第46章 CHAPTER XXII(1)

Three years was the time required to go through the high school.

I grew impatient.Also,my schooling was becoming financially impossible.At such rate I could not last out,and I did greatly want to go to the state university.When I had done a year of high school,I decided to attempt a short cut.I borrowed the money and paid to enter the senior class of a "cramming joint"or academy.I was scheduled to graduate right into the university at the end of four months,thus saving two years.

And how I did cram!I had two years'new work to do in a third of a year.For five weeks I crammed,until simultaneous quadratic equations and chemical formulas fairly oozed from my ears.And then the master of the academy took me aside.He was very sorry,but he was compelled to give me back my tuition fee and to ask me to leave the school.It wasn't a matter of scholarship.I stood well in my classes,and did he graduate me into the university he was confident that in that institution I would continue to stand well.The trouble was that tongues were gossiping about my case.

What!In four months accomplished two years'work!It would be a scandal,and the universities were becoming severer in their treatment of accredited prep schools.He couldn't afford such a scandal,therefore I must gracefully depart.

I did.And I paid back the borrowed money,and gritted my teeth,and started to cram by myself.There were three months yet before the university entrance examinations.Without laboratories,without coaching,sitting in my bedroom,I proceeded to compress that two years'work into three months and to keep reviewed on the previous year's work.

Nineteen hours a day I studied.For three months I kept this pace,only breaking it on several occasions.My body grew weary,my mind grew weary,but I stayed with it.My eyes grew weary and began to twitch,but they did not break down.Perhaps,toward the last,I got a bit dotty.I know that at the time I was confident,I had discovered the formula for squaring the circle;but Iresolutely deferred the working of it out until after the examinations.Then I would show them.

Came the several days of the examinations,during which time Iscarcely closed my eyes in sleep,devoting every moment to cramming and reviewing.And when I turned in my last examination paper I was in full possession of a splendid case of brain-fag.Ididn't want to see a book.I didn't want to think or to lay eyes on anybody who was liable to think.

There was but one prescription for such a condition,and I gave it to myself--the adventure-path.I didn't wait to learn the result of my examinations.I stowed a roll of blankets and some cold food into a borrowed whitehall boat and set sail.Out of the Oakland Estuary I drifted on the last of an early morning ebb,caught the first of the flood up bay,and raced along with a spanking breeze.San Pablo Bay was smoking,and the Carquinez Straits off the Selby Smelter were smoking,as I picked up ahead and left astern the old landmarks I had first learned with Nelson in the unreefer Reindeer.

Benicia showed before me.I opened the bight of Turner's Shipyard,rounded the Solano wharf,and surged along abreast of the patch of tules and the clustering fishermen's arks where in the old days I had lived and drunk deep.

And right here something happened to me,the gravity of which Inever dreamed for many a long year to come.I had had no intention of stopping at Benicia.The tide favoured,the wind was fair and howling--glorious sailing for a sailor.Bull Head and Army Points showed ahead,marking the entrance to Suisun Bay which I knew was smoking.And yet,when I laid eyes on those fishing arks lying in the water-front tules,without debate,on the instant,I put down my tiller,came in on the sheet,and headed for the shore.On the instant,out of the profound of my brain-fag,I knew what I wanted.I wanted to drink.I wanted to get drunk.

The call was imperative.There was no uncertainty about it.More than anything else in the world,my frayed and frazzled mind wanted surcease from weariness in the way it knew surcease would come.And right here is the point.For the first time in my life I consciously,deliberately,desired to get drunk.It was a new,a totally different manifestation of John Barleycorn's power.It was not a body need for alcohol.It was a mental desire.My over-worked and jaded mind wanted to forget.

And here the point is drawn to its sharpest.Granted my prodigious brain-fag,nevertheless,had I never drunk in the past,the thought would never have entered my mind to get drunk now.