We unbent.Our inhibitions and taciturnities vanished.We were as if we had known each other for years and years,and we pledged ourselves to years of future voyagings together.The harpooner told of misadventures and secret shames.Scotty wept over his poor old mother in Edinburgh--a lady,he insisted,gently born--who was in reduced circumstances,who had pinched herself to pay the lump sum to the ship-owners for his apprenticeship,whose sacrificing dream had been to see him a merchantman officer and a gentleman,and who was heartbroken because he had deserted his ship in Australia and joined another as a common sailor before the mast.And Scotty proved it.He drew her last sad letter from his pocket and wept over it as he read it aloud.The harpooner and Iwept with him,and swore that all three of us would ship on the whaleship Bonanza,win a big pay-day,and,still together,make a pilgrimage to Edinburgh and lay our store of money in the dear lady's lap.
And,as John Barleycorn heated his way into my brain,thawing my reticence,melting my modesty,talking through me and with me and as me,my adopted twin brother and alter ego,I,too,raised my voice to show myself a man and an adventurer,and bragged in detail and at length of how I had crossed San Francisco Bay in my open skiff in a roaring southwester when even the schooner sailors doubted my exploit.Further,I--or John Barleycorn,for it was the same thing--told Scotty that he might be a deep-sea sailor and know the last rope on the great deep-sea ships,but that when it came to small-boat sailing I could beat him hands down and sail circles around him.
The best of it was that my assertion and brag were true.With reticence and modesty present,I could never have dared tell Scotty my small-boat estimate of him.But it is ever the way of John Barleycorn to loosen the tongue and babble the secret thought.
Scotty,or John Barleycorn,or the pair,was very naturally offended by my remarks.Nor was I loath.I could whip any runaway sailor seventeen years old.Scotty and I flared and raged like young cockerels,until the harpooner poured another round of drinks to enable us to forgive and make up.Which we did,arms around each other's necks,protesting vows of eternal friendship--just like Black Matt and Tom Morrisey,I remembered,in the ranch kitchen in San Mateo.And,remembering,I knew that I was at last a man--despite my meagre fourteen years--a man as big and manly as those two strapping giants who had quarrelled and made up on that memorable Sunday morning of long ago.
By this time the singing stage was reached,and I joined Scotty and the harpooner in snatches of sea songs and chanties.It was here,in the cabin of the Idler,that I first heard "Blow the Man Down,""Flying Cloud,"and "Whisky,Johnny,Whisky."Oh,it was brave.I was beginning to grasp the meaning of life.Here was no commonplace,no Oakland Estuary,no weary round of throwing newspapers at front doors,delivering ice,and setting up ninepins.All the world was mine,all its paths were under my feet,and John Barleycorn,tricking my fancy,enabled me to anticipate the life of adventure for which I yearned.
We were not ordinary.We were three tipsy young gods,incredibly wise,gloriously genial,and without limit to our powers.Ah!--and I say it now,after the years--could John Barleycorn keep one at such a height,I should never draw a sober breath again.But this is not a world of free freights.One pays according to an iron schedule--for every strength the balanced weakness;for every high a corresponding low;for every fictitious god-like moment an equivalent time in reptilian slime.For every feat of telescoping long days and weeks of life into mad magnificent instants,one must pay with shortened life,and,oft-times,with savage usury added.
Intenseness and duration are as ancient enemies as fire and water.
They are mutually destructive.They cannot co-exist.And John Barleycorn,mighty necromancer though he be,is as much a slave to organic chemistry as we mortals are.We pay for every nerve marathon we run,nor can John Barleycorn intercede and fend off the just payment.He can lead us to the heights,but he cannot keep us there,else would we all be devotees.And there is no devotee but pays for the mad dances John Barleycorn pipes.
