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harpooner was only nineteen years old (and I have never had
anything but his own word that he was a harpooner); but he had
been too shining and glorious a personality for me ever to address
as I paddled around the yacht at a wistful distance. Would I take
Scotty, the runaway sailor, to visit the harpooner, on the opium-
smuggler Idler? WOULD I!
The harpooner came on deck to answer our hail, and invited us
aboard. I played the sailor and the man, fending off the skiff so
that it would not mar the yacht's white paint, dropping the skiff
astern on a long painter, and making the painter fast with two
nonchalant half-hitches.
We went below. It was the first sea-interior I had ever seen.
The clothing on the wall smelled musty. But what of that? Was it
not the sea-gear of men?--leather jackets lined with corduroy,
blue coats of pilot cloth, sou'westers, sea-boots, oilskins. And
everywhere was in evidence the economy of space--the narrow bunks,
the swinging tables, the incredible lockers. There were the tell-
tale compass, the sea-lamps in their gimbals, the blue-backed
charts carelessly rolled and tucked away, the signal-flags in
alphabetical order, and a mariner's dividers jammed into the
woodwork to hold a calendar. At last I was living. Here I sat,
inside my first ship, a smuggler, accepted as a comrade by a
harpooner and a runaway English sailor who said his name was
Scotty.
The first thing that the harpooner, aged nineteen, and the sailor,
aged seventeen, did to show that they were men was to behave like
men. The harpooner suggested the eminent desirableness of a
drink, and Scotty searched his pockets for dimes and nickels.
Then the harpooner carried away a pink flask to be filled in some
blind pig, for there were no licensed saloons in that locality.
We drank the cheap rotgut out of tumblers. Was I any the less
strong, any the less valiant, than the harpooner and the sailor?
They were men. They proved it by the way they drank. Drink was
the badge of manhood. So I drank with them, drink by drink, raw
and straight, though the damned stuff couldn't compare with a
stick of chewing taffy or a delectable "cannon-ball." I shuddered
and swallowed my gorge with every drink, though I manfully hid all
such symptoms.
Divers times we filled the flask that afternoon. All I had was
twenty cents, but I put it up like a man, though with secret
regret at the enormous store of candy it could have bought. The
liquor mounted in the heads of all of us, and the talk of Scotty
and the harpooner was upon running the Easting down, gales off the
Horn and pamperos off the Plate, lower topsail breezes, southerly
busters, North Pacific gales, and of smashed whaleboats in the
Arctic ice.
"You can't swim in that ice water," said the harpooner
confidentially to me. "You double up in a minute and go down.
When a whale smashes your boat, the thing to do is to get your
belly across an oar, so that when the cold doubles you you'll
float."
"Sure," I said, with a grateful nod and an air of certitude that
I, too, would hunt whales and be in smashed boats in the Arctic
Ocean. And, truly, I registered his advice as singularly valuable
information, and filed it away in my brain, where it persists to
this day.
But I couldn't talk--at first. Heavens! I was only fourteen, and
had never been on the ocean in my life. I could only listen to
the two sea-dogs, and show my manhood by drinking with them,
fairly and squarely, drink and drink.
The liquor worked its will with me; the talk of Scotty and the
harpooner poured through the pent space of the Idler's cabin and
through my brain like great gusts of wide, free wind; and in
imagination I lived my years to come and rocked over the wild,
mad, glorious world on multitudinous adventures.
We unbent. Our inhibitions and taciturnities vanished. We were
as if we had known each other for years and years, and we pledged
ourselves to years of future voyagings together. The harpooner
told of misadventures and secret shames. Scotty wept over his
poor old mother in Edinburgh--a lady, he insisted, gently born--
who was in reduced circumstances, who had pinched herself to pay
the lump sum to the ship-owners for his apprenticeship, whose
sacrificing dream had been to see him a merchantman officer and a
gentleman, and who was heartbroken because he had deserted his
ship in Australia and joined another as a common sailor before the
mast. And Scotty proved it. He drew her last sad letter from his
pocket and wept over it as he read it aloud. The harpooner and I
wept with him, and swore that all three of us would ship on the
whaleship Bonanza, win a big pay-day, and, still together, make a
pilgrimage to Edinburgh and lay our store of money in the dear
lady's lap.
And, as John Barleycorn heated his way into my brain, thawing my
reticence, melting my modesty, talking through me and with me and
as me, my adopted twin brother and alter ego, I, too, raised my
voice to show myself a man and an adventurer, and bragged in
detail and at length of how I had crossed San Francisco Bay in my
open skiff in a roaring southwester when even the schooner sailors
doubted my exploit. Further, I--or John Barleycorn, for it was
the same thing--told Scotty that he might be a deep-sea sailor and
know the last rope on the great deep-sea ships, but that when it
came to small-boat sailing I could beat him hands down and sail
circles around him.
The best of it was that my assertion and brag were true. With
reticence and modesty present, I could never have dared tell
Scotty my small-boat estimate of him. But it is ever the way of
John Barleycorn to loosen the tongue and babble the secret
thought.
Scotty, or John Barleycorn, or the pair, was very naturally
offended by my remarks. Nor was I loath. I could whip any
runaway sailor seventeen years old. Scotty and I flared and raged
like young cockerels, until the harpooner poured another round of
drinks to enable us to forgive and make up. Which we did, arms
around each other's necks, protesting vows of eternal friendship--
just like Black Matt and Tom Morrisey, I remembered, in the ranch
kitchen in San Mateo. And, remembering, I knew that I was at last
a man--despite my meagre fourteen years--a man as big and manly as
those two strapping giants who had quarrelled and made up on that
memorable Sunday morning of long ago.
By this time the singing stage was reached, and I joined Scotty
and the harpooner in snatches of sea songs and chanties. It was
here, in the cabin of the Idler, that I first heard "Blow the Man
Down," "Flying Cloud," and "Whisky, Johnny, Whisky." Oh, it was
brave. I was beginning to grasp the meaning of life. Here was no
commonplace, no Oakland Estuary, no weary round of throwing
newspapers at front doors, delivering ice, and setting up
ninepins. All the world was mine, all its paths were under my
feet, and John Barleycorn, tricking my fancy, enabled me to
anticipate the life of adventure for which I yearned.
We were not ordinary. We were three tipsy young gods, incredibly
wise, gloriously genial, and without limit to our powers. Ah!--
and I say it now, after the years--could John Barleycorn keep one
at such a height, I should never draw a sober breath again. But
this is not a world of free freights. One pays according to an
iron schedule--for every strength the balanced weakness; for every
high a corresponding low; for every fictitious god-like moment an
equivalent time in reptilian slime. For every feat of telescoping
long days and weeks of life into mad magnificent instants, one
must pay with shortened life, and, oft-times, with savage usury
added.
Intenseness and duration are as ancient enemies as fire and water.
They are mutually destructive. They cannot co-exist. And John
Barleycorn, mighty necromancer though he be, is as much a slave to
organic chemistry as we mortals are. We pay for every nerve
marathon we run, nor can John Barleycorn intercede and fend off
the just payment. He can lead us to the heights, but he cannot
keep us there, else would we all be devotees. And there is no
devotee but pays for the mad dances John Barleycorn pipes.
Yet the foregoing is all in after wisdom spoken. It was no part
of the knowledge of the lad, fourteen years old, who sat in the
Idler's cabin between the harpooner and the sailor, the air rich
in his nostrils with the musty smell of men's sea-gear, roaring in
chorus: "Yankee ship come down de ribber--pull, my bully boys,
pull!"
We grew maudlin, and all talked and shouted at once. I had a
splendid constitution, a stomach that would digest scrap-iron, and
I was still running my marathon in full vigour when Scotty began
to fail and fade. His talk grew incoherent. He groped for words
and could not find them, while the ones he found his lips were
unable to form. His poisoned consciousness was leaving him. The
brightness went out of his eyes, and he looked as stupid as were
his efforts to talk. His face and body sagged as his
consciousness sagged. (A man cannot sit upright save by an act of
will.) Scotty's reeling brain could not control his muscles. All
his correlations were breaking down. He strove to take another
drink, and feebly dropped the tumbler on the floor. Then, to my
amazement, weeping bitterly, he rolled into a bunk on his back and
immediately snored off to sleep.
The harpooner and I drank on, grinning in a superior way to each
other over Scotty's plight. The last flask was opened, and we
drank it between us, to the accompaniment of Scotty's stertorous
breathing. Then the harpooner faded away into his bunk, and I was
left alone, unthrown, on the field of battle.
I was very proud, and John Barleycorn was proud with me. I could
carry my drink. I was a man. I had drunk two men, drink for
drink, into unconsciousness. And I was still on my two feet,
upright, making my way on deck to get air into my scorching lungs.
It was in this bout on the Idler that I discovered what a good
stomach and a strong head I had for drink--a bit of knowledge that
was to be a source of pride in succeeding years, and that
ultimately I was to come to consider a great affliction. The
fortunate man is the one who cannot take more than a couple of
drinks without becoming intoxicated. The unfortunate wight is the
one who can take many glasses without betraying a sign, who must
take numerous glasses in order to get the "kick."
The sun was setting when I came on the Idler's deck. There were
plenty of bunks below. I did not need to go home. But I wanted
to demonstrate to myself how much I was a man. There lay my skiff
astern. The last of a strong ebb was running out in channel in
the teeth of an ocean breeze of forty miles an hour. I could see
the stiff whitecaps, and the suck and run of the current was
plainly visible in the face and trough of each one.
I set sail, cast off, took my place at the tiller, the sheet in my
hand, and headed across channel. The skiff heeled over and
plunged into it madly. The spray began to fly. I was at the
pinnacle of exaltation. I sang "Blow the Man Down" as I sailed.
I was no boy of fourteen, living the mediocre ways of the sleepy
town called Oakland. I was a man, a god, and the very elements
rendered me allegiance as I bitted them to my will.
The tide was out. A full hundred yards of soft mud intervened
between the boat-wharf and the water. I pulled up my centreboard,
ran full tilt into the mud, took in sail, and, standing in the
stern, as I had often done at low tide, I began to shove the skiff
with an oar. It was then that my correlations began to break
down. I lost my balance and pitched head-foremost into the ooze.
Then, and for the first time, as I floundered to my feet covered
with slime, the blood running down my arms from a scrape against a
barnacled stake, I knew that I was drunk. But what of it? Across
the channel two strong sailormen lay unconscious in their bunks
where I had drunk them. I WAS a man. I was still on my legs, if
they were knee-deep in mud. I disdained to get back into the
skiff. I waded through the mud, shoving the skiff before me and
yammering the chant of my manhood to the world.
I paid for it. I was sick for a couple of days, meanly sick, and
my arms were painfully poisoned from the barnacle scratches. For
a week I could not use them, and it was a torture to put on and
take off my clothes.
I swore, "Never again!" The game wasn't worth it. The price was
too stiff. I had no moral qualms. My revulsion was purely
physical. No exalted moments were worth such hours of misery and
wretchedness. When I got back to my skiff, I shunned the Idler.
I would cross the opposite side of the channel to go around her.
Scotty had disappeared. The harpooner was still about, but him I
avoided. Once, when he landed on the boat-wharf, I hid in a shed
so as to escape seeing him. I was afraid he would propose some
more drinking, maybe have a flask full of whisky in his pocket.
And yet--and here enters the necromancy of John Barleycorn--that
afternoon's drunk on the Idler had been a purple passage flung
into the monotony of my days. It was memorable. My mind dwelt on
it continually. I went over the details, over and over again.
Among other things, I had got into the cogs and springs of men's
actions. I had seen Scotty weep about his own worthlessness and
the sad case of his Edinburgh mother who was a lady. The
harpooner had told me terribly wonderful things of himself. I had
caught a myriad enticing and inflammatory hints of a world beyond
my world, and for which I was certainly as fitted as the two lads
who had drunk with me. I had got behind men's souls. I had got
behind my own soul and found unguessed potencies and greatnesses.
Yes, that day stood out above all my other days. To this day it
so stands out. The memory of it is branded in my brain. But the
price exacted was too high. I refused to play and pay, and
returned to my cannon-balls and taffy-slabs. The point is that
all the chemistry of my healthy, normal body drove me away from
alcohol. The stuff didn't agree with me. It was abominable.
But, despite this, circumstance was to continue to drive me toward
John Barleycorn, to drive me again and again, until, after long
years, the time should come when I would look up John Barleycorn
in every haunt of men--look him up and hail him gladly as
benefactor and friend. And detest and hate him all the time.
Yes, he is a strange friend, John Barleycorn.
I was barely turned fifteen, and working long hours in a cannery.
Month in and month out, the shortest day I ever worked was ten
hours. When to ten hours of actual work at a machine is added the
noon hour; the walking to work and walking home from work; the
getting up in the morning, dressing, and eating; the eating at
night, undressing, and going to bed, there remains no more than
the nine hours out of the twenty-four required by a healthy
youngster for sleep. Out of those nine hours, after I was in bed
and ere my eyes drowsed shut, I managed to steal a little time for
reading.
But many a night I did not knock off work until midnight. On
occasion I worked eighteen and twenty hours on a stretch. Once I
worked at my machine for thirty-six consecutive hours. And there
were weeks on end when I never knocked off work earlier than
eleven o'clock, got home and in bed at half after midnight, and
was called at half-past five to dress, eat, walk to work, and be
at my machine at seven o'clock whistle blow.
No moments here to be stolen for my beloved books. And what had
John Barleycorn to do with such strenuous, Stoic toil of a lad
just turned fifteen? He had everything to do with it. Let me show
you. I asked myself if this were the meaning of life--to be a
work-beast? I knew of no horse in the city of Oakland that worked
the hours I worked. If this were living, I was entirely
unenamoured of it. I remembered my skiff, lying idle and
accumulating barnacles at the boat-wharf; I remembered the wind
that blew every day on the bay, the sunrises and sunsets I never
saw; the bite of the salt air in my nostrils, the bite of the salt
water on my flesh when I plunged overside; I remembered all the
beauty and the wonder and the sense-delights of the world denied
me. There was only one way to escape my deadening toil. I must
get out and away on the water. I must earn my bread on the water.
And the way of the water led inevitably to John Barleycorn. I did
not know this. And when I did learn it, I was courageous enough
not to retreat back to my bestial life at the machine.
I wanted to be where the winds of adventure blew. And the winds
of adventure blew the oyster pirate sloops up and down San
Francisco Bay, from raided oyster-beds and fights at night on
shoal and flat, to markets in the morning against city wharves,
where peddlers and saloon-keepers came down to buy. Every raid on
an oyster-bed was a felony. The penalty was State imprisonment,
the stripes and the lockstep. And what of that? The men in
stripes worked a shorter day than I at my machine. And there was
vastly more romance in being an oyster pirate or a convict than in
being a machine slave. And behind it all, behind all of me with
youth abubble, whispered Romance, Adventure.
So I interviewed my Mammy Jennie, my old nurse at whose black
breast I had suckled. She was more prosperous than my folks. She
was nursing sick people at a good weekly wage. Would she lend her
"white child" the money? WOULD SHE? What she had was mine.
Then I sought out French Frank, the oyster pirate, who wanted to
sell, I had heard, his sloop, the Razzle Dazzle. I found him
lying at anchor on the Alameda side of the estuary near the
Webster Street bridge, with visitors aboard, whom he was
entertaining with afternoon wine. He came on deck to talk
business. He was willing to sell. But it was Sunday. Besides,
he had guests. On the morrow he would make out the bill of sale
and I could enter into possession. And in the meantime I must come
below and meet his friends. They were two sisters, Mamie and
Tess; a Mrs. Hadley, who chaperoned them; "Whisky" Bob, a youthful
oyster pirate of sixteen; and "Spider" Healey, a black-whiskered
wharf-rat of twenty. Mamie, who was Spider's niece, was called
the Queen of the Oyster Pirates, and, on occasion, presided at
their revels. French Frank was in love with her, though I did not
know it at the time; and she steadfastly refused to marry him.
French Frank poured a tumbler of red wine from a big demijohn to
drink to our transaction. I remembered the red wine of the
Italian rancho, and shuddered inwardly. Whisky and beer were not
quite so repulsive. But the Queen of the Oyster Pirates was
looking at me, a part-emptied glass in her own hand. I had my
pride. If I was only fifteen, at least I could not show myself
any less a man than she. Besides, there were her sister, and Mrs.
Hadley, and the young oyster pirate, and the whiskered wharf-rat,
all with glasses in their hands. Was I a milk-and-water sop? No;
a thousand times no, and a thousand glasses no. I downed the
tumblerful like a man.
French Frank was elated by the sale, which I had bound with a
twenty-dollar goldpiece. He poured more wine. I had learned my
strong head and stomach, and I was certain I could drink with them
in a temperate way and not poison myself for a week to come. I
could stand as much as they; and besides, they had already been
drinking for some time.
We got to singing. Spider sang "The Boston Burglar" and "Black
Lulu." The Queen sang "Then I Wisht I Were a Little Bird." And her
sister Tess sang "Oh, Treat My Daughter Kindily." The fun grew
fast and furious. I found myself able to miss drinks without
being noticed or called to account. Also, standing in the
companionway, head and shoulders out and glass in hand, I could
fling the wine overboard.
I reasoned something like this: It is a queerness of these people
that they like this vile-tasting wine. Well, let them. I cannot
quarrel with their tastes. My manhood, according to their queer
notions, must compel me to appear to like this wine. Very well.
I shall so appear. But I shall drink no more than is unavoidable.
And the Queen began to make love to me, the latest recruit to the
oyster pirate fleet, and no mere hand, but a master and owner.
She went upon deck to take the air, and took me with her. She
knew, of course, but I never dreamed, how French Frank was raging
down below. Then Tess joined us, sitting on the cabin; and
Spider, and Bob; and at the last, Mrs. Hadley and French Frank.
And we sat there, glasses in hand, and sang, while the big
demijohn went around; and I was the only strictly sober one.
And I enjoyed it as no one of them was able to enjoy it. Here, in
this atmosphere of bohemianism, I could not but contrast the scene
with my scene of the day before, sitting at my machine, in the
stifling, shut-in air, repeating, endlessly repeating, at top
speed, my series of mechanical motions. And here I sat now, glass
in hand, in warm-glowing camaraderie, with the oyster pirates,
adventurers who refused to be slaves to petty routine, who flouted
restrictions and the law, who carried their lives and their
liberty in their hands. And it was through John Barleycorn that I
came to join this glorious company of free souls, unashamed and
unafraid.
And the afternoon seabreeze blew its tang into my lungs, and
curled the waves in mid-channel. Before it came the scow
schooners, wing-and-wing, blowing their horns for the drawbridges
to open. Red-stacked tugs tore by, rocking the Razzle Dazzle in
the waves of their wake. A sugar barque towed from the "boneyard"
to sea. The sun-wash was on the crisping water, and life was big.
And Spider sang:
"Oh, it's Lulu, black Lulu, my darling,
Oh, it's where have you been so long?
Been layin' in jail,
A-waitin' for bail,
Till my bully comes rollin' along."
There it was, the smack and slap of the spirit of revolt, of
adventure, of romance, of the things forbidden and done defiantly
and grandly. And I knew that on the morrow I would not go back to
my machine at the cannery. To-morrow I would be an oyster pirate,
as free a freebooter as the century and the waters of San
Francisco Bay would permit. Spider had already agreed to sail
with me as my crew of one, and, also, as cook while I did the deck
work. We would outfit our grub and water in the morning, hoist
the big mainsail (which was a bigger piece of canvas than any I
had ever sailed under), and beat our way out the estuary on the
first of the seabreeze and the last of the ebb. Then we would
slack sheets, and on the first of the flood run down the bay to
the Asparagus Islands, where we would anchor miles off shore. And
at last my dream would be realised: I would sleep upon the water.
And next morning I would wake upon the water; and thereafter all
my days and nights would be on the water.
And the Queen asked me to row her ashore in my skiff, when at
sunset French Frank prepared to take his guests ashore. Nor did I
catch the significance of his abrupt change of plan when he turned
the task of rowing his skiff over to Whisky Bob, himself remaining
on board the sloop. Nor did I understand Spider's grinning side-
remark to me: "Gee! There's nothin' slow about YOU." How could it
possibly enter my boy's head that a grizzled man of fifty should
be jealous of me?
We met by appointment, early Monday morning, to complete the deal,
in Johnny Heinhold's "Last Chance "--a saloon, of course, for the
transactions of men. I paid the money over, received the bill of
sale, and French Frank treated. This struck me as an evident
custom, and a logical one--the seller, who receives, the money, to
wet a piece of it in the establishment where the trade was
consummated. But, to my surprise, French Frank treated the house.
He and I drank, which seemed just; but why should Johnny Heinhold,
who owned the saloon and waited behind the bar, be invited to
drink? I figured it immediately that he made a profit on the very
drink he drank. I could, in a way, considering that they were
friends and shipmates, understand Spider and Whisky Bob being
asked to drink; but why should the longshoremen, Bill Kelley and
Soup Kennedy, be asked?
Then there was Pat, the Queen's brother, making a total of eight
of us. It was early morning, and all ordered whisky. What could
I do, here in this company of big men, all drinking whisky?
"Whisky," I said, with the careless air of one who had said it a
thousand times. And such whisky! I tossed it down. A-r-r-r-gh! I
can taste it yet.
And I was appalled at the price French Frank had paid--eighty
cents. EIGHTY CENTS! It was an outrage to my thrifty soul.
Eighty cents--the equivalent of eight long hours of my toil at the
machine, gone down our throats, and gone like that, in a
twinkling, leaving only a bad taste in the mouth. There was no
discussion that French Frank was a waster.
I was anxious to be gone, out into the sunshine, out over the
water to my glorious boat. But all hands lingered. Even Spider,
my crew, lingered. No hint broke through my obtuseness of why
they lingered. I have often thought since of how they must have
regarded me, the newcomer being welcomed into their company
standing at bar with them, and not standing for a single round of
drinks.
French Frank, who, unknown to me, had swallowed his chagrin since
the day before, now that the money for the Razzle Dazzle was in
his pocket, began to behave curiously toward me. I sensed the
change in his attitude, saw the forbidding glitter in his eyes,
and wondered. The more I saw of men, the queerer they became.
Johnny Heinhold leaned across the bar and whispered in my ear s
"He's got it in for you. Watch out."
I nodded comprehension of his statement, and acquiescence in it,
as a man should nod who knows all about men. But secretly I was
perplexed. Heavens! How was I, who had worked hard and read books
of adventure, and who was only fifteen years old, who had not
dreamed of giving the Queen of the Oyster Pirates a second
thought, and who did not know that French Frank was madly and
Latinly in love with her--how was I to guess that I had done him
shame? And how was I to guess that the story of how the Queen had
thrown him down on his own boat, the moment I hove in sight, was
already the gleeful gossip of the water-front? And by the same
token, how was I to guess that her brother Pat's offishness with
me was anything else than temperamental gloominess of spirit?
Whisky Bob got me aside a moment. "Keep your eyes open," he
muttered. "Take my tip. French Frank's ugly. I'm going up river
with him to get a schooner for oystering. When he gets down on
the beds, watch out. He says he'll run you down. After dark, any
time he's around, change your anchorage and douse your riding
light. Savve?"
Oh, certainly, I savve'd. I nodded my head, and, as one man to
another, thanked him for his tip; and drifted back to the group at
the bar. No; I did not treat. I never dreamed that I was
expected to treat. I left with Spider, and my ears burn now as I
try to surmise the things they must have said about me.
I asked Spider, in an off-hand way, what was eating French Frank.
"He's crazy jealous of you," was the answer. "Do you think so?" I
said, and dismissed the matter as not worth thinking about.
But I leave it to any one--the swell of my fifteen-years-old
manhood at learning that French Frank, the adventurer of fifty,
the sailor of all the seas of all the world, was jealous of me--
and jealous over a girl most romantically named the Queen of the
Oyster Pirates. I had read of such things in books, and regarded
them as personal probabilities of a distant maturity. Oh, I felt
a rare young devil, as we hoisted the big mainsail that morning,
broke out anchor, and filled away close-hauled on the three-mile
beat to windward out into the bay.
Such was my escape from the killing machine-toil, and my
introduction to the oyster pirates. True, the introduction had
begun with drink, and the life promised to continue with drink.
But was I to stay away from it for such reason? Wherever life ran
free and great, there men drank. Romance and Adventure seemed
always to go down the street locked arm in arm with John
Barleycorn. To know the two, I must know the third. Or else I
must go back to my free library books and read of the deeds of
other men and do no deeds of my own save slave for ten cents an
hour at a machine in a cannery.
No; I was not to be deterred from this brave life on the water by
the fact that the water-dwellers had queer and expensive desires
for beer and wine and whisky. What if their notions of happiness
included the strange one of seeing me drink? When they persisted
in buying the stuff and thrusting it upon me, why, I would drink
it. It was the price I would pay for their comradeship. And I
didn't have to get drunk. I had not got drunk the Sunday
afternoon I arranged to buy the Razzle Dazzle, despite the fact
that not one of the rest was sober. Well, I could go on into the
future that way, drinking the stuff when it gave them pleasure
that I should drink it, but carefully avoiding over-drinking.
Gradual as was my development as a heavy drinker among the oyster
pirates, the real heavy drinking came suddenly, and was the
result, not of desire for alcohol, but of an intellectual
conviction.
The more I saw of the life, the more I was enamoured of it. I can
never forget my thrills the first night I took part in a concerted
raid, when we assembled on board the Annie--rough men, big and
unafraid, and weazened wharf-rats, some of them ex-convicts, all
of them enemies of the law and meriting jail, in sea-boots and
sea-gear, talking in gruff low voices, and "Big" George with
revolvers strapped about his waist to show that he meant business.
Oh, I know, looking back, that the whole thing was sordid and
silly. But I was not looking back in those days when I was
rubbing shoulders with John Barleycorn and beginning to accept
him. The life was brave and wild, and I was living the adventure
I had read so much about.
Nelson, "Young Scratch" they called him, to distinguish him from
"Old Scratch," his father, sailed in the sloop Reindeer, partners
with one "Clam." Clam was a dare-devil, but Nelson was a reckless
maniac. He was twenty years old, with the body of a Hercules.
When he was shot in Benicia, a couple of years later, the coroner
said he was the greatest-shouldered man he had ever seen laid on a
slab.
Nelson could not read or write. He had been "dragged" up by his
father on San Francisco Bay, and boats were second nature with
him. His strength was prodigious, and his reputation along the
water-front for violence was anything but savoury. He had
Berserker rages and did mad, terrible things. I made his
acquaintance the first cruise of the Razzle Dazzle, and saw him
sail the Reindeer in a blow and dredge oysters all around the rest
of us as we lay at two anchors, troubled with fear of going
ashore.
He was some man, this Nelson; and when, passing by the Last Chance
saloon, he spoke to me, I felt very proud. But try to imagine my
pride when he promptly asked me in to have a drink. I stood at
the bar and drank a glass of beer with him, and talked manfully of
oysters, and boats, and of the mystery of who had put the load of
buckshot through the Annie's mainsail.
We talked and lingered at the bar. It seemed to me strange that
we lingered. We had had our beer. But who was I to lead the way
outside when great Nelson chose to lean against the bar? After a
few minutes, to my surprise, he asked me to have another drink,
which I did. And still we talked, and Nelson evinced no intention
of leaving the bar.
Bear with me while I explain the way of my reasoning and of my
innocence. First of all, I was very proud to be in the company of
Nelson, who was the most heroic figure among the oyster pirates
and bay adventurers. Unfortunately for my stomach and mucous
membranes, Nelson had a strange quirk of nature that made him find
happiness in treating me to beer. I had no moral disinclination
for beer, and just because I didn't like the taste of it and the
weight of it was no reason I should forgo the honour of his
company. It was his whim to drink beer, and to have me drink beer
with him. Very well, I would put up with the passing discomfort.
So we continued to talk at the bar, and to drink beer ordered and
paid for by Nelson. I think, now, when I look back upon it, that
Nelson was curious. He wanted to find out just what kind of a
gink I was. He wanted to see how many times I'd let him treat
without offering to treat in return.
After I had drunk half a dozen glasses, my policy of temperateness
in mind, I decided that I had had enough for that time. So I
mentioned that I was going aboard the Razzle Dazzle, then lying at
the city wharf, a hundred yards away.
I said good-bye to Nelson, and went on down the wharf. But, John
Barleycorn, to the extent of six glasses, went with me. My brain
tingled and was very much alive. I was uplifted by my sense of
manhood. I, a truly-true oyster pirate, was going aboard my own
boat after hob-nobbing in the Last Chance with Nelson, the
greatest oyster pirate of us all. Strong in my brain was the
vision of us leaning against the bar and drinking beer. And
curious it was, I decided, this whim of nature that made men happy
in spending good money for beer for a fellow like me who didn't
want it.
As I pondered this, I recollected that several times other men, in
couples, had entered the Last Chance, and first one, then the
other, had treated to drinks. I remembered, on the drunk on the
Idler, how Scotty and the harpooner and myself had raked and
scraped dimes and nickels with which to buy the whisky. Then came
my boy code: when on a day a fellow gave another a "cannon-ball"
or a chunk of taffy, on some other day he would expect to receive
back a cannon-ball or a chunk of taffy.
That was why Nelson had lingered at the bar. Having bought a
drink, he had waited for me to buy one. I HAD, LET HIM BUY SIX
DRINKS AND NEVER ONCE OFFERED TO TREAT. And he was the great
Nelson! I could feel myself blushing with shame. I sat down on
the stringer-piece of the wharf and buried my face in my hands.
And the heat of my shame burned up my neck and into my cheeks and
forehead. I have blushed many times in my life, but never have I
experienced so terrible a blush as that one.
And sitting there on the stringer-piece in my shame, I did a great
deal of thinking and transvaluing of values. I had been born
poor. Poor I had lived. I had gone hungry on occasion. I had
never had toys nor playthings like other children. My first
memories of life were pinched by poverty. The pinch of poverty
had been chronic. I was eight years old when I wore my first
little undershirt actually sold in a store across the counter.
And then it had been only one little undershirt. When it was
soiled I had to return to the awful home-made things until it was
washed. I had been so proud of it that I insisted on wearing it
without any outer garment. For the first time I mutinied against
my mother--mutinied myself into hysteria, until she let me wear
the store undershirt so all the world could see.
Only a man who has undergone famine can properly value food; only
sailors and desert-dwellers know the meaning of fresh water. And
only a child, with a child's imagination, can come to know the
meaning of things it has been long denied. I early discovered
that the only things I could have were those I got for myself. My
meagre childhood developed meagreness. The first things I had
been able to get for myself had been cigarette pictures, cigarette
posters, and cigarette albums. I had not had the spending of the
money I earned, so I traded "extra" newspapers for these
treasures. I traded duplicates with the other boys, and
circulating, as I did, all about town, I had greater opportunities
for trading and acquiring.
It was not long before I had complete every series issued by every
cigarette manufacturer--such as the Great Race Horses, Parisian
Beauties, Women of All Nations, Flags of All Nations, Noted
Actors, Champion Prize Fighters, etc. And each series I had three
different ways: in the card from the cigarette package, in the
poster, and in the album.
Then I began to accumulate duplicate sets, duplicate albums. I
traded for other things that boys valued and which they usually
bought with money given them by their parents. Naturally, they
did not have the keen sense of values that I had, who was never
given money to buy anything. I traded for postage-stamps, for
minerals, for curios, for birds' eggs, for marbles (I had a more
magnificent collection of agates than I have ever seen any boy
possess--and the nucleus of the collection was a handful worth at
least three dollars, which I had kept as security for twenty cents
I loaned to a messenger-boy who was sent to reform school before
he could redeem them).
I'd trade anything and everything for anything else, and turn it
over in a dozen more trades until it was transmuted into something
that was worth something. I was famous as a trader. I was
notorious as a miser. I could even make a junkman weep when I had
dealings with him. Other boys called me in to sell for them their
collections of bottles, rags, old iron, grain, and gunny-sacks,
and five-gallon oil-cans--aye, and gave me a commission for doing
it.
And this was the thrifty, close-fisted boy, accustomed to slave at
a machine for ten cents an hour, who sat on the stringer-piece and
considered the matter of beer at five cents a glass and gone in a
moment with nothing to show for it. I was now with men I admired.
I was proud to be with them. Had all my pinching and saving
brought me the equivalent of one of the many thrills which had
been mine since I came among the oyster pirates? Then what was
worth while--money or thrills? These men had no horror of
squandering a nickel, or many nickels. They were magnificently
careless of money, calling up eight men to drink whisky at ten
cents a glass, as French Frank had done. Why, Nelson had just
spent sixty cents on beer for the two of us.
Which was it to be? I was aware that I was making a grave
decision. I was deciding between money and men, between
niggardliness and romance. Either I must throw overboard all my
old values of money and look upon it as something to be flung
about wastefully, or I must throw overboard my comradeship with
these men whose peculiar quirks made them like strong drink.
I retraced my steps up the wharf to the Last Chance, where Nelson
still stood outside. "Come on and have a beer," I invited. Again
we stood at the bar and drank and talked, but this time it was I
who paid ten cents! a whole hour of my labour at a machine for a
drink of something I didn't want and which tasted rotten. But it
wasn't difficult. I had achieved a concept. Money no longer
counted. It was comradeship that counted. "Have another?" I
said. And we had another, and I paid for it. Nelson, with the
wisdom of the skilled drinker, said to the barkeeper, "Make mine a
small one, Johnny." Johnny nodded and gave him a glass that
contained only a third as much as the glasses we had been
drinking. Yet the charge was the same--five cents.
By this time I was getting nicely jingled, so such extravagance
didn't hurt me much. Besides, I was learning. There was more in
this buying of drinks than mere quantity. I got my finger on it.
There was a stage when the beer didn't count at all, but just the
spirit of comradeship of drinking together. And, ha!--another
thing! I, too, could call for small beers and minimise by two-
thirds the detestable freightage with which comradeship burdened
one.
"I had to go aboard to get some money," I remarked casually, as we
drank, in the hope Nelson would take it as an explanation of why I
had let him treat six consecutive times.
"Oh, well, you didn't have to do that," he answered. "Johnny'll
trust a fellow like you--won't you, Johnny!"
"Sure," Johnny agreed, with a smile.
"How much you got down against me?" Nelson queried.
Johnny pulled out the book he kept behind the bar, found Nelson's
page, and added up the account of several dollars. At once I
became possessed with a desire to have a page in that book.
Almost it seemed the final badge of manhood.
After a couple more drinks, for which I insisted on paying, Nelson
decided to go. We parted true comradely, and I wandered down the
wharf to the Razzle Dazzle. Spider was just building the fire for
supper.
"Where'd you get it?" he grinned up at me through the open
companion.
"Oh, I've been with Nelson," I said carelessly, trying to hide my
pride.
Then an idea came to me. Here was another one of them. Now that
I had achieved my concept, I might as well practise it thoroughly.
"Come on," I said, "up to Johnny's and have a drink."
Going up the wharf, we met Clam coming down. Clam was Nelson's
partner, and he was a fine, brave, handsome, moustached man of
thirty--everything, in short, that his nickname did not connote.
"Come on," I said, "and have a drink." He came. As we turned into
the Last Chance, there was Pat, the Queen's brother, coming out.
"What's your hurry?" I greeted him. "We're having a drink. Come
on along." "I've just had one," he demurred. "What of it?--we're
having one now," I retorted. And Pat consented to join us, and I
melted my way into his good graces with a couple of glasses of
beer. Oh! I was learning things that afternoon about John
Barleycorn. There was more in him than the bad taste when you
swallowed him. Here, at the absurd cost of ten cents, a gloomy,
grouchy individual, who threatened to become an enemy, was made
into a good friend. He became even genial, his looks were kindly,
and our voices mellowed together as we talked water-front and
oyster-bed gossip.
"Small beer for me, Johnny," I said, when the others had ordered
schooners. Yes, and I said it like the accustomed drinker,
carelessly, casually, as a sort of spontaneous thought that had
just occurred to me. Looking back, I am confident that the only
one there who guessed I was a tyro at bar-drinking was Johnny
Heinhold.
"Where'd he get it?" I overheard Spider confidentially ask Johnny.
"Oh, he's been sousin' here with Nelson all afternoon," was
Johnny's answer.
I never let on that I'd heard, but PROUD? Aye, even the barkeeper
was giving me a recommendation as a man. "HE'S BEEN SOUSIN' HERE
WITH NELSON ALL AFTERNOON." Magic words! The accolade delivered by
a barkeeper with a beer glass!
I remembered that French Frank had treated Johnny the day I bought
the Razzle Dazzle. The glasses were filled and we were ready to
drink. "Have something yourself, Johnny," I said, with an air of
having intended to say it all the time, but of having been a
trifle remiss because of the interesting conversation I had been
holding with Clam and Pat.
Johnny looked at me with quick sharpness, divining, I am positive,
the strides I was making in my education, and poured himself
whisky from his private bottle. This hit me for a moment on my
thrifty side. He had taken a ten-cent drink when the rest of us
were drinking five-cent drinks! But the hurt was only for a
moment. I dismissed it as ignoble, remembered my concept, and did
not give myself away.
"You'd better put me down in the book for this," I said, when we
had finished the drink. And I had the satisfaction of seeing a
fresh page devoted to my name and a charge pencilled for a round
of drinks amounting to thirty cents. And I glimpsed, as through a
golden haze, a future wherein that page would be much charged, and
crossed off, and charged again.
I treated a second time around, and then, to my amazement, Johnny
redeemed himself in that matter of the ten-cent drink. He treated
us around from behind the bar, and I decided that he had
arithmetically evened things up handsomely.
"Let's go around to the St. Louis House," Spider suggested when we
got outside. Pat, who had been shovelling coal all day, had gone
home, and Clam had gone upon the Reindeer to cook supper.
So around Spider and I went to the St. Louis House--my first
visit--a huge bar-room, where perhaps fifty men, mostly
longshoremen, were congregated. And there I met Soup Kennedy for
the second time, and Bill Kelley. And Smith, of the Annie,
drifted in--he of the belt-buckled revolvers. And Nelson showed
up. And I met others, including the Vigy brothers, who ran the
place, and, chiefest of all, Joe Goose, with the wicked eyes, the
twisted nose, and the flowered vest, who played the harmonica like
a roystering angel and went on the most atrocious tears that even
the Oakland water-front could conceive of and admire.
As I bought drinks--others treated as well--the thought flickered
across my mind that Mammy Jennie wasn't going to be repaid much on
her loan out of that week's earnings of the Razzle Dazzle. "But
what of it?" I thought, or rather, John Barleycorn thought it for
me. "You're a man and you're getting acquainted with men. Mammy
Jennie doesn't need the money as promptly as all that. She isn't
starving. You know that. She's got other money in the bank. Let
her wait, and pay her back gradually."
And thus it was I learned another trait of John Barleycorn. He
inhibits morality. Wrong conduct that it is impossible for one to
do sober, is done quite easily when one is not sober. In fact, it
is the only thing one can do, for John Barleycorn's inhibition
rises like a wall between one's immediate desires and long-learned
morality.
I dismissed my thought of debt to Mammy Jennie and proceeded to
anything but his own word that he was a harpooner); but he had
been too shining and glorious a personality for me ever to address
as I paddled around the yacht at a wistful distance. Would I take
Scotty, the runaway sailor, to visit the harpooner, on the opium-
smuggler Idler? WOULD I!
The harpooner came on deck to answer our hail, and invited us
aboard. I played the sailor and the man, fending off the skiff so
that it would not mar the yacht's white paint, dropping the skiff
astern on a long painter, and making the painter fast with two
nonchalant half-hitches.
We went below. It was the first sea-interior I had ever seen.
The clothing on the wall smelled musty. But what of that? Was it
not the sea-gear of men?--leather jackets lined with corduroy,
blue coats of pilot cloth, sou'westers, sea-boots, oilskins. And
everywhere was in evidence the economy of space--the narrow bunks,
the swinging tables, the incredible lockers. There were the tell-
tale compass, the sea-lamps in their gimbals, the blue-backed
charts carelessly rolled and tucked away, the signal-flags in
alphabetical order, and a mariner's dividers jammed into the
woodwork to hold a calendar. At last I was living. Here I sat,
inside my first ship, a smuggler, accepted as a comrade by a
harpooner and a runaway English sailor who said his name was
Scotty.
The first thing that the harpooner, aged nineteen, and the sailor,
aged seventeen, did to show that they were men was to behave like
men. The harpooner suggested the eminent desirableness of a
drink, and Scotty searched his pockets for dimes and nickels.
Then the harpooner carried away a pink flask to be filled in some
blind pig, for there were no licensed saloons in that locality.
We drank the cheap rotgut out of tumblers. Was I any the less
strong, any the less valiant, than the harpooner and the sailor?
They were men. They proved it by the way they drank. Drink was
the badge of manhood. So I drank with them, drink by drink, raw
and straight, though the damned stuff couldn't compare with a
stick of chewing taffy or a delectable "cannon-ball." I shuddered
and swallowed my gorge with every drink, though I manfully hid all
such symptoms.
Divers times we filled the flask that afternoon. All I had was
twenty cents, but I put it up like a man, though with secret
regret at the enormous store of candy it could have bought. The
liquor mounted in the heads of all of us, and the talk of Scotty
and the harpooner was upon running the Easting down, gales off the
Horn and pamperos off the Plate, lower topsail breezes, southerly
busters, North Pacific gales, and of smashed whaleboats in the
Arctic ice.
"You can't swim in that ice water," said the harpooner
confidentially to me. "You double up in a minute and go down.
When a whale smashes your boat, the thing to do is to get your
belly across an oar, so that when the cold doubles you you'll
float."
"Sure," I said, with a grateful nod and an air of certitude that
I, too, would hunt whales and be in smashed boats in the Arctic
Ocean. And, truly, I registered his advice as singularly valuable
information, and filed it away in my brain, where it persists to
this day.
But I couldn't talk--at first. Heavens! I was only fourteen, and
had never been on the ocean in my life. I could only listen to
the two sea-dogs, and show my manhood by drinking with them,
fairly and squarely, drink and drink.
The liquor worked its will with me; the talk of Scotty and the
harpooner poured through the pent space of the Idler's cabin and
through my brain like great gusts of wide, free wind; and in
imagination I lived my years to come and rocked over the wild,
mad, glorious world on multitudinous adventures.
We unbent. Our inhibitions and taciturnities vanished. We were
as if we had known each other for years and years, and we pledged
ourselves to years of future voyagings together. The harpooner
told of misadventures and secret shames. Scotty wept over his
poor old mother in Edinburgh--a lady, he insisted, gently born--
who was in reduced circumstances, who had pinched herself to pay
the lump sum to the ship-owners for his apprenticeship, whose
sacrificing dream had been to see him a merchantman officer and a
gentleman, and who was heartbroken because he had deserted his
ship in Australia and joined another as a common sailor before the
mast. And Scotty proved it. He drew her last sad letter from his
pocket and wept over it as he read it aloud. The harpooner and I
wept with him, and swore that all three of us would ship on the
whaleship Bonanza, win a big pay-day, and, still together, make a
pilgrimage to Edinburgh and lay our store of money in the dear
lady's lap.
And, as John Barleycorn heated his way into my brain, thawing my
reticence, melting my modesty, talking through me and with me and
as me, my adopted twin brother and alter ego, I, too, raised my
voice to show myself a man and an adventurer, and bragged in
detail and at length of how I had crossed San Francisco Bay in my
open skiff in a roaring southwester when even the schooner sailors
doubted my exploit. Further, I--or John Barleycorn, for it was
the same thing--told Scotty that he might be a deep-sea sailor and
know the last rope on the great deep-sea ships, but that when it
came to small-boat sailing I could beat him hands down and sail
circles around him.
The best of it was that my assertion and brag were true. With
reticence and modesty present, I could never have dared tell
Scotty my small-boat estimate of him. But it is ever the way of
John Barleycorn to loosen the tongue and babble the secret
thought.
Scotty, or John Barleycorn, or the pair, was very naturally
offended by my remarks. Nor was I loath. I could whip any
runaway sailor seventeen years old. Scotty and I flared and raged
like young cockerels, until the harpooner poured another round of
drinks to enable us to forgive and make up. Which we did, arms
around each other's necks, protesting vows of eternal friendship--
just like Black Matt and Tom Morrisey, I remembered, in the ranch
kitchen in San Mateo. And, remembering, I knew that I was at last
a man--despite my meagre fourteen years--a man as big and manly as
those two strapping giants who had quarrelled and made up on that
memorable Sunday morning of long ago.
By this time the singing stage was reached, and I joined Scotty
and the harpooner in snatches of sea songs and chanties. It was
here, in the cabin of the Idler, that I first heard "Blow the Man
Down," "Flying Cloud," and "Whisky, Johnny, Whisky." Oh, it was
brave. I was beginning to grasp the meaning of life. Here was no
commonplace, no Oakland Estuary, no weary round of throwing
newspapers at front doors, delivering ice, and setting up
ninepins. All the world was mine, all its paths were under my
feet, and John Barleycorn, tricking my fancy, enabled me to
anticipate the life of adventure for which I yearned.
We were not ordinary. We were three tipsy young gods, incredibly
wise, gloriously genial, and without limit to our powers. Ah!--
and I say it now, after the years--could John Barleycorn keep one
at such a height, I should never draw a sober breath again. But
this is not a world of free freights. One pays according to an
iron schedule--for every strength the balanced weakness; for every
high a corresponding low; for every fictitious god-like moment an
equivalent time in reptilian slime. For every feat of telescoping
long days and weeks of life into mad magnificent instants, one
must pay with shortened life, and, oft-times, with savage usury
added.
Intenseness and duration are as ancient enemies as fire and water.
They are mutually destructive. They cannot co-exist. And John
Barleycorn, mighty necromancer though he be, is as much a slave to
organic chemistry as we mortals are. We pay for every nerve
marathon we run, nor can John Barleycorn intercede and fend off
the just payment. He can lead us to the heights, but he cannot
keep us there, else would we all be devotees. And there is no
devotee but pays for the mad dances John Barleycorn pipes.
Yet the foregoing is all in after wisdom spoken. It was no part
of the knowledge of the lad, fourteen years old, who sat in the
Idler's cabin between the harpooner and the sailor, the air rich
in his nostrils with the musty smell of men's sea-gear, roaring in
chorus: "Yankee ship come down de ribber--pull, my bully boys,
pull!"
We grew maudlin, and all talked and shouted at once. I had a
splendid constitution, a stomach that would digest scrap-iron, and
I was still running my marathon in full vigour when Scotty began
to fail and fade. His talk grew incoherent. He groped for words
and could not find them, while the ones he found his lips were
unable to form. His poisoned consciousness was leaving him. The
brightness went out of his eyes, and he looked as stupid as were
his efforts to talk. His face and body sagged as his
consciousness sagged. (A man cannot sit upright save by an act of
will.) Scotty's reeling brain could not control his muscles. All
his correlations were breaking down. He strove to take another
drink, and feebly dropped the tumbler on the floor. Then, to my
amazement, weeping bitterly, he rolled into a bunk on his back and
immediately snored off to sleep.
The harpooner and I drank on, grinning in a superior way to each
other over Scotty's plight. The last flask was opened, and we
drank it between us, to the accompaniment of Scotty's stertorous
breathing. Then the harpooner faded away into his bunk, and I was
left alone, unthrown, on the field of battle.
I was very proud, and John Barleycorn was proud with me. I could
carry my drink. I was a man. I had drunk two men, drink for
drink, into unconsciousness. And I was still on my two feet,
upright, making my way on deck to get air into my scorching lungs.
It was in this bout on the Idler that I discovered what a good
stomach and a strong head I had for drink--a bit of knowledge that
was to be a source of pride in succeeding years, and that
ultimately I was to come to consider a great affliction. The
fortunate man is the one who cannot take more than a couple of
drinks without becoming intoxicated. The unfortunate wight is the
one who can take many glasses without betraying a sign, who must
take numerous glasses in order to get the "kick."
The sun was setting when I came on the Idler's deck. There were
plenty of bunks below. I did not need to go home. But I wanted
to demonstrate to myself how much I was a man. There lay my skiff
astern. The last of a strong ebb was running out in channel in
the teeth of an ocean breeze of forty miles an hour. I could see
the stiff whitecaps, and the suck and run of the current was
plainly visible in the face and trough of each one.
I set sail, cast off, took my place at the tiller, the sheet in my
hand, and headed across channel. The skiff heeled over and
plunged into it madly. The spray began to fly. I was at the
pinnacle of exaltation. I sang "Blow the Man Down" as I sailed.
I was no boy of fourteen, living the mediocre ways of the sleepy
town called Oakland. I was a man, a god, and the very elements
rendered me allegiance as I bitted them to my will.
The tide was out. A full hundred yards of soft mud intervened
between the boat-wharf and the water. I pulled up my centreboard,
ran full tilt into the mud, took in sail, and, standing in the
stern, as I had often done at low tide, I began to shove the skiff
with an oar. It was then that my correlations began to break
down. I lost my balance and pitched head-foremost into the ooze.
Then, and for the first time, as I floundered to my feet covered
with slime, the blood running down my arms from a scrape against a
barnacled stake, I knew that I was drunk. But what of it? Across
the channel two strong sailormen lay unconscious in their bunks
where I had drunk them. I WAS a man. I was still on my legs, if
they were knee-deep in mud. I disdained to get back into the
skiff. I waded through the mud, shoving the skiff before me and
yammering the chant of my manhood to the world.
I paid for it. I was sick for a couple of days, meanly sick, and
my arms were painfully poisoned from the barnacle scratches. For
a week I could not use them, and it was a torture to put on and
take off my clothes.
I swore, "Never again!" The game wasn't worth it. The price was
too stiff. I had no moral qualms. My revulsion was purely
physical. No exalted moments were worth such hours of misery and
wretchedness. When I got back to my skiff, I shunned the Idler.
I would cross the opposite side of the channel to go around her.
Scotty had disappeared. The harpooner was still about, but him I
avoided. Once, when he landed on the boat-wharf, I hid in a shed
so as to escape seeing him. I was afraid he would propose some
more drinking, maybe have a flask full of whisky in his pocket.
And yet--and here enters the necromancy of John Barleycorn--that
afternoon's drunk on the Idler had been a purple passage flung
into the monotony of my days. It was memorable. My mind dwelt on
it continually. I went over the details, over and over again.
Among other things, I had got into the cogs and springs of men's
actions. I had seen Scotty weep about his own worthlessness and
the sad case of his Edinburgh mother who was a lady. The
harpooner had told me terribly wonderful things of himself. I had
caught a myriad enticing and inflammatory hints of a world beyond
my world, and for which I was certainly as fitted as the two lads
who had drunk with me. I had got behind men's souls. I had got
behind my own soul and found unguessed potencies and greatnesses.
Yes, that day stood out above all my other days. To this day it
so stands out. The memory of it is branded in my brain. But the
price exacted was too high. I refused to play and pay, and
returned to my cannon-balls and taffy-slabs. The point is that
all the chemistry of my healthy, normal body drove me away from
alcohol. The stuff didn't agree with me. It was abominable.
But, despite this, circumstance was to continue to drive me toward
John Barleycorn, to drive me again and again, until, after long
years, the time should come when I would look up John Barleycorn
in every haunt of men--look him up and hail him gladly as
benefactor and friend. And detest and hate him all the time.
Yes, he is a strange friend, John Barleycorn.
I was barely turned fifteen, and working long hours in a cannery.
Month in and month out, the shortest day I ever worked was ten
hours. When to ten hours of actual work at a machine is added the
noon hour; the walking to work and walking home from work; the
getting up in the morning, dressing, and eating; the eating at
night, undressing, and going to bed, there remains no more than
the nine hours out of the twenty-four required by a healthy
youngster for sleep. Out of those nine hours, after I was in bed
and ere my eyes drowsed shut, I managed to steal a little time for
reading.
But many a night I did not knock off work until midnight. On
occasion I worked eighteen and twenty hours on a stretch. Once I
worked at my machine for thirty-six consecutive hours. And there
were weeks on end when I never knocked off work earlier than
eleven o'clock, got home and in bed at half after midnight, and
was called at half-past five to dress, eat, walk to work, and be
at my machine at seven o'clock whistle blow.
No moments here to be stolen for my beloved books. And what had
John Barleycorn to do with such strenuous, Stoic toil of a lad
just turned fifteen? He had everything to do with it. Let me show
you. I asked myself if this were the meaning of life--to be a
work-beast? I knew of no horse in the city of Oakland that worked
the hours I worked. If this were living, I was entirely
unenamoured of it. I remembered my skiff, lying idle and
accumulating barnacles at the boat-wharf; I remembered the wind
that blew every day on the bay, the sunrises and sunsets I never
saw; the bite of the salt air in my nostrils, the bite of the salt
water on my flesh when I plunged overside; I remembered all the
beauty and the wonder and the sense-delights of the world denied
me. There was only one way to escape my deadening toil. I must
get out and away on the water. I must earn my bread on the water.
And the way of the water led inevitably to John Barleycorn. I did
not know this. And when I did learn it, I was courageous enough
not to retreat back to my bestial life at the machine.
I wanted to be where the winds of adventure blew. And the winds
of adventure blew the oyster pirate sloops up and down San
Francisco Bay, from raided oyster-beds and fights at night on
shoal and flat, to markets in the morning against city wharves,
where peddlers and saloon-keepers came down to buy. Every raid on
an oyster-bed was a felony. The penalty was State imprisonment,
the stripes and the lockstep. And what of that? The men in
stripes worked a shorter day than I at my machine. And there was
vastly more romance in being an oyster pirate or a convict than in
being a machine slave. And behind it all, behind all of me with
youth abubble, whispered Romance, Adventure.
So I interviewed my Mammy Jennie, my old nurse at whose black
breast I had suckled. She was more prosperous than my folks. She
was nursing sick people at a good weekly wage. Would she lend her
"white child" the money? WOULD SHE? What she had was mine.
Then I sought out French Frank, the oyster pirate, who wanted to
sell, I had heard, his sloop, the Razzle Dazzle. I found him
lying at anchor on the Alameda side of the estuary near the
Webster Street bridge, with visitors aboard, whom he was
entertaining with afternoon wine. He came on deck to talk
business. He was willing to sell. But it was Sunday. Besides,
he had guests. On the morrow he would make out the bill of sale
and I could enter into possession. And in the meantime I must come
below and meet his friends. They were two sisters, Mamie and
Tess; a Mrs. Hadley, who chaperoned them; "Whisky" Bob, a youthful
oyster pirate of sixteen; and "Spider" Healey, a black-whiskered
wharf-rat of twenty. Mamie, who was Spider's niece, was called
the Queen of the Oyster Pirates, and, on occasion, presided at
their revels. French Frank was in love with her, though I did not
know it at the time; and she steadfastly refused to marry him.
French Frank poured a tumbler of red wine from a big demijohn to
drink to our transaction. I remembered the red wine of the
Italian rancho, and shuddered inwardly. Whisky and beer were not
quite so repulsive. But the Queen of the Oyster Pirates was
looking at me, a part-emptied glass in her own hand. I had my
pride. If I was only fifteen, at least I could not show myself
any less a man than she. Besides, there were her sister, and Mrs.
Hadley, and the young oyster pirate, and the whiskered wharf-rat,
all with glasses in their hands. Was I a milk-and-water sop? No;
a thousand times no, and a thousand glasses no. I downed the
tumblerful like a man.
French Frank was elated by the sale, which I had bound with a
twenty-dollar goldpiece. He poured more wine. I had learned my
strong head and stomach, and I was certain I could drink with them
in a temperate way and not poison myself for a week to come. I
could stand as much as they; and besides, they had already been
drinking for some time.
We got to singing. Spider sang "The Boston Burglar" and "Black
Lulu." The Queen sang "Then I Wisht I Were a Little Bird." And her
sister Tess sang "Oh, Treat My Daughter Kindily." The fun grew
fast and furious. I found myself able to miss drinks without
being noticed or called to account. Also, standing in the
companionway, head and shoulders out and glass in hand, I could
fling the wine overboard.
I reasoned something like this: It is a queerness of these people
that they like this vile-tasting wine. Well, let them. I cannot
quarrel with their tastes. My manhood, according to their queer
notions, must compel me to appear to like this wine. Very well.
I shall so appear. But I shall drink no more than is unavoidable.
And the Queen began to make love to me, the latest recruit to the
oyster pirate fleet, and no mere hand, but a master and owner.
She went upon deck to take the air, and took me with her. She
knew, of course, but I never dreamed, how French Frank was raging
down below. Then Tess joined us, sitting on the cabin; and
Spider, and Bob; and at the last, Mrs. Hadley and French Frank.
And we sat there, glasses in hand, and sang, while the big
demijohn went around; and I was the only strictly sober one.
And I enjoyed it as no one of them was able to enjoy it. Here, in
this atmosphere of bohemianism, I could not but contrast the scene
with my scene of the day before, sitting at my machine, in the
stifling, shut-in air, repeating, endlessly repeating, at top
speed, my series of mechanical motions. And here I sat now, glass
in hand, in warm-glowing camaraderie, with the oyster pirates,
adventurers who refused to be slaves to petty routine, who flouted
restrictions and the law, who carried their lives and their
liberty in their hands. And it was through John Barleycorn that I
came to join this glorious company of free souls, unashamed and
unafraid.
And the afternoon seabreeze blew its tang into my lungs, and
curled the waves in mid-channel. Before it came the scow
schooners, wing-and-wing, blowing their horns for the drawbridges
to open. Red-stacked tugs tore by, rocking the Razzle Dazzle in
the waves of their wake. A sugar barque towed from the "boneyard"
to sea. The sun-wash was on the crisping water, and life was big.
And Spider sang:
"Oh, it's Lulu, black Lulu, my darling,
Oh, it's where have you been so long?
Been layin' in jail,
A-waitin' for bail,
Till my bully comes rollin' along."
There it was, the smack and slap of the spirit of revolt, of
adventure, of romance, of the things forbidden and done defiantly
and grandly. And I knew that on the morrow I would not go back to
my machine at the cannery. To-morrow I would be an oyster pirate,
as free a freebooter as the century and the waters of San
Francisco Bay would permit. Spider had already agreed to sail
with me as my crew of one, and, also, as cook while I did the deck
work. We would outfit our grub and water in the morning, hoist
the big mainsail (which was a bigger piece of canvas than any I
had ever sailed under), and beat our way out the estuary on the
first of the seabreeze and the last of the ebb. Then we would
slack sheets, and on the first of the flood run down the bay to
the Asparagus Islands, where we would anchor miles off shore. And
at last my dream would be realised: I would sleep upon the water.
And next morning I would wake upon the water; and thereafter all
my days and nights would be on the water.
And the Queen asked me to row her ashore in my skiff, when at
sunset French Frank prepared to take his guests ashore. Nor did I
catch the significance of his abrupt change of plan when he turned
the task of rowing his skiff over to Whisky Bob, himself remaining
on board the sloop. Nor did I understand Spider's grinning side-
remark to me: "Gee! There's nothin' slow about YOU." How could it
possibly enter my boy's head that a grizzled man of fifty should
be jealous of me?
We met by appointment, early Monday morning, to complete the deal,
in Johnny Heinhold's "Last Chance "--a saloon, of course, for the
transactions of men. I paid the money over, received the bill of
sale, and French Frank treated. This struck me as an evident
custom, and a logical one--the seller, who receives, the money, to
wet a piece of it in the establishment where the trade was
consummated. But, to my surprise, French Frank treated the house.
He and I drank, which seemed just; but why should Johnny Heinhold,
who owned the saloon and waited behind the bar, be invited to
drink? I figured it immediately that he made a profit on the very
drink he drank. I could, in a way, considering that they were
friends and shipmates, understand Spider and Whisky Bob being
asked to drink; but why should the longshoremen, Bill Kelley and
Soup Kennedy, be asked?
Then there was Pat, the Queen's brother, making a total of eight
of us. It was early morning, and all ordered whisky. What could
I do, here in this company of big men, all drinking whisky?
"Whisky," I said, with the careless air of one who had said it a
thousand times. And such whisky! I tossed it down. A-r-r-r-gh! I
can taste it yet.
And I was appalled at the price French Frank had paid--eighty
cents. EIGHTY CENTS! It was an outrage to my thrifty soul.
Eighty cents--the equivalent of eight long hours of my toil at the
machine, gone down our throats, and gone like that, in a
twinkling, leaving only a bad taste in the mouth. There was no
discussion that French Frank was a waster.
I was anxious to be gone, out into the sunshine, out over the
water to my glorious boat. But all hands lingered. Even Spider,
my crew, lingered. No hint broke through my obtuseness of why
they lingered. I have often thought since of how they must have
regarded me, the newcomer being welcomed into their company
standing at bar with them, and not standing for a single round of
drinks.
French Frank, who, unknown to me, had swallowed his chagrin since
the day before, now that the money for the Razzle Dazzle was in
his pocket, began to behave curiously toward me. I sensed the
change in his attitude, saw the forbidding glitter in his eyes,
and wondered. The more I saw of men, the queerer they became.
Johnny Heinhold leaned across the bar and whispered in my ear s
"He's got it in for you. Watch out."
I nodded comprehension of his statement, and acquiescence in it,
as a man should nod who knows all about men. But secretly I was
perplexed. Heavens! How was I, who had worked hard and read books
of adventure, and who was only fifteen years old, who had not
dreamed of giving the Queen of the Oyster Pirates a second
thought, and who did not know that French Frank was madly and
Latinly in love with her--how was I to guess that I had done him
shame? And how was I to guess that the story of how the Queen had
thrown him down on his own boat, the moment I hove in sight, was
already the gleeful gossip of the water-front? And by the same
token, how was I to guess that her brother Pat's offishness with
me was anything else than temperamental gloominess of spirit?
Whisky Bob got me aside a moment. "Keep your eyes open," he
muttered. "Take my tip. French Frank's ugly. I'm going up river
with him to get a schooner for oystering. When he gets down on
the beds, watch out. He says he'll run you down. After dark, any
time he's around, change your anchorage and douse your riding
light. Savve?"
Oh, certainly, I savve'd. I nodded my head, and, as one man to
another, thanked him for his tip; and drifted back to the group at
the bar. No; I did not treat. I never dreamed that I was
expected to treat. I left with Spider, and my ears burn now as I
try to surmise the things they must have said about me.
I asked Spider, in an off-hand way, what was eating French Frank.
"He's crazy jealous of you," was the answer. "Do you think so?" I
said, and dismissed the matter as not worth thinking about.
But I leave it to any one--the swell of my fifteen-years-old
manhood at learning that French Frank, the adventurer of fifty,
the sailor of all the seas of all the world, was jealous of me--
and jealous over a girl most romantically named the Queen of the
Oyster Pirates. I had read of such things in books, and regarded
them as personal probabilities of a distant maturity. Oh, I felt
a rare young devil, as we hoisted the big mainsail that morning,
broke out anchor, and filled away close-hauled on the three-mile
beat to windward out into the bay.
Such was my escape from the killing machine-toil, and my
introduction to the oyster pirates. True, the introduction had
begun with drink, and the life promised to continue with drink.
But was I to stay away from it for such reason? Wherever life ran
free and great, there men drank. Romance and Adventure seemed
always to go down the street locked arm in arm with John
Barleycorn. To know the two, I must know the third. Or else I
must go back to my free library books and read of the deeds of
other men and do no deeds of my own save slave for ten cents an
hour at a machine in a cannery.
No; I was not to be deterred from this brave life on the water by
the fact that the water-dwellers had queer and expensive desires
for beer and wine and whisky. What if their notions of happiness
included the strange one of seeing me drink? When they persisted
in buying the stuff and thrusting it upon me, why, I would drink
it. It was the price I would pay for their comradeship. And I
didn't have to get drunk. I had not got drunk the Sunday
afternoon I arranged to buy the Razzle Dazzle, despite the fact
that not one of the rest was sober. Well, I could go on into the
future that way, drinking the stuff when it gave them pleasure
that I should drink it, but carefully avoiding over-drinking.
Gradual as was my development as a heavy drinker among the oyster
pirates, the real heavy drinking came suddenly, and was the
result, not of desire for alcohol, but of an intellectual
conviction.
The more I saw of the life, the more I was enamoured of it. I can
never forget my thrills the first night I took part in a concerted
raid, when we assembled on board the Annie--rough men, big and
unafraid, and weazened wharf-rats, some of them ex-convicts, all
of them enemies of the law and meriting jail, in sea-boots and
sea-gear, talking in gruff low voices, and "Big" George with
revolvers strapped about his waist to show that he meant business.
Oh, I know, looking back, that the whole thing was sordid and
silly. But I was not looking back in those days when I was
rubbing shoulders with John Barleycorn and beginning to accept
him. The life was brave and wild, and I was living the adventure
I had read so much about.
Nelson, "Young Scratch" they called him, to distinguish him from
"Old Scratch," his father, sailed in the sloop Reindeer, partners
with one "Clam." Clam was a dare-devil, but Nelson was a reckless
maniac. He was twenty years old, with the body of a Hercules.
When he was shot in Benicia, a couple of years later, the coroner
said he was the greatest-shouldered man he had ever seen laid on a
slab.
Nelson could not read or write. He had been "dragged" up by his
father on San Francisco Bay, and boats were second nature with
him. His strength was prodigious, and his reputation along the
water-front for violence was anything but savoury. He had
Berserker rages and did mad, terrible things. I made his
acquaintance the first cruise of the Razzle Dazzle, and saw him
sail the Reindeer in a blow and dredge oysters all around the rest
of us as we lay at two anchors, troubled with fear of going
ashore.
He was some man, this Nelson; and when, passing by the Last Chance
saloon, he spoke to me, I felt very proud. But try to imagine my
pride when he promptly asked me in to have a drink. I stood at
the bar and drank a glass of beer with him, and talked manfully of
oysters, and boats, and of the mystery of who had put the load of
buckshot through the Annie's mainsail.
We talked and lingered at the bar. It seemed to me strange that
we lingered. We had had our beer. But who was I to lead the way
outside when great Nelson chose to lean against the bar? After a
few minutes, to my surprise, he asked me to have another drink,
which I did. And still we talked, and Nelson evinced no intention
of leaving the bar.
Bear with me while I explain the way of my reasoning and of my
innocence. First of all, I was very proud to be in the company of
Nelson, who was the most heroic figure among the oyster pirates
and bay adventurers. Unfortunately for my stomach and mucous
membranes, Nelson had a strange quirk of nature that made him find
happiness in treating me to beer. I had no moral disinclination
for beer, and just because I didn't like the taste of it and the
weight of it was no reason I should forgo the honour of his
company. It was his whim to drink beer, and to have me drink beer
with him. Very well, I would put up with the passing discomfort.
So we continued to talk at the bar, and to drink beer ordered and
paid for by Nelson. I think, now, when I look back upon it, that
Nelson was curious. He wanted to find out just what kind of a
gink I was. He wanted to see how many times I'd let him treat
without offering to treat in return.
After I had drunk half a dozen glasses, my policy of temperateness
in mind, I decided that I had had enough for that time. So I
mentioned that I was going aboard the Razzle Dazzle, then lying at
the city wharf, a hundred yards away.
I said good-bye to Nelson, and went on down the wharf. But, John
Barleycorn, to the extent of six glasses, went with me. My brain
tingled and was very much alive. I was uplifted by my sense of
manhood. I, a truly-true oyster pirate, was going aboard my own
boat after hob-nobbing in the Last Chance with Nelson, the
greatest oyster pirate of us all. Strong in my brain was the
vision of us leaning against the bar and drinking beer. And
curious it was, I decided, this whim of nature that made men happy
in spending good money for beer for a fellow like me who didn't
want it.
As I pondered this, I recollected that several times other men, in
couples, had entered the Last Chance, and first one, then the
other, had treated to drinks. I remembered, on the drunk on the
Idler, how Scotty and the harpooner and myself had raked and
scraped dimes and nickels with which to buy the whisky. Then came
my boy code: when on a day a fellow gave another a "cannon-ball"
or a chunk of taffy, on some other day he would expect to receive
back a cannon-ball or a chunk of taffy.
That was why Nelson had lingered at the bar. Having bought a
drink, he had waited for me to buy one. I HAD, LET HIM BUY SIX
DRINKS AND NEVER ONCE OFFERED TO TREAT. And he was the great
Nelson! I could feel myself blushing with shame. I sat down on
the stringer-piece of the wharf and buried my face in my hands.
And the heat of my shame burned up my neck and into my cheeks and
forehead. I have blushed many times in my life, but never have I
experienced so terrible a blush as that one.
And sitting there on the stringer-piece in my shame, I did a great
deal of thinking and transvaluing of values. I had been born
poor. Poor I had lived. I had gone hungry on occasion. I had
never had toys nor playthings like other children. My first
memories of life were pinched by poverty. The pinch of poverty
had been chronic. I was eight years old when I wore my first
little undershirt actually sold in a store across the counter.
And then it had been only one little undershirt. When it was
soiled I had to return to the awful home-made things until it was
washed. I had been so proud of it that I insisted on wearing it
without any outer garment. For the first time I mutinied against
my mother--mutinied myself into hysteria, until she let me wear
the store undershirt so all the world could see.
Only a man who has undergone famine can properly value food; only
sailors and desert-dwellers know the meaning of fresh water. And
only a child, with a child's imagination, can come to know the
meaning of things it has been long denied. I early discovered
that the only things I could have were those I got for myself. My
meagre childhood developed meagreness. The first things I had
been able to get for myself had been cigarette pictures, cigarette
posters, and cigarette albums. I had not had the spending of the
money I earned, so I traded "extra" newspapers for these
treasures. I traded duplicates with the other boys, and
circulating, as I did, all about town, I had greater opportunities
for trading and acquiring.
It was not long before I had complete every series issued by every
cigarette manufacturer--such as the Great Race Horses, Parisian
Beauties, Women of All Nations, Flags of All Nations, Noted
Actors, Champion Prize Fighters, etc. And each series I had three
different ways: in the card from the cigarette package, in the
poster, and in the album.
Then I began to accumulate duplicate sets, duplicate albums. I
traded for other things that boys valued and which they usually
bought with money given them by their parents. Naturally, they
did not have the keen sense of values that I had, who was never
given money to buy anything. I traded for postage-stamps, for
minerals, for curios, for birds' eggs, for marbles (I had a more
magnificent collection of agates than I have ever seen any boy
possess--and the nucleus of the collection was a handful worth at
least three dollars, which I had kept as security for twenty cents
I loaned to a messenger-boy who was sent to reform school before
he could redeem them).
I'd trade anything and everything for anything else, and turn it
over in a dozen more trades until it was transmuted into something
that was worth something. I was famous as a trader. I was
notorious as a miser. I could even make a junkman weep when I had
dealings with him. Other boys called me in to sell for them their
collections of bottles, rags, old iron, grain, and gunny-sacks,
and five-gallon oil-cans--aye, and gave me a commission for doing
it.
And this was the thrifty, close-fisted boy, accustomed to slave at
a machine for ten cents an hour, who sat on the stringer-piece and
considered the matter of beer at five cents a glass and gone in a
moment with nothing to show for it. I was now with men I admired.
I was proud to be with them. Had all my pinching and saving
brought me the equivalent of one of the many thrills which had
been mine since I came among the oyster pirates? Then what was
worth while--money or thrills? These men had no horror of
squandering a nickel, or many nickels. They were magnificently
careless of money, calling up eight men to drink whisky at ten
cents a glass, as French Frank had done. Why, Nelson had just
spent sixty cents on beer for the two of us.
Which was it to be? I was aware that I was making a grave
decision. I was deciding between money and men, between
niggardliness and romance. Either I must throw overboard all my
old values of money and look upon it as something to be flung
about wastefully, or I must throw overboard my comradeship with
these men whose peculiar quirks made them like strong drink.
I retraced my steps up the wharf to the Last Chance, where Nelson
still stood outside. "Come on and have a beer," I invited. Again
we stood at the bar and drank and talked, but this time it was I
who paid ten cents! a whole hour of my labour at a machine for a
drink of something I didn't want and which tasted rotten. But it
wasn't difficult. I had achieved a concept. Money no longer
counted. It was comradeship that counted. "Have another?" I
said. And we had another, and I paid for it. Nelson, with the
wisdom of the skilled drinker, said to the barkeeper, "Make mine a
small one, Johnny." Johnny nodded and gave him a glass that
contained only a third as much as the glasses we had been
drinking. Yet the charge was the same--five cents.
By this time I was getting nicely jingled, so such extravagance
didn't hurt me much. Besides, I was learning. There was more in
this buying of drinks than mere quantity. I got my finger on it.
There was a stage when the beer didn't count at all, but just the
spirit of comradeship of drinking together. And, ha!--another
thing! I, too, could call for small beers and minimise by two-
thirds the detestable freightage with which comradeship burdened
one.
"I had to go aboard to get some money," I remarked casually, as we
drank, in the hope Nelson would take it as an explanation of why I
had let him treat six consecutive times.
"Oh, well, you didn't have to do that," he answered. "Johnny'll
trust a fellow like you--won't you, Johnny!"
"Sure," Johnny agreed, with a smile.
"How much you got down against me?" Nelson queried.
Johnny pulled out the book he kept behind the bar, found Nelson's
page, and added up the account of several dollars. At once I
became possessed with a desire to have a page in that book.
Almost it seemed the final badge of manhood.
After a couple more drinks, for which I insisted on paying, Nelson
decided to go. We parted true comradely, and I wandered down the
wharf to the Razzle Dazzle. Spider was just building the fire for
supper.
"Where'd you get it?" he grinned up at me through the open
companion.
"Oh, I've been with Nelson," I said carelessly, trying to hide my
pride.
Then an idea came to me. Here was another one of them. Now that
I had achieved my concept, I might as well practise it thoroughly.
"Come on," I said, "up to Johnny's and have a drink."
Going up the wharf, we met Clam coming down. Clam was Nelson's
partner, and he was a fine, brave, handsome, moustached man of
thirty--everything, in short, that his nickname did not connote.
"Come on," I said, "and have a drink." He came. As we turned into
the Last Chance, there was Pat, the Queen's brother, coming out.
"What's your hurry?" I greeted him. "We're having a drink. Come
on along." "I've just had one," he demurred. "What of it?--we're
having one now," I retorted. And Pat consented to join us, and I
melted my way into his good graces with a couple of glasses of
beer. Oh! I was learning things that afternoon about John
Barleycorn. There was more in him than the bad taste when you
swallowed him. Here, at the absurd cost of ten cents, a gloomy,
grouchy individual, who threatened to become an enemy, was made
into a good friend. He became even genial, his looks were kindly,
and our voices mellowed together as we talked water-front and
oyster-bed gossip.
"Small beer for me, Johnny," I said, when the others had ordered
schooners. Yes, and I said it like the accustomed drinker,
carelessly, casually, as a sort of spontaneous thought that had
just occurred to me. Looking back, I am confident that the only
one there who guessed I was a tyro at bar-drinking was Johnny
Heinhold.
"Where'd he get it?" I overheard Spider confidentially ask Johnny.
"Oh, he's been sousin' here with Nelson all afternoon," was
Johnny's answer.
I never let on that I'd heard, but PROUD? Aye, even the barkeeper
was giving me a recommendation as a man. "HE'S BEEN SOUSIN' HERE
WITH NELSON ALL AFTERNOON." Magic words! The accolade delivered by
a barkeeper with a beer glass!
I remembered that French Frank had treated Johnny the day I bought
the Razzle Dazzle. The glasses were filled and we were ready to
drink. "Have something yourself, Johnny," I said, with an air of
having intended to say it all the time, but of having been a
trifle remiss because of the interesting conversation I had been
holding with Clam and Pat.
Johnny looked at me with quick sharpness, divining, I am positive,
the strides I was making in my education, and poured himself
whisky from his private bottle. This hit me for a moment on my
thrifty side. He had taken a ten-cent drink when the rest of us
were drinking five-cent drinks! But the hurt was only for a
moment. I dismissed it as ignoble, remembered my concept, and did
not give myself away.
"You'd better put me down in the book for this," I said, when we
had finished the drink. And I had the satisfaction of seeing a
fresh page devoted to my name and a charge pencilled for a round
of drinks amounting to thirty cents. And I glimpsed, as through a
golden haze, a future wherein that page would be much charged, and
crossed off, and charged again.
I treated a second time around, and then, to my amazement, Johnny
redeemed himself in that matter of the ten-cent drink. He treated
us around from behind the bar, and I decided that he had
arithmetically evened things up handsomely.
"Let's go around to the St. Louis House," Spider suggested when we
got outside. Pat, who had been shovelling coal all day, had gone
home, and Clam had gone upon the Reindeer to cook supper.
So around Spider and I went to the St. Louis House--my first
visit--a huge bar-room, where perhaps fifty men, mostly
longshoremen, were congregated. And there I met Soup Kennedy for
the second time, and Bill Kelley. And Smith, of the Annie,
drifted in--he of the belt-buckled revolvers. And Nelson showed
up. And I met others, including the Vigy brothers, who ran the
place, and, chiefest of all, Joe Goose, with the wicked eyes, the
twisted nose, and the flowered vest, who played the harmonica like
a roystering angel and went on the most atrocious tears that even
the Oakland water-front could conceive of and admire.
As I bought drinks--others treated as well--the thought flickered
across my mind that Mammy Jennie wasn't going to be repaid much on
her loan out of that week's earnings of the Razzle Dazzle. "But
what of it?" I thought, or rather, John Barleycorn thought it for
me. "You're a man and you're getting acquainted with men. Mammy
Jennie doesn't need the money as promptly as all that. She isn't
starving. You know that. She's got other money in the bank. Let
her wait, and pay her back gradually."
And thus it was I learned another trait of John Barleycorn. He
inhibits morality. Wrong conduct that it is impossible for one to
do sober, is done quite easily when one is not sober. In fact, it
is the only thing one can do, for John Barleycorn's inhibition
rises like a wall between one's immediate desires and long-learned
morality.
I dismissed my thought of debt to Mammy Jennie and proceeded to