Holman Day

“ They say that dying men live over their lives in a. flash—that’s so! When I was dying in black darkness, five fathoms deep under the waters of the Pacific, with a bar of gold in either hand, I remembered what that Pratt girl said to me that day in the glory of the autumn sunshine, my face as red as a frost-touched leaf; it was the day of my bitterest humiliation; I slunk off without daring to look at Celene Kingsley. ”

“ And then Uncle Deck took me in hand to make a man of me, so he said.
He wasn’t all bad—don’t understand me as saying that. He would pass a sleepless night if he failed to cheat a man in a horse trade, but he would sell his shirt before he would allow any old folks in our town to go onto the poor-farm. He would sneak around with wood and groceries after dark, that big, red face of his like a harvest moon, and when they would start to thank him he would curse the miserable old creatures so horribly that my blood used to run cold. ”

“ Human arms had given up—human strength and grit had failed. But I knew that through the hours of that afternoon, through the watches of the night, that old, miserly ocean would keep toiling on, rolling sand back into that hole, patting it down with unseen fingers, locking a door over the treasure that would serve the purpose better than doors of steel or bars of bronze. ”

“ One day when I was at the bottom of the hole I had bored and had just succeeded in fastening my hooks to a box, I got a shock that made me believe the end of the world had come. Something hit me on the top of the helmet with a thud that knocked me senseless for a moment. I reached out quickly with one hand, reserving the other for my hose, and felt the breastplate of a diver. I realized what had happened then. One of Keedy’s men, sent to spy, had stumbled through the sand swirling from my pit, and had fallen in on me, not dreaming that I had been able to dig a fifteen-foot hole. ”

“ If he had been the right kind of a man I would have told him, for a proper man would have been proud of his daughter under those circumstances. But I knew that Judge Kingsley would consider that she had disgraced herself by talking to me.
“You can’t tell the truth—you won’t tell the truth—for the truth isn’t in you,” he stormed. “You are convicted by the tongues of the boys who have owned up.” ”

“ But get down into it—get down deep where it can play with you, twirl you, toss you, suck your breath, provided it can throttle your air-hose—where it can work all its schemes and its spite. You will find out that the ocean has a new trick for every day.
There are beaches where persons have bathed in safety for years. Then all at once some day a shrieking man or woman is seized, as though by some hidden monster, and is dragged off to death. That mighty and erratic force is called an undertow. ”

“ I stabbed with all my might, drove the crowbar in again and again, struggled to hold myself on bottom, and muttered appeals to that undertow in my frenzy of toil. I do not know how long I worked. I do know that all my sensations informed me that I was remaining beyond my limit of endurance. But the conviction came to me that this was not a chance to be neglected. I was in a fever of hope. I wanted to show that coward of a Marcena Keedy that a strong man could call the bluff of a loafer’s sneers. ”

“ I had a brand-new diving dress, and, above all, queer as this may sound, I had a specially new outfit which was my chief pride: a frock-coat and pearl-gray trousers, waistcoat modestly fancy—my real tastes in that direction having been gently suppressed by an honest tailor—and a plug-hat whose shininess fairly put my eyes out. And up to that time I had had no opportunity to wear that suit except in front of the mirror in my hiding-place! ”

“ I knew that if I ever did succeed in boring that sand, holding that hose in my hands, my feet would have to serve as hands for the purpose of feeling out objects.
Keedy’s men had come up before I gave the word to lower me. Number-two Jones had peered through the cracks of the boarding, and had reported that they had come over the rail without bringing treasure, and that Keedy was stamping up and down the deck, wagging his fists over his head. I could imagine from my own experience what kind of language the cowardly slave-driver was spewing out. ”

“ She looked up at me through her tears. And off I hiked, leaving my earthly possessions in charge of a girl whom I had met for the first time less than ten minutes before.
Of course, I knew what every one knows, whether he has been in San Francisco or not, that Market Street cuts straight across the city from bay to ocean. But at just what street on the course Captain Rask Holstrom proceeded to port his helm and swing to starboard blessed if I had the least idea. I didn’t know the name of another street in the city. I knew what the Barbary Coast was in San Francisco. ”

“ You needn’t be, Captain Holstrom. What I say doesn’t have any reference to you at all. I hope my relations and yours will stay as they are—no, I hope they will improve as you know me better. But that gambler has grafted himself on to this scheme. He isn’t a practical man, as you are. He sneers at me and my work—and God knows it’s hard and dangerous work. He expects impossible things, and it doesn’t do any good to come up out of that hell of water and explain to him. Every time he opens his mouth I feel like jumping down his throat and galloping his gizzard out of him. ”

“ So here were all my fresh plans, my hankering for home, my new-laid reputation for Levant consumption about to be kicked into the black depths of tophet by the grudge of Anson C. Doughty!
I could see that the stevedores despised my size because I was wearing a plug-hat; they glowered at me with the natural enmity the man in overalls feels for the dandy. It was perfectly damnable—that situation! To be arrested—to be shown up for what I was—the thought screwed my desperation to the breaking-point. ”

“ Somehow I felt as if I had been specially delegated to stand up for the Kingsley family. “Maybe so! Maybe so!” agreed Vose. “Finance is a strange critter—and the judge is a regular financier. But, I swan, if I like the looks of the strangers he has been doing business with for a long time back. I ain’t any kind of a hand to pry into the dealings of men who put up at my tavern. Those fellows always paid their bills and showed plenty of money, but it don’t seem to me as if straight business needs to be so blamed secret.” ”

“ I would have liked to lean over the rail and talk with her, though I never presumed to speak to her on deck. Take a fellow when he is young, penned aboard a slow packet, a pretty girl near him all the time, and you bet he cannot confine all his thought to the scenery and his job.
She truly was a pretty girl! I can see her now as she strode to and fro on the upper deck, her hands shoved deep in the pockets of her white sweater, and drawing it forward so that it set off her plumpness. ”

“ I could see that something was going to break loose there mighty soon, and after what I had told Beason I didn’t want that young sneak to overhear. It would be like him to come back with a gang and “do” me on the excuse that I was a stranger who was “frsking” Captain Holstrom for his pocketful.
I hauled out two ten-dollar bills mighty quick, and passed them to Beason. He held one in each hand, pinched between thumb and forefinger, and looked at them in turn, wrinkling his nose with as much disgust as though he were holding lizards by the tails. ”

“ I led the gang to the wood-lot, and that plug-hat of mine must have flashed in the March sunlight about as brightly as the helmet of Henry of Navarre—providing I remember my Fourth Reader selection. That wad of bills which I had frisked out of the table drawer was bulked against my ribs in most comforting manner.
I never saw men pitch into a job more cheerfully than those chaps did after I led them over the fence and gave the word. It was a real frolic. Men bantered one another and made side bets on ability and everybody was laughing. ”

“ I never in my life came close to my uncle Deck when he did not have the smell of liquor on his breath: On each side of his nose there was a patch of perfectly lurid crimson. He was a horse-trader and he made considerable money.
“That slur of yours is a high-priced one,” my uncle shouted. “I have my eye on you, you old hypocrite. There’ll come a day when that slur will cost you more than you can afford to pay. That’s how high-priced it is, Judge Kingsley.” ”

“ After you sized him up, you naturally decided that men who could cheat Keedy must be the champion renegades of the Pacific coast! I can’t blame you much for the way you came banging up against us. I don’t know what else he has said to our prejudice, and I don’t care. Now that you are here with us, face to face, and we’re down on a real man-basis, we don’t need to paw over what a liar has said. I want you to call that man Keedy on to the Zizania, even though he poisons the air. ”

“ Then there are other ideas which march up to a man and hit him on the head.
Twenty tons of coal shifted in five minutes by a monkey and a hose! The idea that hit me was like a hammer blow. My head wasn’t clear all at once; I was dizzy. The details were hazy—but there was the idea hammering at me. It was such a glorious idea that I walked aft to that ensign mast, looked up, and took off my hat to that monkey. I know he misunderstood my act. I know he cursed me as another enemy. But I did not care. I had got used to being misunderstood and underrated aboard the Zizania. ”

“ As my toes located loose ingots, I sifted the mush of sand with the fingers of one hand, captured the gold, and stuffed it down into the deep pocket. I came up with a box, and my breeches were bagging with gold.
Then came the climax of my strained relations with those greaser divers. I’ve heard of pickpockets operating everywhere, almost, but I reckon that I’m the first and only man who ever had his pockets picked at the bottom of the sea. The first devil who got to me as the sand settled, in groping for a handhold on my dress, felt the loose ingots. ”

“ Vose chanted his everlasting and singsong, “Maybe so!” Then he added: “But I reckon your uncle Deck has more visible property spread around this town than any other taxpayer in it. Maybe he has had a change of heart about money. Maybe he intends to loosen up in his old age. Maybe he wants to hand something back to a town he has gouged all his life. But from what I know of your uncle Deck, I don’t think he has grown so cussed patriotic all of a sudden. Young Sidney, I reckon there’s a hotter and livelier reason. Your uncle has been nursing a grudge till it’s well-grown and all haired out. ”

“ Men who have observed and studied think they have a pretty good line on the notions and the moods of the sea—but take it from me as a submarine diver, they haven’t. If one is standing on a rock and looking out on it, or sailing across it in a safe boat, the ocean becomes a matter of “beautiful surf,” or an expanse more or less hubbly with waves. ”

“ But as to Royal City! The place tickled me about as much as if it were a cemetery and I were riding in the hearse. It wasn’t even as ripe as that railroad.
My first performance was to step into a mud-hole about half-way to my knees, and I wondered how my pearl-gray trousers stood up under that introduction to the town.
I couldn’t see Mr. Dragg or anybody else; there in that bowl among the hills the darkness was something a man could eat! ”