Why should it worry me now--
worry me like the devil;--and she caught on to that 'point' about
the slope of forty-five degrees."
Chapter V
Condy began his week's work for the supplement behindhand.
Naturally he overslept himself Tuesday morning, and, not having
any change in his pockets, was obliged to walk down to the office.
He arrived late, to find the compositors already fretting for
copy. His editor promptly asked for the whaleback stuff, and
Condy was forced into promising it within a half-hour. It was out
of the question to write the article according to his own idea in
so short a time; so Condy faked the stuff from the exchange
clipping, after all. His description of the boat and his comments
upon her mission--taken largely at second hand--served only to
fill space in the paper. They were lacking both in interest and
in point. There were no illustrations. The article was a
failure.
But Condy redeemed himself by a witty interview later in the week
with an emotional actress, and by a solemn article compiled after
an hour's reading in Lafcadio Hearn and the Encyclopedia--on the
"Industrial Renaissance in Japan."
But the idea of the diver's story came back to him again and
again, and Thursday night after supper he went down to his club,
and hid himself at a corner desk in the library, and, in a burst
of enthusiasm, wrote out some two thousand words of it. In order
to get the "technical details," upon which he set such store, he
consulted the Encyclopedias again, and "worked in" a number of
unfamiliar phrases and odd-sounding names.
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