“So I knew—for I lashed on that shoe with my own hands. Very well! What good are you as a diver without your wits or your nerve?”
“No good, sir.”
“You can buy an eighteen-pound shoe at any equipment loft. But how about buying nerve?”
“I reckon it can’t be bought, sir,” I confessed.
“Still, you were almighty particular,” he sneered, “to bring back that shoe with you even if you didn’t bring your nerve. Left your nerve on the bottom, eh?”
He was mighty nasty in his tone and his manner, and the men standing around were grinning. Perhaps even all that would not have put grit back into me, for I was dizzy and scared and was owning up to myself that I was better fitted for dry ground than a wet sea-bottom. But just then Anson C. Doughty bellowed from the wharf:
“Say, look here, Vose, let that coward go back upcountry to his steers! We have no time to fool away on greenhorns.”
“If I did leave my nerve on the bottom I’m going back after it, and I’m going right now!” I told the diver. I was holding the shoe and I dropped it on deck and shoved my foot into it. Captain Vose kneeled and began to lash it.
“What are you doing, there?” demanded the manager.
“Making a diver,” stated my teacher, calmly.