So I came into the fifty-dollar-a-day class of workers, to the grim
content of my mentor.
I have just remarked that the snarl of Anson C. Doughty sent me in
earnest to my first job. Also, just as suddenly, that snarl pried me
loose from my job.
I wish I did not have to confess what I have to say now. I come to
jounce number two!
I have spoken a ways back of mile-stones in my life and suggested that
Anson C. Doughty was connected with one.
I wish I could give a real, compelling, manly reason why I tossed my
hopes and my prospects so wildly into the air all of a sudden. I have
spoken of my ready temper--but that’s no reason.
In fifteen seconds I shifted the life I was living as completely as a
derailing-switch shoots a runaway engine off the main line.
The borers of that mysterious hatred for Anson C. Doughty must have been
burrowing in me all the time, even as those little teredinoid bivalves
we call ship-worms gnaw into submerged piles with the edges of their
shells. I was full of burrows and went to pieces all of a sudden.
For I came up one day out of thirty fathoms--and that’s man’s work--and
Doughty was giving me green help out of his general meanness--and my
head was far from steady; in addition he gave me his snarl for the last
time, instead of snarling at his infernal dubs who were risking my life.
I stepped on his foot with a shoe that was loaded with twenty pounds of
lead--and that’s some anchor!--I walloped him into insensibility with
the end of a rubber hose. Then I resigned informally, while he lay on
the deck of the lighter, grunting back to life again.
Nobody stopped me when I said I was going and announced that it would be
dangerous to get in my way.
They stood back while I shifted my clothes--and I got away with my
diving equipment, even! It was the newest thing out for those days and
the going styles of gear, and I had paid good money for it.
I say again, I wish I had a more cogent reason to give for throwing up
my work. But I’m giving the truth of the matter. I left just that way.
I knew that Anson C. Doughty would have me put in jail if he could catch
me. I knew that I couldn’t do any more diving, for divers are marked men
and are easily located. It was up to me to go and hide; so I went and
hid.