CHAPTER XIV


Back in Oakland from my wanderings, I returned to the water-front
and renewed my comradeship with Nelson, who was now on shore all
the time and living more madly than before. I, too, spent my time
on shore with him, only occasionally going for cruises of several
days on the bay to help out on short-handed scow-schooners.

The result was that I was no longer reinvigorated by periods of
open-air abstinence and healthy toil. I drank every day, and
whenever opportunity offered I drank to excess; for I still
laboured under the misconception that the secret of John
Barleycorn lay in drinking to bestiality and unconsciousness. I
became pretty thoroughly alcohol-soaked during this period. I
practically lived in saloons; became a bar-room loafer, and worse.

And right here was John Barleycorn getting me in a more insidious
though no less deadly way than when he nearly sent me out with the
tide. I had a few months still to run before I was seventeen; I
scorned the thought of a steady job at anything; I felt myself a
pretty tough individual in a group of pretty tough men; and I
drank because these men drank and because I had to make good with
them. I had never had a real boyhood, and in this, my precocious
manhood, I was very hard and woefully wise. Though I had never
known girl's love even, I had crawled through such depths that I
was convinced absolutely that I knew the last word about love and
life. And it wasn't a pretty knowledge. Without being
pessimistic, I was quite satisfied that life was a rather cheap
and ordinary affair.