Chapter XXXIII

by Jack London

　　I went to Australia to go into hospital and get tinkered up, afterwhich I planned to go on with the voyage. And during the longweeks I lay in hospital, from the first day I never missedalcohol. I never thought about it. I knew I should have it againwhen I was on my feet. But when I regained my feet I was notcured of my major afflictions. Naaman's silvery skin was stillmine. The mysterious sun-sickness, which the experts of Australiacould not fathom, still ripped and tore my tissues. Malaria stillfestered in me and put me on my back in shivering delirium at themost unexpected moments, compelling me to cancel a double lecturetour which had been arranged.

　　So I abandoned the Snark voyage and sought a cooler climate. Theday I came out of hospital I took up drinking again as a matter ofcourse. I drank wine at meals. I drank cocktails before meals.I drank Scotch highballs when anybody I chanced to be with wasdrinking them. I was so thoroughly the master of John BarleycornI could take up with him or let go of him whenever I pleased, justas I had done all my life.

　　After a time, for cooler climate, I went down to southermostTasmania in forty-three South. And I found myself in a placewhere there was nothing to drink. It didn't mean anything. Ididn't drink. It was no hardship. I soaked in the cool air, rodehorseback, and did my thousand words a day save when the fevershock came in the morning.

　　And for fear that the idea may still lurk in some minds that mypreceding years of drinking were the cause of my disabilities, Ihere point out that my Japanese cabin boy, Nakata, still with me,was rotten with fever, as was Charmian, who in addition was in theslough of a tropical neurasthenia that required several years oftemperate climates to cure, and that neither she nor Nakata drankor ever had drunk.

　　When I returned to Hobart Town, where drink was obtainable, Idrank as of old. The same when I arrived back in Australia. Onthe contrary, when I sailed from Australia on a tramp steamercommanded by an abstemious captain, I took no drink along, and hadno drink for the forty-three days' passage. Arrived in Ecuador,squarely under the equatorial sun, where the humans were dying ofyellow fever, smallpox, and the plague, I promptly drank again--every drink of every sort that had a kick in it. I caught none ofthese diseases. Neither did Charmian nor Nakata who did notdrink.

　　Enamoured of the tropics, despite the damage done me, I stopped invarious places, and was a long while getting back to the splendid,temperate climate of California. I did my thousand words a day,travelling or stopping over, suffered my last faint fever shock,saw my silvery skin vanish and my sun-torn tissues healthily knitagain, and drank as a broad-shouldered chesty man may drink.