fire, and the company was at work from within its walls, from the alley below and from the roof.

Sidney never again saw the fireman who had pulled him up to life. Not even all his inquiries in the after days could discover him. One of the nameless heroes of a commercial age, to whom heroism is a part of daily action, as little thought of as going to work in the morning or coming home again at night. He passed on with the great unnumbered army of common men who are always doing their duty, and do not want any medals pinned on them for doing it.

In the thick of all the confusion he had a distinct sense of more to be done. He had almost lost consciousness. But he found himself again near the window. Nothing but smoke and flame. That was all a thing of the past. No more lives to be saved there. Where had they all

Then he knew he was over in the corner where the strange figure of the man was. The girl was there, and the crippled girl, and they were all three carrying the man out. Smoke and flame in the narrow hallway. More shouting, mad rushes for stairways, water, fire, smoke, firemen, tenement roomers in panic, and at last, thank God, out in the street, the man on the couch, strangely calm, the girl with the blackened, burned face, and always in Sidney’s vision as she steadied her end of the burden. And the cripple somehow keeping along-side, shuffling down the narrow stairs, now flung against the wall by desperate men and women, now almost trodden under foot as the people poured down like maddened cattle. And then, as they finally reached the street and kindly eager hands helped, Sidney had the final view of the girl falling on her knees over the form on the couch, while the man’s hands fell with searching pathos over her tangled black hair. And for the first time Sidney realized that the man was blind as well as paralyzed.

Then he knew that the couch, with the man and the girl by its side, and the crippled girl, had all been moved back, up the street, out of danger of falling walls, and he himself had come back to gaze awestricken at the line of firemen and others carrying those bodies out of the alley, and putting them down on the sidewalk, row after row. Oh, cover them up fast and close from morbidly unholy view, these young lives, victims of the hellish greed that built a firetrap without a fire escape (though the law said there should be one), and locked the doors of the factory rooms during the unpaid working hours of girls who toiled among inflammable and health-destroying materials when they should have been happy and laughing creatures in school or out in the fields ! Why not? The same as your child or mine. Is there one law of life for a factory girl and another for the daughter of the factory owner?

But oh, the pity of it ! Those rows of covered-up bodies ! Yet some of the souls that were in them a few minutes ago are happier, no doubt, now than

A BUILDER OF SHIP they ever have been before. And that is the only compensation to this tragedy. Is it enough?

Sidney took out his watch. Only a little after four o’clock. In less than half an hour all that had happened. The naval supplies factory was a gutted, tangled mass of ruin. Fifty bodies were somewhere within it. Fifty more were on the sidewalk. A few had escaped. The tenement house had suffered only at one side. The fire-fighters had subdued the enemy there. Every minute increased the number of morbid sight-seers. Ambulances choked up the narrow passages. The department threw ropes across the alley passage, and the police kept the people away.

Sidney mechanically put his watch back. What more could he do? The crime had been committed — ■ the crime of respectable greed against poverty; the story was all there for the newspapers. Yes, there was a newspaper reporter with his camera taking shots at the ruins, the firemen, the crowd, even the bodies. He saw one enterprising reporter even attempt to pull the covering off a dead body as it was being carried toward an ambulance. He wanted to strike him down. It was the first time even during that half hour’s tremendous experiences that he felt his pulses quicken into real fever heat.

The incident passed. A policeman thrust the young man back. The body was hastily pushed into the wagon and another lifted up. Sidney grew sick. He went back, forcing his way slowly through the mass of people, to make inquiry of the group he had left, of the strangely calm old man with the eyes that seemed to see and not to see, of the girl who had helped the others, the girl with the blackened fireblistered face. But in the confusion he could not find them. He stood aimlessly enough, at last, on the fringe of the mob, gazing at the smoking ruins, wondering over the loss of life, not able to realize his own share in the afternoon’s event, an event which he could not understand until long and wonderful years had rolled over his head.

At last he felt himself moving slowly back with the crowd. The police and the fire department needed more room. He was of a decided, positive nature. There was no more he could do. He extricated himself from a heavy-faced group of men who had blocked his way and started up Moore Street to get — ^he smiled strangely as he said it to himself — to get a hat, when a young man stopped him.

‘^Oh, you’re the young fellow who helped bring people out of the double decker. What is your name ? ”

What is yours ? ”

I’m representing the ^^ew York Megaphone,^'

“ Oh, are you ? ”

Sidney moved along, and the reporter kept step with him.

‘‘ Yes, and I want your name and the particulars. How did you come to be here? ”

How did you? ”

Come. Is that the way to talk on an occasion like this? What’s the matter? I only want your story. What’s your name? ”

“ I know him. That’s Sidney Cushing, son of Brander Cushing at the ship-yard,” said a man whom Sidney recognized as a dock hand.

Oh ! Cushing ! Give me your story. T hear you helped several out. Crossed on a board or something. How was that? Give us the story,”

The reporter planted himself fairly in front of Sidney and repeated his question.