John Barleycorn

gers, my vision with tropic isles and far sea-rims, I was sailing a small centreboard skiff around San Francisco Bay and on the Oakland Estuary. I wanted to go to sea. I wa

warp and woof of that man-wor

t worked his way on another ship to San Francisco; and now he wanted to see about getting a berth on a whaler. Across the estuary, near where the whalers lay, was lying the slo

m his freedom. He never had to leave the water. He slept aboard the Idler each night, while I had to go home upon the land to go to bed. The harpooner was only nineteen years old (and I have never had anything but his own word that he was a ha

the man, fending off the skiff so that it would not mar the yacht's white paint, dropping th

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

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.

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,

ouble up in a minute and go down. When a whale smashes your boat, the thing to do i

s and be in smashed boats in the Arctic Ocean. And, truly, I registered his advice as sin

een on the ocean in my life. I could only listen to the two sea-dogs, and s

ce of the Idler's cabin and through my brain like great gusts of wide, free wind; and in imagination

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

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, fo

present, I could never have dared tell Scotty my small-boat estimate of him. But it

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

ing 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,

ld 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

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 payme

ld, who sat in the Idler's cabin between the harpooner and the sailor, the air rich in his nostrils with the

e 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

flask was opened, and we drank it between us, to the accompaniment of Scotty's stertorous breathing.

ngs. 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.

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

adly. 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

rrelations 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 c

s were painfully poisoned from the barnacle scratches. For a week I cou

tchedness. 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

ong 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 caugh

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, u