However, Ase Jepson let drop a remark once which sounded pretty good
to me: “I’d never run from a bear-fight, because if you lick the bear
there’s the pelt, the steak, the oil, and the reppytation. But who in
blazes ever got any sensible satisfaction out of sticking to the job and
licking a nestful of hornets?”
I got a little satisfaction out of thinking that I had run away from
hornets, even if they would be sure to call me coward behind my back.
But what I knew of the world outside my home town could have been put
in the eye of a mosquito without making the insect blink. I felt as
helpless as a wooden shingle latching a furnace door in tophet. I had
never seen Jodrey Vose. Either I had dreamed it or had heard that he was
considered a pretty hard ticket in his early days. As a diver, a man
who passed much of his time under water in the mysteries of the sea, he
seemed to me like something unreal. I studied the superscription on
the letter and felt as if I were carrying a line of introduction to a
bullfrog.
And so I went bumping on toward somewhere, my thoughts heavy and my
possessions mighty light; I hadn’t even a clean handkerchief.
If I had not so many bigger matters to hurry on to in this tale, I’d
like to describe how I was all of two days locating the Trident Wrecking
Company and Jodrey Vose, after I arrived in the city. The folks in
Levant always seemed to think I was a cheeky youngster, and I guess I
was, to a certain extent. I had plenty of temper and when I wanted a
thing I always had to go and get it--it wasn’t handed to me. But in that
big city I was more meeching than a scared pup in a boiler-factory.
I had no idea how large a real city was, anyway. Furthermore, all of
a sudden, I found myself becoming very crafty, according to my own
reckoning. I had decided that I was a fugitive from justice and that
every policeman was on the watch for me. Therefore I avoided policemen,
turning comers whenever I saw brass buttons. As I looked on everybody
else in the hurrying multitude as a sharper, on the hunt for country
picking, that left me without anybody to question. I had my nose in the
air and must have sniffed the water-front after a time. At any rate,
I found myself down there, dodging drays, tramping dirty alleys and as
completely lost as a bug in a brush-pile.
I lived on chestnuts because I found men selling them on the street. I
drank water from horse-fountains. After I walked all day and most of the
night, and napped for a while, standing up against a building in a dark
corner, I began to feel more or less like a horse; I had eaten so much
dry fodder and had gulped so much water! There were many adventures, of
course, but I have already stated why I may not deal with them.
Staggering from weariness, I fairly bumped, at last, into a door which
was labeled: “Trident Wrecking Company, Anson C. Doughty, General
Manager.” This was no accident. I reckon I had tramped all the
waterfront and had read all the signs except that one.