I HAD been about a bit during three years and a half.
I own up frankly that I had found out that I had more or less of a cheap
streak in me. I’m not disguising it wholly by the name of curiosity;
though, of course, a country fellow has a keen hankering to look in on
some of the sights of the big city.
When we boys up in Levant used to hand around among ourselves by stealth
some of the flashy papers, I didn’t believe there were such things as I
read in print and saw in pictures. After some of my sporty associates
of the Trident workers began to take me around with them evenings I kept
perfectly still about my earlier disbeliefs, and my cheap streak began
to talk up to me. Somebody came distributing free admission cards to
concerts, managed by religious and fraternal bodies--but I preferred to
pay money at the door of a burlesque theater. I liked to go scouting in
dance-halls, and I haunted low resorts to hear what I could hear and see
what I could see.
We went boldly, for we were husky youths. As for myself, I had licked
the boys of Levant at every opportunity--and my Sidney temper afforded
me opportunities aplenty. I was never afraid when I went about alone,
either. I had a rather quiet way of minding my own business and
impressing it on the other fellow that he’d better mind his.
So, it may be guessed, most of my wanderings had been done in the lower
quarters of the city.
That’s where I went to hide. And I had knowledge enough of the locality
to hide myself effectually and keep hidden.
I did get in touch with one of the fellows who had been around a great
deal with me and whom I trusted--for he had no special use for Anson C.
Doughty.
Anson C. Doughty was out of doors once more, after spending a week of
retirement in the company of a few busy little leeches, and, as to
eyes and nose, he was not looking so very badly on the outside, but was
evidently having a great amount of trouble with a volcano raging within,
so my informant told me. Mr. Doughty was proclaiming that he proposed to
catch me so that he could make an example for the sake of discipline
in his crews in the future; but according to the program he had
promulgated, he proposed to cut me up with a meatchopper before turning
me over to the law. So I decided to keep under cover for an indefinite
period.
Then I sent word to Captain Jodrey Vose and had him call on me in my
castle, because I did not want him to think that he had wasted all his
efforts when he had made me a diver.
However, the captain did seem to think so. He frankly said so.
“You’ll never get another job diving on the Atlantic coast,” he told me.
“In the first place, you won’t dare to show up as a diver where Anson C.
Doughty can grab you. In the next place, Anson C. Doughty has posted
you with all the wrecking companies as being as dangerous as an Asiatic
tiger with lighted kerosene on his tail. Now tell me what made you do
it.”