Chapter VI

by Jack London

　　But the time was rapidly drawing near when I was to begin mysecond series of bouts with John Barleycorn. When I was fourteen,my head filled with the tales of the old voyagers, my vision withtropic isles and far sea-rims, I was sailing a small centreboardskiff around San Francisco Bay and on the Oakland Estuary. Iwanted to go to sea. I wanted to get away from monotony and thecommonplace. I was in the flower of my adolescence, a-thrill withromance and adventure, dreaming of wild life in the wild man-world. Little I guessed how all the warp and woof of that man-world was entangled with alcohol.

　　So, one day, as I hoisted sail on my skiff, I met Scotty. He wasa husky youngster of seventeen, a runaway apprentice, he told me,from an English ship in Australia. He had just worked his way onanother ship to San Francisco; and now he wanted to see aboutgetting a berth on a whaler. Across the estuary, near where thewhalers lay, was lying the sloop-yacht Idler. The caretaker was aharpooner who intended sailing next voyage on the whale shipBonanza. Would I take him, Scotty, over in my skiff to call uponthe harpooner?

　　Would I! Hadn't I heard the stories and rumours about the Idler?--the big sloop that had come up from the Sandwich Islands where ithad been engaged in smuggling opium. And the harpooner who wascaretaker! How often had I seen him and envied him his freedom.He never had to leave the water. He slept aboard the Idler eachnight, while I had to go home upon the land to go to bed. Theharpooner was only nineteen years old (and I have never hadanything but his own word that he was a harpooner); but he hadbeen too shining and glorious a personality for me ever to addressas I paddled around the yacht at a wistful distance. Would I takeScotty, 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 usaboard. I played the sailor and the man, fending off the skiff sothat it would not mar the yacht's white paint, dropping the skiffastern on a long painter, and making the painter fast with twononchalant 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 itnot the sea-gear of men?--leather jackets lined with corduroy,blue coats of pilot cloth, sou'westers, sea-boots, oilskins. Andeverywhere 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-backedcharts carelessly rolled and tucked away, the signal-flags inalphabetical order, and a mariner's dividers jammed into thewoodwork to hold a calendar. At last I was living. Here I sat,inside my first ship, a smuggler, accepted as a comrade by aharpooner and a runaway English sailor who said his name wasScotty.

　　The first thing that the harpooner, aged nineteen, and the sailor,aged seventeen, did to show that they were men was to behave likemen. The harpooner suggested the eminent desirableness of adrink, and Scotty searched his pockets for dimes and nickels.Then the harpooner carried away a pink flask to be filled in someblind pig, for there were no licensed saloons in that locality.We drank the cheap rotgut out of tumblers. Was I any the lessstrong, any the less valiant, than the harpooner and the sailor?They were men. They proved it by the way they drank. Drink wasthe badge of manhood. So I drank with them, drink by drink, rawand straight, though the damned stuff couldn't compare with astick of chewing taffy or a delectable "cannon-ball." I shudderedand swallowed my gorge with every drink, though I manfully hid allsuch symptoms.

　　Divers times we filled the flask that afternoon. All I had wastwenty cents, but I put it up like a man, though with secretregret at the enormous store of candy it could have bought. Theliquor mounted in the heads of all of us, and the talk of Scottyand the harpooner was upon running the Easting down, gales off theHorn and pamperos off the Plate, lower topsail breezes, southerlybusters, North Pacific gales, and of smashed whaleboats in theArctic ice.

　　"You can't swim in that ice water," said the harpoonerconfidentially to me. "You double up in a minute and go down.When a whale smashes your boat, the thing to do is to get yourbelly across an oar, so that when the cold doubles you you'llfloat."

　　"Sure," I said, with a grateful nod and an air of certitude thatI, too, would hunt whales and be in smashed boats in the ArcticOcean. And, truly, I registered his advice as singularly valuableinformation, and filed it away in my brain, where it persists tothis day.

　　But I couldn't talk--at first. Heavens! I was only fourteen, andhad never been on the ocean in my life. I could only listen tothe 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 theharpooner poured through the pent space of the Idler's cabin andthrough my brain like great gusts of wide, free wind; and inimagination 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 wereas if we had known each other for years and years, and we pledgedourselves to years of future voyagings together. The harpoonertold of misadventures and secret shames. Scotty wept over hispoor old mother in Edinburgh--a lady, he insisted, gently born--who was in reduced circumstances, who had pinched herself to paythe lump sum to the ship-owners for his apprenticeship, whosesacrificing dream had been to see him a merchantman officer and agentleman, and who was heartbroken because he had deserted hisship in Australia and joined another as a common sailor before themast. And Scotty proved it. He drew her last sad letter from hispocket and wept over it as he read it aloud. The harpooner and Iwept with him, and swore that all three of us would ship on thewhaleship Bonanza, win a big pay-day, and, still together, make apilgrimage to Edinburgh and lay our store of money in the dearlady's lap.

　　And, as John Barleycorn heated his way into my brain, thawing myreticence, melting my modesty, talking through me and with me andas me, my adopted twin brother and alter ego, I, too, raised myvoice to show myself a man and an adventurer, and bragged indetail and at length of how I had crossed San Francisco Bay in myopen skiff in a roaring southwester when even the schooner sailorsdoubted my exploit. Further, I--or John Barleycorn, for it wasthe same thing--told Scotty that he might be a deep-sea sailor andknow the last rope on the great deep-sea ships, but that when itcame to small-boat sailing I could beat him hands down and sailcircles around him.

　　The best of it was that my assertion and brag were true. Withreticence and modesty present, I could never have dared tellScotty my small-boat estimate of him. But it is ever the way ofJohn Barleycorn to loosen the tongue and babble the secretthought.

　　Scotty, or John Barleycorn, or the pair, was very naturallyoffended by my remarks. Nor was I loath. I could whip anyrunaway sailor seventeen years old. Scotty and I flared and ragedlike young cockerels, until the harpooner poured another round ofdrinks to enable us to forgive and make up. Which we did, armsaround each other's necks, protesting vows of eternal friendship--just like Black Matt and Tom Morrisey, I remembered, in the ranchkitchen in San Mateo. And, remembering, I knew that I was at lasta man--despite my meagre fourteen years--a man as big and manly asthose two strapping giants who had quarrelled and made up on thatmemorable Sunday morning of long ago.

　　By this time the singing stage was reached, and I joined Scottyand the harpooner in snatches of sea songs and chanties. It washere, in the cabin of the Idler, that I first heard "Blow the ManDown," "Flying Cloud," and "Whisky, Johnny, Whisky." Oh, it wasbrave. I was beginning to grasp the meaning of life. Here was nocommonplace, no Oakland Estuary, no weary round of throwingnewspapers at front doors, delivering ice, and setting upninepins. All the world was mine, all its paths were under myfeet, and John Barleycorn, tricking my fancy, enabled me toanticipate the life of adventure for which I yearned.

　　We were not ordinary. We were three tipsy young gods, incrediblywise, gloriously genial, and without limit to our powers. Ah!--and I say it now, after the years--could John Barleycorn keep oneat such a height, I should never draw a sober breath again. Butthis is not a world of free freights. One pays according to aniron schedule--for every strength the balanced weakness; for everyhigh a corresponding low; for every fictitious god-like moment anequivalent time in reptilian slime. For every feat of telescopinglong days and weeks of life into mad magnificent instants, onemust pay with shortened life, and, oft-times, with savage usuryadded.

　　Intenseness and duration are as ancient enemies as fire and water.They are mutually destructive. They cannot co-exist. And JohnBarleycorn, mighty necromancer though he be, is as much a slave toorganic chemistry as we mortals are. We pay for every nervemarathon we run, nor can John Barleycorn intercede and fend offthe just payment. He can lead us to the heights, but he cannotkeep us there, else would we all be devotees. And there is nodevotee but pays for the mad dances John Barleycorn pipes.

　　Yet the foregoing is all in after wisdom spoken. It was no partof the knowledge of the lad, fourteen years old, who sat in theIdler's cabin between the harpooner and the sailor, the air richin his nostrils with the musty smell of men's sea-gear, roaring inchorus: "Yankee ship come down de ribber--pull, my bully boys,pull!"

　　We grew maudlin, and all talked and shouted at once. I had asplendid constitution, a stomach that would digest scrap-iron, andI was still running my marathon in full vigour when Scotty beganto fail and fade. His talk grew incoherent. He groped for wordsand could not find them, while the ones he found his lips wereunable to form. His poisoned consciousness was leaving him. Thebrightness went out of his eyes, and he looked as stupid as werehis efforts to talk. His face and body sagged as hisconsciousness sagged. (A man cannot sit upright save by an act ofwill.) Scotty's reeling brain could not control his muscles. Allhis correlations were breaking down. He strove to take anotherdrink, and feebly dropped the tumbler on the floor. Then, to myamazement, weeping bitterly, he rolled into a bunk on his back andimmediately snored off to sleep.

　　The harpooner and I drank on, grinning in a superior way to eachother over Scotty's plight. The last flask was opened, and wedrank it between us, to the accompaniment of Scotty's stertorousbreathing. Then the harpooner faded away into his bunk, and I wasleft alone, unthrown, on the field of battle.

　　I was very proud, and John Barleycorn was proud with me. I couldcarry my drink. I was a man. I had drunk two men, drink fordrink, 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 goodstomach and a strong head I had for drink--a bit of knowledge thatwas to be a source of pride in succeeding years, and thatultimately I was to come to consider a great affliction. Thefortunate man is the one who cannot take more than a couple ofdrinks without becoming intoxicated. The unfortunate wight is theone who can take many glasses without betraying a sign, who musttake numerous glasses in order to get the "kick."

　　The sun was setting when I came on the Idler's deck. There wereplenty of bunks below. I did not need to go home. But I wantedto demonstrate to myself how much I was a man. There lay my skiffastern. The last of a strong ebb was running out in channel inthe teeth of an ocean breeze of forty miles an hour. I could seethe stiff whitecaps, and the suck and run of the current wasplainly visible in the face and trough of each one.

　　I set sail, cast off, took my place at the tiller, the sheet in myhand, and headed across channel. The skiff heeled over andplunged into it madly. The spray began to fly. I was at thepinnacle of exaltation. I sang "Blow the Man Down" as I sailed.I was no boy of fourteen, living the mediocre ways of the sleepytown called Oakland. I was a man, a god, and the very elementsrendered me allegiance as I bitted them to my will.

　　The tide was out. A full hundred yards of soft mud intervenedbetween the boat-wharf and the water. I pulled up my centreboard,ran full tilt into the mud, took in sail, and, standing in thestern, as I had often done at low tide, I began to shove the skiffwith an oar. It was then that my correlations began to breakdown. I lost my balance and pitched head-foremost into the ooze.Then, and for the first time, as I floundered to my feet coveredwith slime, the blood running down my arms from a scrape against abarnacled stake, I knew that I was drunk. But what of it? Acrossthe channel two strong sailormen lay unconscious in their bunkswhere I had drunk them. I was a man. I was still on my legs, ifthey were knee-deep in mud. I disdained to get back into theskiff. I waded through the mud, shoving the skiff before me andyammering the chant of my manhood to the world.

　　I paid for it. I was sick for a couple of days, meanly sick, andmy arms were painfully poisoned from the barnacle scratches. Fora week I could not use them, and it was a torture to put on andtake off my clothes.

　　I swore, "Never again!" The game wasn't worth it. The price wastoo stiff. I had no moral qualms. My revulsion was purelyphysical. No exalted moments were worth such hours of misery andwretchedness. 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 Iavoided. Once, when he landed on the boat-wharf, I hid in a shedso as to escape seeing him. I was afraid he would propose somemore drinking, maybe have a flask full of whisky in his pocket.

　　And yet--and here enters the necromancy of John Barleycorn--thatafternoon's drunk on the Idler had been a purple passage flunginto the monotony of my days. It was memorable. My mind dwelt onit continually. I went over the details, over and over again.Among other things, I had got into the cogs and springs of men'sactions. I had seen Scotty weep about his own worthlessness andthe sad case of his Edinburgh mother who was a lady. Theharpooner had told me terribly wonderful things of himself. I hadcaught a myriad enticing and inflammatory hints of a world beyondmy world, and for which I was certainly as fitted as the two ladswho had drunk with me. I had got behind men's souls. I had gotbehind my own soul and found unguessed potencies and greatnesses.

　　Yes, that day stood out above all my other days. To this day itso stands out. The memory of it is branded in my brain. But theprice exacted was too high. I refused to play and pay, andreturned to my cannon-balls and taffy-slabs. The point is thatall the chemistry of my healthy, normal body drove me away fromalcohol. The stuff didn't agree with me. It was abominable.But, despite this, circumstance was to continue to drive me towardJohn Barleycorn, to drive me again and again, until, after longyears, the time should come when I would look up John Barleycornin every haunt of men--look him up and hail him gladly asbenefactor and friend. And detest and hate him all the time.Yes, he is a strange friend, John Barleycorn.