Chapter XXII

by Jack London

　　Three years was the time required to go through the high school.I grew impatient. Also, my schooling was becoming financiallyimpossible. At such rate I could not last out, and I did greatlywant to go to the state university. When I had done a year ofhigh school, I decided to attempt a short cut. I borrowed themoney and paid to enter the senior class of a "cramming joint" oracademy. I was scheduled to graduate right into the university atthe end of four months, thus saving two years.

　　And how I did cram! I had two years' new work to do in a third ofa year. For five weeks I crammed, until simultaneous quadraticequations and chemical formulas fairly oozed from my ears. Andthen the master of the academy took me aside. He was very sorry,but he was compelled to give me back my tuition fee and to ask meto leave the school. It wasn't a matter of scholarship. I stoodwell in my classes, and did he graduate me into the university hewas confident that in that institution I would continue to standwell. The trouble was that tongues were gossiping about my case.What! In four months accomplished two years' work! It would be ascandal, and the universities were becoming severer in theirtreatment of accredited prep schools. He couldn't afford such ascandal, therefore I must gracefully depart.

　　I did. And I paid back the borrowed money, and gritted my teeth,and started to cram by myself. There were three months yet beforethe university entrance examinations. Without laboratories,without coaching, sitting in my bedroom, I proceeded to compressthat two years' work into three months and to keep reviewed on theprevious year's work.

　　Nineteen hours a day I studied. For three months I kept thispace, only breaking it on several occasions. My body grew weary,my mind grew weary, but I stayed with it. My eyes grew weary andbegan to twitch, but they did not break down. Perhaps, toward thelast, I got a bit dotty. I know that at the time I was confident,I had discovered the formula for squaring the circle; but Iresolutely deferred the working of it out until after theexaminations. Then I would show them.

　　Came the several days of the examinations, during which time Iscarcely closed my eyes in sleep, devoting every moment tocramming and reviewing. And when I turned in my last examinationpaper I was in full possession of a splendid case of brain-fag. Ididn't want to see a book. I didn't want to think or to lay eyeson anybody who was liable to think.

　　There was but one prescription for such a condition, and I gave itto myself--the adventure-path. I didn't wait to learn the resultof my examinations. I stowed a roll of blankets and some coldfood into a borrowed whitehall boat and set sail. Out of theOakland Estuary I drifted on the last of an early morning ebb,caught the first of the flood up bay, and raced along with aspanking breeze. San Pablo Bay was smoking, and the CarquinezStraits off the Selby Smelter were smoking, as I picked up aheadand left astern the old landmarks I had first learned with Nelsonin the unreefer Reindeer.

　　Benicia showed before me. I opened the bight of Turner'sShipyard, rounded the Solano wharf, and surged along abreast ofthe patch of tules and the clustering fishermen's arks where inthe old days I had lived and drunk deep.

　　And right here something happened to me, the gravity of which Inever dreamed for many a long year to come. I had had nointention of stopping at Benicia. The tide favoured, the wind wasfair and howling--glorious sailing for a sailor. Bull Head andArmy Points showed ahead, marking the entrance to Suisun Bay whichI knew was smoking. And yet, when I laid eyes on those fishingarks lying in the water-front tules, without debate, on theinstant, I put down my tiller, came in on the sheet, and headedfor the shore. On the instant, out of the profound of my brain-fag, I knew what I wanted. I wanted to drink. I wanted to getdrunk.

　　The call was imperative. There was no uncertainty about it. Morethan anything else in the world, my frayed and frazzled mindwanted surcease from weariness in the way it knew surcease wouldcome. And right here is the point. For the first time in my lifeI consciously, deliberately, desired to get drunk. It was a new,a totally different manifestation of John Barleycorn's power. Itwas not a body need for alcohol. It was a mental desire. Myover-worked and jaded mind wanted to forget.

　　And here the point is drawn to its sharpest. Granted myprodigious brain-fag, nevertheless, had I never drunk in the past,the thought would never have entered my mind to get drunk now.Beginning with physical intolerance for alcohol, for yearsdrinking only for the sake of comradeship and because alcohol waseverywhere on the adventure-path, I had now reached the stagewhere my brain cried out, not merely for a drink, but for a drunk.And had I not been so long used to alcohol, my brain would nothave so cried out. I should have sailed on past Bull Head, and inthe smoking white of Suisun Bay, and in the wine of wind thatfilled my sail and poured through me, I should have forgotten myweary brain and rested and refreshed it.

　　So I sailed in to shore, made all fast, and hurried up among thearks. Charley Le Grant fell on my neck. His wife, Lizzie, foldedme to her capacious breast. Billy Murphy, and Joe Lloyd, and allthe survivors of the old guard, got around me and their armsaround me. Charley seized the can and started for Jorgensen'ssaloon across the railroad tracks. That meant beer. I wantedwhisky, so I called after him to bring a flask.

　　Many times that flask journeyed across the railroad tracks andback. More old friends of the old free and easy times dropped in,fishermen, Greeks, and Russians, and French. They took turns intreating, and treated all around in turn again. They came andwent, but I stayed on and drank with all. I guzzled. I swilled.I ran the liquor down and joyed as the maggots mounted in mybrain.

　　And Clam came in, Nelson's partner before me, handsome as ever,but more reckless, half insane, burning himself out with whisky.He had just had a quarrel with his partner on the sloop Gazelle,and knives had been drawn, and blows struck, and he was bent onmaddening the fever of the memory with more whisky. And while wedowned it, we remembered Nelson and that he had stretched out hisgreat shoulders for the last long sleep in this very town ofBenicia; and we wept over the memory of him, and remembered onlythe good things of him, and sent out the flask to be filled anddrank again.

　　They wanted me to stay over, but through the open door I could seethe brave wind on the water, and my ears were filled with the roarof it. And while I forgot that I had plunged into the booksnineteen hours a day for three solid months, Charley Le Grantshifted my outfit into a big Columbia River salmon boat. He addedcharcoal and a fisherman's brazier, a coffee pot and frying pan,and the coffee and the meat, and a black bass fresh from the waterthat day.

　　They had to help me down the rickety wharf and into the salmonboat. Likewise they stretched my boom and sprit until the sailset like a board. Some feared to set the sprit; but I insisted,and Charley had no doubts. He knew me of old, and knew that Icould sail as long as I could see. They cast off my painter. Iput the tiller up, filled away before it, and with dizzy eyeschecked and steadied the boat on her course and waved farewell.

　　The tide had turned, and the fierce ebb, running in the teeth of afiercer wind, kicked up a stiff, upstanding sea. Suisun Bay waswhite with wrath and sea-lump. But a salmon boat can sail, and Iknew how to sail a salmon boat. So I drove her into it, andthrough it, and across, and maundered aloud and chanted my disdainfor all the books and schools. Cresting seas filled me a foot orso with water, but I laughed at it sloshing about my feet, andchanted my disdain for the wind and the water. I hailed myself amaster of life, riding on the back of the unleashed elements, andJohn Barleycorn rode with me. Amid dissertations on mathematicsand philosophy and spoutings and quotations, I sang all the oldsongs learned in the days when I went from the cannery to theoyster boats to be a pirate--such songs as: "Black Lulu," "FlyingCloud," "Treat my Daughter Kind-i-ly," "The Boston Burglar," "Comeall you Rambling, Gambling Men," "I Wisht I was a Little Bird,""Shenandoah," and "Ranzo, Boys, Ranzo."

　　Hours afterward, in the fires of sunset, where the Sacramento andthe San Joaquin tumble their muddy floods together, I took the NewYork Cut-Off, skimmed across the smooth land-locked water pastBlack Diamond, on into the San Joaquin, and on to Antioch, where,somewhat sobered and magnificently hungry, I laid alongside a bigpotato sloop that had a familiar rig. Here were old friendsaboard, who fried my black bass in olive oil. Then, too, therewas a meaty fisherman's stew, delicious with garlic, and crustyItalian bread without butter, and all washed down with pint mugsof thick and heady claret.

　　My salmon boat was a-soak, but in the snug cabin of the sloop dryblankets and a dry bunk were mine; and we lay and smoked andyarned of old days, while overhead the wind screamed through therigging and taut halyards drummed against the mast.