evidences of my inferiority. I made it a point to be among the first of
the watch going on deck, among the last going below, never leaving a
sheet or tackle for some one else to coil over a pin. I was always eager
for the run aloft for the shifting of topsail sheets and tacks, or for
the setting or taking in of topsails; and in these matters I did more
than my share.

Furthermore, I was on a hair-trigger of resentment myself. I knew better
than to accept any abuse or the slightest patronizing. At the first hint
of such, I went off--I exploded. I might be beaten in the subsequent
fight, but I left the impression that I was a wild-cat and that I would
just as willingly fight again. My intention was to demonstrate that I
would tolerate no imposition. I proved that the man who imposed on me
must have a fight on his hands. And doing my work well, the innate
justice of the men, assisted by their wholesome dislike for a clawing and
rending wild-cat ruction, soon led them to give over their hectoring.
After a bit of strife, my attitude was accepted, and it was my pride that
I was taken in as an equal in spirit as well as in fact. From then on,
everything was beautiful, and the voyage promised to be a happy one.

But there was one other man in the forecastle. Counting the
Scandinavians as ten, and myself as the eleventh, this man was the
twelfth and last. We never knew his name, contenting ourselves with
calling him the "Bricklayer." He was from Missouri--at least he so
informed us in the one meagre confidence he was guilty of in the early
days of the voyage. Also, at that time, we learned several other things.
He was a bricklayer by trade. He had never even seen salt water until
the week before he joined us, at which time he had arrived in San
Francisco and looked upon San Francisco Bay. Why he, of all men, at
forty years of age, should have felt the prod to go to sea, was beyond