I went to work for Wally, a wiry little Scotsman who drove his crews and himself hard. Nobody wanted to work for Wally. He lived by example. He’d work faster than anyone on the boat and do his job twice as good. He didn’t expect you to keep up. He did expect you to work at least half as fast and do half as effective as he did. From the minute you stepped on the boat, to your last step off, you stayed busy. Most guys said no, for the same reason I said yes. That was my work ethic, as well.

Wally’s boat was small, only 40 feet, but he carried five divers. Still, this was inshore mining, which meant that violating the boundaries of a mining concession was easy to spot. But if there was a heavy fog, we could be certain that at the last moment our captain would turn back toward shore and drop the anchor just inside of his legally permitted grounds. Then we’d pay out a hundred yards or more of anchor line and begin to poach until threatened with discovery.

Twice Wally chose to mine other side of the boundary while I was on the bottom. I was working away and suddenly the nozzle began to leap about. It went berserk in my hands and then clinging to it, I was given the ride of my life. I knew that up on deck the crew was yanking in the extended anchor line, keeping it free of the spinning propeller, as Wally ran the boat forward at full speed dragging me and the hose behind. We had 6 or 7 minutes to get the operation legal, so as soon as the hose halted, I had to open the nozzle once more, and pretend to be hard at work. A minute later came the inspecting diver in scuba gear. I waved and shrugged at the small amount of work so far accomplished. Apparently, I wasn’t much of a miner. All that morning and I hadn’t found a decent spot to work. The Academy Award winning shrug had to say all that, and disguise the fact that we’d just managed to raid a couple of hundred carats from the illegal concession.