CHAPTER XII


Nor have I ever regretted those months of mad devilry I put in
with Nelson. He COULD sail, even if he did frighten every man
that sailed with him. To steer to miss destruction by an inch or
an instant was his joy. To do what everybody else did not dare
attempt to do, was his pride. Never to reef down was his mania,
and in all the time I spent with him, blow high or low, the
Reindeer was never reefed. Nor was she ever dry. We strained her
open and sailed her open and sailed her open continually. And we
abandoned the Oakland water-front and went wider afield for our
adventures.

And all this glorious passage in my life was made possible for me
by John Barleycorn. And this is my complaint against John
Barleycorn. Here I was, thirsting for the wild life of adventure,
and the only way for me to win to it was through John Barleycorn's
mediation. It was the way of the men who lived the life. Did I
wish to live the life, I must live it the way they did. It was by
virtue of drinking that I gained that partnership and comradeship
with Nelson. Had I drunk only the beer he paid for, or had I
declined to drink at all, I should never have been selected by him
as a partner. He wanted a partner who would meet him on the
social side, as well as the work side of life.

I abandoned myself to the life, and developed the misconception
that the secret of John Barleycorn lay in going on mad drunks,
rising through the successive stages that only an iron
constitution could endure to final stupefaction and swinish