rink was obtainable, I drank as of
old. The same when I arrived back in Australia. On the contrary, when I
sailed from Australia on a tramp steamer commanded by an abstemious
captain, I took no drink along, and had no drink for the forty-three
days' passage. Arrived in Ecuador, squarely under the equatorial sun,
where the humans were dying of yellow fever, smallpox, and the plague, I
promptly drank again--every drink of every sort that had a kick in it. I
caught none of these diseases. Neither did Charmian nor Nakata who did
not drink.

Enamoured of the tropics, despite the damage done me, I stopped in
various places, and was a long while getting back to the splendid,
temperate climate of California. I did my thousand words a day,
travelling or stopping over, suffered my last faint fever shock, saw my
silvery skin vanish and my sun-torn tissues healthily knit again, and
drank as a broad-shouldered chesty man may drink.

CHAPTER XXXIV

Back on the ranch, in the Valley of the Moon, I resumed my steady
drinking. My programme was no drink in the morning; first drink-time
came with the completion of my thousand words. Then, between that and
the midday meal, were drinks numerous enough to develop a pleasant
jingle. Again, in the hour preceding the evening meal, I developed
another pleasant jingle. Nobody ever saw me drunk, for the simple reason
that I never was drunk. But I did get a jingle twice each day; and the
amount of alcohol I consumed every day, if loosed in the system of one
unaccustomed to drink, would have put such a one on his back and out.

It was the old proposition. The more I drank, the more I was compelled
to drink in order to get an effect. The time came when cocktails were
inadequate. I had neither the time in which to drink them nor the space
to accommodate them. Whisky had a more powerful jolt. It gave quicker
action with less quantity. Bourbon or rye, or cunningly aged blends,
constituted the pre-midday drinking. In the late afternoon it was Scotch
and soda.

My sleep, always excellent, now became not quite so excellent. I had
been accustomed to read myself back asleep when I chanced to awake. But
now this began to fail me. When I had read two or three of the small
hours away and was as wide awake as ever, I found that a drink furnished
the soporific effect. Sometimes two or three drinks were required.

So short a period of sleep then intervened before early morning ri