Chapter XI

by Jack London

　　And still there arose in me no desire for alcohol, no chemicaldemand. In years and years of heavy drinking, drinking did notbeget the desire. Drinking was the way of the life I led, the wayof the men with whom I lived. While away on my cruises on thebay, I took no drink along; and while out on the bay the thoughtof the desirableness of a drink never crossed my mind. It was notuntil I tied the Razzle Dazzle up to the wharf and got ashore inthe congregating places of men, where drink flowed, that thebuying of drinks for other men, and the accepting of drinks fromother men, devolved upon me as a social duty and a manhood rite.

　　Then, too, there were the times, lying at the city wharf or acrossthe estuary on the sand-spit, when the Queen, and her sister, andher brother Pat, and Mrs. Hadley came aboard. It was my boat, Iwas host, and I could only dispense hospitality in the terms oftheir understanding of it. So I would rush Spider, or Irish, orScotty, or whoever was my crew, with the can for beer and thedemijohn for red wine. And again, lying at the wharf disposing ofmy oysters, there were dusky twilights when big policemen andplain-clothes men stole on board. And because we lived in theshadow of the police, we opened oysters and fed them to them withsquirts of pepper sauce, and rushed the growler or got strongerstuff in bottles.

　　Drink as I would, I couldn't come to like John Barleycorn. Ivalued him extremely well for his associations, but not for thetaste of him. All the time I was striving to be a man amongstmen, and all the time I nursed secret and shameful desires forcandy. But I would have died before I'd let anybody guess it. Iused to indulge in lonely debauches, on nights when I knew my crewwas going to sleep ashore. I would go up to the Free Library,exchange my books, buy a quarter's worth of all sorts of candythat chewed and lasted, sneak aboard the Razzle Dazzle, lockmyself in the cabin, go to bed, and lie there long hours of bliss,reading and chewing candy. And those were the only times I feltthat I got my real money's worth. Dollars and dollars, across thebar, couldn't buy the satisfaction that twenty-five cents did in acandy store.

　　As my drinking grew heavier, I began to note more and more that itwas in the drinking bouts the purple passages occurred. Drunkswere always memorable. At such times things happened. Men likeJoe Goose dated existence from drunk to drunk. The longshoremenall looked forward to their Saturday night drunk. We of theoyster boats waited until we had disposed of our cargoes before wegot really started, though a scattering of drinks and a meeting ofa chance friend sometimes precipitated an accidental drunk.

　　In ways, the accidental drunks were the best. Stranger and moreexciting things happened at such times. As, for instance, theSunday when Nelson and French Frank and Captain Spink stole thestolen salmon boat from Whisky Bob and Nicky the Greek. Changeshad taken place in the personnel of the oyster boats. Nelson hadgot into a fight with Bill Kelley on the Annie and was carrying abullet-hole through his left hand. Also, having quarrelled withClam and broken partnership, Nelson had sailed the Reindeer, hisarm in a sling, with a crew of two deep-water sailors, and he hadsailed so madly as to frighten them ashore. Such was the tale ofhis recklessness they spread, that no one on the water-front wouldgo out with Nelson. So theReindeer, crewless, lay across the estuary at the sandspit.Beside her lay the Razzle Dazzle with a burned mainsail and Scottyand me on board. Whisky Bob had fallen out with French Frank andgone on a raid "up river" with Nicky the Greek.

　　The result of this raid was a brand-new Columbia River salmonboat, stolen from an Italian fisherman. We oyster pirates wereall visited by the searching Italian, and we were convinced, fromwhat we knew of their movements, that Whisky Bob and Nicky theGreek were the guilty parties. But where was the salmon boat?Hundreds of Greek and Italian fishermen, up river and down bay,had searched every slough and tule patch for it. When the ownerdespairingly offered a reward of fifty dollars, our interestincreased and the mystery deepened.

　　One Sunday morning old Captain Spink paid me a visit. Theconversation was confidential. He had just been fishing in hisskiff in the old Alameda ferry slip. As the tide went down, hehad noticed a rope tied to a pile under water and leadingdownward. In vain he had tried to heave up what was fast on theother end. Farther along, to another pile, was a similar rope,leading downward and unheavable. Without doubt, it was themissing salmon boat. If we restored it to its rightful ownerthere was fifty dollars in it for us. But I had queer ethicalnotions about honour amongst thieves, and declined to haveanything to do with the affair.

　　But French Frank had quarrelled with Whisky Bob, and Nelson wasalso an enemy. (Poor Whisky Bob!--without viciousness, good-natured, generous, born weak, raised poorly, with an irresistiblechemical demand for alcohol, still prosecuting his vocation of baypirate, his body was picked up, not long afterward, beside a dockwhere it had sunk full of gunshot wounds.) Within an hour after Ihad rejected Captain Spink's proposal, I saw him sail down theestuary on board the Reindeer with Nelson. Also, French Frankwent by on his schooner.

　　It was not long ere they sailed back up the estuary, curiouslyside by side. As they headed in for the sandspit, the submergedsalmon boat could be seen, gunwales awash and held up from sinkingby ropes fast to the schooner and the sloop. The tide was halfout, and they sailed squarely in on the sand, grounding in a row,with the salmon boat in the middle.

　　Immediately Hans, one of French Frank's sailors, was into a skiffand pulling rapidly for the north shore. The big demijohn in thestern-sheets told his errand. They couldn't wait a moment tocelebrate the fifty dollars they had so easily earned. It is theway of the devotees of John Barleycorn. When good fortune comes,they drink. When they have no fortune, they drink to the hope ofgood fortune. If fortune be ill, they drink to forget it. Ifthey meet a friend, they drink. If they quarrel with a friend andlose him, they drink. If their love-making be crowned withsuccess, they are so happy they needs must drink. If they bejilted, they drink for the contrary reason. And if they haven'tanything to do at all, why, they take a drink, secure in theknowledge that when they have taken a sufficient number of drinksthe maggots will start crawling in their brains and they will havetheir hands full with things to do. When they are sober they wantto drink; and when they have drunk they want to drink more.

　　Of course, as fellow comrades, Scotty and I were called in for thedrinking. We helped to make a hole in that fifty dollars not yetreceived. The afternoon, from just an ordinary common summerSunday afternoon, became a gorgeous, purple afternoon. We alltalked and sang and ranted and bragged, and ever French Frank andNelson sent more drinks around. We lay in full sight of theOakland water-front, and the noise of our revels attractedfriends. Skiff after skiff crossed the estuary and hauled up onthe sandspit, while Hans' work was cut out for him--ever to rowback and forth for more supplies of booze.

　　Then Whisky Bob and Nicky the Greek arrived, sober, indignant,outraged in that their fellow pirates had raised their plant.French Frank, aided by John Barleycorn, orated hypocriticallyabout virtue and honesty, and, despite his fifty years, got WhiskyBob out on the sand and proceeded to lick him. When Nicky theGreek jumped in with a short-handled shovel to Whisky Bob'sassistance, short work was made of him by Hans. And of course,when the bleeding remnants of Bob and Nicky were sent packing intheir skiff, the event must needs be celebrated in furthercarousal.

　　By this time, our visitors being numerous, we were a large crowdcompounded of many nationalities and diverse temperaments, allaroused by John Barleycorn, all restraints cast off. Old quarrelsrevived, ancient hates flared up. Fight was in the air. Andwhenever a longshoreman remembered something against a scow-schooner sailor, or vice versa, or an oyster pirate remembered orwas remembered, a fist shot out and another fight was on. Andevery fight was made up in more rounds of drinks, wherein thecombatants, aided and abetted by the rest of us, embraced eachother and pledged undying friendship.

　　And, of all times, Soup Kennedy selected this time to come andretrieve an old shirt of his, left aboard the Reindeer from thetrip he sailed with Clam. He had espoused Clam's side of thequarrel with Nelson. Also, he had been drinking in the St. LouisHouse, so that it was John Barleycorn who led him to the sandspitin quest of his old shirt. Few words started the fray. He lockedwith Nelson in the cockpit of the Reindeer, and in the mix-upbarely escaped being brained by an iron bar wielded by irateFrench Frank--irate because a two-handed man had attacked a one-handed man. (If the Reindeer still floats, the dent of the ironbar remains in the hard-wood rail of her cockpit.)

　　But Nelson pulled his bandaged hand, bullet-perforated, out of itssling, and, held by us, wept and roared his Berserker belief thathe could lick Soup Kennedy one-handed. And we let them loose onthe sand. Once, when it looked as if Nelson were getting theworst of it, French Frank and John Barleycorn sprang unfairly intothe fight. Scotty protested and reached for French Frank, whowhirled upon him and fell on top of him in a pummelling clinchafter a sprawl of twenty feet across the sand. In the course ofseparating these two, half a dozen fights started amongst the restof us. These fights were finished, one way or the other, or weseparated them with drinks, while all the time Nelson and SoupKennedy fought on. Occasionally we returned to them and gaveadvice, such as, when they lay exhausted in the sand, unable tostrike a blow, "Throw sand in his eyes." And they threw sand ineach other's eyes, recuperated, and fought on to successiveexhaustions.

　　And now, of all this that is squalid, and ridiculous, and bestial,try to think what it meant to me, a youth not yet sixteen, burningwith the spirit of adventure, fancy-filled with tales ofbuccaneers and sea-rovers, sacks of cities and conflicts of armedmen, and imagination-maddened by the stuff I had drunk. It waslife raw and naked, wild and free--the only life of that sortwhich my birth in time and space permitted me to attain. And morethan that. It carried a promise. It was the beginning. From thesandspit the way led out through the Golden Gate to the vastnessof adventure of all the world, where battles would be fought, notfor old shirts and over stolen salmon boats, but for high purposesand romantic ends.

　　And because I told Scotty what I thought of his letting an old manlike French Frank get away with him, we, too, brawled and added tothe festivity of the sandspit. And Scotty threw up his job ascrew, and departed in the night with a pair of blankets belongingto me. During the night, while the oyster pirates lay stupefiedin their bunks, the schooner and the Reindeer floated on the highwater and swung about to their anchors. The salmon boat, stillfilled with rocks and water, rested on the bottom.

　　In the morning, early, I heard wild cries from the Reindeer, andtumbled out in the chill grey to see a spectacle that made thewater-front laugh for days. The beautiful salmon boat lay on thehard sand, squashed flat as a pancake, while on it were perchedFrench Frank's schooner and the Reindeer. Unfortunately two ofthe Reindeer's planks had been crushed in by the stout oak stem ofthe salmon boat. The rising tide had flowed through the hole, andjust awakened Nelson by getting into his bunk with him. I lent ahand, and we pumped the Reindeer out and repaired the damage.

　　Then Nelson cooked breakfast, and while we ate we considered thesituation. He was broke. So was I. The fifty dollars rewardwould never be paid for that pitiful mess of splinters on the sandbeneath us. He had a wounded hand and no crew. I had a burnedmain sail and no crew.

　　"What d'ye say, you and me?" Nelson queried. "I'll go you," wasmy answer. And thus I became partners with "Young Scratch"Nelson, the wildest, maddest of them all. We borrowed the moneyfor an outfit of grub from Johnny Heinhold, filled our water-barrels, and sailed away that day for the oyster-beds.