“You have heard of bears and lynxes caught in traps who have chewed at their imprisoned leg until they left it behind them and hobbled away, maimed and bleeding, but free. I swear to you that I would have done the same with that hand of mine, if I had been able.
“I thought of a woodsman whom I knew, who had been caught by a falling tree that had crushed his foot. He knew that if he stayed there that night, the wolves would get him. His axe was within reach and he deliberately chopped off his foot. I didn’t have even that chance. I was in my bathing suit and my knife was in the clothes left on the shore.
“And all this time the cruel, treacherous sea was coming in and the tide was mounting higher and higher. It purled about me softly, gently, like a cat playing with a mouse. I beat at it angrily with my left hand and it seemed to laugh. It felt sure of me and could afford to be indulgent. It was already above my waist and my knowledge of the coast told me that when it reached the flood it would be ten feet deep at the place where I stood.
“I looked wildly around, in the hope of seeing some one on the shore. But it was absolutely deserted. A little while before, I had been gloating over the fact that I was alone and could have a monopoly of the hunting. Now I would have given all I had in the world for the sight of a human face. I shouted until I was hoarse, but no one came. Far out at sea, I could glimpse dimly the sails of a vessel. I waved my free hand desperately, but I knew at the time that it was futile. I was a mere speck to any one on board, and even if they trained strong glasses on me they would have thought it nothing but the frolicsome antics of a bather.
“Now the water was up to my armpits. The thought came to me that if I should keep perfectly quiet, the abalone might think his danger gone and loosen his grip. But, though I nearly went crazy with the terrible strain of keeping still, when every impulse was to leap and yell, the cunning creature never relaxed that murderous clutch.
“Then I lost all control of myself. It wasn’t the thought of death itself. I could, I think, have steeled myself to that. But it was the horrible mode of death. To be young and strong and twenty, and to die there, slowly and inexorably, while six feet away was a certain means of rescue!
“The water had reached my neck. My overstrung nerves gave way. I tugged wildly at my bleeding hand. I raved and wept. I think I must have grown delirious. I dimly remember babbling to the iron bar that I could see lying there so serenely in the transparent water. I coaxed it, wheedled it, cajoled it, begged it to come to me, and, when it refused, I cursed it. The waves were breaking over me and I was choking. The spray was in my eyes and ears. I thought I heard a shouting, the sound of oars. Then a great blackness settled down upon me and I knew nothing more.
“When next I came to consciousness, I was in a hospital, where I had been for two months with brain fever. They had had to take off two fingers, and barely saved the rest of the hand. They wouldn’t let me see a mirror until they had prepared me for the change in my appearance.
“I learned then the story of my rescue. A party had come around a bend of the shore when I was at my last gasp. They caught sight of my hand just above the water. They made for me at once and tried to pull me into the boat. Then they saw my plight, and, with a marlinspike, pried the abalone loose. They tell me that my bleeding fingers had stiffened around the pearl, and they could scarcely get it away from me. They asked me afterward if I cared to see it, but I hated it so bitterly that I refused to look at it. It had been bought at too high a price.
“And now,” he concluded, “do you wonder that I dread that sleek and crawling monster that I call the sea?”