It was during the early winter of 1892 that I resolved to go to sea. My
Hancock Fire Brigade experience was very little responsible for this. I
still drank and frequented saloons--practically lived in saloons. Whisky
was dangerous, in my opinion, but not wrong. Whisky was dangerous like
other dangerous things in the natural world. Men died of whisky; but
then, too, fishermen were capsized and drowned, hoboes fell under trains
and were cut to pieces. To cope with winds and waves, railroad trains,
and bar-rooms, one must use judgment. To get drunk after the manner of
men was all right, but one must do it with discretion. No more quarts of
whisky for me.
What really decided me to go to sea was that I had caught my first vision
of the death-road which John Barleycorn maintains for his devotees. It
was not a clear vision, however, and there were two phases of it,
somewhat jumbled at the time. It struck me, from watching those with
whom I associated, that the life we were living was more destructive than
that lived by the average man.
John Barleycorn, by inhibiting morality, incited to crime. Everywhere I
saw men doing, drunk, what they would never dream of doing sober. And
this wasn't the worst of it. It was the penalty that must be paid.
Crime was destructive. Saloon-mates I drank with, who were good fellows
and harmless, sober, did most violent and lunatic things when they were
drunk. And then the police gathered them in and they vanished from our
ken. Sometimes I visited them behind the bars and said good-bye ere they
journeyed across the bay to put on the felon's stripes. And time and
again I heard the one explanation "IF I HADN'T BEEN DRUNK I WOULDN'T
A-DONE IT." And sometimes, under the spell of John Barleycorn, the most
frightful things were done--things that shocked even my case-hardened
soul.
The other phase of the death-road was that of the habitual drunkards, who
had a way of turning up their toes without apparent provocation. When
they took sick, even with trifling afflictions that any ordinary man
could pull through, they just pegged out. Sometimes they were found
unattended and dead in their beds; on occasion their bodies were dragged
out of the water; and sometimes it was just plain accident, as when Bill
Kelley, unloading cargo while drunk, had a finger jerked off, which,
under the circumstances, might just as easily have been his head.
So I considered my situation and knew that I was getting into a bad way
of living. It made toward death too quickly to suit my youth and
vitality. And there was only one way out of this hazardous manner of
living, and that was to get out. The sealing 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 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?