And when I never drew a sober breath,on one stretch,for three solid weeks,I was certain I had reached the top.Surely,in that direction,one could go no farther.It was time for me to move on.For always,drunk or sober,at the back of my consciousness something whispered that this carousing and bay-adventuring was not all of life.This whisper was my good fortune.I happened to be so made that I could hear it calling,always calling,out and away over the world.It was not canniness on my part.It was curiosity,desire to know,an unrest and a seeking for things wonderful that I seemed somehow to have glimpsed or guessed.What was this life for,I demanded,if this were all?No;there was something more,away and beyond.(And,in relation to my much later development as a drinker,this whisper,this promise of the things at the back of life,must be noted,for it was destined to play a dire part in my more recent wrestlings with John Barleycorn.)But what gave immediacy to my decision to move on was a trick John Barleycorn played me--a monstrous,incredible trick that showed abysses of intoxication hitherto undreamed.At one o'clock in the morning,after a prodigious drunk,I was tottering aboard a sloop at the end of the wharf,intending to go to sleep.The tides sweep through Carquinez Straits as in a mill-race,and the full ebb was on when I stumbled overboard.There was nobody on the wharf,nobody on the sloop.I was borne away by the current.Iwas not startled.I thought the misadventure delightful.I was a good swimmer,and in my inflamed condition the contact of the water with my skin soothed me like cool linen.
And then John Barleycorn played me his maniacal trick.Some maundering fancy of going out with the tide suddenly obsessed me.
I had never been morbid.Thoughts of suicide had never entered my head.And now that they entered,I thought it fine,a splendid culminating,a perfect rounding off of my short but exciting career.I,who had never known girl's love,nor woman's love,nor the love of children;who had never played in the wide joy-fields of art,nor climbed the star-cool heights of philosophy,nor seen with my eyes more than a pin-point's surface of the gorgeous world;I decided that this was all,that I had seen all,lived all,been all,that was worth while,and that now was the time to cease.This was the trick of John Barleycorn,laying me by the heels of my imagination and in a drug-dream dragging me to death.
Oh,he was convincing.I had really experienced all of life,and it didn't amount to much.The swinish drunkenness in which I had lived for months (this was accompanied by the sense of degradation and the old feeling of conviction of sin)was the last and best,and I could see for myself what it was worth.There were all the broken-down old bums and loafers I had bought drinks for.That was what remained of life.Did I want to become like them?Athousand times no;and I wept tears of sweet sadness over my glorious youth going out with the tide.(And who has not seen the weeping drunk,the melancholic drunk?They are to be found in all the bar-rooms,if they can find no other listener telling their sorrows to the barkeeper,who is paid to listen.)The water was delicious.It was a man's way to die.John Barleycorn changed the tune he played in my drink-maddened brain.
Away with tears and regret.It was a hero's death,and by the hero's own hand and will.So I struck up my death-chant and was singing it lustily,when the gurgle and splash of the current-riffles in my ears reminded me of my more immediate situation.
