XXVI—CAPTAIN HOLSTROM ET AL.
MY face was set to the West, to be sure, but my thoughts were traveling back over my shoulder to the East. I wish I could say that a lively sense of injury enabled me to put out of my mind Levant and everybody in Levant—box and dice! But I’m not much of a liar.
I do not propose to dwell on the bitterness which stuck in me day after day, along with softer sentiments. This narrative goes into a gallop at about this point and there is no time to be wasted on self-communings. However, if I do not mention my old home and the folks back there it must not be understood that the problem of my life ceased to go to bed with me, rise with me, and keep pace with me as I hurried through the day’s work. I obeyed Jodrey Vose’s counsel about giving bulletins of my progress west. After I had bought my railroad ticket and had counted up, I felt that I could not afford to take any chances on those strangers losing their interest in me. I needed a job almighty sudden after I landed in San Francisco.
On the last leg of the journey I was able to forecast the hour of my arrival and I suggested by wire that somebody meet me—knowing that my diver’s kit in its duck bag would be identification enough. This telegraph business was shooting arrows into the air and I would have welcomed a return message; I thought they ought to be able to guess closely enough to intercept me somewhere along the line. But, although no answer came, I had the comfortable feeling that they’d be likely to be on the lookout for me. And at last I got my first peek at Pacific waters.
Our train was hung up outside the yard over in Oakland while they opened our track to the ferry, and a chap I had chatted with more or less in the smoking-room on the trip, and who knew my business, rushed out, climbed down beside the roadbed, and scooped a tumblerful of water. He ran back into the car and dumped the water over me for a joke, and I’m so accustomed to water that the joke did not jar me. I took it as it was meant.
“I baptize thee in the name of the Pacific,” he said. “Now I hope the old dame will be good to you in your line.”
Well, whether she was or not depends on how one looks at those things.
I walked slowly through the ferry-house, hoping to be hailed, and stepped out on to the foot of Market Street into the old San Francisco of the days before the great calamity. In my right hand I tugged along the duck bag that was bulging with my diving equipment. In my left hand I had the rest of my earthly possessions in a grip which was about the size of a ten-cent loaf of bread. It was early evening, and all the lights were aglare.