Nobody paid any attention to me for half an hour. There were men writing
in big books behind a counter, and finally I pushed the letter over to
one of them who had stopped to light a cigar. He pushed it back.
“Not here,” he said. “Doesn’t come here.”
“But where will I find him?”
“Don’t know. He’s a diver. They don’t do their diving here in the
office.”
There was not a place in that office where I could sit and I was so
tired I was sick. The man turned his back on me and I did not dare to
ask him any more questions. I backed away from the counter and stood
in the middle of the floor, swaying and blinking. I reckon I must have
looked like a down-and-out bum. At any rate, when a big man came showing
a caller out of a door labeled “General Manager, Private,” he bumped
against me when I did not get out of the road and almost knocked me
down.
I suppose it was due to my state of mind and body--but till that moment
I had never felt what ugly, vicious hatred--desire to kill--meant. The
feeling came up in me so suddenly that I was frightened.
The big man went right on with his friend and took no notice of me. He
had hairy hands which he flourished as he talked, and the coat of his
brown suit had long tails which ended in a sort of scallop at his knees,
behind; it came to me in the flush of my boiling hatred that he looked
like a fat cockroach. And that bump dealt to me when I was so miserable,
that suggestion of the cockroach which always popped up at me as long
as I knew him, later made for another decisive turning-point in my life.
Again I am calling attention to the fact that matters which I did
not reckon on as to amounting to much at the moment have been my
mile-stones. As I look back I recognize the mile-stones, though I could
not distinguish them at the time. For instance, if you keep on with me
far enough, I shall tell you how an affair which counted, perhaps, as
the biggest crisis in my life was dominated by a plain, ordinary monkey
with an artificial tail.
I followed after that big man with a raging desire to kick him under the
sleek tads of that coat--to pound my fists into his fat back. I might
have given quite an account of myself, at that, for I was full grown at
twenty and as hard as hickory.
“As I say,” I heard before he slammed the door behind him, “you better
come along with me down to Trull wharf and talk to Vose himself. He can
tell you--”
I gathered my wits and chased along behind. The two of them paid as
little attention to me as they would to a prowling cat. But if they were
on the way to talk to “Vose himself,” that surely was my opportunity.
It was some distance and by way of devious alleys, but we came at last
to where a lighter was tied beside a wharf.
There was a derrick and the scow was loaded with blocks of granite.
A man was slowly and ceaselessly turning the wheel of a queer-looking
machine, another was carefully handling hose which passed over the side
of the lighter and down into the water, and still another was tending
ropes. It did not occur to me at first what this activity indicated.
But when the big man called out, “Is Vose about due to come up?” I
understood at once and was mightily interested.
I looked down into the dock and saw water like liquid muck, filled
with floating refuse, and a good deal of the glamour of a diver’s life
departed from my imagination. Somehow I had thought that Jodrey Vose
spent his days in blue depths of pure ocean water, looking around at
strange fishes and exploring mysterious caves. That he was obliged to
go down into any such mess as that and work on blocks of stones with his
two hands was a depressing discovery.
After a time there was a bubbling of the turbid water close beside
the lighter, and for the first time in my life I saw a diver’s helmet
emerge; the goggling eye-plates, the grotesque excrescences, the
sprouting antennæ of the hose lines, the venomous hissing of the air
from the vents--it all seemed uncanny, and made me shiver.
Men reached down to help him up the ladder, and when he was on deck in
full view, scuffing his huge, weighted shoes, a balloon-like creature,
as shapeless as the doughnut men my mother used to cut for me when she
was in good humor on frying-day, I was sure I had never seen so curious
a sight.
After he sat down they twisted off the helmet, and the fat man, whom I
reckoned must be Manager Anson C. Doughty, escorted the other man aboard
the lighter and the three started a conversation which I could not hear.
I knew the diver for Jodrey Vose because I had seen his picture at the
tavern.
The business, whatever it was, did not take much time and the manager
and the other man went away. Helpers began to shuck the diver from his
suit; it was nearing sundown and work for the day was over, it seemed.
When he was free from the bulk of the stuff and was starting for the
cabin of the lighter I went to him and gave him the letter.
“From Dod, hey?” Then he told me to follow him.
I looked at him while he read the letter by the light of a bracket
lamp. He was a wiry man with a twist of grizzled chin-beard. I was much
comforted when he looked up from the letter and grinned.
“Ben Sidney’s boy! Well, your father was the only critter on two legs in
Levant, in the old days, who could stand in a barrel, like I could, and
jump out without touching the sides. You look as if you have some of his
spryness and grit!”
“I hope so, sir. I have always worked at what has come to my hands to
do.”
“Dod says business is a mite slow in Levant and that you want a job.”
“Yes, sir.”
Now there was gratitude in me as well as comfort; it was evident that
Dodovah Vose had not written that I was a runaway.
The diver laid down the letter and went fumbling for his street clothes
in a closet.
“At any rate, you can come up to my boarding-place with me for the night
and we’ll talk it all over,” he said, in a very kind way. “If you had
only made yourself known a few minutes ago I could have introduced you
to Manager Anson C. Doughty. But to-morrow will do as well.”
I did not dare to offer comment. I wondered what there was about Anson
C. Doughty to keep my hatred of him so stirred.
“He takes my recommendations as to my helpers,” said Vose. “There is one
thing a diver has to be sure about--that’s picking his helpers. We’ll
talk it over, I say. If I find there’s considerable of Ben Sidney in
you, I reckon we can make a go of it. Have you a hankering to learn the
business, itself?”
I blossomed under the warmth of this kindness, I was full of words by
that time. I hadn’t opened my mouth to talk for two days. I told
him about my evenings in that tavern, my poring over his curios, my
ambitions, my dreams and hopes after hearing the stories his brother had
to tell me.
When he had finished dressing he clapped me on the shoulder.
“Oh, I calculate you’re going to do,” he told me. “Don’t get your
expectations too high. I have given up all the deep work--too old. Five
or six years steady at deep work finishes a man. I have nursed myself
along. Wharf work--fifteen to thirty feet--that’s my limit these days.
But I like your spirit, son. Can’t find boys in the city like that! I
should say that you’ve got the real hankering. Cigarettes, ever?”
“No, sir! No tobacco.”
“No cider jamborees? No express packages from the city?”
“No, Mr. Vose.”
“Good! I reckon I’ll keep the old town of Levant on the map in the
diving line. I know the game, my boy. And I know how to teach it to the
right kind of a pupil.”
“I’m sure you do, Mr. Vose.”
“So we’ll talk it all over this evening--and while we’re about it, if
you don’t call me Captain Vose down this way they’ll think you don’t
know me very well.”