I set sail, cast off, took my place at the tiller, the sheet in my
hand, and headed across channel. The skiff heeled over and
plunged into it madly. The spray began to fly. I was at the
pinnacle of exaltation. I sang "Blow the Man Down" as I sailed.
I was no boy of fourteen, living the mediocre ways of the sleepy
town called Oakland. I was a man, a god, and the very elements
rendered me allegiance as I bitted them to my will.

The tide was out. A full hundred yards of soft mud intervened
between the boat-wharf and the water. I pulled up my centreboard,
ran full tilt into the mud, took in sail, and, standing in the
stern, as I had often done at low tide, I began to shove the skiff
with an oar. It was then that my correlations began to break
down. I lost my balance and pitched head-foremost into the ooze.
Then, and for the first time, as I floundered to my feet covered
with slime, the blood running down my arms from a scrape against a
barnacled stake, I knew that I was drunk. But what of it? Across
the channel two strong sailormen lay unconscious in their bunks
where I had drunk them. I WAS a man. I was still on my legs, if
they were knee-deep in mud. I disdained to get back into the
skiff. I waded through the mud, shoving the skiff before me and
yammering the chant of my manhood to the world.

I paid for it. I was sick for a couple of days, meanly sick, and
my arms were painfully poisoned from the barnacle scratches. For
a week I could not use them, and it was a torture to put on and
take off my clothes.

I swore, "Never again!" The game wasn't worth it. The price was