t. And we
know that a certain percentage of them, the livest and most daring, will
fall into the well. The thing to do--we all know it--is to cover up the
well. The case is the same with John Barleycorn. All the no-saying and
no-preaching in the world will fail to keep men, and youths growing into
manhood, away from John Barleycorn when John Barleycorn is everywhere
accessible, and where John Barleycorn is everywhere the connotation of
manliness, and daring, and great-spiritedness.

The only rational thing for the twentieth-century folk to do is to cover
up the well; to make the twentieth century in truth the twentieth
century, and to relegate to the nineteenth century and all the preceding
centuries the things of those centuries, the witch-burnings, the
intolerances, the fetiches, and, not least among such barbarisms. John
Barleycorn.

CHAPTER XVII

North we raced from the Bonin Islands to pick up the seal-herd, and north
we hunted it for a hundred days into frosty, mitten weather and into and
through vast fogs which hid the sun from us for a week at a time. It was
wild and heavy work, without a drink or thought of drink. Then we sailed
south to Yokohama, with a big catch of skins in our salt and a heavy
pay-day coming.

I was eager to be ashore and see Japan, but the first day was devoted to
ship's work, and not until evening did we sailors land. And here, by the
very system of things, by the way life was organised and men transacted
affairs, John Barleycorn reached out and tucked my arm in his. The
captain had given money for us to the hunters, and the hunters were
waiting in a certain Japanese public house for us to come and get it. We
rode to the place in rickshaws. Our own crowd had taken possession of
it. Drink was flowing. Everybody had money, and everybody was treating.
After the hundred days of hard toil and absolute abstinence, in the pink
of physical condition, bulging with health, over-spilling with spirits
that had long been pent by discipline and circumstance, of course we
would have a drink or two. And after that we would see the town.

It was the old story. There were so many drinks to be drunk, and as the
warm magic poured through our veins and mellowed our voices and
affections we knew it was no time to make invidious distinctions--to
drink with this shipmate and to decline to drink with that shipmate. We
were all shipmates who had been through stress and storm together, w