What! To be treated in such fashion! As the news spread among the
schooners, they were emptied. Everybody came ashore. Men who had
had no intention of coming ashore climbed into the boats. The
unfortunate governor's ukase had precipitated a general debauch
for all hands. It was hours after sunset, and the men wanted to
see anybody try to put them on board. They went around inviting
the authorities to try to put them on board. In front of the
governor's house they were gathered thickest, bawling sea-songs,
circulating square faces, and dancing uproarious Virginia reels
and old-country dances. The police, including the reserves, stood
in little forlorn groups, waiting for the command the governor was
too wise to issue. And I thought this saturnalia was great. It
was like the old days of the Spanish Main come back. It was
license; it was adventure. And I was part of it, a chesty sea-
rover along with all these other chesty sea-rovers among the paper
houses of Japan.

The governor never issued the order to clear the streets, and Axel
and I wandered on from drink to drink. After a time, in some of
the antics, getting hazy myself, I lost him. I drifted along,
making new acquaintances, downing more drinks, getting hazier and
hazier. I remember, somewhere, sitting in a circle with Japanese
fishermen, Kanaka boat-steerers from our own vessels, and a young
Danish sailor fresh from cowboying in the Argentine and with a
penchant for native customs and ceremonials. And with due and
proper and most intricate Japanese ceremonial we of the circle
drank saki, pale, mild, and lukewarm, from tiny porcelain bowls.

And, later, I remember the runaway apprentices--boys of eighteen