Chapter XXXII

by Jack London

　　When the Snark sailed on her long cruise from San Francisco therewas nothing to drink on board. Or, rather, we were all of usunaware that there was anything to drink, nor did we discover itfor many a month. This sailing with a "dry " boat was maliceaforethought on my part. I had played John Barleycorn a trick.And it showed that I was listening ever so slightly to the faintwarnings that were beginning to arise in my consciousness.

　　Of course, I veiled the situation to myself and excused myself toJohn Barleycorn. And I was very scientific about it. I said thatI would drink only while in ports. During the dry sea-stretchesmy system would be cleansed of the alcohol that soaked it, so thatwhen I reached a port I should be in shape to enjoy JohnBarleycorn more thoroughly. His bite would be sharper, his kickkeener and more delicious.

　　We were twenty-seven days on the traverse between San Franciscoand Honolulu. After the first day out, the thought of a drinknever troubled me. This I take to show how intrinsically I am notan alcoholic. Sometimes, during the traverse, looking ahead andanticipating the delightful lanai luncheons and dinners of Hawaii(I had been there a couple of times before), I thought, naturally,of the drinks that would precede those meals. I did not think ofthose drinks with any yearning, with any irk at the length of thevoyage. I merely thought they would be nice and jolly, part ofthe atmosphere of a proper meal.

　　Thus, once again I proved to my complete satisfaction that I wasJohn Barleycorn's master. I could drink when I wanted, refrainwhen I wanted. Therefore I would continue to drink when I wanted.

　　Some five months were spent in the various islands of the Hawaiiangroup. Being ashore, I drank. I even drank a bit more than I hadbeen accustomed to drink in California prior to the voyage. Thepeople in Hawaii seemed to drink a bit more, on the average, thanthe people in more temperate latitudes. I do not intend the pun,and can awkwardly revise the statement to "latitudes more remotefrom the equator;" Yet Hawaii is only sub-tropical. The deeper Igot into the tropics, the deeper I found men drank, the deeper Idrank myself.

　　From Hawaii we sailed for the Marquesas. The traverse occupiedsixty days. For sixty days we never raised land, a sail, nor asteamer smoke. But early in those sixty days the cook, giving anoverhauling to the galley, made a find. Down in the bottom of adeep locker he found a dozen bottles of angelica and muscatel.These had come down from the kitchen cellar of the ranch alongwith the home-preserved fruits and jellies. Six months in thegalley heat had effected some sort of a change in the thick sweetwine--branded it, I imagine.

　　I took a taste. Delicious! And thereafter, once each day, attwelve o'clock, after our observations were worked up and theSnark's position charted, I drank half a tumbler of the stuff. Ithad a rare kick to it. It warmed the cockles of my geniality andput a fairer face on the truly fair face of the sea. Eachmorning, below, sweating out my thousand words, I found myselflooking forward to that twelve o'clock event of the day.

　　The trouble was I had to share the stuff, and the length of thetraverse was doubtful. I regretted that there were not more thana dozen bottles. And when they were gone I even regretted that Ihad shared any of it. I was thirsty for the alcohol, and eager toarrive in the Marquesas.

　　So it was that I reached the Marquesas the possessor of a realman's size thirst. And in the Marquesas were several white men, alot of sickly natives, much magnificent scenery, plenty of traderum, an immense quantity of absinthe, but neither whisky nor gin.The trade rum scorched the skin off one's mouth. I know, becauseI tried it. But I had ever been plastic, and I accepted theabsinthe. The trouble with the stuff was that I had to take suchinordinate quantities in order to feel the slightest effect.

　　From the Marquesas I sailed with sufficient absinthe in ballast tolast me to Tahiti, where I outfitted with Scotch and Americanwhisky, and thereafter there were no dry stretches between ports.But please do not misunderstand. There was no drunkenness, asdrunkenness is ordinarily understood--no staggering and rollingaround, no befuddlement of the senses. The skilled and seasoneddrinker, with a strong constitution, never descends to anythinglike that. He drinks to feel good, to get a pleasant jingle, andno more than that. The things he carefully avoids are the nauseaof over-drinking, the after-effect of over-drinking, thehelplessness and loss of pride of over-drinking.

　　What the skilled and seasoned drinker achieves is a discreet andcanny semi-intoxication. And he does it by the twelve-montharound without any apparent penalty. There are hundreds ofthousands of men of this sort in the United States to-day, inclubs, hotels, and in their own homes--men who are never drunk,and who, though most of them will indignantly deny it, are rarelysober. And all of them fondly believe, as I fondly believed, thatthey are beating the game.

　　On the sea-stretches I was fairly abstemious; but ashore I drankmore. I seemed to need more, anyway, in the tropics. This is acommon experience, for the excessive consumption of alcohol in thetropics by white men is a notorious fact. The tropics is no placefor white-skinned men. Their skin-pigment does not protect themagainst the excessive white light of the sun. The ultra-violetrays, and other high-velocity and invisible rays from the upperend of the spectrum, rip and tear through their tissues, just asthe X-ray ripped and tore through the tissues of so manyexperimenters before they learned the danger.

　　White men in the tropics undergo radical changes of nature. Theybecome savage, merciless. They commit monstrous acts of crueltythat they would never dream of committing in their originaltemperate climate. They become nervous, irritable, and lessmoral. And they drink as they never drank before. Drinking isone form of the many forms of degeneration that set in when whitemen are exposed too long to too much white light. The increase ofalcoholic consumption is automatic. The tropics is no place for along sojourn. They seem doomed to die anyway, and the heavydrinking expedites the process. They don't reason about it. Theyjust do it.

　　The sun sickness got me, despite the fact that I had been in thetropics only a couple of years. I drank heavily during this time,but right here I wish to forestall misunderstanding. The drinkingwas not the cause of the sickness, nor of the abandonment of thevoyage. I was strong as a bull, and for many months I fought thesun sickness that was ripping and tearing my surface and nervoustissues to pieces. All through the New Hebrides and the Solomonsand up among the atolls on the Line, during this period under atropic sun, rotten with malaria, and suffering from a few minorafflictions such as Biblical leprosy with the silvery skin, I didthe work of five men.

　　To navigate a vessel through the reefs and shoals and passages andunlighted coasts of the coral seas is a man's work in itself. Iwas the only navigator on board. There was no one to check me upon the working out of my observations, nor with whom I couldadvise in the ticklish darkness among uncharted reefs and shoals.And I stood all watches. There was no sea-man on board whom Icould trust to stand a mate's watch. I was mate as well ascaptain. Twenty-four hours a day were the watches I stood at sea,catching cat-naps when I might. Third, I was doctor. And let mesay right here that the doctor's job on the Snark at that time wasa man's job. All on board suffered from malaria--the real,tropical malaria that can kill in three months. All on boardsuffered from perforating ulcers and from the maddening itch ofngari-ngari. A Japanese cook went insane from his too numerousafflictions. One of my Polynesian sailors lay at death's doorwith blackwater fever. Oh, yes, it was a full man's job, and Idosed and doctored, and pulled teeth, and dragged my patientsthrough mild little things like ptomaine poisoning.

　　Fourth, I was a writer. I sweated out my thousand words a day,every day, except when the shock of fever smote me, or a couple ofnasty squalls smote the Snark, in the morning. Fifth, I was atraveller and a writer, eager to see things and to gather materialinto my note-books. And, sixth, I was master and owner of thecraft that was visiting strange places where visitors are rare andwhere visitors are made much of. So here I had to hold up thesocial end, entertain on board, be entertained ashore by planters,traders, governors, captains of war vessels, kinky-headed cannibalkings, and prime ministers sometimes fortunate enough to be cladin cotton shifts.

　　Of course I drank. I drank with my guests and hosts. Also, Idrank by myself. Doing the work of five men, I thought, entitledme to drink. Alcohol was good for a man who over-worked. I notedits effect on my small crew, when, breaking their backs and heartsat heaving up anchor in forty fathoms, they knocked off gaspingand trembling at the end of half an hour and had new life put intothem by stiff jolts of rum. They caught their breaths, wipedtheir mouths, and went to it again with a will. And when wecareened the Snark and had to work in the water to our necksbetween shocks of fever, I noted how raw trade rum helped the workalong.

　　And here again we come to another side of many-sided JohnBarleycorn. On the face of it, he gives something for nothing.Where no strength remains he finds new strength. The wearied onerises to greater effort. For the time being there is an actualaccession of strength. I remember passing coal on an oceansteamer through eight days of hell, during which time we coal-passers were kept to the job by being fed with whisky. We toiledhalf drunk all the time. And without the whisky we could not havepassed the coal.

　　This strength John Barleycorn gives is not fictitious strength.It is real strength. But it is manufactured out of the sources ofstrength, and it must ultimately be paid for, and with interest.But what weary human will look so far ahead? He takes thisapparently miraculous accession of strength at its face value.And many an overworked business and professional man, as well as aharried common labourer, has travelled John Barleycorn's deathroad because of this mistake.