fleet was wintering in San Francisco Bay, and in the saloons I met
skippers, mates, hunters, boat-steerers, and boat-pullers. I met
the seal-hunter, Pete Holt, and agreed to be his boat-puller and
to sign on any schooner he signed on. And I had to have half a
dozen drinks with Pete Holt there and then to seal our agreement.
And at once awoke all my old unrest that John Barleycorn had put
to sleep. I found myself actually bored with the saloon life of
the Oakland water-front, and wondered what I had ever found
fascinating in it. Also, with this death-road concept in my
brain, I began to grow afraid that something would happen to me
before sailing day, which was set for some time in January. I
lived more circumspectly, drank less deeply, and went home more
frequently. When drinking grew too wild, I got out. When Nelson
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was in his maniacal cups, I managed to get separated from him.
On the 12th of January, 1893, I was seventeen, and the 20th of
January I signed before the shipping commissioner the articles of
the Sophie Sutherland, a three topmast sealing schooner bound on a
voyage to the coast of Japan. And of course we had to drink on
it. Joe Vigy cashed my advance note, and Pete Holt treated, and I
treated, and Joe Vigy treated, and other hunters treated. Well,
it was the way of men, and who was I, just turned seventeen, that
I should decline the way of life of these fine, chesty, man-grown
men?
CHAPTER XVI
There was nothing to drink on the Sophie Sutherland, and we had
fifty-one days of glorious sailing, taking the southern passage in
the north-east trades to Bonin Islands. This isolated group,
belonging to Japan, had been selected as the rendezvous of the
Canadian and American sealing fleets. Here they filled their
water-barrels and made repairs before starting on the hundred
days’ harrying of the seal-herd along the northern coasts of Japan
to Behring Sea.
Those fifty-one days of fine sailing and intense sobriety had put
me in splendid fettle. The alcohol had been worked out of my
system, and from the moment the voyage began I had not known the
desire for a drink. I doubt if I even thought once about a drink.
Often, of course, the talk in the forecastle turned on drink, and
the men told of their more exciting or humorous drunks,
remembering such passages more keenly, with greater delight, than
all the other passages of their adventurous lives.
In the forecastle, the oldest man, fat and fifty, was Louis. He
was a broken skipper. John Barleycorn had thrown him, and he was
winding up his career where he had begun it, in the forecastle.
His case made quite an impression on me. John Barleycorn did
other things beside kill a man. He hadn’t killed Louis. He had
done much worse. He had robbed him of power and place and
comfort, crucified his pride, and condemned him to the hardship of
the common sailor that would last as long as his healthy breath
lasted, which promised to be for a long time.
We completed our run across the Pacific, lifted the volcanic
peaks, jungle-clad, of the Bonin Islands, sailed in among the
reefs to the land-locked harbour, and let our anchor rumble down
where lay a score or more of sea-gypsies like ourselves. The
scents of strange vegetation blew off the tropic land.
Aborigines, in queer outrigger canoes, and Japanese, in queerer
sampans, paddled about the bay and came aboard. It was my first
foreign land; I had won to the other side of the world, and I
would see all I had read in the books come true. I was wild to
get ashore.
Victor and Axel, a Swede and a Norwegian, and I planned to keep
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52
together. (And so well did we, that for the rest of the cruise we
were known as the “Three Sports.”) Victor pointed out a pathway
that disappeared up a wild canyon, emerged on a steep bare lava
slope, and thereafter appeared and disappeared, ever climbing,
among the palms and flowers. We would go over that path, he said,
and we agreed, and we would see beautiful scenery, and strange
native villages, and find, Heaven alone knew, what adventure at
the end. And Axel was keen to go fishing. The three of us agreed
to that, too. We would get a sampan, and a couple of Japanese
fishermen who knew the fishing grounds, and we would have great
sport. As for me, I was keen for anything.
And then, our plans made, we rowed ashore over the banks of living
coral and pulled our boat up the white beach of coral sand. We
walked across the fringe of beach under the cocoanut-palms and
into the little town, and found several hundred riotous seamen
from all the world, drinking prodigiously, singing prodigiously,
dancing prodigiously–and all on the main street to the scandal of
a helpless handful of Japanese police.
Victor and Axel said that we’d have a drink before we started on
our long walk. Could I decline to drink with these two chesty
shipmates? Drinking together, glass in hand, put the seal on
comradeship. It was the way of life. Our teetotaler owner-
captain was laughed at, and sneered at, by all of us because of
his teetotalism. I didn’t in the least want a drink, but I did
want to be a good fellow and a good comrade. Nor did Louis’ case
deter me, as I poured the biting, scorching stuff down my throat.
John Barleycorn had thrown Louis to a nasty fall, but I was young.
My blood ran full and red; I had a constitution of iron; and–
well, youth ever grins scornfully at the wreckage of age.
Queer, fierce, alcoholic stuff it was that we drank. There was no
telling where or how it had been manufactured–some native
concoction most likely. But it was hot as fire, pale as water,
and quick as death with its kick. It had been filled into empty
“square-face” bottles which had once contained Holland gin, and
which still bore the fitting legend “Anchor Brand.” It certainly
anchored us. We never got out of the town. We never went fishing
in the sampan. And though we were there ten days, we never trod
that wild path along the lava cliffs and among the flowers.
We met old acquaintances from other schooners, fellows we had met
in the saloons of San Francisco before we sailed. And each
meeting meant a drink; and there was much to talk about; and more
drinks; and songs to be sung; and pranks and antics to be
performed, until the maggots of imagination began to crawl, and it
all seemed great and wonderful to me, these lusty hard-bitten sea-
rovers, of whom I made one, gathered in wassail on a coral strand.
Old lines about knights at table in the great banquet halls, and
of those above the salt and below the salt, and of Vikings
feasting fresh from sea and ripe for battle, came to me; and I
knew that the old times were not dead and that we belonged to that
selfsame ancient breed.
By mid-afternoon Victor went mad with drink, and wanted to fight
everybody and everything. I have since seen lunatics in the
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53
violent wards of asylums that seemed to behave in no wise
different from Victor’s way, save that perhaps he was more
violent. Axel and I interfered as peacemakers, were roughed and
jostled in the mix-ups, and finally, with infinite precaution and
intoxicated cunning, succeeded in inveigling our chum down to the
boat and in rowing him aboard our schooner.
But no sooner did Victor’s feet touch the deck than he began to
clean up the ship. He had the strength of several men, and he ran
amuck with it. I remember especially one man whom he got into the
chain-boxes but failed to damage through inability to hit him.
The man dodged and ducked, and Victor broke all the knuckles of
both his fists against the huge links of the anchor chain. By the
time we dragged him out of that, his madness had shifted to the
belief that he was a great swimmer, and the next moment he was
overboard and demonstrating his ability by floundering like a sick
porpoise and swallowing much salt water.
We rescued him, and by the time we got him below, undressed, and
into his bunk, we were wrecks ourselves. But Axel and I wanted to
see more of shore, and away we went, leaving Victor snoring. It
was curious, the judgment passed on Victor by his shipmates,
drinkers themselves. They shook their heads disapprovingly and
muttered: “A man like that oughtn’t to drink.” Now Victor was the
smartest sailor and best-tempered shipmate in the forecastle. He
was an all-round splendid type of seaman; his mates recognised his