第36章 CHAPTER XVII(2)

Said Axel Gunderson,who didn't care for dancing and social functions:"I've got a good pay-day.Now I can go home.It is fifteen years since I've seen my mother and all the family.When I pay off,I shall send my money home to wait for me.Then I'll pick a good ship bound for Europe,and arrive there with another pay-day.Put them together,and I'll have more money than ever in my life before.I'll be a prince at home.You haven't any idea how cheap everything is in Norway.I can make presents to everybody,and spend my money like what would seem to them a millionaire,and live a whole year there before I'd have to go back to sea.""The very thing I'm going to do,"declared Red John."It's three years since I've received a line from home and ten years since Iwas there.Things are just as cheap in Sweden,Axel,as in Norway,and my folks are real country folk and farmers.I'll send my pay-day home and ship on the same ship with you for around the Horn.We'll pick a good one."And as Axel Gunderson and Red John painted the pastoral delights and festive customs of their respective countries,each fell in love with the other's home place,and they solemnly pledged to make the journey together,and to spend,together,six months in the one's Swedish home and six months in the other's Norwegian home.And for the rest of the voyage they could hardly be pried apart,so infatuated did they become with discussing their plans.

Long John was not a home-body.But he was tired of the forecastle.No boarding-house sharks in his.He,too,would get a room in a quiet family,and he would go to a navigation school and study to be a captain.And so it went.Each man swore that for once he would be sensible and not squander his money.No boarding-house sharks,no sailor-town,no drink,was the slogan of our forecastle.

The men became stingy.Never was there such economy.They refused to buy anything more from the slopchest.Old rags had to last,and they sewed patch upon patch,turning out what are called "homeward-bound patches "of the most amazing proportions.They saved on matches,even,waiting till two or three were ready to light their pipes from the same match.

As we sailed up the San Francisco water-front,the moment the port doctors passed us,the boarding-house runners were alongside in whitehall boats.They swarmed on board,each drumming for his own boarding-house,and each with a bottle of free whisky inside his shirt.But we waved them grandly and blasphemously away.We wanted none of their boarding-houses and none of their whisky.We were sober,thrifty sailormen,with better use for our money.

Came the paying off before the shipping commissioner.We emerged upon the sidewalk,each with a pocketful of money.About us,like buzzards,clustered the sharks and harpies.And we looked at each other.We had been seven months together,and our paths were separating.One last farewell rite of comradeship remained.(Oh,it was the way,the custom.)"Come on,boys,"said our sailing master.There stood the inevitable adjacent saloon.There were a dozen saloons all around.And when we had followed the sailing master into the one of his choice,the sharks were thick on the sidewalk outside.Some of them even ventured inside,but we would have nothing to do with them.

There we stood at the long bar--the sailing master,the mate,the six hunters,the six boat-steerers,and the five boat-pullers.

There were only five of the last,for one of our number had been dropped overboard,with a sack of coal at his feet,between two snow squalls in a driving gale off Cape Jerimo.There were nineteen of us,and it was to be our last drink together.With seven months of men's work in the world,blow high,blow low,behind us,we were looking on each other for the last time.We knew it,for sailors'ways go wide.And the nineteen of us,drank the sailing master's treat.Then the mate looked at us with eloquent eyes and called another round.We liked the mate just as well as the sailing master,and we liked them both.Could we drink with one,and not the other?

And Pete Holt,my own hunter (lost next year in the Mary Thomas,with all hands),called a round.The time passed,the drinks continued to come on the bar,our voices rose,and the maggots began to crawl.There were six hunters,and each insisted,in the sacred name of comradeship,that all hands drink with him just once.There were six boat-steerers and five boat-pullers and the same logic held with them.There was money in all our pockets,and our money was as good as any man's,and our hearts were as free and generous.

Nineteen rounds of drinks.What more would John Barleycorn ask in order to have his will with men?They were ripe to forget their dearly cherished plans.They rolled out of the saloon and into the arms of the sharks and harpies.They didn't last long.From two days to a week saw the end of their money and saw them being carted by the boarding-house masters on board outward-bound ships.

Victor was a fine body of a man,and through a lucky friendship managed to get into the life-saving service.He never saw the dancing-school nor placed his advertisement for a room in a working-class family.Nor did Long John win to navigation school.

By the end of the week he was a transient lumper on a river steamboat.Red John and Axel did not send their pay-days home to the old country.Instead,and along with the rest,they were scattered on board sailing ships bound for the four quarters of the globe,where they had been placed by the boarding-house masters,and where they were working out advance money which they had neither seen nor spent.

What saved me was that I had a home and people to go to.Icrossed the bay to Oakland,and,among other things,took a look at the death-road.Nelson was gone--shot to death while drunk and resisting the officers.His partner in that affair was lying in prison.Whisky Bob was gone.Old Cole,Old Smoudge,and Bob Smith were gone.Another Smith,he of the belted guns and the Annie,was drowned.French Frank,they said,was lurking up river,afraid to come down because of something he had done.

Others were wearing the stripes in San Quentin or Folsom.Big Alec,the King of the Greeks,whom I had known well in the old Benicia days,and with whom I had drunk whole nights through,had killed two men and fled to foreign parts.Fitzsimmons,with whom I had sailed on the Fish Patrol,had been stabbed in the lung through the back and had died a lingering death complicated with tuberculosis.And so it went,a very lively and well-patronised road,and,from what I knew of all of them,John Barleycorn was responsible,with the sole exception of Smith of the Annie.