on. Now, the hostess was a charming woman, but it was not for her
sake that I was under her roof so frequently. It happened that she made
by far the finest cocktail procurable in that large city where
drink-mixing on the part of the foreign population was indeed an art. Up
at the club, down at the hotels, and in other private houses, no such
cocktails were created. Her cocktails were subtle. They were
masterpieces. They were the least repulsive to the palate and carried
the most "kick." And yet, I desired her cocktails only for sociability's
sake, to key myself to sociable moods. When I rode away from that city,
across hundreds of miles of rice-fields and mountains, and through months
of campaigning, and on with the victorious Japanese into Manchuria, I did
not drink. Several bottles of whisky were always to be found on the
backs of my pack-horses. Yet I never broached a bottle for myself, never
took a drink by myself, and never knew a desire to take such a drink.
Oh, if a white man came into my camp, I opened a bottle and we drank
together according to the way of men, just as he would open a bottle and
drink with me if I came into his camp. I carried that whisky for social
purposes, and I so charged it up in my expense account to the newspaper
for which I worked.

Only in retrospect can I mark the almost imperceptible growth of my
desire. There were little hints then that I did not take, little straws
in the wind that I did not see, little incidents the gravity of which I
did not realise.

For instance, for some years it had been my practice each winter to
cruise for six or eight weeks on San Francisco Bay. My stout sloop
yacht, the Spray, had a comfortable cabin and a coal stove. A Korean boy
did the cooking, and I usually took a friend or so along to share the
joys of the cruise. Also, I took my machine along and did my thousand
words a day. On the particular trip I have in mind, Cloudesley and Toddy
came along. This was Toddy's first trip. On previous trips Cloudesley
had elected to drink beer; so I had kept the yacht supplied with beer and
had drunk beer with him.

But on this cruise the situation was different. Toddy was so nicknamed
because of his diabolical cleverness in concocting toddies. So I brought
whisky along--a couple of gallons. Alas! Many another gallon I bought,
for Cloudesley and I got into the habit of drinking a certain hot toddy
that actually tasted delicious going down and