第20章 CHAPTER XI(1)

And still there arose in me no desire for alcohol,no chemical demand.In years and years of heavy drinking,drinking did not beget the desire.Drinking was the way of the life I led,the way of the men with whom I lived.While away on my cruises on the bay,I took no drink along;and while out on the bay the thought of the desirableness of a drink never crossed my mind.It was not until I tied the Razzle Dazzle up to the wharf and got ashore in the congregating places of men,where drink flowed,that the buying of drinks for other men,and the accepting of drinks from other men,devolved upon me as a social duty and a manhood rite.

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

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

As my drinking grew heavier,I began to note more and more that it was in the drinking bouts the purple passages occurred.Drunks were always memorable.At such times things happened.Men like Joe Goose dated existence from drunk to drunk.The longshoremen all looked forward to their Saturday night drunk.We of the oyster boats waited until we had disposed of our cargoes before we got really started,though a scattering of drinks and a meeting of a chance friend sometimes precipitated an accidental drunk.

In ways,the accidental drunks were the best.Stranger and more exciting things happened at such times.As,for instance,the Sunday when Nelson and French Frank and Captain Spink stole the stolen salmon boat from Whisky Bob and Nicky the Greek.Changes had taken place in the personnel of the oyster boats.Nelson had got into a fight with Bill Kelley on the Annie and was carrying a bullet-hole through his left hand.Also,having quarrelled with Clam and broken partnership,Nelson had sailed the Reindeer,his arm in a sling,with a crew of two deep-water sailors,and he had sailed so madly as to frighten them ashore.Such was the tale of his recklessness they spread,that no one on the water-front would go out with Nelson.So the Reindeer,crewless,lay across the estuary at the sandspit.

Beside her lay the Razzle Dazzle with a burned mainsail and Scotty and me on board.Whisky Bob had fallen out with French Frank and gone on a raid "up river"with Nicky the Greek.

The result of this raid was a brand-new Columbia River salmon boat,stolen from an Italian fisherman.We oyster pirates were all visited by the searching Italian,and we were convinced,from what we knew of their movements,that Whisky Bob and Nicky the Greek 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 owner despairingly offered a reward of fifty dollars,our interest increased and the mystery deepened.

One Sunday morning old Captain Spink paid me a visit.The conversation was confidential.He had just been fishing in his skiff in the old Alameda ferry slip.As the tide went down,he had noticed a rope tied to a pile under water and leading downward.In vain he had tried to heave up what was fast on the other end.Farther along,to another pile,was a similar rope,leading downward and unheavable.Without doubt,it was the missing salmon boat.If we restored it to its rightful owner there was fifty dollars in it for us.But I had queer ethical notions about honour amongst thieves,and declined to have anything to do with the affair.

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

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