the hunters, and the hunters were waiting in a certain Japanese
public house for us to come and get it. We rode to the place in
rickshaws. Our own crowd had taken possession of it. Drink was
flowing. Everybody had money, and everybody was treating. After
the hundred days of hard toil and absolute abstinence, in the pink
of physical condition, bulging with health, over-spilling with
spirits that had long been pent by discipline and circumstance, of
course we would have a drink or two. And after that we would see
the town.
It was the old story. There were so many drinks to be drunk, and
as the warm magic poured through our veins and mellowed our voices
and affections we knew it was no time to make invidious
distinctions–to drink with this shipmate and to decline to drink
with that shipmate. We were all shipmates who had been through
stress and storm together, who had pulled and hauled on the same
sheets and tackles, relieved one another’s wheels, laid out side
by side on the same jib-boom when she was plunging into it and
looked to see who was missing when she cleared and lifted. So we
drank with all, and all treated, and our voices rose, and we
remembered a myriad kindly acts of comradeship, and forgot our
fights and wordy squabbles, and knew one another for the best
fellows in the world.
Well, the night was young when we arrived in that public house,
and for all of that first night that public house was what I saw
of Japan–a drinking-place which was very like a drinking-place at
home or anywhere else over the world.
We lay in Yokohama harbour for two weeks, and about all we saw of
Japan was its drinking-places where sailors congregated.
Occasionally, some one of us varied the monotony with a more
exciting drunk. In such fashion I managed a real exploit by
swimming off to the schooner one dark midnight and going soundly
to sleep while the water-police searched the harbour for my body
and brought my clothes out for identification.
Perhaps it was for things like that, I imagined, that men got
drunk. In our little round of living what I had done was a
noteworthy event. All the harbour talked about it. I enjoyed
several days of fame among the Japanese boatmen and ashore in the
pubs. It was a red-letter event. It was an event to be
John Barleycorn
57
remembered and narrated with pride. I remember it to-day, twenty
years afterward, with a secret glow of pride. It was a purple
passage, just as Victor’s wrecking of the tea-house in the Bonin
Islands and my being looted by the runaway apprentices were purple
passages.
The point is that the charm of John Barleycorn was still a mystery
to me. I was so organically a non-alcoholic that alcohol itself
made no appeal; the chemical reactions it produced in me were not
satisfying because I possessed no need for such chemical
satisfaction. I drank because the men I was with drank, and
because my nature was such that I could not permit myself to be
less of a man than other men at their favourite pastime. And I
still had a sweet tooth, and on privy occasions when there was no
man to see, bought candy and blissfully devoured it.
We hove up anchor to a jolly chanty, and sailed out of Yokohama
harbour for San Francisco. We took the northern passage, and with
the stout west wind at our back made the run across the Pacific in
thirty-seven days of brave sailing. We still had a big pay-day
coming to us, and for thirty-seven days, without a drink to addle
our mental processes, we incessantly planned the spending of our
money.
The first statement of each man–ever an ancient one in homeward-
bound forecastles–was: “No boarding-house sharks in mine.” Next,
in parentheses, was regret at having spent so much money in
Yokohama. And after that, each man proceeded to paint his
favourite phantom. Victor, for instance, said that immediately he
landed in San Francisco he would pass right through the water-
front and the Barbary Coast, and put an advertisement in the
papers. His advertisement would be for board and room in some
simple working-class family. “Then,” said Victor, “I shall go to
some dancing-school for a week or two, just to meet and get
acquainted with the girls and fellows. Then I’ll get the run of
the different dancing crowds, and be invited to their homes, and
to parties, and all that, and with the money I’ve got I can last
out till next January, when I’ll go sealing again.”
No; he wasn’t going to drink. He knew the way of it, particularly
his way of it, wine in, wit out, and his money would be gone in no
time. He had his choice, based on bitter experience, between
three days’ debauch among the sharks and harpies of the Barbary
Coast and a whole winter of wholesome enjoyment and sociability,
and there wasn’t any doubt of the way he was going to choose.
Said Axel Gunderson, who didn’t care for dancing and social
functions: “I’ve got a good pay-day. Now I can go home. It is
fifteen years since I’ve seen my mother and all the family. When
I pay off, I shall send my money home to wait for me. Then I’ll
pick a good ship bound for Europe, and arrive there with another
pay-day. Put them together, and I’ll have more money than ever in
my life before. I’ll be a prince at home. You haven’t any idea
how cheap everything is in Norway. I can make presents to
everybody, and spend my money like what would seem to them a
millionaire, and live a whole year there before I’d have to go
back to sea.”
John Barleycorn
58
“The very thing I’m going to do,” declared Red John. “It’s three
years since I’ve received a line from home and ten years since I
was there. Things are just as cheap in Sweden, Axel, as in
Norway, and my folks are real country folk and farmers. I’ll send
my pay-day home and ship on the same ship with you for around the
Horn. We’ll pick a good one.”
And as Axel Gunderson and Red John painted the pastoral delights
and festive customs of their respective countries, each fell in
love with the other’s home place, and they solemnly pledged to
make the journey together, and to spend, together, six months in
the one’s Swedish home and six months in the other’s Norwegian
home. And for the rest of the voyage they could hardly be pried
apart, so infatuated did they become with discussing their plans.
Long John was not a home-body. But he was tired of the
forecastle. No boarding-house sharks in his. He, too, would get
a room in a quiet family, and he would go to a navigation school
and study to be a captain. And so it went. Each man swore that
for once he would be sensible and not squander his money. No
boarding-house sharks, no sailor-town, no drink, was the slogan of
our forecastle.
The men became stingy. Never was there such economy. They
refused to buy anything more from the slopchest. Old rags had to
last, and they sewed patch upon patch, turning out what are called
“homeward-bound patches ” of the most amazing proportions. They
saved on matches, even, waiting till two or three were ready to
light their pipes from the same match.
As we sailed up the San Francisco water-front, the moment the port
doctors passed us, the boarding-house runners were alongside in
whitehall boats. They swarmed on board, each drumming for his own
boarding-house, and each with a bottle of free whisky inside his
shirt. But we waved them grandly and blasphemously away. We
wanted none of their boarding-houses and none of their whisky. We
were sober, thrifty sailormen, with better use for our money.
Came the paying off before the shipping commissioner. We emerged
upon the sidewalk, each with a pocketful of money. About us, like
buzzards, clustered the sharks and harpies. And we looked at each
other. We had been seven months together, and our paths were
separating. One last farewell rite of comradeship remained. (Oh,
it was the way, the custom.) “Come on, boys,” said our sailing
master. There stood the inevitable adjacent saloon. There were a
dozen saloons all around. And when we had followed the sailing
master into the one of his choice, the sharks were thick on the
sidewalk outside. Some of them even ventured inside, but we would
have nothing to do with them.
There we stood at the long bar–the sailing master, the mate, the
six hunters, the six boat-steerers, and the five boat-pullers.
There were only five of the last, for one of our number had been
dropped overboard, with a sack of coal at his feet, between two