and lunatic things when they were drunk. And then the police
gathered them in and they vanished from our ken. Sometimes I
visited them behind the bars and said good-bye ere they journeyed
across the bay to put on the felon's stripes. And time and again
I heard the one explanation "IF I HADN'T BEEN DRUNK I WOULDN'T A-
DONE IT." And sometimes, under the spell of John Barleycorn, the
most frightful things were done--things that shocked even my case-
hardened soul.

The other phase of the death-road was that of the habitual
drunkards, who had a way of turning up their toes without apparent
provocation. When they took sick, even with trifling afflictions
that any ordinary man could pull through, they just pegged out.
Sometimes they were found unattended and dead in their beds; on
occasion their bodies were dragged out of the water; and sometimes
it was just plain accident, as when Bill Kelley, unloading cargo
while drunk, had a finger jerked off, which, under the
circumstances, might just as easily have been his head.

So I considered my situation and knew that I was getting into a
bad way of living. It made toward death too quickly to suit my
youth and vitality. And there was only one way out of this
hazardous manner of living, and that was to get out. The sealing
fleet was wintering in San Francisco Bay, and in the saloons I met
skippers, mates, hunters, boat-steerers, and boat-pullers. I met
the seal-hunter, Pete Holt, and agreed to be his boat-puller and
to sign on any schooner he signed on. And I had to have half a
dozen drinks with Pete Holt there and then to seal our agreement.

And at once awoke all my old unrest that John Barleycorn had put