The Human Drift .................................................................................................................................................1

The history of civilisation is a history of wandering, sword in hand, in search of food. In the misty younger

world we catch glimpses of phantom races, rising, slaying, finding food, building rude civilisations, decaying,

falling under the swords of stronger hands, and passing utterly away. Man, like any other animal, has roved

over the earth seeking what he might devour; and not romance and adventure, but the hungerneed, has urged

him on his vast adventures. Whether a bankrupt gentleman sailing to colonise Virginia or a lean Cantonese

contracting to labour on the sugar plantations of Hawaii, in each case, gentleman and coolie, it is a desperate

It has always been so, from the time of the first prehuman anthropoid crossing a mountaindivide in quest

of better berry bushes beyond, down to the latest Slovak, arriving on our shores today, to go to work in the

coalmines of Pennsylvania. These migratory movements of peoples have been called drifts, and the word is

apposite. Unplanned, blind, automatic, spurred on by the pain of hunger, man has literally drifted his way

around the planet. There have been drifts in the past, innumerable and forgotten, and so remote that no

records have been left, or composed of such lowtyped humans or prehumans that they made no scratchings

These early drifts we conjecture and know must have occurred, just as we know that the first uprightwalking

brutes were descended from some kin of the quadrumana through having developed "a pair of great toes out

of two opposable thumbs." Dominated by fear, and by their very fear accelerating their development, these

early ancestors of ours, suffering hungerpangs very like the ones we experience today, drifted on, hunting

and being hunted, eating and being eaten, wandering through thousandyearlong odysseys of screaming

primordial savagery, until they left their skeletons in glacial gravels, some of them, and their

There have been drifts from east to west and west to east, from north to south and back again, drifts that have

crisscrossed one another, and drifts colliding and recoiling and caroming off in new directions. From

Central Europe the Aryans have drifted into Asia, and from Central Asia the Turanians have drifted across

Europe. Asia has thrown forth great waves of hungry humans from the prehistoric "roundbarrow"

"broadheads" who overran Europe and penetrated to Scandinavia and England, down through the hordes of

Attila and Tamerlane, to the present immigration of Chinese and Japanese that threatens America. The

Phoenicians and the Greeks, with unremembered drifts behind them, colonised the Mediterranean. Rome was

engulfed in the torrent of Germanic tribes drifting down from the north before a flood of drifting Asiatics.

The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, after having drifted whence no man knows, poured into Britain, and the

English have carried this drift on around the world. Retreating before stronger breeds, hungry and voracious,

the Eskimo has drifted to the inhospitable polar regions, the Pigmy to the feverrotten jungles of Africa. And

in this day the drift of the races continues, whether it be of Chinese into the Philippines and the Malay

Peninsula, of Europeans to the United States or of Americans to the wheatlands of Manitoba and the

Perhaps most amazing has been the South Sea Drift. Blind, fortuitous, precarious as no other drift has been,

nevertheless the islands in that waste of ocean have received drift after drift of the races. Down from the

mainland of Asia poured an Aryan drift that built civilisations in Ceylon, Java, and Sumatra. Only the

monuments of these Aryans remain. They themselves have perished utterly, though not until after leaving

evidences of their drift clear across the great South Pacific to far Easter Island. And on that drift they

encountered races who had accomplished the drift before them, and they, the Aryans, passed, in turn, before

the drift of other and subsequent races whom we today call the Polynesian and the Melanesian.

Man early discovered death. As soon as his evolution permitted, he made himself better devices for killing

than the old natural ones of fang and claw. He devoted himself to the invention of killing devices before he

discovered fire or manufactured for himself religion. And to this day, his finest creative energy and technical

skill are devoted to the same old task of making better and ever better killing weapons. All his days, down all

the past, have been spent in killing. And from the fearstricken, jungle lurking, cavehaunting creature of

long ago, he won to empery over the whole animal world because he developed into the most terrible and

awful killer of all the animals. He found himself crowded. He killed to make room, and as he made room ever

he increased and found himself crowded, and ever he went on killing to make more room. Like a settler

clearing land of its weeds and forest bushes in order to plant corn, so man was compelled to clear all manner

of life away in order to plant himself. And, sword in hand, he has literally hewn his way through the vast

masses of life that occupied the earth space he coveted for himself. And ever he has carried the battle wider

and wider, until today not only is he a far more capable killer of men and animals than ever before, but he

has pressed the battle home to the infinite and invisible hosts of menacing lives in the world of

It is true, that they that rose by the sword perished by the sword. And yet, not only did they not all perish, but

more rose by the sword than perished by it, else man would not today be overrunning the world in such

huge swarms. Also, it must not be forgotten that they who did not rise by the sword did not rise at all. They

were not. In view of this, there is something wrong with Doctor Jordan's wartheory, which is to the effect

that the best being sent out to war, only the second best, the men who are left, remain to breed a secondbest

race, and that, therefore, the human race deteriorates under war. If this be so, if we have sent forth the best we

bred and gone on breeding from the men who were left, and since we have done this for ten thousand

millenniums and are what we splendidly are today, then what unthinkably splendid and godlike beings

must have been our forebears those ten thousand millenniums ago! Unfortunately for Doctor Jordan's theory,

those ancient forebears cannot live up to this fine reputation. We know them for what they were, and before

the monkey cage of any menagerie we catch truer glimpses and hints and resemblances of what our ancestors

really were long and long ago. And by killing, incessant killing, by making a shambles of the planet, those

apelike creatures have developed even into you and me. As Henley has said in "The Song of the Sword":

Driving the darkness, Even as the banners And spear of the Morning; Sifting the nations, The Slag from the

metal, The waste and the weak From the fit and the strong; Fighting the brute, The abysmal Fecundity;

Checking the gross Multitudinous blunders, The groping, the purblind Excesses in service Of the Womb

As time passed and man increased, he drifted ever farther afield in search of room. He encountered other

drifts of men, and the killing of men became prodigious. The weak and the decadent fell under the sword.

Nations that faltered, that waxed prosperous in fat valleys and rich river deltas, were swept away by the drifts

of stronger men who were nourished on the hardships of deserts and mountains and who were more capable

with the sword. Unknown and unnumbered billions of men have been so destroyed in prehistoric times.

Draper says that in the twenty years of the Gothic war, Italy lost 15,000,000 of her population; "and that the

wars, famines, and pestilences of the reign of Justinian diminished the human species by the almost

incredible number of 100,000,000." Germany, in the Thirty Years' War, lost 6,000,000 inhabitants. The

And man has been destroyed in other ways than by the sword. Flood, famine, pestilence and murder are

potent factors in reducing populationin making room. As Mr. Charles Woodruff, in his "Expansion of

Races," has instanced: In 1886, when the dikes of the Yellow River burst, 7,000,000 people were drowned.

The failure of crops in Ireland, in 1848, caused 1,000,000 deaths. The famines in India of 18967 and

18991900 lessened the population by 21,000,000. The T'ai'ping rebellion and the Mohammedan rebellion,

combined with the famine of 187778, destroyed scores of millions of Chinese. Europe has been swept

repeatedly by great plagues. In India, for the period of 1903 to 1907, the plague deaths averaged between one

and two millions a year. Mr. Woodruff is responsible for the assertion that 10,000,000 persons now living in

the United States are doomed to die of tuberculosis. And in this same country ten thousand persons a year are

directly murdered. In China, between three and six millions of infants are annually destroyed, while the total

infanticide record of the whole world is appalling. In Africa, now, human beings are dying by millions of the

More destructive of life than war, is industry. In all civilised countries great masses of people are crowded

into slums and labourghettos, where disease festers, vice corrodes, and famine is chronic, and where they

die more swiftly and in greater numbers than do the soldiers in our modern wars. The very infant mortality of

a slum parish in the East End of London is three times that of a middleclass parish in the West End. In the

United States, in the last fourteen years, a total of coalminers, greater than our entire standing army, has

been killed and injured. The United States Bureau of Labour states that during the year 1908, there were

between 30,000 and 35,000 deaths of workers by accidents, while 200,000 more were injured. In fact, the

safest place for a workingman is in the army. And even if that army be at the front, fighting in Cuba or

South Africa, the soldier in the ranks has a better chance for life than the workingman at home.

And yet, despite this terrible roll of death, despite the enormous killing of the past and the enormous killing

of the present, there are today alive on the planet a billion and three quarters of human beings. Our

immediate conclusion is that man is exceedingly fecund and very tough. Never before have there been so

many people in the world. In the past centuries the world's population has been smaller; in the future

centuries it is destined to be larger. And this brings us to that old bugbear that has been so frequently laughed

away and that still persists in raising its grisly headnamely, the doctrine of Malthus. While man's

increasing efficiency of foodproduction, combined with colonisation of whole virgin continents, has for

generations given the apparent lie to Malthus' mathematical statement of the Law of Population, nevertheless

the essential significance of his doctrine remains and cannot be challenged. Population DOES press against

subsistence. And no matter how rapidly subsistence increases, population is certain to catch up with it.

When man was in the hunting stage of development, wide areas were necessary for the maintenance of scant

populations. With the shepherd stages, the means of subsistence being increased, a larger population was

supported on the same territory. The agricultural stage gave support to a still larger population; and, today,

with the increased foodgetting efficiency of a machine civilisation, an even larger population is made

possible. Nor is this theoretical. The population is here, a billion and three quarters of men, women, and

A heavy European drift to the New World has gone on and is going on; yet Europe, whose population a

century ago was 170,000,000, has today 500,000,000. At this rate of increase, provided that subsistence is

not overtaken, a century from now the population of Europe will be 1,500,000,000. And be it noted of the

present rate of increase in the United States that only onethird is due to immigration, while twothirds is

due to excess of births over deaths. And at this present rate of increase, the population of the United States

Man, the hungry one, the killer, has always suffered for lack of room. The world has been chronically

overcrowded. Belgium with her 572 persons to the square mile is no more crowded than was Denmark when

it supported only 500 palaeolithic people. According to Mr. Woodruff, cultivated land will produce 1600

times as much food as hunting land. From the time of the Norman Conquest, for centuries Europe could

support no more than 25 to the square mile. Today Europe supports 81 to the square mile. The explanation

of this is that for the several centuries after the Norman Conquest her population was saturated. Then, with

the development of trading and capitalism, of exploration and exploitation of new lands, and with the

invention of laboursaving machinery and the discovery and application of scientific principles, was brought

about a tremendous increase in Europe's foodgetting efficiency. And immediately her population sprang up.

According to the census of Ireland, of 1659, that country had a population of 500,000. One hundred and fifty

years later, her population was 8,000,000. For many centuries the population of Japan was stationary. There

seemed no way of increasing her food getting efficiency. Then, sixty years ago, came Commodore Perry,

knocking down her doors and letting in the knowledge and machinery of the superior foodgetting efficiency

of the Western world. Immediately upon this rise in subsistence began the rise of population; and it is only

the other day that Japan, finding her population once again pressing against subsistence, embarked, sword in

hand, on a westward drift in search of more room. And, sword in hand, killing and being killed, she has

carved out for herself Formosa and Korea, and driven the vanguard of her drift far into the rich interior of

For an immense period of time China's population has remained at 400,000,000the saturation point. The

only reason that the Yellow River periodically drowns millions of Chinese is that there is no other land for

those millions to farm. And after every such catastrophe the wave of human life rolls up and now millions

flood out upon that precarious territory. They are driven to it, because they are pressed remorselessly against

subsistence. It is inevitable that China, sooner or later, like Japan, will learn and put into application our own

superior foodgetting efficiency. And when that time comes, it is likewise inevitable that her population will

increase by unguessed millions until it again reaches the saturation point. And then, inoculated with Western

ideas, may she not, like Japan, take sword in hand and start forth colossally on a drift of her own for more

room? This is another reputed bogiethe Yellow Peril; yet the men of China are only men, like any other

race of men, and all men, down all history, have drifted hungrily, here, there and everywhere over the planet,

But a change has long been coming in the affairs of man. The more recent drifts of the stronger races, carving

their way through the lesser breeds to more earthspace, has led to peace, ever to wider and more lasting

peace. The lesser breeds, under penalty of being killed, have been compelled to lay down their weapons and

cease killing among themselves. The scalptalking Indian and the head hunting Melanesian have been

either destroyed or converted to a belief in the superior efficacy of civil suits and criminal prosecutions. The

planet is being subdued. The wild and the hurtful are either tamed or eliminated. From the beasts of prey and

the cannibal humans down to the deathdealing microbes, no quarter is given; and daily, wider and wider

areas of hostile territory, whether of a warring deserttribe in Africa or a pestilential feverhole like Panama,

are made peaceable and habitable for mankind. As for the great mass of stayathome folk, what percentage

of the present generation in the United States, England, or Germany, has seen war or knows anything of war

War itself, the old red anarch, is passing. It is safer to be a soldier than a workingman. The chance for life is

greater in an active campaign than in a factory or a coalmine. In the matter of killing, war is growing

impotent, and this in face of the fact that the machinery of war was never so expensive in the past nor so

dreadful. Warequipment today, in time of peace, is more expensive than of old in time of war. A standing

army costs more to maintain than it used to cost to conquer an empire. It is more expensive to be ready to kill,

than it used to be to do the killing. The price of a Dreadnought would furnish the whole army of Xerxes with

killing weapons. And, in spite of its magnificent equipment, war no longer kills as it used to when its

methods were simpler. A bombardment by a modern fleet has been known to result in the killing of one mule.

The casualties of a twentieth century war between two worldpowers are such as to make a worker in an

ironfoundry turn green with envy. War has become a joke. Men have made for themselves monsters of

battle which they cannot face in battle. Subsistence is generous these days, life is not cheap, and it is not in

the nature of flesh and blood to indulge in the carnage made possible by presentday machinery. This is not

theoretical, as will be shown by a comparison of deaths in battle and men involved, in the South African War

and the Spanish American War on the one hand, and the Civil War or the Napoleonic Wars on the other.

Not only has war, by its own evolution, rendered itself futile, but man himself, with greater wisdom and

higher ethics, is opposed to war. He has learned too much. War is repugnant to his common sense. He

conceives it to be wrong, to be absurd, and to be very expensive. For the damage wrought and the results

accomplished, it is not worth the price. Just as in the disputes of individuals the arbitration of a civil court

instead of a blood feud is more practical, so, man decides, is arbitration more practical in the disputes of

War is passing, disease is being conquered, and man's foodgetting efficiency is increasing. It is because of

these factors that there are a billion and three quarters of people alive today instead of a billion, or

threequarters of a billion. And it is because of these factors that the world's population will very soon be two

billions and climbing rapidly toward three billions. The lifetime of the generation is increasing steadily. Men

live longer these days. Life is not so precarious. The newborn infant has a greater chance for survival than at

any time in the past. Surgery and sanitation reduce the fatalities that accompany the mischances of life and

the ravages of disease. Men and women, with deficiencies and weaknesses that in the past would have

effected their rapid extinction, live today and father and mother a numerous progeny. And high as the

foodgetting efficiency may soar, population is bound to soar after it. "The abysmal fecundity" of life has not

altered. Given the food, and life will increase. A small percentage of the billion and threequarters that live

today may hush the clamour of life to be born, but it is only a small percentage. In this particular, the life in

And still another change is coming in human affairs. Though politicians gnash their teeth and cry anathema,

and man, whose superficial booklearning is vitiated by crystallised prejudice, assures us that civilisation will

go to smash, the trend of society, today, the world over, is toward socialism. The old individualism is

passing. The state interferes more and more in affairs that hitherto have been considered sacredly private.

And socialism, when the last word is said, is merely a new economic and political system whereby more men

Furthermore, not only will socialism get food more easily and in greater quantity, but it will achieve a more

equitable distribution of that food. Socialism promises, for a time, to give all men, women, and children all

they want to eat, and to enable them to eat all they want as often as they want. Subsistence will be pushed

back, temporarily, an exceedingly long way. In consequence, the flood of life will rise like a tidal wave.

There will be more marriages and more children born. The enforced sterility that obtains today for many

millions, will no longer obtain. Nor will the fecund millions in the slums and labourghettos, who today die

of all the ills due to chronic underfeeding and overcrowding, and who die with their fecundity largely

unrealised, die in that future day when the increased foodgetting efficiency of socialism will give them all

It is undeniable that population will increase prodigiouslyjust as it has increased prodigiously during the last

few centuries, following upon the increase in foodgetting efficiency. The magnitude of population in that

future day is well nigh unthinkable. But there is only so much land and water on the surface of the earth.

Man, despite his marvellous accomplishments, will never be able to increase the diameter of the planet. The

old days of virgin continents will be gone. The habitable planet, from icecap to icecap, will be inhabited.

And in the matter of foodgetting, as in everything else, man is only finite. Undreamedof efficiencies in

foodgetting may be achieved, but, soon or late, man will find himself face to face with Malthus' grim law.

Not only will population catch up with subsistence, but it will press against subsistence, and the pressure will

be pitiless and savage. Somewhere in the future is a date when man will face, consciously, the bitter fact that

When this day comes, what then? Will there be a recrudescence of old obsolete war? In a saturated

population life is always cheap, as it is cheap in China, in India, today. Will new human drifts take place,

questing for room, carving earthspace out of crowded life. Will the Sword again sing:

"Follow, O follow, then, Heroes, my harvesters! Where the tall grain is ripe Thrust in your sickles! Stripped

and adust In a stubble of empire Scything and binding The full sheaves of sovereignty."

Even if, as of old, man should wander hungrily, sword in hand, slaying and being slain, the relief would be

only temporary. Even if one race alone should hew down the last survivor of all the other races, that one race,

drifting the world around, would saturate the planet with its own life and again press against subsistence. And

in that day, the death rate and the birth rate will have to balance. Men will have to die, or be prevented from

being born. Undoubtedly a higher quality of life will obtain, and also a slowly decreasing fecundity. But this

decrease will be so slow that the pressure against subsistence will remain. The control of progeny will be one

of the most important problems of man and one of the most important functions of the state. Men will simply

Disease, from time to time, will ease the pressure. Diseases are parasites, and it must not be forgotten that just

as there are drifts in the world of man, so are there drifts in the world of microorganismshungerquests

for food. Little is known of the microorganic world, but that little is appalling; and no census of it will ever

be taken, for there is the true, literal "abysmal fecundity." Multitudinous as man is, all his totality of

individuals is as nothing in comparison with the inconceivable vastness of numbers of the microorganisms.

In your body, or in mine, right now, are swarming more individual entities than there are human beings in the

world today. It is to us an invisible world. We only guess its nearest confines. With our powerful

microscopes and ultramicroscopes, enlarging diameters twenty thousand times, we catch but the slightest

Little is known of that world, save in a general way. We know that out of it arise diseases, new to us, that

afflict and destroy man. We do not know whether these diseases are merely the drifts, in a fresh direction, of

alreadyexisting breeds of micro organisms, or whether they are new, absolutely new, breeds themselves

just spontaneously generated. The latter hypothesis is tenable, for we theorise that if spontaneous generation

still occurs on the earth, it is far more likely to occur in the form of simple organisms than of complicated

Another thing we know, and that is that it is in crowded populations that new diseases arise. They have done

so in the past. They do so today. And no matter how wise are our physicians and bacteriologists, no matter

how successfully they cope with these invaders, new invaders continue to arisenew drifts of hungry life

seeking to devour us. And so we are justified in believing that in the saturated populations of the future, when

life is suffocating in the pressure against subsistence, that new, and ever new, hosts of destroying micro

organisms will continue to arise and fling themselves upon earth crowded man to give him room. There may

even be plagues of unprecedented ferocity that will depopulate great areas before the wit of man can

overcome them. And this we know: that no matter how often these invisible hosts may be overcome by man's

becoming immune to them through a cruel and terrible selection, new hosts will ever arise of these

microorganisms that were in the world before he came and that will be here after he is gone.

After he is gone? Will he then some day be gone, and this planet know him no more? Is it thither that the

human drift in all its totality is trending? God Himself is silent on this point, though some of His prophets

have given us vivid representations of that last day when the earth shall pass into nothingness. Nor does

science, despite its radium speculations and its attempted analyses of the ultimate nature of matter, give us

any other word than that man will pass. So far as man's knowledge goes, law is universal. Elements react

under certain unchangeable conditions. One of these conditions is temperature. Whether it be in the test tube

of the laboratory or the workshop of nature, all organic chemical reactions take place only within a restricted

range of heat. Man, the latest of the ephemera, is pitifully a creature of temperature, strutting his brief day on

the thermometer. Behind him is a past wherein it was too warm for him to exist. Ahead of him is a future

wherein it will be too cold for him to exist. He cannot adjust himself to that future, because he cannot alter

universal law, because he cannot alter his own construction nor the molecules that compose him.

It would be well to ponder these lines of Herbert Spencer's which follow, and which embody, possibly, the

"Motion as well as Matter being fixed in quantity, it would seem that the change in the distribution of Matter

which Motion effects, coming to a limit in whichever direction it is carried, the indestructible Motion

thereupon necessitates a reverse distribution. Apparently, the universallycoexistent forces of attraction and

repulsion, which, as we have seen, necessitate rhythm in all minor changes throughout the Universe, also

necessitate rhythm in the totality of its changesproduce now an immeasurable period during which the

attractive forces predominating, cause universal concentration, and then an immeasurable period during

which the repulsive forces predominating, cause universal diffusionalternate eras of Evolution and

That is itthe most we knowalternate eras of evolution and dissolution. In the past there have been other

evolutions similar to that one in which we live, and in the future there may be other similar evolutionsthat

is all. The principle of all these evolutions remains, but the concrete results are never twice alike. Man was

not; he was; and again he will not be. In eternity which is beyond our comprehension, the particular evolution

of that solar satellite we call the "Earth" occupied but a slight fraction of time. And of that fraction of time

man occupies but a small portion. All the whole human drift, from the first apeman to the last savant, is but

a phantom, a flash of light and a flutter of movement across the infinite face of the starry night.

When the thermometer drops, man ceaseswith all his lusts and wrestlings and achievements; with all his

raceadventures and racetragedies; and with all his red killings, billions upon billions of human lives

multiplied by as many billions more. This is the last word of Science, unless there be some further, unguessed

word which Science will some day find and utter. In the meantime it sees no farther than the starry void,

where the "fleeting systems lapse like foam." Of what ledgeraccount is the tiny life of man in a vastness

where stars snuff out like candles and great suns blaze for a timetick of eternity and are gone?

And for us who live, no worse can happen than has happened to the earliest drifts of man, marked today by

ruined cities of forgotten civilisationruined cities, which, on excavation, are found to rest on ruins of

earlier cities, city upon city, and fourteen cities, down to a stratum where, still earlier, wandering herdsmen

drove their flocks, and where, even preceding them, wild hunters chased their prey long after the caveman

and the man of the squattingplace cracked the knucklebones of wild animals and vanished from the earth.

There is nothing terrible about it. With Richard Hovey, when he faced his death, we can say: "Behold! I have

lived!" And with another and greater one, we can lay ourselves down with a will. The one drop of living, the

one taste of being, has been good; and perhaps our greatest achievement will be that we dreamed immortality,

A sailor is born, not made. And by "sailor" is meant, not the average efficient and hopeless creature who is

found today in the forecastle of deepwater ships, but the man who will take a fabric compounded of wood

and iron and rope and canvas and compel it to obey his will on the surface of the sea. Barring captains and

mates of big ships, the smallboat sailor is the real sailor. He knowshe must knowhow to make the

wind carry his craft from one given point to another given point. He must know about tides and rips and

eddies, bar and channel markings, and day and night signals; he must be wise in weatherlore; and he must

be sympathetically familiar with the peculiar qualities of his boat which differentiate it from every other boat

that was ever built and rigged. He must know how to gentle her about, as one instance of a myriad, and to fill

her on the other tack without deadening her way or allowing her to fall off too far.

The deepwater sailor of today needs know none of these things. And he doesn't. He pulls and hauls as he is

ordered, swabs decks, washes paint, and chips ironrust. He knows nothing, and cares less. Put him in a small

boat and he is helpless. He will cut an even better figure on the hurricane deck of a horse.

I shall never forget my childastonishment when I first encountered one of these strange beings. He was a

runaway English sailor. I was a lad of twelve, with a deckedover, fourteenfoot, centreboard skiff which I

had taught myself to sail. I sat at his feet as at the feet of a god, while he discoursed of strange lands and

peoples, deeds of violence, and hairraising gales at sea. Then, one day, I took him for a sail. With all the

trepidation of the veriest little amateur, I hoisted sail and got under way. Here was a man, looking on

critically, I was sure, who knew more in one second about boats and the water than I could ever know. After

an interval, in which I exceeded myself, he took the tiller and the sheet. I sat on the little thwart amidships,

openmouthed, prepared to learn what real sailing was. My mouth remained open, for I learned what a real

sailor was in a small boat. He couldn't trim the sheet to save himself, he nearly capsized several times in

squalls, and, once again, by blunderingly jibing over; he didn't know what a centreboard was for, nor did he

know that in running a boat before the wind one must sit in the middle instead of on the side; and finally,

when we came back to the wharf, he ran the skiff in full tilt, shattering her nose and carrying away the

Which points my moral. A man can sail in the forecastles of big ships all his life and never know what real

sailing is. From the time I was twelve, I listened to the lure of the sea. When I was fifteen I was captain and

owner of an oysterpirate sloop. By the time I was sixteen I was sailing in scowschooners, fishing salmon

with the Greeks up the Sacramento River, and serving as sailor on the Fish Patrol. And I was a good sailor,

too, though all my cruising had been on San Francisco Bay and the rivers tributary to it. I had never been on

Then, the month I was seventeen, I signed before the mast as an able seaman on a threetopmast schooner

bound on a sevenmonths' cruise across the Pacific and back again. As my shipmates promptly informed me,

I had had my nerve with me to sign on as able seaman. Yet behold, I WAS an able seaman. I had graduated

from the right school. It took no more than minutes to learn the names and uses of the few new ropes. It was

simple. I did not do things blindly. As a smallboat sailor I had learned to reason out and know the WHY of

everything. It is true, I had to learn how to steer by compass, which took maybe half a minute; but when it

came to steering "fullandby" and "closeandby," I could beat the average of my shipmates, because that

was the very way I had always sailed. Inside fifteen minutes I could box the compass around and back again.

And there was little else to learn during that sevenmonths' cruise, except fancy ropesailorising, such as the

more complicated lanyard knots and the making of various kinds of sennit and ropemats. The point of all of

which is that it is by means of smallboat sailing that the real sailor is best schooled.

And if a man is a born sailor, and has gone to the school of the sea, never in all his life can he get away from

the sea again. The salt of it is in his bones as well as his nostrils, and the sea will call to him until he dies. Of

late years, I have found easier ways of earning a living. I have quit the forecastle for keeps, but always I come

back to the sea. In my case it is usually San Francisco Bay, than which no lustier, tougher, sheet of water can

It really blows on San Francisco Bay. During the winter, which is the best cruising season, we have

southeasters, southwesters, and occasional howling northers. Throughout the summer we have what we call

the "seabreeze," an unfailing wind off the Pacific that on most afternoons in the week blows what the

Atlantic Coast yachtsmen would name a gale. They are always surprised by the small spread of canvas our

yachts carry. Some of them, with schooners they have sailed around the Horn, have looked proudly at their

own lofty sticks and huge spreads, then patronisingly and even pityingly at ours. Then, perchance, they have

joined in a club cruise from San Francisco to Mare Island. They found the morning run up the Bay delightful.

In the afternoon, when the brave west wind ramped across San Pablo Bay and they faced it on the long beat

home, things were somewhat different. One by one, like a flight of swallows, our more meagrely sparred and

canvassed yachts went by, leaving them wallowing and dead and shortening down in what they called a gale

but which we called a dandy sailing breeze. The next time they came out, we would notice their sticks cut

down, their booms shortened, and their after leeches nearer the luffs by whole cloths.

As for excitement, there is all the difference in the world between a ship in trouble at sea, and a small boat in

trouble on landlocked water. Yet for genuine excitement and thrill, give me the small boat. Things happen

so quickly, and there are always so few to do the workand hard work, too, as the smallboat sailor knows.

I have toiled all night, both watches on deck, in a typhoon off the coast of Japan, and been less exhausted

than by two hours' work at reefing down a thirtyfoot sloop and heaving up two anchors on a lee shore in a

Hard work and excitement? Let the wind baffle and drop in a heavy tideway just as you are sailing your

little sloop through a narrow drawbridge. Behold your sails, upon which you are depending, flap with

sudden emptiness, and then see the impish wind, with a haul of eight points, fill your jib aback with a gusty

puff. Around she goes, and sweeps, not through the open draw, but broadside on against the solid piles. Hear

the roar of the tide, sucking through the trestle. And hear and see your pretty, freshpainted boat crash

against the piles. Feel her stout little hull give to the impact. See the rail actually pinch in. Hear your canvas

tearing, and see the black, squareended timbers thrusting holes through it. Smash! There goes your topmast

stay, and the topmast reels over drunkenly above you. There is a ripping and crunching. If it continues, your

starboard shrouds will be torn out. Grab a ropeany ropeand take a turn around a pile. But the free end of

the rope is too short. You can't make it fast, and you hold on and wildly yell for your one companion to get a

turn with another and longer rope. Hold on! You hold on till you are purple in the face, till it seems your arms

are dragging out of their sockets, till the blood bursts from the ends of your fingers. But you hold, and your

partner gets the longer rope and makes it fast. You straighten up and look at your hands. They are ruined.

You can scarcely relax the crooks of the fingers. The pain is sickening. But there is no time. The skiff, which

is always perverse, is pounding against the barnacles on the piles which threaten to scrape its gunwale off. It's

drop the peak! Down jib! Then you run lines, and pull and haul and heave, and exchange unpleasant remarks

with the bridgetender who is always willing to meet you more than half way in such repartee. And finally, at

the end of an hour, with aching back, sweatsoaked shirt, and slaughtered hands, you are through and

swinging along on the placid, beneficent tide between narrow banks where the cattle stand kneedeep and

gaze wonderingly at you. Excitement! Work! Can you beat it in a calm day on the deep sea?

I've tried it both ways. I remember labouring in a fourteen days' gale off the coast of New Zealand. We were

a tramp collier, rusty and battered, with six thousand tons of coal in our hold. Life lines were stretched fore

and aft; and on our weather side, attached to smokestack guys and rigging, were huge ropenettings, hung

there for the purpose of breaking the force of the seas and so saving our messroom doors. But the doors

were smashed and the messrooms washed out just the same. And yet, out of it all, arose but the one feeling,

In contrast with the foregoing, about the liveliest eight days of my life were spent in a small boat on the west

coast of Korea. Never mind why I was thus voyaging up the Yellow Sea during the month of February in

belowzero weather. The point is that I was in an open boat, a sampan, on a rocky coast where there were no

lighthouses and where the tides ran from thirty to sixty feet. My crew were Japanese fishermen. We did not

speak each other's language. Yet there was nothing monotonous about that trip. Never shall I forget one

particular cold bitter dawn, when, in the thick of driving snow, we took in sail and dropped our small anchor.

The wind was howling out of the northwest, and we were on a lee shore. Ahead and astern, all escape was cut

off by rocky headlands, against whose bases burst the unbroken seas. To windward a short distance, seen

only between the snowsqualls, was a low rocky reef. It was this that inadequately protected us from the

The Japanese crawled under a communal rice mat and went to sleep. I joined them, and for several hours we

dozed fitfully. Then a sea deluged us out with icy water, and we found several inches of snow on top the mat.

The reef to windward was disappearing under the rising tide, and moment by moment the seas broke more

strongly over the rocks. The fishermen studied the shore anxiously. So did I, and with a sailor's eye, though I

could see little chance for a swimmer to gain that surfhammered line of rocks. I made signs toward the

headlands on either flank. The Japanese shook their heads. I indicated that dreadful lee shore. Still they shook

their heads and did nothing. My conclusion was that they were paralysed by the hopelessness of the situation.

Yet our extremity increased with every minute, for the rising tide was robbing us of the reef that served as

buffer. It soon became a case of swamping at our anchor. Seas were splashing on board in growing volume,

and we baled constantly. And still my fishermen crew eyed the surfbattered shore and did nothing.

At last, after many narrow escapes from complete swamping, the fishermen got into action. All hands tailed

on to the anchor and hove it up. For'ard, as the boat's head paid off, we set a patch of sail about the size of a

floursack. And we headed straight for shore. I unlaced my shoes, unbottoned my greatcoat and coat, and

was ready to make a quick partial strip a minute or so before we struck. But we didn't strike, and, as we

rushed in, I saw the beauty of the situation. Before us opened a narrow channel, frilled at its mouth with

breaking seas. Yet, long before, when I had scanned the shore closely, there had been no such channel. I

HAD FORGOTTEN THE THIRTYFOOT TIDE. And it was for this tide that the Japanese had so

precariously waited. We ran the frill of breakers, curved into a tiny sheltered bay where the water was

scarcely flawed by the gale, and landed on a beach where the salt sea of the last tide lay frozen in long

curving lines. And this was one gale of three in the course of those eight days in the sampan. Would it have

been beaten on a ship? I fear me the ship would have gone aground on the outlying reef and that its people

There are enough surprises and mishaps in a threedays' cruise in a small boat to supply a great ship on the

ocean for a full year. I remember, once, taking out on her trial trip a little thirty footer I had just bought. In

six days we had two stiff blows, and, in addition, one proper southwester and one ripsnorting southeaster. The

slight intervals between these blows were dead calms. Also, in the six days, we were aground three times.

Then, too, we tied up to the bank in the Sacramento River, and, grounding by an accident on the steep slope

on a falling tide, nearly turned a side somersault down the bank. In a stark calm and heavy tide in the

Carquinez Straits, where anchors skate on the channelscoured bottom, we were sucked against a big dock

and smashed and bumped down a quarter of a mile of its length before we could get clear. Two hours

afterward, on San Pablo Bay, the wind was piping up and we were reefing down. It is no fun to pick up a

skiff adrift in a heavy sea and gale. That was our next task, for our skiff, swamping, parted both towing

painters we had bent on. Before we recovered it we had nearly killed ourselves with exhaustion, and we

certainly had strained the sloop in every part from keelson to truck. And to cap it all, coming into our home

port, beating up the narrowest part of the San Antonio Estuary, we had a shave of inches from collision with a

big ship in tow of a tug. I have sailed the ocean in far larger craft a year at a time, in which period occurred

After all, the mishaps are almost the best part of smallboat sailing. Looking back, they prove to be

punctuations of joy. At the time they try your mettle and your vocabulary, and may make you so pessimistic

as to believe that God has a grudge against youbut afterward, ah, afterward, with what pleasure you

remember them and with what gusto do you relate them to your brother skippers in the fellowhood of

A narrow, winding slough; a half tide, exposing mud surfaced with gangrenous slime; the water itself filthy

and discoloured by the waste from the vats of a nearby tannery; the marsh grass on either side mottled with

all the shades of a decaying orchid; a crazy, ramshackled, ancient wharf; and at the end of the wharf a small,

whitepainted sloop. Nothing romantic about it. No hint of adventure. A splendid pictorial argument against

the alleged joys of smallboat sailing. Possibly that is what Cloudesley and I thought, that sombre, leaden

morning as we turned out to cook breakfast and wash decks. The latter was my stunt, but one look at the dirty

water overside and another at my freshpainted deck, deterred me. After breakfast, we started a game of

chess. The tide continued to fall, and we felt the sloop begin to list. We played on until the chess men began

to fall over. The list increased, and we went on deck. Bowline and sternline were drawn taut. As we looked

the boat listed still farther with an abrupt jerk. The lines were now very taut.

"Seven feet of water," he announced. "The bank is almost up and down. The first thing that touches will be

An ominous, minute snapping noise came from the sternline. Even as we looked, we saw a strand fray and

part. Then we jumped. Scarcely had we bent another line between the stern and the wharf, when the original

line parted. As we bent another line for'ard, the original one there crackled and parted. After that, it was an

We ran more and more lines, and more and more lines continued to part, and more and more the pretty boat

went over on her side. We bent all our spare lines; we unrove sheets and halyards; we used our twoinch

hawser; we fastened lines part way up the mast, half way up, and everywhere else. We toiled and sweated and

enounced our mutual and sincere conviction that God's grudge still held against us. Country yokels came

down on the wharf and sniggered at us. When Cloudesley let a coil of rope slip down the inclined deck into

the vile slime and fished it out with seasick countenance, the yokels sniggered louder and it was all I could do

By the time the sloop's deck was perpendicular, we had unbent the boomlift from below, made it fast to the

wharf, and, with the other end fast nearly to the masthead, heaved it taut with block and tackle. The lift was

of steel wire. We were confident that it could stand the strain, but we doubted the holdingpower of the stays

The tide had two more hours to ebb (and it was the big runout), which meant that five hours must elapse ere

the returning tide would give us a chance to learn whether or not the sloop would rise to it and right herself.

The bank was almost up and down, and at the bottom, directly beneath us, the fastebbing tide left a pit of the

vilest, illest smelling, illestappearing muck to be seen in many a day's ride. Said Cloudesley to me gazing

"I love you as a brother. I'd fight for you. I'd face roaring lions, and sudden death by field and flood. But just

the same, don't you fall into that." He shuddered nauseously. "For if you do, I haven't the grit to pull you out.

I simply couldn't. You'd be awful. The best I could do would be to take a boathook and shove you down out

We sat on the upper sidewall of the cabin, dangled our legs down the top of the cabin, leaned our backs

against the deck, and played chess until the rising tide and the block and tackle on the boomlift enabled us

to get her on a respectable keel again. Years afterward, down in the South Seas, on the island of Ysabel, I was

caught in a similar predicament. In order to clean her copper, I had careened the Snark broadside on to the

beach and outward. When the tide rose, she refused to rise. The water crept in through the scuppers, mounted

over the rail, and the level of the ocean slowly crawled up the slant of the deck. We battened down the

engineroom hatch, and the sea rose to it and over it and climbed perilously near to the cabin

companionway and skylight. We were all sick with fever, but we turned out in the blazing tropic sun and

toiled madly for several hours. We carried our heaviest lines ashore from our mastheads and heaved with

our heaviest purchase until everything crackled including ourselves. We would spell off and lie down like

dead men, then get up and heave and crackle again. And in the end, our lower rail five feet under water and

the wavelets lapping the companionway combing, the sturdy little craft shivered and shook herself and

There is never lack of exercise in smallboat sailing, and the hard work is not only part of the fun of it, but it

beats the doctors. San Francisco Bay is no mill pond. It is a large and draughty and variegated piece of water.

I remember, one winter evening, trying to enter the mouth of the Sacramento. There was a freshet on the

river, the flood tide from the bay had been beaten back into a strong ebb, and the lusty west wind died down

with the sun. It was just sunset, and with a fair to middling breeze, dead aft, we stood still in the rapid current.

We were squarely in the mouth of the river; but there was no anchorage and we drifted backward, faster and

faster, and dropped anchor outside as the last breath of wind left us. The night came on, beautiful and warm

and starry. My one companion cooked supper, while on deck I put everything in shape Bristol fashion. When

we turned in at nine o'clock the weatherpromise was excellent. (If I had carried a barometer I'd have known

better.) By two in the morning our shrouds were thrumming in a piping breeze, and I got up and gave her

more scope on her hawser. Inside another hour there was no doubt that we were in for a southeaster.

It is not nice to leave a warm bed and get out of a bad anchorage in a black blowy night, but we arose to the

occasion, put in two reefs, and started to heave up. The winch was old, and the strain of the jumping head sea

was too much for it. With the winch out of commission, it was impossible to heave up by hand. We knew,

because we tried it and slaughtered our hands. Now a sailor hates to lose an anchor. It is a matter of pride. Of

course, we could have buoyed ours and slipped it. Instead, however, I gave her still more hawser, veered her,

There was little sleep after that, for first one and then the other of us would be rolled out of our bunks. The

increasing size of the seas told us we were dragging, and when we struck the scoured channel we could tell

by the feel of it that our two anchors were fairly skating across. It was a deep channel, the farther edge of it

rising steeply like the wall of a canyon, and when our anchors started up that wall they hit in and held.

Yet, when we fetched up, through the darkness we could hear the seas breaking on the solid shore astern, and

Daylight showed us that between the stern of the skiff and destruction was no more than a score of feet. And

how it did blow! There were times, in the gusts, when the wind must have approached a velocity of seventy

or eighty miles an hour. But the anchors held, and so nobly that our final anxiety was that the for'ard bitts

would be jerked clean out of the boat. All day the sloop alternately ducked her nose under and sat down on

her stern; and it was not till late afternoon that the storm broke in one last and worst mad gust. For a full five

minutes an absolute dead calm prevailed, and then, with the suddenness of a thunderclap, the wind snorted

out of the southwesta shift of eight points and a boisterous gale. Another night of it was too much for us,

and we hove up by hand in a cross headsea. It was not stiff work. It was heartbreaking. And I know we

were both near to crying from the hurt and the exhaustion. And when we did get the first anchor

upanddown we couldn't break it out. Between seas we snubbed her nose down to it, took plenty of turns,

and stood clear as she jumped. Almost everything smashed and parted except the anchorhold. The chocks

were jerked out, the rail torn off, and the very coveringboard splintered, and still the anchor held. At last,

hoisting the reefed mainsail and slacking off a few of the hardwon feet of the chain, we sailed the anchor

out. It was nip and tuck, though, and there were times when the boat was knocked down flat. We repeated the

manoeuvre with the remaining anchor, and in the gathering darkness fled into the shelter of the river's mouth.

I was born so long ago that I grew up before the era of gasolene. As a result, I am oldfashioned. I prefer a

sailboat to a motor boat, and it is my belief that boatsailing is a finer, more difficult, and sturdier art than

running a motor. Gasolene engines are becoming foolproof, and while it is unfair to say that any fool can

run an engine, it is fair to say that almost any one can. Not so, when it comes to sailing a boat. More skill,

more intelligence, and a vast deal more training are necessary. It is the finest training in the world for boy and

youth and man. If the boy is very small, equip him with a small, comfortable skiff. He will do the rest. He

won't need to be taught. Shortly he will be setting a tiny legofmutton and steering with an oar. Then he

will begin to talk keels and centreboards and want to take his blankets out and stop aboard all night.

But don't be afraid for him. He is bound to run risks and encounter accidents. Remember, there are accidents

in the nursery as well as out on the water. More boys have died from hothouse culture than have died on

boats large and small; and more boys have been made into strong and reliant men by boatsailing than by

And once a sailor, always a sailor. The savour of the salt never stales. The sailor never grows so old that he

does not care to go back for one more wrestling bout with wind and wave. I know it of myself. I have turned

rancher, and live beyond sight of the sea. Yet I can stay away from it only so long. After several months have

passed, I begin to grow restless. I find myself daydreaming over incidents of the last cruise, or wondering if

the striped bass are running on Wingo Slough, or eagerly reading the newspapers for reports of the first

northern flights of ducks. And then, suddenly, there is a hurried pack of suitcases and overhauling of gear,

and we are off for Vallejo where the little Roamer lies, waiting, always waiting, for the skiff to come

alongside, for the lighting of the fire in the galleystove, for the pulling off of gaskets, the swinging up of the

mainsail, and the rattattat of the reefpoints, for the heaving short and the breaking out, and for the

"Huh! Drive four horses! I wouldn't sit behind younot for a thousand dollarsover them mountain roads."

Said another Glen Ellen friend: "What? London? He drive four horses? Can't drive one!"

And the best of it is that he was right. Even after managing to get a few hundred miles with my four horses, I

don't know how to drive one. Just the other day, swinging down a steep mountain road and rounding an

abrupt turn, I came full tilt on a horse and buggy being driven by a woman up the hill. We could not pass on

the narrow road, where was only a foot to spare, and my horses did not know how to back, especially uphill.

About two hundred yards down the hill was a spot where we could pass. The driver of the buggy said she

didn't dare back down because she was not sure of the brake. And as I didn't know how to tackle one horse, I

didn't try it. So we unhitched her horse and backed down by hand. Which was very well, till it came to

hitching the horse to the buggy again. She didn't know how. I didn't either, and I had depended on her

knowledge. It took us about half an hour, with frequent debates and consultations, though it is an absolute

No; I can't harness up one horse. But I can four, which compels me to back up again to get to my beginning.

Having selected Sonoma Valley for our abiding place, Charmian and I decided it was about time we knew

what we had in our own county and the neighbouring ones. How to do it, was the first question. Among our

many weaknesses is the one of being oldfashioned. We don't mix with gasolene very well. And, as true

sailors should, we naturally gravitate toward horses. Being one of those lucky individuals who carries his

office under his hat, I should have to take a typewriter and a load of books along. This put saddle horses out

of the running. Charmian suggested driving a span. She had faith in me; besides, she could drive a span

herself. But when I thought of the many mountains to cross, and of crossing them for three months with a

poor tired span, I vetoed the proposition and said we'd have to come back to gasolene after all. This she

vetoed just as emphatically, and a deadlock obtained until I received inspiration.

I threw my chest out and my shoulders back. "What man has done, I can do," I proclaimed grandly. "And

please don't forget that when we sailed on the Snark I knew nothing of navigation, and that I taught myself as

"Very well," she said. (And there's faith for you! ) "They shall be four saddle horses, and we'll strap our

And what I knew about horses, much less about breaking them, was just about as much as any sailor knows.

Having been kicked, bucked off, fallen over backward upon, and thrown out and run over, on very numerous

occasions, I had a mighty vigorous respect for horses; but a wife's faith must be lived up to, and I went at it.

King was a polo pony from St. Louis, and Prince a manygaited lovehorse from Pasadena. The hardest

thing was to get them to dig in and pull. They rollicked along on the levels and galloped down the hills, but

when they struck an upgrade and felt the weight of the breakingcart, they stopped and turned around and

looked at me. But I passed them, and my troubles began. Milda was fourteen years old, an unadulterated

broncho, and in temperament was a combination of mule and jackrabbit blended equally. If you pressed

your hand on her flank and told her to get over, she lay down on you. If you got her by the head and told her

to back, she walked forward over you. And if you got behind her and shoved and told her to "Giddap!" she

sat down on you. Also, she wouldn't walk. For endless weary miles I strove with her, but never could I get

her to walk a step. Finally, she was a mangerglutton. No matter how near or far from the stable, when six

o'clock came around she bolted for home and never missed the directest crossroad. Many times I rejected

The fourth and most rejected horse of all was the Outlaw. From the age of three to seven she had defied all

horsebreakers and broken a number of them. Then a long, lanky cowboy, with a fifty pound saddle and a

Mexican bit had got her proud goat. I was the next owner. She was my favourite riding horse. Charmian said

I'd have to put her in as a wheeler where I would have more control over her. Now Charmian had a favourite

riding mare called Maid. I suggested Maid as a substitute. Charmian pointed out that my mare was a branded

range horse, while hers was a near thoroughbred, and that the legs of her mare would be ruined forever if

she were driven for three months. I acknowledged her mare's thoroughbredness, and at the same time defied

her to find any thoroughbred with as small and delicatelyviciously pointed ears as my Outlaw. She indicated

Maid's exquisitely thin shinbone. I measured the Outlaw's. It was equally thin, although, I insinuated,

possibly more durable. This stabbed Charmian's pride. Of course her nearthoroughbred Maid, carrying the

blood of "old" Lexington, Morella, and a streak of the super enduring Morgan, could run, walk, and work

my unregistered Outlaw into the ground; and that was the very precise reason why such a paragon of a saddle

So it was that Charmian remained obdurate, until, one day, I got her behind the Outlaw for a fortymile

drive. For every inch of those forty miles the Outlaw kicked and jumped, in between the kicks and jumps

finding time and space in which to seize its team mate by the back of the neck and attempt to drag it to the

ground. Another trick the Outlaw developed during that drive was suddenly to turn at right angles in the

traces and endeavour to butt its teammate over the grade. Reluctantly and nobly did Charmian give in and

consent to the use of Maid. The Outlaw's shoes were pulled off, and she was turned out on range.

Finally, the four horses were hooked to the riga light Studebaker trap. With two hours and a half of

practice, in which the excitement was not abated by several jackpoles and numerous kicking matches, I

announced myself as ready for the start. Came the morning, and Prince, who was to have been a wheeler with

Maid, showed up with a badly kicked shoulder. He did not exactly show up; we had to find him, for he was

unable to walk. His leg swelled and continually swelled during the several days we waited for him. Remained

only the Outlaw. In from pasture she came, shoes were nailed on, and she was harnessed into the wheel.

Friends and relatives strove to press accident policies on me, but Charmian climbed up alongside, and Nakata

got into the rear seat with the typewriterNakata, who sailed cabinboy on the Snark for two years and who

had shown himself afraid of nothing, not even of me and my amateur jamborees in experimenting with new

modes of locomotion. And we did very nicely, thank you, especially after the first hour or so, during which

time the Outlaw had kicked about fifty various times, chiefly to the damage of her own legs and the

paintwork, and after she had bitten a couple of hundred times, to the damage of Maid's neck and Charmian's

temper. It was hard enough to have her favourite mare in the harness without also enduring the spectacle of

Our leaders were joys. King being a polo pony and Milda a rabbit, they rounded curves beautifully and darted

ahead like coyotes out of the way of the wheelers. Milda's besetting weakness was a frantic desire not to have

the leadbar strike her hocks. When this happened, one of three things occurred: either she sat down on the

leadbar, kicked it up in the air until she got her back under it, or exploded in a straightahead,

harnessdisrupting jump. Not until she carried the leadbar clean away and danced a breakdown on it and

the traces, did she behave decently. Nakata and I made the repairs with good oldfashioned balerope, which

In the meantime I was learningI shall not say to tool a fourin handbut just simply to drive four

horses. Now it is all right enough to begin with four workhorses pulling a load of several tons. But to begin

with four light horses, all running, and a light rig that seems to outrun themwell, when things happen they

happen quickly. My weakness was total ignorance. In particular, my fingers lacked training, and I made the

mistake of depending on my eyes to handle the reins. This brought me up against a disastrous optical illusion.

The bight of the off headline, being longer and heavier than that of the off wheelline, hung lower. In a

moment requiring quick action, I invariably mistook the two lines. Pulling on what I thought was the

wheelline, in order to straighten the team, I would see the leaders swing abruptly around into a jackpole.

Now for sensations of sheer impotence, nothing can compare with a jackpole, when the horrified driver

beholds his leaders prancing gaily up the road and his wheelers jogging steadily down the road, all at the

I no longer jackpole, and I don't mind admitting how I got out of the habit. It was my eyes that enslaved my

fingers into ill practices. So I shut my eyes and let the fingers go it alone. Today my fingers are independent

of my eyes and work automatically. I do not see what my fingers do. They just do it. All I see is the

Still we managed to get over the ground that first daydown sunny Sonoma Valley to the old town of

Sonoma, founded by General Vallejo as the remotest outpost on the northern frontier for the purpose of

holding back the Gentiles, as the wild Indians of those days were called. Here history was made. Here the last

Spanish mission was reared; here the Bear flag was raised; and here Kit Carson, and Fremont, and all our

We swung on over the low, rolling hills, through miles of dairy farms and chicken ranches where every

blessed hen is white, and down the slopes to Petaluma Valley. Here, in 1776, Captain Quiros came up

Petaluma Creek from San Pablo Bay in quest of an outlet to Bodega Bay on the coast. And here, later, the

Russians, with Alaskan hunters, carried skin boats across from Fort Ross to poach for seaotters on the

Spanish preserve of San Francisco Bay. Here, too, still later, General Vallejo built a fort, which still

standsone of the finest examples of Spanish adobe that remain to us. And here, at the old fort, to bring the

chronicle up to date, our horses proceeded to make peculiarly personal history with astonishing success and

dispatch. King, our peerless, polopony leader, went lame. So hopelessly lame did he go that no expert, then

and afterward, could determine whether the lameness was in his frogs, hoofs, legs, shoulders, or head. Maid

picked up a nail and began to limp. Milda, figuring the day already sufficiently spent and maniacal with

mangergluttony, began to rabbitjump. All that held her was the balerope. And the Outlaw, game to the

last, exceeded all previous exhibitions of skinremoving, paint marring, and horseeating.

At Petaluma we rested over while King was returned to the ranch and Prince sent to us. Now Prince had

proved himself an excellent wheeler, yet he had to go into the lead and let the Outlaw retain his old place.

There is an axiom that a good wheeler is a poor leader. I object to the last adjective. A good wheeler makes

an infinitely worse kind of a leader than that. I know . . . now. I ought to know. Since that day I have driven

Prince a few hundred miles in the lead. He is neither any better nor any worse than the first mile he ran in the

lead; and his worst is even extremely worse than what you are thinking. Not that he is vicious. He is merely a

goodnatured rogue who shakes hands for sugar, steps on your toes out of sheer excessive friendliness, and

But he won't get out of the way. Also, whenever he is reproved for being in the wrong, he accuses Milda of it

and bites the back of her neck. So bad has this become that whenever I yell "Prince!" in a loud voice, Milda

immediately rabbitjumps to the side, straight ahead, or sits down on the leadbar. All of which is quite

disconcerting. Picture it yourself. You are swinging round a sharp, downgrade, mountain curve, at a fast

trot. The rock wall is the outside of the curve. The inside of the curve is a precipice. The continuance of the

curve is a narrow, unrailed bridge. You hit the curve, throwing the leaders in against the wall and making the

polohorse do the work. All is lovely. The leaders are hugging the wall like nestling doves. But the moment

comes in the evolution when the leaders must shoot out ahead. They really must shoot, or else they'll hit the

wall and miss the bridge. Also, behind them are the wheelers, and the rig, and you have just eased the brake

in order to put sufficient snap into the manoeuvre. If ever teamwork is required, now is the time. Milda tries

to shoot. She does her best, but Prince, bubbling over with roguishness, lags behind. He knows the trick.

Milda is half a length ahead of him. He times it to the fraction of a second. Maid, in the wheel, overrunning

him, naturally bites him. This disturbs the Outlaw, who has been behaving beautifully, and she immediately

reaches across for Maid. Simultaneously, with a fine display of firm conviction that it's all Milda's fault,

Prince sinks his teeth into the back of Milda's defenceless neck. The whole thing has occurred in less than a

second. Under the surprise and pain of the bite, Milda either jumps ahead to the imminent peril of harness and

leadbar, or smashes into the wall, stops short with the leadbar over her back, and emits a couple of

hysterical kicks. The Outlaw invariably selects this moment to remove paint. And after things are untangled

and you have had time to appreciate the close shave, you go up to Prince and reprove him with your choicest

vocabulary. And Prince, gazelle eyed and tender, offers to shake hands with you for sugar. I leave it to any

We have some history north of the Bay. Nearly three centuries and a half ago, that doughty pirate and

explorer, Sir Francis Drake, combing the Pacific for Spanish galleons, anchored in the bight formed by Point

Reyes, on which today is one of the richest dairy regions in the world. Here, less than two decades after

Drake, Sebastien Carmenon piled up on the rocks with a silkladen galleon from the Philippines. And in this

same bay of Drake, long afterward, the Russian furpoachers rendezvous'd their bidarkas and stole in through

Farther up the coast, in Sonoma County, we pilgrimaged to the sites of the Russian settlements. At Bodega

Bay, south of what today is called Russian River, was their anchorage, while north of the river they built

their fort. And much of Fort Ross still stands. Logbastions, church, and stables hold their own, and so well,

with rusty hinges creaking, that we warmed ourselves at the hundredyearsold double fireplace and slept

under the handhewn roof beams still held together by spikes of handwrought iron.

We went to see where history had been made, and we saw scenery as well. One of our stretches in a day's

drive was from beautiful Inverness on Tomales Bay, down the Olema Valley to Bolinas Bay, along the

eastern shore of that body of water to Willow Camp, and up over the seabluffs, around the bastions of

Tamalpais, and down to Sausalito. From the head of Bolinas Bay to Willow Camp the drive on the edge of

the beach, and actually, for halfmile stretches, in the waters of the bay itself, was a delightful experience.

The wonderful part was to come. Very few San Franciscans, much less Californians, know of that drive from

Willow Camp, to the south and east, along the poppyblown cliffs, with the sea thundering in the sheer

depths hundreds of feet below and the Golden Gate opening up ahead, disclosing smoky San Francisco on her

many hills. Far off, blurred on the breast of the sea, can be seen the Farallones, which Sir Francis Drake

passed on a S. W. course in the thick of what he describes as a "stynking fog." Well might he call it that, and

a few other names, for it was the fog that robbed him of the glory of discovering San Francisco Bay.

It was on this part of the drive that I decided at last I was learning real mountaindriving. To confess the

truth, for delicious titillation of one's nerve, I have since driven over no mountain road that was worse, or

And then the contrast! From Sausalito, over excellent, parklike boulevards, through the splendid redwoods

and homes of Mill Valley, across the blossomed hills of Marin County, along the knollstudded picturesque

marshes, past San Rafael resting warmly among her hills, over the divide and up the Petaluma Valley, and on

to the grassy feet of Sonoma Mountain and home. We covered fiftyfive miles that day. Not so bad, eh, for

Prince the Rogue, the paintremoving Outlaw, the thinshanked thoroughbred, and the rabbitjumper? And

Oh, we didn't stop. We considered we were just starting, and that was many weeks ago. We have kept on

going over six counties which are comfortably large, even for California, and we are still going. We have

twisted and tabled, crisscrossed our tracks, made fascinating and lengthy dives into the interior valleys in

the hearts of Napa and Lake Counties, travelled the coast for hundreds of miles on end, and are now in

Eureka, on Humboldt Bay, which was discovered by accident by the goldseekers, who were trying to find

their way to and from the Trinity diggings. Even here, the white man's history preceded them, for dim

tradition says that the Russians once anchored here and hunted seaotter before the first Yankee trader

rounded the Horn, or the first Rocky Mountain trapper thirsted across the "Great American Desert" and

trickled down the snowy Sierras to the sunkissed land. No; we are not resting our horses here on Humboldt

Bay. We are writing this article, gorging on abalones and mussels, digging clams, and catching

recordbreaking seatrout and rockcod in the intervals in which we are not sailing, motorboating, and

These comfortably large counties! They are veritable empires. Take Humboldt, for instance. It is three times

as large as Rhode Island, one and a half times as large as Delaware, almost as large as Connecticut, and half

as large as Massachusetts. The pioneer has done his work in this north of the bay region, the foundations are

laid, and all is ready for the inevitable inrush of population and adequate development of resources which so

far have been no more than skimmed, and casually and carelessly skimmed at that. This region of the six

counties alone will some day support a population of millions. In the meanwhile, O you homeseekers, you

wealthseekers, and, above all, you climateseekers, now is the time to get in on the ground floor.

Robert Ingersoll once said that the genial climate of California would in a fairly brief time evolve a race

resembling the Mexicans, and that in two or three generations the Californians would be seen of a Sunday

morning on their way to a cockfight with a rooster under each arm. Never was made a rasher generalisation,

based on so absolute an ignorance of facts. It is to laugh. Here is a climate that breeds vigour, with just

sufficient geniality to prevent the expenditure of most of that vigour in fighting the elements. Here is a

climate where a man can work three hundred and sixtyfive days in the year without the slightest hint of

enervation, and where for three hundred and sixtyfive nights he must perforce sleep under blankets. What

more can one say? I consider myself somewhat of climate expert, having adventured among most of the

climates of five out of the six zones. I have not yet been in the Antarctic, but whatever climate obtains there

will not deter me from drawing the conclusion that nowhere is there a climate to compare with that of this

region. Maybe I am as wrong as Ingersoll was. Nevertheless I take my medicine by continuing to live in this

But to return to the horses. There is some improvement. Milda has actually learned to walk. Maid has proved

her thoroughbredness by never tiring on the longest days, and, while being the strongest and highest spirited

of all, by never causing any trouble save for an occasional kick at the Outlaw. And the Outlaw rarely gallops,

no longer butts, only periodically kicks, comes in to the pole and does her work without attempting to

vivisect Maid's medulla oblongata, andmarvel of marvelsis really and truly getting lazy. But Prince

And the country we've been over! The drives through Napa and Lake Counties! One, from Sonoma Valley,

via Santa Rosa, we could not refrain from taking several ways, and on all the ways we found the roads

excellent for machines as well as horses. One route, and a more delightful one for an automobile cannot be

found, is out from Santa Rosa, past old Altruria and Mark West Springs, then to the right and across to

Calistoga in Napa Valley. By keeping to the left, the drive holds on up the Russian River Valley, through the

miles of the noted Asti Vineyards to Cloverdale, and then by way of Pieta, Witter, and Highland Springs to

Lakeport. Still another way we took, was down Sonoma Valley, skirting San Pablo Bay, and up the lovely

Napa Valley. From Napa were side excursions through Pope and Berryessa Valleys, on to AEtna Springs, and

Continuing up the Napa Valley, walled on either hand by great rock palisades and redwood forests and

carpeted with endless vineyards, and crossing the many stone bridges for which the County is noted and

which are a joy to the beautyloving eyes as well as to the fourhorse tyro driver, past Calistoga with its old

mudbaths and chickensoup springs, with St. Helena and its giant saddle ever towering before us, we

climbed the mountains on a good grade and dropped down past the quicksilver mines to the canyon of the

Geysers. After a stop over night and an exploration of the miniaturegrand volcanic scene, we pulled on

across the canyon and took the grade where the cicadas simmered audibly in the noon sunshine among the

hillside manzanitas. Then, higher, came the big cattledotted upland pastures, and the rocky summit. And

here on the summit, abruptly, we caught a vision, or what seemed a mirage. The ocean we had left long days

before, yet far down and away shimmered a blue sea, framed on the farther shore by rugged mountains, on

the near shore by fat and rolling farm lands. Clear Lake was before us, and like proper sailors we returned to

our sea, going for a sail, a fish, and a swim ere the day was done and turning into tired Lakeport blankets in

the early evening. Well has Lake County been called the Walledin County. But the railroad is coming. They

say the approach we made to Clear Lake is similar to the approach to Lake Lucerne. Be that as it may, the

And what can be more exquisite than the drive out from Clear Lake to Ukiah by way of the Blue Lakes

chain!every turn bringing into view a picture of breathless beauty; every glance backward revealing some

perfect composition in line and colour, the intense blue of the water margined with splendid oaks, green

fields, and swaths of orange poppies. But those side glances and backward glances were provocative of

trouble. Charmian and I disagreed as to which way the connecting stream of water ran. We still disagree, for

at the hotel, where we submitted the affair to arbitration, the hotel manager and the clerk likewise disagreed. I

assume, now, that we never will know which way that stream runs. Charmian suggests "both ways." I refuse

such a compromise. No stream of water I ever saw could accomplish that feat at one and the same time. The

greatest concession I can make is that sometimes it may run one way and sometimes the other, and that in the

More valley from Ukiah to Willits, and then we turned westward through the virgin Sherwood Forest of

magnificent redwood, stopping at Alpine for the night and continuing on through Mendocino County to Fort

Bragg and "salt water." We also came to Fort Bragg up the coast from Fort Ross, keeping our coast journey

intact from the Golden Gate. The coast weather was cool and delightful, the coast driving superb. Especially

in the Fort Ross section did we find the roads thrilling, while all the way along we followed the sea. At every

stream, the road skirted dizzy cliffedges, dived down into lush growths of forest and ferns and climbed out

along the cliffedges again. The way was lined with flowerswild lilac, wild roses, poppies, and lupins.

Such lupins!giant clumps of them, of every lupinshade and colour. And it was along the Mendocino

roads that Charmian caused many delays by insisting on getting out to pick the wild blackberries,

strawberries, and thimbleberries which grew so profusely. And ever we caught peeps, far down, of steam

schooners loading lumber in the rocky coves; ever we skirted the cliffs, day after day, crossing stretches of

rolling farm lands and passing through thriving villages and sawmill towns. Memorable was our launch

trip from Mendocino City up Big River, where the steering gears of the launches work the reverse of

anywhere else in the world; where we saw a stream of logs, of six to twelve and fifteen feet in diameter,

which filled the river bed for miles to the obliteration of any sign of water; and where we were told of a white

All the streams were filled with trout, and more than once we saw the sidehill salmon on the slopes. No,

sidehill salmon is not a peripatetic fish; it is a deer out of season. But the trout! At Gualala Charmian caught

her first one. Once before in my life I had caught two . . . on angleworms. On occasion I had tried fly and

spinner and never got a strike, and I had come to believe that all this talk of flyfishing was just so much

naturefaking. But on the Gualala River I caught trouta lot of themon fly and spinners; and I was

beginning to feel quite an expert, until Nakata, fishing on bottom with a pellet of bread for bait, caught the

biggest trout of all. I now affirm there is nothing in science nor in art. Nevertheless, since that day poles and

baskets have been added to our baggage, we tackle every stream we come to, and we no longer are able to

At Usal, many hilly and picturesque miles north of Fort Bragg, we turned again into the interior of

Mendocino, crossing the ranges and coming out in Humboldt County on the south fork of Eel River at

Garberville. Throughout the trip, from Marin County north, we had been warned of "bad roads ahead." Yet

we never found those bad roads. We seemed always to be just ahead of them or behind them. The farther we

came the better the roads seemed, though this was probably due to the fact that we were learning more and

more what four horses and a light rig could do on a road. And thus do I save my face with all the counties. I

refuse to make invidious road comparisons. I can add that while, save in rare instances on steep pitches, I

have trotted my horses down all the grades, I have never had one horse fall down nor have I had to send the

Also, I am learning to throw leather. If any tyro thinks it is easy to take a shorthandled, longlashed whip,

and throw the end of that lash just where he wants it, let him put on automobile goggles and try it. On

reconsideration, I would suggest the substitution of a wire fencingmask for the goggles. For days I looked at

that whip. It fascinated me, and the fascination was composed mostly of fear. At my first attempt, Charmian

and Nakata became afflicted with the same sort of fascination, and for a long time afterward, whenever they

saw me reach for the whip, they closed their eyes and shielded their heads with their arms.

Here's the problem. Instead of pulling honestly, Prince is lagging back and manoeuvring for a bite at Milda's

neck. I have four reins in my hands. I must put these four reins into my left hand, properly gather the whip

handle and the bight of the lash in my right hand, and throw that lash past Maid without striking her and into

Prince. If the lash strikes Maid, her thoroughbredness will go up in the air, and I'll have a case of horse

hysteria on my hands for the next half hour. But follow. The whole problem is not yet stated. Suppose that I

miss Maid and reach the intended target. The instant the lash cracks, the four horses jump, Prince most of all,

and his jump, with spread wicked teeth, is for the back of Milda's neck. She jumps to escapewhich is her

second jump, for the first one came when the lash exploded. The Outlaw reaches for Maid's neck, and Maid,

who has already jumped and tried to bolt, tries to bolt harder. And all this infinitesimal fraction of time I am

trying to hold the four animals with my left hand, while my whiplash, writhing through the air, is coming

back to me. Three simultaneous things I must do: keep hold of the four reins with my left hand; slam on the

brake with my foot; and on the rebound catch that flying lash in the hollow of my right arm and get the bight

of it safely into my right hand. Then I must get two of the four lines back into my right hand and keep the

horses from running away or going over the grade. Try it some time. You will find life anything but

wearisome. Why, the first time I hit the mark and made the lash go off like a revolver shot, I was so

astounded and delighted that I was paralysed. I forgot to do any of the multitudinous other things, tangled the

whip lash in Maid's harness, and was forced to call upon Charmian for assistance. And now, confession. I

carry a few pebbles handy. They're great for reaching Prince in a tight place. But just the same I'm learning

that whip every day, and before I get home I hope to discard the pebbles. And as long as I rely on pebbles, I

From Garberville, where we ate eel to repletion and got acquainted with the aborigines, we drove down the

Eel River Valley for two days through the most unthinkably glorious body of redwood timber to be seen

anywhere in California. From Dyerville on to Eureka, we caught glimpses of railroad construction and of

great concrete bridges in the course of building, which advertised that at least Humboldt County was going to

We still consider our trip is just begun. As soon as this is mailed from Eureka, it's heigh ho! for the horses

and pull on. We shall continue up the coast, turn in for Hoopa Reservation and the gold mines, and shoot

down the Trinity and Klamath rivers in Indian canoes to Requa. After that, we shall go on through Del Norte

County and into Oregon. The trip so far has justified us in taking the attitude that we won't go home until the

winter rains drive us in. And, finally, I am going to try the experiment of putting the Outlaw in the lead and

relegating Prince to his old position in the near wheel. I won't need any pebbles then.

It was at Quito, the mountain capital of Ecuador, that the following passage at correspondence took place.

Having occasion to buy a pair of shoes in a shop six feet by eight in size and with walls three feet thick, I

noticed a mangy leopard skin on the floor. I had no Spanish. The shopkeeper had no English. But I was an

adept at sign language. I wanted to know where I should go to buy leopard skins. On my scribblepad I drew

the interesting streets of a city. Then I drew a small shop, which, after much effort, I persuaded the proprietor

into recognising as his shop. Next, I indicated in my drawing that on the many streets there were many shops.

And, finally, I made myself into a living interrogation mark, pointing all the while from the mangy leopard

But the proprietor failed to follow me. So did his assistant. The street came in to helpthat is, as many as

could crowd into the sixbyeight shop; while those that could not force their way in held an overflow

meeting on the sidewalk. The proprietor and the rest took turns at talking to me in rapidfire Spanish, and,

from the expressions on their faces, all concluded that I was remarkably stupid. Again I went through my

programme, pointing on the sketch from the one shop to the many shops, pointing out that in this particular

shop was one leopard skin, and then questing interrogatively with my pencil among all the shops. All

regarded me in blank silence, until I saw comprehension suddenly dawn on the face of a small boy.

This appealed to me as mountain tigers, namely, leopards; and in token that he understood, the boy made

signs for me to follow him, which I obeyed. He led me for a quarter of a mile, and paused before the doorway

of a large building where soldiers slouched on sentry duty and in and out of which went other soldiers.

Fifteen minutes later he was out again, without leopard skins, but full of information. By means of my card,

of my hotel card, of my watch, and of the boy's fingers, I learned the following: that at six o'clock that

evening he would arrive at my hotel with ten leopard skins for my inspection. Further, I learned that the skins

were the property of one Captain Ernesto Becucci. Also, I learned that the boy's name was Eliceo.

The boy was prompt. At six o'clock he was at my room. In his hand was a small roll addressed to me. On

opening it I found it to be manuscript piano music, the Hora Tranquila Valse, or "Tranquil Hour Waltz," by

Ernesto Becucci. I came for leopard skins, thought I, and the owner sends me sheet music instead. But the

boy assured me that he would have the skins at the hotel at nine next morning, and I entrusted to him the

"A thousand thanks for your kind presentation of Hora Tranquila Valse. Mrs. London will play it for me this

Next morning Eliceo was back, but without the skins. Instead, he gave me a letter, written in Spanish, of

" I sent you last night an offering by the bearer of this note, and you returned me a letter which I translated.

"Be it known to you, sir, that I am giving this waltz away in the best society, and therefore to your honoured

self. Therefore it is beholden to you to recognise the attention, I mean by a tangible return, as this

composition was made by myself. You will therefore send by your humble servant, the bearer, any offering,

however minute, that you may be prompted to make. Send it under cover of an envelope. The bearer may be

"I did not indulge in the pleasure of visiting your honourable self this morning, as I find my body not to be

"As regards the skins from the mountain, you shall be waited on by a small boy at seven o'clock at night with

"In the hope that you will look upon this in the same light as myself, I beg to be allowed to remain,

Well, thought I, this Captain Ernesto Becucci has shown himself to be such an undependable person, that,

while I don't mind rewarding him for his composition, I fear me if I do I never shall lay eyes on those leopard

"Have the boy bring the skins at seven o'clock this evening, when I shall be glad to look at them. This

evening when the boy brings the skins, I shall be pleased to give him, in an envelope, for you, a tangible

"Please put the price on each skin, and also let me know for what sum all the skins will sell together.

Now, thought I, I have him. No skins, no tangible return; and evidently he is set on receiving that tangible

At seven o'clock Eliceo was back, but without leopard skins. He handed me this letter:

"I wish to instil in you the belief that I lost today, at half past three in the afternoon, the key to my cubicle.

While distributing rations to the soldiers I dropped it. I see in this loss the act of God.

"I received a letter from your honourable self, delivered by the one who bears you this poor response of mine.

Tomorrow I will burst open the door to permit me to keep my word with you. I feel myself eternally shamed

not to be able to dominate the evils that afflict colonial mankind. Please send me the trifle that you offered

me. Send me this proof of your appreciation by the bearer, who is to be trusted. Also give to him a small sum

Also, inclosed in the foregoing letter was the following original poem, e propos neither of leopard skins nor

Thou canst not weep; Nor ask I for a year To rid me of my woes Or make my life more dear.

The mystic chains that bound Thy allfond heart to mine, Alas! asundered are For now and for all time.

In vain you strove to hide, From vulgar gaze of man, The burning glance of love That none but Love can

Go on thy starlit way And leave me to my fate; Our souls must needs unite But, God! 'twill be too late.

"I regret exceedingly to hear that by act of God, at half past three this afternoon, you lost the key to your

cubicle. Please have the boy bring the skins at seven o'clock tomorrow morning, at which time, when he

brings the skins, I shall be glad to make you that tangible return for your "Tranquil Hour Waltz."

"After offering you my most sincere respects, I beg to continue by telling you that no one, up to the time of

writing, has treated me with such lack of attention. It was a present to GENTLEMEN who were to retain the

piece of music, and who have all, without exception, made me a present of five dollars. It is beyond my

humble capacity to believe that you, after having offered to send me money in an envelope, should fail to do

"Send me, I pray of you, the money to remunerate the small boy for his repeated visits to you. Please be

"Last night I came to the hotel with the boy. You were dining. I waited more than an hour for you and then

went to the theatre. Give the boy some small amount, and send me a like offering of larger proportions.

And here, like one of George Moore's realistic studies, ends this intercourse with Captain Ernesto Becucci.

Nothing happened. Nothing ever came to anything. He got no tangible return, and I got no leopard skins. The

tangible return he might have got, I presented to Eliceo, who promptly invested it in a pair of trousers and a

(NOTE TO EDITOR.This is a faithful narration of what actually happened in Quito, Ecuador.)

The month in which my seventeenth birthday arrived I signed on before the mast on the Sophie Sutherland, a

threetopmast schooner bound on a sevenmonths' sealhunting cruise to the coast of Japan. We sailed from

San Francisco, and immediately I found confronting me a problem of no inconsiderable proportions. There

were twelve men of us in the forecastle, ten of whom were hardened, tarrythumbed sailors. Not alone was I

a youth and on my first voyage, but I had for shipmates men who had come through the hard school of the

merchant service of Europe. As boys, they had had to perform their ship's duty, and, in addition, by

immemorial sea custom, they had had to be the slaves of the ordinary and ablebodied seamen. When they

became ordinary seamen they were still the slaves of the ablebodied. Thus, in the forecastle, with the watch

below, an able seaman, lying in his bunk, will order an ordinary seaman to fetch him his shoes or bring him a

drink of water. Now the ordinary seaman may be lying in HIS bunk. He is just as tired as the able seaman.

Yet he must get out of his bunk and fetch and carry. If he refuses, he will be beaten. If, perchance, he is so

strong that he can whip the able seaman, then all the able seamen, or as many as may be necessary, pitch

My problem now becomes apparent. These hardbit Scandinavian sailors had come through a hard school.

As boys they had served their mates, and as able seamen they looked to be served by other boys. I was a

boywithal with a man's body. I had never been to sea beforewithal I was a good sailor and knew my

business. It was either a case of holding my own with them or of going under. I had signed on as an equal,

and an equal I must maintain myself, or else endure seven months of hell at their hands. And it was this very

equality they resented. By what right was I an equal? I had not earned that high privilege. I had not endured

the miseries they had endured as maltreated boys or bullied ordinaries. Worse than that, I was a landlubber

making his first voyage. And yet, by the injustice of fate, on the ship's articles I was their equal.

My method was deliberate, and simple, and drastic. In the first place, I resolved to do my work, no matter

how hard or dangerous it might be, so well that no man would be called upon to do it for me. Further, I put

ginger in my muscles. I never malingered when pulling on a rope, for I knew the eagle eyes of my forecastle

mates were squinting for just such evidences of my inferiority. I made it a point to be among the first of the

watch going on deck, among the last going below, never leaving a sheet or tackle for some one else to coil

over a pin. I was always eager for the run aloft for the shifting of topsail sheets and tacks, or for the setting or

Furthermore, I was on a hairtrigger of resentment myself. I knew better than to accept any abuse or the

slightest patronizing. At the first hint of such, I went off I exploded. I might be beaten in the subsequent

fight, but I left the impression that I was a wildcat and that I would just as willingly fight again. My

intention was to demonstrate that I would tolerate no imposition. I proved that the man who imposed on me

must have a fight on his hands. And doing my work well, the innate justice of the men, assisted by their

wholesome dislike for a clawing and rending wildcat ruction, soon led them to give over their hectoring.

After a bit of strife, my attitude was accepted, and it was my pride that I was taken in as an equal in spirit as

well as in fact. From then on, everything was beautiful, and the voyage promised to be a happy one.

But there was one other man in the forecastle. Counting the Scandinavians as ten, and myself as the eleventh,

this man was the twelfth and last. We never knew his name, contenting ourselves with calling him the

"Bricklayer." He was from Missouriat least he so informed us in the one meagre confidence he was guilty

of in the early days of the voyage. Also, at that time, we learned several other things. He was a bricklayer by

trade. He had never even seen salt water until the week before he joined us, at which time he had arrived in

San Francisco and looked upon San Francisco Bay. Why he, of all men, at forty years of age, should have felt

the prod to go to sea, was beyond all of us; for it was our unanimous conviction that no man less fitted for the

sea had ever embarked on it. But to sea he had come. After a week's stay in a sailors' boardinghouse, he had

All hands had to do his work for him. Not only did he know nothing, but he proved himself unable to learn

anything. Try as they would, they could never teach him to steer. To him the compass must have been a

profound and awful whirligig. He never mastered its cardinal points, much less the checking and steadying of

the ship on her course. He never did come to know whether ropes should be coiled from left to right or from

right to left. It was mentally impossible for him to learn the easy muscular trick of throwing his weight on a

rope in pulling and hauling. The simplest knots and turns were beyond his comprehension, while he was

mortally afraid of going aloft. Bullied by captain and mate, he was one day forced aloft. He managed to get

underneath the crosstrees, and there he froze to the ratlines. Two sailors had to go after him to help him

All of which was bad enough had there been no worse. But he was vicious, malignant, dirty, and without

common decency. He was a tall, powerful man, and he fought with everybody. And there was no fairness in

his fighting. His first fight on board, the first day out, was with me, when he, desiring to cut a plug of

chewing tobacco, took my personal tableknife for the purpose, and whereupon, I, on a hairtrigger,

promptly exploded. After that he fought with nearly every member of the crew. When his clothing became

too filthy to be bearable by the rest of us, we put it to soak and stood over him while he washed it. In short,

the Bricklayer was one of those horrible and monstrous things that one must see in order to be convinced that

I will only say that he was a beast, and that we treated him like a beast. It is only by looking back through the

years that I realise how heartless we were to him. He was without sin. He could not, by the very nature of

things, have been anything else than he was. He had not made himself, and for his making he was not

responsible. Yet we treated him as a free agent and held him personally responsible for all that he was and

that he should not have been. As a result, our treatment of him was as terrible as he was himself terrible.

Finally we gave him the silent treatment, and for weeks before he died we neither spoke to him nor did he

speak to us. And for weeks he moved among us, or lay in his bunk in our crowded house, grinning at us his

hatred and malignancy. He was a dying man, and he knew it, and we knew it. And furthermore, he knew that

we wanted him to die. He cumbered our life with his presence, and ours was a rough life that made rough

men of us. And so he died, in a small space crowded by twelve men and as much alone as if he had died on

some desolate mountain peak. No kindly word, no last word, was passed between. He died as he had lived, a

And now I come to the most startling moment of my life. No sooner was he dead than he was flung

overboard. He died in a night of wind, drawing his last breath as the men tumbled into their oilskins to the cry

of "All hands!" And he was flung overboard, several hours later, on a day of wind. Not even a canvas

wrapping graced his mortal remains; nor was he deemed worthy of bars of iron at his feet. We sewed him up

in the blankets in which he died and laid him on a hatchcover for'ard of the mainhatch on the port side. A

It was bitter cold. The weatherside of every rope, spar, and stay was coated with ice, while all the rigging

was a harp, singing and shouting under the fierce hand of the wind. The schooner, hove to, lurched and

floundered through the sea, rolling her scuppers under and perpetually flooding the deck with icy salt water.

We of the forecastle stood in seaboots and oilskins. Our hands were mittened, but our heads were bared in

the presence of the death we did not respect. Our ears stung and numbed and whitened, and we yearned for

the body to be gone. But the interminable reading of the burial service went on. The captain had mistaken his

place, and while he read on without purpose we froze our ears and resented this final hardship thrust upon us

by the helpless cadaver. As from the beginning, so to the end, everything had gone wrong with the

Bricklayer. Finally, the captain's son, irritated beyond measure, jerked the book from the palsied fingers of

the old man and found the place. Again the quavering voice of the captain arose. Then came the cue: "And

the body shall be cast into the sea." We elevated one end of the hatchcover, and the Bricklayer plunged

Back into the forecastle we cleaned house, washing out the dead man's bunk and removing every vestige of

him. By sea law and sea custom, we should have gathered his effects together and turned them over to the

captain, who, later, would have held an auction in which we should have bid for the various articles. But no

man wanted them, so we tossed them up on deck and overboard in the wake of the departed bodythe last

illtreatment we could devise to wreak upon the one we had hated so. Oh, it was raw, believe me; but the life

The Bricklayer's bunk was better than mine. Less sea water leaked down through the deck into it, and the

light was better for lying in bed and reading. Partly for this reason I proceeded to move into his bunk. My

other reason was pride. I saw the sailors were superstitious, and by this act I determined to show that I was

braver than they. I would cap my proved equality by a deed that would compel their recognition of my

superiority. Oh, the arrogance of youth! But let that pass. The sailors were appalled by my intention. One and

all, they warned me that in the history of the sea no man had taken a dead man's bunk and lived to the end of

the voyage. They instanced case after case in their personal experience. I was obdurate. Then they begged

and pleaded with me, and my pride was tickled in that they showed they really liked me and were concerned

about me. This but served to confirm me in my madness. I moved in, and, lying in the dead man's bunk, all

afternoon and evening listened to dire prophecies of my future. Also were told stories of awful deaths and

gruesome ghosts that secretly shivered the hearts of all of us. Saturated with this, yet scoffing at it, I rolled

At ten minutes to twelve I was called, and at twelve I was dressed and on deck, relieving the man who had

called me. On the sealing grounds, when hove to, a watch of only a single man is kept through the night, each

man holding the deck for an hour. It was a dark night, though not a black one. The gale was breaking up, and

the clouds were thinning. There should have been a moon, and, though invisible, in some way a dim, suffused

radiance came from it. I paced back and forth across the deck amidships. My mind was filled with the event

of the day and with the horrible tales my shipmates had told, and yet I dare to say, here and now, that I was

not afraid. I was a healthy animal, and furthermore, intellectually, I agreed with Swinburne that dead men rise

up never. The Bricklayer was dead, and that was the end of it. He would rise up neverat least, never on the

deck of the Sophie Sutherland. Even then he was in the ocean depths miles to windward of our leeward drift,

and the likelihood was that he was already portioned out in the maws of many sharks. Still, my mind

pondered on the tales of the ghosts of dead men I had heard, and I speculated on the spirit world. My

conclusion was that if the spirits of the dead still roamed the world they carried the goodness or the

malignancy of the earthlife with them. Therefore, granting the hypothesis (which I didn't grant at all), the

ghost of the Bricklayer was bound to be as hateful and malignant as he in life had been. But there wasn't any

A few minutes, thinking thus, I paced up and down. Then, glancing casually for'ard, along the port side, I

leaped like a startled deer and in a blind madness of terror rushed aft along the poop, heading for the cabin.

Gone was all my arrogance of youth and my intellectual calm. I had seen a ghost. There, in the dim light,

where we had flung the dead man overboard, I had seen a faint and wavering form. Sixfeet in length it was,

slender, and of substance so attenuated that I had distinctly seen through it the tracery of the forerigging.

As for me, I was as panicstricken as a frightened horse. I, as I, had ceased to exist. Through me were

vibrating the fibre instincts of ten thousand generations of superstitious forebears who had been afraid of the

dark and the things of the dark. I was not I. I was, in truth, those ten thousand forebears. I was the race, the

whole human race, in its superstitious infancy. Not until part way down the cabincompanionway did my

identity return to me. I checked my flight and clung to the steep ladder, suffocating, trembling, and dizzy.

Never, before nor since, have I had such a shock. I clung to the ladder and considered. I could not doubt my

senses. That I had seen something there was no discussion. But what was it? Either a ghost or a joke. There

could be nothing else. If a ghost, the question was: would it appear again? If it did not, and I aroused the

ship's officers, I would make myself the laughing stock of all on board. And by the same token, if it were a

joke, my position would be still more ridiculous. If I were to retain my hardwon place of equality, it would

I am a brave man. I dare to say so; for in fear and trembling I crept up the companionway and went back to

the spot from which I had first seen the thing. It had vanished. My bravery was qualified, however. Though I

could see nothing, I was afraid to go for'ard to the spot where I had seen the thing. I resumed my pacing up

and down, and though I cast many an anxious glance toward the dread spot, nothing manifested itself. As my

equanimity returned to me, I concluded that the whole affair had been a trick of the imagination and that I had

Once more my glances for'ard were casual, and not anxious; and then, suddenly, I was a madman, rushing

wildly aft. I had seen the thing again, the long, wavering attenuated substance through which could be seen

the forerigging. This time I had reached only the break of the poop when I checked myself. Again I

reasoned over the situation, and it was pride that counselled strongest. I could not afford to make myself a

laughingstock. This thing, whatever it was, I must face alone. I must work it out myself. I looked back to the

spot where we had tilted the Bricklayer. It was vacant. Nothing moved. And for a third time I resumed my

In the absence of the thing my fear died away and my intellectual poise returned. Of course it was not a ghost.

Dead men did not rise up. It was a joke, a cruel joke. My mates of the forecastle, by some unknown means,

were frightening me. Twice already must they have seen me run aft. My cheeks burned with shame. In fancy

I could hear the smothered chuckling and laughter even then going on in the forecastle. I began to grow

angry. Jokes were all very well, but this was carrying the thing too far. I was the youngest on board, only a

youth, and they had no right to play tricks on me of the order that I well knew in the past had made raving

maniacs of men and women. I grew angrier and angrier, and resolved to show them that I was made of sterner

stuff and at the same time to wreak my resentment upon them. If the thing appeared again, I made my mind

up that I would go up to it furthermore, that I would go up to it knife in hand. When within striking

distance, I would strike. If a man, he would get the knifethrust he deserved. If a ghost, well, it wouldn't hurt

Now I was very angry, and I was quite sure the thing was a trick; but when the thing appeared a third time, in

the same spot, long, attenuated, and wavering, fear surged up in me and drove most of my anger away. But I

did not run. Nor did I take my eyes from the thing. Both times before, it had vanished while I was running

away, so I had not seen the manner of its going. I drew my sheathknife from my belt and began my advance.

Step by step, nearer and nearer, the effort to control myself grew more severe. The struggle was between my

will, my identity, my very self, on the one hand, and on the other, the ten thousand ancestors who were

twisted into the fibres of me and whose ghostly voices were whispering of the dark and the fear of the dark

I advanced more slowly, and still the thing wavered and flitted with strange eerie lurches. And then, right

before my eyes, it vanished. I saw it vanish. Neither to the right nor left did it go, nor backward. Right there,

while I gazed upon it, it faded away, ceased to be. I didn't die, but I swear, from what I experienced in those

few succeeding moments, that I know full well that men can die of fright. I stood there, knife in hand,

swaying automatically to the roll of the ship, paralysed with fear. Had the Bricklayer suddenly seized my

throat with corporeal fingers and proceeded to throttle me, it would have been no more than I expected. Dead

men did rise up, and that would be the most likely thing the malignant Bricklayer would do.

But he didn't seize my throat. Nothing happened. And, since nature abhors a status, I could not remain there

in the one place forever paralysed. I turned and started aft. I did not run. What was the use? What chance had

I against the malevolent world of ghosts? Flight, with me, was the swiftness of my legs. The pursuit, with a

And so, stumbling slowly aft, I discovered the explanation of the seeming. I saw the mizzen topmast lurching

across a faint radiance of cloud behind which was the moon. The idea leaped in my brain. I extended the line

between the cloudy radiance and the mizzentopmast and found that it must strike somewhere near the

forerigging on the port side. Even as I did this, the radiance vanished. The driving clouds of the breaking

gale were alternately thickening and thinning before the face of the moon, but never exposing the face of the

moon. And when the clouds were at their thinnest, it was a very dim radiance that the moon was able to

make. I watched and waited. The next time the clouds thinned I looked for'ard, and there was the shadow of

the topmast, long and attenuated, wavering and lurching on the deck and against the rigging.

This was my first ghost. Once again have I seen a ghost. It proved to be a Newfoundland dog, and I don't

know which of us was the more frightened, for I hit that Newfoundland a full rightarm swing to the jaw.

Regarding the Bricklayer's ghost, I will say that I never mentioned it to a soul on board. Also, I will say that

in all my life I never went through more torment and mental suffering than on that lonely nightwatch on the

Once in a hundred years is a book written that lives not alone for its own century but which becomes a

document for the future centuries. Such a book is Dana's. When Marryat's and Cooper's sea novels are gone

to dust, stimulating and joyful as they have been to generations of men, still will remain "Two Years Before

Paradoxical as it may seem, Dana's book is the classic of the sea, not because there was anything

extraordinary about Dana, but for the precise contrary reason that he was just an ordinary, normal man,

clearseeing, hardheaded, controlled, fitted with adequate education to go about the work. He brought a

trained mind to put down with untroubled vision what he saw of a certain phase of workaday life. There

was nothing brilliant nor flyaway about him. He was not a genius. His heart never rode his head. He was

neither overlorded by sentiment nor hagridden by imagination. Otherwise he might have been guilty of the

beautiful exaggerations in Melville's "Typee" or the imaginative orgies in the latter's "Moby Dick." It was

Dana's cool poise that saved him from being spreadeagled and flogged when two of his mates were so

treated; it was his lack of abandon that prevented him from taking up permanently with the sea, that

prevented him from seeing more than one poetical spot, and more than one romantic spot on all the coast of

Old California. Yet these apparent defects were his strength. They enabled him magnificently to write, and

Written close to the middle of the last century, such has been the revolution worked in man's method of

trafficking with the sea, that the life and conditions described in Dana's book have passed utterly away. Gone

are the crack clippers, the driving captains, the hardbitten but efficient foremast hands. Remain only

crawling cargo tanks, dirty tramps, greyhound liners, and a sombre, sordid type of sailing ship. The only

records broken to day by sailing vessels are those for slowness. They are no longer built for speed, nor are

they manned before the mast by as sturdy a sailor stock, nor aft the mast are they officered by sail carrying

Speed is left to the liners, who run the silk, and tea, and spices. Admiralty courts, boards of trade, and

underwriters frown upon driving and sailcarrying. No more are the freeandeasy, daredevil days, when

fortunes were made in fast runs and lucky ventures, not alone for owners, but for captains as well. Nothing is

ventured now. The risks of swift passages cannot be abided. Freights are calculated to the last least fraction of

per cent. The captains do no speculating, no bargainmaking for the owners. The latter attend to all this, and

by wire and cable rake the ports of the seven seas in quest of cargoes, and through their agents make all

It has been learned that small crews only, and large carriers only, can return a decent interest on the

investment. The inevitable corollary is that speed and spirit are at a discount. There is no discussion of the

fact that in the sailing merchant marine the seamen, as a class, have sadly deteriorated. Men no longer sell

farms to go to sea. But the time of which Dana writes was the heyday of fortunemaking and adventure on

It was Dana's fortune, for the sake of the picture, that the Pilgrim was an average ship, with an average crew

and officers, and managed with average discipline. Even the HAZING that took place after the California

coast was reached, was of the average sort. The Pilgrim savoured not in any way of a hellship. The captain,

while not the sweetestnatured man in the world, was only an average downeast driver, neither brilliant nor

slovenly in his seamanship, neither cruel nor sentimental in the treatment of his men. While, on the one hand,

there were no extra liberty days, no delicacies added to the meagre forecastle fare, nor grog or hot coffee on

double watches, on the other hand the crew were not chronically crippled by the continual play of

knuckledusters and belaying pins. Once, and once only, were men flogged or ironeda very fair average

for the year 1834, for at that time flogging on board merchant vessels was already well on the decline.

The difference between the sealife then and now can be no better epitomised than in Dana's description of

"The trousers tight around the hips, and thence hanging long and loose around the feet, a superabundance of

checked shirt, a low crowned, wellvarnished black hat, worn on the back of the head, with half a fathom of

black ribbon hanging over the left eye, and a peculiar tie to the black silk neckerchief."

Though Dana sailed from Boston only threequarters of a century ago, much that is at present obsolete was

then in full sway. For instance, the old word LARBOARD was still in use. He was a member of the

LARBOARD watch. The vessel was on the LARBOARD tack. It was only the other day, because of its

similarity in sound to starboard, that LARBOARD was changed to PORT. Try to imagine "All larboard

bowlines on deck!" being shouted down into the forecastle of a present day ship. Yet that was the call used on

The chronometer, which is merely the least imperfect timepiece man has devised, makes possible the surest

and easiest method by far of ascertaining longitude. Yet the Pilgrim sailed in a day when the chronometer

was just coming into general use. So little was it depended upon that the Pilgrim carried only one, and that

one, going wrong at the outset, was never used again. A navigator of the present would be aghast if asked to

voyage for two years, from Boston, around the Horn to California, and back again, without a chronometer. In

those days such a proceeding was a matter of course, for those were the days when dead reckoning was

indeed something to reckon on, when running down the latitude was a common way of finding a place, and

when lunar observations were direly necessary. It may be fairly asserted that very few merchant officers of

today ever make a lunar observation, and that a large percentage are unable to do it.

"Sept. 22nd., upon coming on deck at seven bells in the morning we found the other watch aloft throwing

water upon the sails, and looking astern we saw a small, clipperbuilt brig with a black hull heading directly

after us. We went to work immediately, and put all the canvas upon the brig which we could get upon her,

rigging out oars for studdingsail yards; and contined wetting down the sails by buckets of water whipped up

The foregoing sounds like a paragraph from "Midshipman Easy" or the "Water Witch," rather than a

paragraph from the soberest, faithfullest, and most literal chronicle of the sea ever written. And yet the chase

by a pirate occurred, on board the brig Pilgrim, on September 22nd, 1834something like only two

Dana was the thoroughgoing type of man, not overbalanced and erratic, without quirk or quibble of

temperament. He was efficient, but not brilliant. His was a general allround efficiency. He was efficient at

the law; he was efficient at college; he was efficient as a sailor; he was efficient in the matter of pride, when

that pride was no more than the pride of a forecastle hand, at twelve dollars a month, in his seaman's task well

done, in the smart sailing of his captain, in the clearness and trimness of his ship.

There is no sailor whose cockles of the heart will not warm to Dana's description of the first time he sent

down a royal yard. Once or twice he had seen it done. He got an old hand in the crew to coach him. And then,

the first anchorage at Monterey, being pretty THICK with the second mate, he got him to ask the mate to be

sent up the first time the royal yards were struck. "Fortunately," as Dana describes it, "I got through without

any word from the officer; and heard the 'well done' of the mate, when the yard reached the deck, with as

much satisfaction as I ever felt at Cambridge on seeing a 'bene' at the foot of a Latin exercise."

"This was the first time I had taken a weather earring, and I felt not a little proud to sit astride of the weather

yardarm, past the earring, and sing out 'Haul out to leeward!'" He had been over a year at sea before he

essayed this able seaman's task, but he did it, and he did it with pride. And with pride, he went down a

fourhundred foot cliff, on a pair of topgallant studding sail halyards bent together, to dislodge several

dollars worth of stranded bullock hides, though all the acclaim he got from his mates was: "What a dd fool

In brief, it was just this efficiency in pride, as well as work, that enabled Dana to set down, not merely the

photograph detail of life before the mast and hidedroghing on the coast of California, but of the untarnished

simple psychology and ethics of the forecastle hands who droghed the hides, stood at the wheel, made and

took in sail, tarred down the rigging, holystoned the decks, turned in allstanding, grumbled as they cut about

the kid, criticised the seamanship of their officers, and estimated the duration of their exile from the cubic

LORETTA, A sweet, young thing. Frightfully innocent. About nineteen years old. Slender, delicate, a fragile

NED BASHFORD, A jaded young man of the world, who has philosophised his experiences and who is

BILLY MARSH, A boy from a country town who is just about as innocent as Loretta. Awkward. Positive.

Curtain rises on a conventional living room of a country house in California. It is the Hemingway house at

Santa Clara. The room is remarkable for magnificent stone fireplace at rear centre. On either side of

fireplace are generous, diamondpaned windows. Wide, curtained doorways to right and left. To left, front,

Curtain discovers LORETTA seated at piano, not playing, her back to it, facing NED BASHFORD, who is

LORETTA.Petulantly, fanning herself with sheet of music. No, I won't go fishing. It's too warm. Besides, the

NED. Oh, come on. It's not warm at all. And anyway, we won't really fish. I want to tell you something.

NED. Yes, but only in fun. This is different. This is serious. Our . . . my happiness depends upon it.

LORETTA.Speaking eagerly, no longer petulant, looking, serious and delighted, divining a proposal. Then

He looks around apprehensively as though fearing interruption, clears his throat, takes resolution, also takes

LORETTA is startled, timid, yet willing to hear, naively unable to conceal her love for him.

JACK HEMINGWAY.Resignedly, going out right. You needn't take a fellow's head off.

LORETTA.Accusingly, fanning herself vigorously. And you told me it wasn't warm at all.

NED.Speaking softly. That isn't what I wanted to tell you, Loretta. He takes her hand. Dear Loretta

ALICE HEMINGWAY.Speaking quickly, and trying to withdraw. No, no. I only came to see if the mail had

ALICE HEMINGWAY.Moving over and standing in front of him. Speaks accusingly. What have you been

ALICE HEMINGWAY.With sudden change of front. Then you ought to have been saying something to her.

NED.Irritably. Getting chair for her, seating her, and seating himself again. Look here, Alice, I know your

ALICE HEMINGWAY. Nothing of the sort, sir. I asked you down to meet a sweet and unsullied girlthe

ALICE HEMINGWAY. And that's why you came. Jack had been trying for a year to get you to come. He

NED. If you think I came because of a line in a letter about a girl I'd never seen

ALICE HEMINGWAY.Mockingly. The poor, jaded, worldworn man, who is no longer interested in

women . . . and girls! The poor, tired pessimist who has lost all faith in the goodness of women

ALICE HEMINGWAY.Judiciously. First, because I did not love you. Second, because you did not love me.

She smiles at his protesting hand and at the protesting expression on his face. And third, because there were

just about twentyseven other women at that time that you loved, or thought you loved. That is why I married

Jack. And that is why you lost faith in the goodness of women. You have only yourself to blame.

NED.Admiringly. You talk so convincingly. I almost believe you as I listen to you. And yet I know all the

time that you are like all the rest of your sexfaithless, unveracious, and . . .

NED.Gloatingly. That's right. Get angry. You may break the furniture if you wish. I don't mind.

ALICE HEMINGWAY. The depths of duplicity that must lurk under that sweet and innocent exterior . . .

NED.Earnestly. Loretta is an exception, I confess. She is all that you said in your letter. She is a little fairy,

an angel. I never dreamed of anything like her. It is remarkable to find such a woman in this age.

NED.Taking the bait. Yes, isn't she? Her face and her tongue betray all her secrets.

ALICE HEMINGWAY.Laughing and rising. And to think I once permitted you to make love to me for

ALICE HEMINGWAY.Running over letters. None for you, Ned. Selecting two letters for

herself. Tradesmen. Handing remainder of letters to MAID. And three for Loretta. Speaking to MAID. Put

ALICE HEMINGWAY.Laughing and putting her hand reassuringly on his arm. Now don't be alarmed,

LORETTA trips swiftly across to table, looks at letters, sits down, opens letters, and begins to read.

ALICE HEMINGWAY. I am afraid he loves her very hard. That is why she is here. They had to send her

away. Billy was making life miserable for her. They were little children togetherplaymates. And Billy has

been, well, importunate. And Loretta, poor child, does not know anything about marriage. That is all.

ALICE HEMINGWAY starts slowly toward right exit, continuing conversation and accompanied by NED.

ALICE HEMINGWAY. Right here. Looks significantly in direction of LORETTA. Now is your opportunity

NED hesitates, starts to follow her, looks at LORETTA, and stops. He twists his moustache and continues to

LORETTA is unaware of his presence and goes on reading. Finishes letter, folds it, replaces in envelope,

LORETTA.Willingly, settling herself to listen. Yes, you were going to . . . Drops eyes and ceases talking.

NED.Taking her hand, tenderly. I little dreamed when I came down here visiting that I was to meet my

LORETTA glances into tray and discovers that it is empty. She looks inquiringly at MAID.

MAID. A gentleman to see you. He hasn't any card. He said for me to tell you that it was Billy.

NED Gracefully and courteously, rising to his feet and preparing to go. If you'll excuse me now, I'll wait till

LORETTA.Slowly. I can't do that. We are old friends. We . . . were children together. To the MAID. Send

BILLY enters from left. Stands in doorway a moment. His shoes are dusty. He looks overheated. His eyes and

LORETTA.Not exactly enthusiastic in her reception, going slowly to meet him. You never said you were

BILLY.With expression of shrewdness. If I had let you know, you wouldn't have let me come.

BILLY.Coaxingly. Go on, just one. LORETTA shakes head and holds him off. Why not? We're engaged.

LORETTA.With decision. We're not. You know we're not. You know I broke it off the day before I came

BILLY sits down on edge of chair. LORETTA seats herself by table. Billy, without rising, jerks his chair

forward till they are facing each other, his knees touching hers. He yearns toward her. She moves back her

BILLY.With supreme confidence. That's what I came to see you forto get engaged over again.

BILLY.Drawing out large silver watch and looking at it. Now look here, Loretta, I haven't any time to lose.

LORETTA. But we're not engaged, Billy. So there can't be any setting of the day.

BILLY.With confidence. But we're going to be. Suddenly breaking out. Oh, Loretta, if you only knew how

I've suffered. That first night I didn't sleep a wink. I haven't slept much ever since. Hudges chair forward. I

walk the floor all night. Solemnly. Loretta, I don't eat enough to keep a canary bird alive. Loretta . . . Hudges

LORETTA.Hudging her chair back maternally. Billy, what you need is a tonic. Have you seen Doctor

BILLY.Looking at watch and evincing signs of haste. Loretta, when a girl kisses a man, it means she is going

LORETTA. I know it, Billy. But . . . She glances toward letters on table. Captain Kitt doesn't want me to

BILLY. Never mind what Captain Kitt says. He wants you to stay and be company for your sister. He doesn't

LORETTA. Daisy doesn't want to keep me. She wants nothing but my own happiness. She saysShe takes

LORETTA.Taking third letter from table and beginning to open it. And Martha says

There is an awkward pause. Billy has lost the thread of the conversation and has vacant expression.

BILLY.Suddenly recollecting. Never mind Captain Kitt, and Daisy, and Martha, and what they want. The

BILLY.Ignoring the appeal and pressing home the point. The thing is, do you want to marry me? He looks at

BILLY.Most irascibly. Darn isn't swearing. Plaintively. That's the way you always put me off. I didn't come

all the way here for a train. I came for you. Now just answer me one thing. Do you want to marry me?

BILLY.With unshaken assurance. That's what I saidgot to. And I'll see that you do.

LORETTA.Blazing with anger. I am no longer a child. You can't bully me, Billy Marsh!

BILLY.Nodding. Yes, reputation. He pauses for a moment, then speaks very solemnly. Loretta, when a

LORETTA.Brokenly. And when . . . a . . . a woman kisses a man and doesn't . . . marry him . . . ?

BILLY. Then there is a scandal. That's where all the scandals you see in the papers come from.

LORETTA.In abasement. You are a good man, Billy. Billy shows that he believes it. And I am a very

BILLY. But you did afterward and that's what counts. You let me you in the grapearbour. You let me

BILLY.Relentlessly.kiss you when you were playing the piano. You let me kiss you that day of the picnic.

BILLY.Emphatically. So it was all rightuntil you said you wouldn't marry me after all. Then it was a

scandalonly no one knows it yet. If you marry me no one ever will know it. Looks at watch. I've got to go.

BILLY.Approvingly. You bet it's awful. And there's only one way out. Looks anxiously about for hat. What

LORETTA.Brokenly. I must think. I'll write to you. Faintly. The train? Your hat's in the hall.

BILLY.Looks at watch, hastily tries to kiss her, succeeds only in shaking hand, starts across stage toward

left. All right. You write to me. Write tomorrow. Stops for a moment in door way and speaks very

LORETTA sits in chair quietly weeping. Slowly dries eyes, rises from chair, and stands, undecided as to what

NED enters from right, peeping. Discovers that LORETTA is alone, and comes quietly across stage to her.

When NED comes up to her she begins weeping again and tries to turn her head away. NED catches both her

NED.Putting one arm protectingly around her shoulder and drawing her toward him. There, there, little one,

LORETTA.Turning her face to his shoulder like a tired child, sobbing. Oh, Ned, if you only knew how

NED.Smiling indulgently. What is the matter, little one? Has your dearly beloved sister failed to write to you?

LORETTA shakes head. Has Hemingway been bullying you? LORETTA shakes head. Then it must have been

that caller of yours? Long pause, during which LORETTA's weeping grows more violent. Tell me what's the

matter, and we'll see what I can do. He lightly kisses her hairso lightly that she does not know.

NED.Laughing incredulously. Let us forget all about it. I want to tell you something that may make me very

LORETTA.Still moaning. Oh, why did I? NED somewhat stiffens. I was so young. I did not know the world

LORETTA. Oh, I . . . he . . . Billy . . . I am a wicked woman, Ned. I know you will never speak to me again.

LORETTA. I . . . he . . . I didn't know. I was so young. I could not help it. Oh, I shall go mad, I shall go

NED's encircling arm goes limp. He gently disengages her and deposits her in big chair.

NED.Twisting moustache fiercely, regarding her dubiously, hesitating a moment, then drawing up chair and

NED.His face brightening instantly, leaning forward and laying a hand soothingly on hers. That should not

make any girl unhappy. Because you don't love him is no reasonAbruptly breaking off. Of course you don't

NED.With confidence. Because you don't love him is no reason that you should be unhappy just because he

LORETTA.Sobbing. That's the trouble. I wish I did love him. Oh, I wish I were dead.

NED.Growing complacent. Now my dear child, you are worrying yourself over trifles. His second hand joins

the first in holding her hands. Women do it every day. Because you have changed your mind, or did not

LORETTA.Interrupting, raising her head and looking at him. Jilted? Oh Ned, if that were a all!

NED's hands slowly retreat from hers. He opens his mouth as though to speak further, then changes his mind

LORETTA.Nodding. I know it is. Her lips are trembling, but she strives for control and manages to speak

more calmly. I am a wicked woman. A terrible wicked woman. No one knows how wicked I am . . . except

NED.Starting, looking at her queerly. He . . . Billy knows? LORETTA nods. He debates with himself a

LORETTA. There was no one to tell me. We were with each other so much. I did not know anything of the

LORETTA. Yes, of course, Billy. We were with each other so much . . . If I had only known . . . There was

LORETTA.Lifting her head. Billy is not a scoundrel . . . He . . . he . . . is a good man.

NED.Sarcastically. I suppose you'll be telling me next that it was all your fault. LORETTA nods. What!

LORETTA.Steadily. It was all my fault. I should never have let him. I was to blame.

NED.Paces up and down for a minute, stops in front of her, and speaks with resignation. All right. I don't

blame you in the least, Loretta. And you have been very honest. It is . . . er . . . commendable. But Billy is

NED. Yes, to Billy. I'll see to it. Where does he live? I'll make him. If he won't I'll . . . I'll shoot him!

I don't want to leave Daisy! I don't want to leave Daisy! What shall I do? What shall I do? How was I to

know? He didn't tell me. Nobody else ever kissed me. NED stops curiously to listen. As he listens his face

brightens. I never dreamed a kiss could be so terrible . . . until . . . until he told me. He only told me this

NED.In hopeless voice, the brightness gone out of his face, about to begin pacing again. Then what are you

LORETTA. Because you said I had to marry Billy. I don't want to marry Billy. I don't want to leave Daisy. I

NED.Nerving himself for another effort. Now look here, Loretta, be sensible. What is this about kisses? You

LORETTA. This afternoon. Just now. Billy said that my . . . our . . . our . . . our kisses were terrible if we

LORETTA. He said that when a woman permitted a man to kiss her she always married him. That it was

awful if she didn't. It was the custom, he said; and I say it is a bad, wicked custom, and it has broken my

heart. I shall never be happy again. I know I am terrible, but I can't help it. I must have been born wicked.

NED.Absentmindedly bringing out a cigarette and striking a match. Do you mind if I smoke? Coming to

himself again, and flinging away match and cigarette. I beg your pardon. I don't want to smoke. I didn't mean

that at all. What I mean is . . . He bends over LORETTA, catches her hands in his, then sits on arm of chair,

LORETTA. Yes, you said it yourself, with your own lips, not ten minutes ago. I shall never believe you

NED.Masterfully putting arm around her and drawing her toward him. And I am a joker, too, and a very

NED. Scandal fiddlesticks. Loretta, I want you to be my wife. He waits anxiously.

LORETTA.With sad conviction. Oh, yes, there is. You said yourself that I had to marry Billy. You said you

LORETTA.Slightly holding him off. And it isn't the custom . . . what . . . Billy said?

LORETTA.Pouting demurely. Don't be angry with me, Ned. He gathers her into his arms and kisses her.

She partially frees herself, gasping. I wish it were the custom, because now I'd have to marry you, Ned,

NED and LORETTA, startled, but still in each other's arms, look around. NED looks sillily at ALICE

SCENEOne of the club rooms of the West Bay Athletic Club. Near centre front is a large table covered

with newspapers and magazines. At left a punchingbag apparatus. At right, against wall, a desk, on which

rests a desktelephone. Door at rear toward left. On walls are framed pictures of pugilists, conspicuous

among which is one of Robert Fitzsimmons. Appropriate furnishings, etc., such as foils, clubs, dumbbells

She is dressed as a man, in evening clothes, preferably a Tuxedo. In her hand is a card, and under her arm a

paperwrapped parcel. She peeps about curiously and advances to table. She is timorous and excited, elated

MAUD.Pausing by table. Not a soul saw me. I wonder where everybody is. And that big brother of mine said

I could not get in. She reads back of card. "Here is my card, Maudie. If you can use it, go ahead. But you will

never get inside the door. I consider my bet as good as won." Looking up, triumphantly. You do, do you? Oh,

if you could see your little sister now. Here she is, inside. Pauses, and looks about. So this is the West Bay

Athletic Club. No women allowed. Well, here I am, if I don't look like one. Stretches out one leg and then the

other, and looks at them. Leaving card and parcel on table, she struts around like a man, looks at pictures of

pugilists on walls, reading aloud their names and making appropriate remarks. But she stops before the

portrait of Fitzsimmons and reads aloud. "Robert Fitzsimmons, the greatest warrior of them all." Clasps

Continues strutting around, imitating what she considers are a man's stride and swagger, returns to table

and proceeds to unwrap parcel. Well, I'll go out like a girl, if I did come in like a man. Drops wrapping

paper on table and holds up a woman's long automobile cloak and a motor bonnet. Is suddenly startled by

sound of approaching footsteps and glances in a frightened way toward door. Mercy! Here comes somebody

now! Glances about her in alarm, drops cloak and bonnet on floor close to table, seizes a handful of

newspapers, and runs to large leather chair to right of table, where she seats herself hurriedly. One paper

she holds up before her, hiding her face as she pretends to read. Unfortunately the paper is upside down. The

He looks about, advances to table, takes out cigarette case and is about to select one, when he notices motor

cloak and bonnet on floor. He lays cigarette case on table and picks them up. They strike him as profoundly

curious things to be in a club room. He looks at MAUD, then sees card on table. He picks it up and reach it

to himself, then looks at her with comprehension. Hidden by her newspaper, she sees nothing. He looks at

FITZSIMMONS. "Maudie. John H. Sylvester." That must be Jack Sylvester's sister Maud. FITZSIMMONS

shows by his expression that he is going to play a joke. Tossing cloak and bonnet under the table he places

card in his vest pocket, selects a chair, sits down, and looks at MAUD. He notes paper is upside down, is

hugely tickled, and laughs silently. Hello! Newspaper is agitated by slight tremor. He speaks more

MAUD.Lowering newspaper and trying to appear at ease. It's quite a trick, isn't it? I often practise it. I'm real

MAUD.Glancing quickly from his face to portrait and back again. Yes, and I know youYou are Robert

MAUD. Yes, it was out in San Francisco. My people still live there. I'm justahemdoing New York.

FITZSIMMONS.Hugely delighted, leaping from chair and striding over to her. Sure. Slaps her

She is nearly crushed by the weight of the blow, and at the same time shocked. She scrambles to her feet.

FITZSIMMONS. Glad to see you, Harry. He wrings her hand, so that it hurts. Glad to see you again, Harry.

MAUD.Struggling to withdraw her hand and finally succeeding. Her voice is rather faint. Yees, er . . . Bob

. . . er . . . glad to see you again. She looks ruefully at her bruised fingers and sinks into chair. Then,

FITZSIMMONS.Crossing to desk at right, against which he leans, facing her. You were a wild young

rascal in those San Francisco days. Chuckling. Lord, Lord, how it all comes back to me.

FITZSIMMONS. Surely you haven't forgotten that night! You began with dropping champagne bottles out

of the club windows on the heads of the people on the sidewalk, and you wound up by assaulting a cabman.

And let me tell you I saved you from a good licking right there, and squared it with the police. Don't you

MAUD.Nodding hesitatingly. Yes, it is beginning to come back to me. I was a bit tight that night.

FITZSIMMONS.Exultantly. A bit tight! Why, before I could get you to bed you insisted on telling me the

FITZSIMMONS. I should say not. You were past remembering anything by that time. You had your arms

MAUD.Springing to her feet. Oh! I never did! Recollecting herself. Perhaps I must have. I was a trifle wild in

those days, I admit. But I'm wise now. I've sowed my wild oats and steadied down.

FITZSIMMONS. I'm glad to hear that, Harry. You were tearing off a pretty fast pace in those days. Pause,

MAUD.In quick alarm, glancing at punching bag. No, I've got out of the hang of it.

FITZSIMMONS.Reproachfully. You haven't forgotten that right andleft, arm, elbow and shoulder

MAUD.Rising reluctantly and following. I'd rather see you punch the bag. I'd just love to.

MAUD. No; I tell you I am out of practice. I've forgotten it all. You see, I made a discovery.

MAUD. I've been practising it ever since. Experts, in another room, would swear it was a woman's voice. So

FITZSIMMONS.Who has been laughing incredulously, now becomes suspicious. Look here, kid, I think

FITZSIMMONS. There is one thing I remember very distinctly. Harry Jones had a birth mark on his knee.

MAUD.Embarrassed, then resolving to carry it out. Yes, right here. She advances right leg and touches it.

FITZSIMMONS.Suddenly springing to her and attempting to seize her leg. Then we'll prove it. Let me see.

MAUD.In a panic backs away from him and resists his attempts, until grinning in an aside to the audience,

he gives over. She, in an aside to audience. Fancy his wanting to see my birth mark.

FITZSIMMONS.Bullying. Then take a go at the bag. She shakes her head. You're not Harry Jones.

MAUD.Resolving to attempt it, hits bag several nice blows, and then is struck on the nose by it. Oh!

Recovering herself and rubbing her nose. I told you I was out of practice. You punch the bag, Bob.

FITZSIMMONS. I will, if you will show me what you can do with that wonderful soprano voice of yours.

FITZSIMMONS.Shaking his head. No, they won't. They've all gone to the fight. There's not a soul in the

MAUD walks over to the table toward right. She is about to sing, when she notices FITZSIMMONS' cigarette

MAUD. "Robert Fitzsimmons." That will prove to my brother that I have been here.

During the song FITZSIMMONS turns his head slowly and looks at her with growing admiration.

Recollecting herself and shrugging her shoulders. Oh, very well. Now let's see if you can do any better with

FITZSIMMONS puts on coat and goes over and sits down near table. Nothing like the bag to limber one up. I

MAUD.Emphatically, as she picks up newspapers from leather chair, sits down, and places them on her

MAUD.Boastfully, in mannish, fashion. Oh, I still have my fling. Do you know anywell,er,nice

MAUD. So you see I don't know him very well. I only met him onceat the club. We had a drink together.

FITZSIMMONS.Enthusiastically. She's a peach. A queen. A little bit of all right. Aa looloo.

FITZSIMMONS. I've taken her out more times than I can remember. You'll like her, I'm sure.

FITZSIMMONS. She dresses a bit loud. But you won't mind that. And whatever you do, don't take her to

FITZSIMMONS. It's fair sickening. She must have a tapeworm. And she thinks she can sing.

FITZSIMMONS. Rotten. You can do better yourself, and that's not saying much. She's a nice girl, really she

FITZSIMMONS. Her brother Jack is all right. But he can't do anything with her. She's aa

MAUD.Springing to her feet and slamming newspapers in his face. Oh! Oh! Oh! You liar! She isn't anything

FITZSIMMONS.Recovering from the onslaught and making believe he is angry, advancing threateningly

MAUD.All alarm and contrition, backing away from him. Don't! Please don't! I'm sorry! I apologise. II

beg your pardon, Bob. Only I don't like to hear girls talked about that way, even even if it is true. And you

MAUD.Sitting down in leather chair. I told you I'd reformed. Let us talk about something else. Why is it

girls like prize fighters? I should thinkahemI mean it seems to me that girls would think prizefighters

MAUD. But there is so much crookedness in the game. One hears about it all the time.

FITZSIMMONS. There are crooked men in every business and profession. The best fighters are not

MAUD.Shocked, speaking sadly. And I always heard of you and thought of you as the one clean champion

FITZSIMMONS.Gently and seriously. Let me tell you about it. It was down in Australia. I had just begun to

fight my way up. It was with old Bill Hobart out at Rushcutters Bay. I threw the fight to him.

FITZSIMMONS. Let me tell you about it. Bill was an old fighter. Not an old man, you know, but he'd been

in the fighting game a long time. He was about thirtyeight and a gamer man never entered the ring. But he

was in hard luck. Younger fighters were coming up, and he was being crowded out. At that time it wasn't

often he got a fight and the purses were small. Besides it was a drought year in Australia. You don't know

what that means. It means that the rangers are starved. It means that the sheep are starved and die by the

millions. It means that there is no money and no work, and that the men and women and kiddies starve.

Bill Hobart had a missus and three kids and at the time of his fight with me they were all starving. They did

not have enough to eat. Do you understand? They did not have enough to eat. And Bill did not have enough

to eat. He trained on an empty stomach, which is no way to train you'll admit. During that drought year there

was little enough money in the ring, but he had failed to get any fights. He had worked at longshoring,

ditchdigging, coalshovellinganything, to keep the life in the missus and the kiddies. The trouble was the

jobs didn't hold out. And there he was, matched to fight with me, behind in his rent, a tough old

choppingblock, but weak from lack of food. If he did not win the fight, the landlord was going to put them

FITZSIMMONS. I did not know. I did not learn till at the ringside just before the fight. It was in the

dressing rooms, waiting our turn to go on. Bill came out of his room, ready for the ring. "Bill," I saidin

fun, you know. "Bill, I've got to do you tonight." He said nothing, but he looked at me with the saddest and

most pitiful face I have ever seen. He went back into his dressing room and sat down.

"Poor Bill!" one of my seconds said. "He's been fair starving these last weeks. And I've got it straight, the

Then the call came and we went into the ring. Bill was desperate. He fought like a tiger, a madman. He was

fair crazy. He was fighting for more than I was fighting for. I was a rising fighter, and I was fighting for the

money and the recognition. But Bill was fighting for lifefor the life of his loved ones.

Well, condition told. The strength went out of him, and I was fresh as a daisy. "What's the matter, Bill?" I

said to him in a clinch. "You're weak." "I ain't had a bit to eat this day," he answered. That was all.

By the seventh round he was about all in, hanging on and panting and sobbing for breath in the clinches, and I

knew I could put him out any time. I drew back my right for the shortarm jab that would do the business. He

And right there I saw and knew it all. I saw the hungry children asleep, and the missus sitting up and waiting

for Bill to come home, waiting to know whether they were to have food to eat or be thrown out in the street.

"Bill," I said, in the next clinch, so low only he could hear. "Bill, remember the La Blanche swing. Give it to

We broke away, and he was tottering and groggy. He staggered away and started to whirl the swing. I saw it

coming. I made believe I didn't and started after him in a rush. Biff! It caught me on the jaw, and I went

down. I was young and strong. I could eat punishment. I could have got up the first second. But I lay there

and let them count me out. And making believe I was still dazed, I let them carry me to my corner and work

MAUD.Springing to him and shaking his hand. Thank God! Oh! You are a man! Aaa hero!

FITZSIMMONS.Dryly, feeling in his pocket. Let's have a smoke. He fails to find cigarette case.

FITZSIMMONS.Gruffly. Forget it. He looks on table, and fails to find cigarette case. Looks at her

FITZSIMMONS. You are not Harry Jones. And not only are you an impostor, but you are a thief.

FITZSIMMONS. Too late. It won't save you. This club must be kept respectable. Thieves cannot be

MAUD.Hurriedly, in a panic. I'll give you a reasonaa good one. IIam not Harry Jones.

FITZSIMMONS.Sternly. I should say you ought to be. Reaches for telephone receiver.

MAUD.In rush of desperation. Stop! I'm aI'm aa girl. There! Sinks down in chair, burying her face in

MAUD removes hands and looks at him indignantly. As she speaks her indignation grows.

MAUD. I only wanted your cigarette case to prove to my brother that I had been here. II'm Maud

Sylvester, and you never took me out once. And I'm not a black sheep. And I don't dress loudly, and I haven't

FITZSIMMONS.Grinning and pulling out card from vest pocket. I knew you were Miss Sylvester all the

MAUD.Relenting. Yees. She rises, crosses to table, and is about to stoop for motor cloak and bonnet, but

he forestall her, holds cloak and helps her into it. Thank you. She takes off wig, fluffs her own hair

becomingly, and puts on bonnet, looking every inch a pretty young girl, ready for an automobile ride.

FITZSIMMONS.Who, all the time, watching her transformation, has been growing bashful, now handing

MAUD.Looking at him, hesitates, then takes it. I thank you erBob. I shall treasure it all my life. He is

FITZSIMMONS. But it's somehow different now when you've got your girl's clothes on.

MAUD. But you weren't a bit bashfulor nice, whenyouyou Blurting it out. Were so anxious about