to sleep. I found myself actually bored with the saloon life of
the Oakland water-front, and wondered what I had ever found
fascinating in it. Also, with this death-road concept in my
brain, I began to grow afraid that something would happen to me
before sailing day, which was set for some time in January. I
lived more circumspectly, drank less deeply, and went home more
frequently. When drinking grew too wild, I got out. When Nelson
was in his maniacal cups, I managed to get separated from him.

On the 12th of January, 1893, I was seventeen, and the 20th of
January I signed before the shipping commissioner the articles of
the Sophie Sutherland, a three topmast sealing schooner bound on a
voyage to the coast of Japan. And of course we had to drink on
it. Joe Vigy cashed my advance note, and Pete Holt treated, and I
treated, and Joe Vigy treated, and other hunters treated. Well,
it was the way of men, and who was I, just turned seventeen, that
I should decline the way of life of these fine, chesty, man-grown
men?



CHAPTER XVI


There was nothing to drink on the Sophie Sutherland, and we had
fifty-one days of glorious sailing, taking the southern passage in
the north-east trades to Bonin Islands. This isolated group,
belonging to Japan, had been selected as the rendezvous of the
Canadian and American sealing fleets. Here they filled their
water-barrels and made repairs before starting on the hundred