I struck something new that day in the ruck at the bottom of the hole. I found ingots loose in the hodgepodge of pantry wreckage. A wooden box had been smashed. I had a slit and a sort of deep pocket in the canvas overalls affair which protected my India-rubber suit. 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. He got one, but he did not get away with it. Trouble or no trouble, knives or no knives, I had got to the limit of my temper. I gave him a jab with the end of my sheet-iron nozzle, and as near as I could judge I took a hunk of meat out of him as neatly as a woman could operate on dough with a doughnut cutter. The edges of that nozzle had been whetted on sand until they were as sharp as a razor blade. The fellow drooped that ingot and darted upward, blood streaming behind him. Another diver was coming down to take his place, but when I jabbed at him with the nozzle he whirled like a fish and went up, giving me an awful kick when he started.
I reckoned I had thrown down the gage of battle, and I was not minded to stay there and meet the pack, for I was weak after my extra struggle down in the hole. It had been a tedious job gathering that loose gold. I saw the box started on the way to the surf-boat, gave the emergency signal, and was yanked back to the lighter at a lively clip.
Later that day, being in a proper and ugly frame of mind, I tucked a rifle under my arm and had myself rowed to the neighboring sloop. I found the spokesman of the crew ready to talk English that day, all right. But when our conversation was ended I had received a surprise. No demand was made on me for a “hot rock.” I found that I was dealing with men who had deeper motives. It took me some time to understand that they were not holding out for a big offer. The man at the rail wrinkled his nose and sneered when I angrily told him that was what they were after.
“It’s what I’d expect a gringo to tell me,” he said. “But we are not here to do business with thieves. You have no right to be here. You may pick and steal, but it will not amount to that!” He snapped his finger above his head. “We shall do our business with those who will have the gold in the end, with those who can pay and will pay. And we have a man who will see that we are paid.”
My wits had been sharpened while I had toiled at San Apusa Bar. I was able to see farther into the ways of guile than before I had met a man like Marcena Keedy. I had a flash of suspicion that was almost instinct.
“So you think you have made a better trade with that renegade, Keedy, do you?” I flung at him.
I was sure I had guessed right; the man’s face betrayed him.
“Oh, we are honest men—not thieves,” he called back. “We do not deal with thieves. We came here to stop you from stealing. But you do not stop. Now we shall see. We have kept our knives in our belts. But you have set us an example. You have tried to kill a man who did not offer to hurt you.” He leaped up on the rail, and aimed a long finger at me. “We can fight the way you do. If we catch you there on bottom again you’ll be pulled up with six of these sticking in you.” He patted the knife in his belt.
There are men who can threaten and who cannot impress others. It is easily docketed as bluster. There is another kind of a man who gives you a look and a word, and you know that he means what he says. I went away from that sloop feeling that if I were desperate enough just then to commit suicide, an easy way had been opened for me.