第23章 CHAPTER XII(1)

Nor have I ever regretted those months of mad devilry I put in with Nelson.He COULD sail,even if he did frighten every man that sailed with him.To steer to miss destruction by an inch or an instant was his joy.To do what everybody else did not dare attempt to do,was his pride.Never to reef down was his mania,and in all the time I spent with him,blow high or low,the Reindeer was never reefed.Nor was she ever dry.We strained her open and sailed her open and sailed her open continually.And we abandoned the Oakland water-front and went wider afield for our adventures.

And all this glorious passage in my life was made possible for me by John Barleycorn.And this is my complaint against John Barleycorn.Here I was,thirsting for the wild life of adventure,and the only way for me to win to it was through John Barleycorn's mediation.It was the way of the men who lived the life.Did Iwish to live the life,I must live it the way they did.It was by virtue of drinking that I gained that partnership and comradeship with Nelson.Had I drunk only the beer he paid for,or had Ideclined to drink at all,I should never have been selected by him as a partner.He wanted a partner who would meet him on the social side,as well as the work side of life.

I abandoned myself to the life,and developed the misconception that the secret of John Barleycorn lay in going on mad drunks,rising through the successive stages that only an iron constitution could endure to final stupefaction and swinish unconsciousness.I did not like the taste,so I drank for the sole purpose of getting drunk,of getting hopelessly,helplessly drunk.And I,who had saved and scraped,traded like a Shylock and made junkmen weep;I,who had stood aghast when French Frank,at a single stroke,spent eighty cents for whisky for eight men,Iturned myself loose with a more lavish disregard for money than any of them.

I remember going ashore one night with Nelson.In my pocket were one hundred and eighty dollars.It was my intention,first,to buy me some clothes,after that,some drinks.I needed the clothes.All I possessed were on me,and they were as follows:a pair of sea-boots that providentially leaked the water out as fast as it ran in,a pair of fifty-cent overalls,a forty-cent cotton shirt,and a sou'wester.I had no hat,so I had to wear the sou'wester,and it will be noted that I have listed neither underclothes nor socks.I didn't own any.

To reach the stores where clothes could be bought,we had to pass a dozen saloons.So I bought me the drinks first.I never got to the clothing stores.In the morning,broke,poisoned,but contented,I came back on board,and we set sail.I possessed only the clothes I had gone ashore in,and not a cent remained of the one hundred and eighty dollars.It might well be deemed impossible,by those who have never tried it,that in twelve hours a lad can spend all of one hundred and eighty dollars for drinks.

I know otherwise.

And I had no regrets.I was proud.I had shown them I could spend with the best of them.Amongst strong men I had proved myself strong.I had clinched again,as I had often clinched,my right to the title of "Prince."Also,my attitude may be considered,in part,as a reaction from my childhood's meagreness and my childhood's excessive toil.Possibly my inchoate thought was:Better to reign among booze-fighters a prince than to toil twelve hours a day at a machine for ten cents an hour.There are no purple passages in machine toil.But if the spending of one hundred and eighty dollars in twelve hours isn't a purple passage,then I'd like to know what is.

Oh,I skip much of the details of my trafficking with John Barleycorn during this period,and shall only mention events that will throw light on John Barleycorn's ways.There were three things that enabled me to pursue this heavy drinking:first,a magnificent constitution far better than the average;second,the healthy open-air life on the water;and third,the fact that Idrank irregularly.While out on the water,we never carried any drink along.

The world was opening up to me.Already I knew several hundred miles of the water-ways of it,and of the towns and cities and fishing hamlets on the shores.Came the whisper to range farther.

I had not found it yet.There was more behind.But even this much of the world was too wide for Nelson.He wearied for his beloved Oakland water-front,and when he elected to return to it we separated in all friendliness.

I now made the old town of Benicia,on the Carquinez Straits,my headquarters.In a cluster of fishermen's arks,moored in the tules on the water-front,dwelt a congenial crowd of drinkers and vagabonds,and I joined them.I had longer spells ashore,between fooling with salmon fishing and making raids up and down bay and rivers as a deputy fish patrolman,and I drank more and learned more about drinking.I held my own with any one,drink for drink;and often drank more than my share to show the strength of my manhood.When,on a morning,my unconscious carcass was disentangled from the nets on the drying-frames,whither I had stupidly,blindly crawled the night before;and when the water-front talked it over with many a giggle and laugh and another drink,I was proud indeed.It was an exploit.