row afraid that
something would happen to me before sailing day, which was set for some
time in January. I lived more circumspectly, drank less deeply, and went
home more frequently. When drinking grew too wild, I got out. When
Nelson was in his maniacal cups, I managed to get separated from him.

On the 12th of January, 1893, I was seventeen, and the 20th of January I
signed before the shipping commissioner the articles of the Sophie
Sutherland, a three topmast sealing schooner bound on a voyage to the
coast of Japan. And of course we had to drink on it. Joe Vigy cashed my
advance note, and Pete Holt treated, and I treated, and Joe Vigy treated,
and other hunters treated. Well, it was the way of men, and who was I,
just turned seventeen, that I should decline the way of life of these
fine, chesty, man-grown men?

CHAPTER XVI

There was nothing to drink on the Sophie Sutherland, and we had fifty-one
days of glorious sailing, taking the southern passage in the north-east
trades to Bonin Islands. This isolated group, belonging to Japan, had
been selected as the rendezvous of the Canadian and American sealing
fleets. Here they filled their water-barrels and made repairs before
starting on the hundred days' harrying of the seal-herd along the
northern coasts of Japan to Behring Sea.

Those fifty-one days of fine sailing and intense sobriety had put me in
splendid fettle. The alcohol had been worked out of my system, and from
the moment the voyage began I had not known the desire for a drink. I
doubt if I even thought once about a drink. Often, of course, the talk
in the forecastle turned on drink, and the men told of their more
exciting or humorous drunks, remembering such passages more keenly, with
greater delight, than all the other passages of their adventurous lives.

In the forecastle, the oldest man, fat and fifty, was Louis. He was a
broken skipper. John Barleycorn had thrown him, and he was winding up
his career where he had begun it, in the forecastle. His case made quite
an impression on me. John Barleycorn did other things beside kill a man.
He hadn't killed Louis. He had done much worse. He had robbed him of
power and place and comfort, crucified his pride, and condemned him to
the hardship of the common sailor that would last as long as his healthy
breath lasted, which promised to be for a long time.

We completed our run across the Pacific, lifted the volcanic peaks,
jungle-clad,