Of course, I veiled the situation to myself and excused myself to John Barleycorn. And I was very scientific about it. I said that I would drink only while in ports. During the dry sea-stretches my system would be cleansed3 of the alcohol that soaked it, so that when I reached a port I should be in shape to enjoy John Barleycorn more thoroughly4. His bite would be sharper, his kick keener and more delicious.
We were twenty-seven days on the traverse between San Francisco and Honolulu. After the first day out, the thought of a drink never troubled me. This I take to show how intrinsically I am not an alcoholic5. Sometimes, during the traverse, looking ahead and anticipating the delightful6 lanai luncheons7 and dinners of Hawaii (I had been there a couple of times before), I thought, naturally, of the drinks that would precede those meals. I did not think of those drinks with any yearning8, with any irk at the length of the voyage. I merely thought they would be nice and jolly, part of the atmosphere of a proper meal.
Thus, once again I proved to my complete satisfaction that I was John Barleycorn's master. I could drink when I wanted, refrain when I wanted. Therefore I would continue to drink when I wanted.
Some five months were spent in the various islands of the Hawaiian group. Being ashore9, I drank. I even drank a bit more than I had been accustomed to drink in California prior to the voyage. The people in Hawaii seemed to drink a bit more, on the average, than the people in more temperate10 latitudes11. I do not intend the pun, and can awkwardly revise the statement to "latitudes more remote from the equator." Yet Hawaii is only sub-tropical. The deeper I got into the tropics, the deeper I found men drank, the deeper I drank myself.
From Hawaii we sailed for the Marquesas. The traverse occupied sixty days. For sixty days we never raised land, a sail, nor a steamer smoke. But early in those sixty days the cook, giving an overhauling12 to the galley13, made a find. Down in the bottom of a deep locker14 he found a dozen bottles of angelica and muscatel. These had come down from the kitchen cellar of the ranch16 along with the home-preserved fruits and jellies. Six months in the galley heat had effected some sort of a change in the thick sweet wine—branded it, I imagine.
I took a taste. Delicious! And thereafter, once each day, at twelve o'clock, after our observations were worked up and the Snark's position charted, I drank half a tumbler of the stuff. It had a rare kick to it. It warmed the cockles of my geniality17 and put a fairer face on the truly fair face of the sea. Each morning, below, sweating out my thousand words, I found myself looking forward to that twelve o'clock event of the day.
The trouble was I had to share the stuff, and the length of the traverse was doubtful. I regretted that there were not more than a dozen bottles. And when they were gone I even regretted that I had shared any of it. I was thirsty for the alcohol, and eager to arrive in the Marquesas.
So it was that I reached the Marquesas the possessor of a real man's size thirst. And in the Marquesas were several white men, a lot of sickly natives, much magnificent scenery, plenty of trade rum, an immense quantity of absinthe, but neither whisky nor gin. The trade rum scorched18 the skin off one's mouth. I know, because I tried it. But I had ever been plastic, and I accepted the absinthe. The trouble with the stuff was that I had to take such inordinate19 quantities in order to feel the slightest effect.
From the Marquesas I sailed with sufficient absinthe in ballast to last me to Tahiti, where I outfitted20 with Scotch21 and American whisky, and thereafter there were no dry stretches between ports. But please do not misunderstand. There was no drunkenness, as drunkenness is ordinarily understood—no staggering and rolling around, no befuddlement22 of the senses. The skilled and seasoned drinker, with a strong constitution, never descends23 to anything like that. He drinks to feel good, to get a pleasant jingle24, and no more than that. The things he carefully avoids are the nausea25 of over-drinking, the after-effect of over-drinking, the helplessness and loss of pride of over-drinking.
What the skilled and seasoned drinker achieves is a discreet26 and canny27 semi-intoxication. And he does it by the twelve-month around without any apparent penalty. There are hundreds of thousands of men of this sort in the United States to-day, in clubs, hotels, and in their own homes—men who are never drunk, and who, though most of them will indignantly deny it, are rarely sober. And all of them fondly believe, as I fondly believed, that they are beating the game.
On the sea-stretches I was fairly abstemious28; but ashore I drank more. I seemed to need more, anyway, in the tropics. This is a common experience, for the excessive consumption of alcohol in the tropics by white men is a notorious fact. The tropics is no place for white-skinned men. Their skin-pigment does not protect them against the excessive white light of the sun. The ultra-violet rays, and other high-velocity and invisible rays from the upper end of the spectrum29, rip and tear through their tissues, just as the X-ray ripped and tore through the tissues of so many experimenters before they learned the danger.
White men in the tropics undergo radical30 changes of nature. They become savage31, merciless. They commit monstrous32 acts of cruelty that they would never dream of committing in their original temperate climate. They become nervous, irritable33, and less moral. And they drink as they never drank before. Drinking is one form of the many forms of degeneration that set in when white men are exposed too long to too much white light. The increase of alcoholic consumption is automatic. The tropics is no place for a long sojourn34. They seem doomed35 to die anyway, and the heavy drinking expedites the process. They don't reason about it. They just do it.
The sun sickness got me, despite the fact that I had been in the tropics only a couple of years. I drank heavily during this time, but right here I wish to forestall36 misunderstanding. The drinking was not the cause of the sickness, nor of the abandonment of the voyage. I was strong as a bull, and for many months I fought the sun sickness that was ripping and tearing my surface and nervous tissues to pieces. All through the New Hebrides and the Solomons and up among the atolls on the Line, during this period under a tropic sun, rotten with malaria37, and suffering from a few minor38 afflictions such as Biblical leprosy with the silvery skin, I did the work of five men.
To navigate39 a vessel40 through the reefs and shoals and passages and unlighted coasts of the coral seas is a man's work in itself. I was the only navigator on board. There was no one to check me up on the working out of my observations, nor with whom I could advise in the ticklish41 darkness among uncharted reefs and shoals. And I stood all watches. There was no sea-man on board whom I could trust to stand a mate's watch. I was mate as well as captain. Twenty-four hours a day were the watches I stood at sea, catching42 cat-naps when I might. Third, I was doctor. And let me say right here that the doctor's job on the Snark at that time was a man's job. All on board suffered from malaria—the real, tropical malaria that can kill in three months. All on board suffered from perforating ulcers43 and from the maddening itch15 of ngari-ngari. A Japanese cook went insane from his too numerous afflictions. One of my Polynesian sailors lay at death's door with blackwater fever. Oh, yes, it was a full man's job, and I dosed and doctored, and pulled teeth, and dragged my patients through mild little things like ptomaine poisoning.
Fourth, I was a writer. I sweated out my thousand words a day, every day, except when the shock of fever smote44 me, or a couple of nasty squalls smote the Snark, in the morning. Fifth, I was a traveller and a writer, eager to see things and to gather material into my note-books. And, sixth, I was master and owner of the craft that was visiting strange places where visitors are rare and where visitors are made much of. So here I had to hold up the social end, entertain on board, be entertained ashore by planters, traders, governors, captains of war vessels45, kinky-headed cannibal kings, and prime ministers sometimes fortunate enough to be clad in cotton shifts.
Of course I drank. I drank with my guests and hosts. Also, I drank by myself. Doing the work of five men, I thought, entitled me to drink. Alcohol was good for a man who over-worked. I noted46 its effect on my small crew, when, breaking their backs and hearts at heaving up anchor in forty fathoms47, they knocked off gasping48 and trembling at the end of half an hour and had new life put into them by stiff jolts49 of rum. They caught their breaths, wiped their mouths, and went to it again with a will. And when we careened the Snark and had to work in the water to our necks between shocks of fever, I noted how raw trade rum helped the work along.
And here again we come to another side of many-sided John Barleycorn. On the face of it, he gives something for nothing. Where no strength remains50 he finds new strength. The wearied one rises to greater effort. For the time being there is an actual accession of strength. I remember passing coal on an ocean steamer through eight days of hell, during which time we coal-passers were kept to the job by being fed with whisky. We toiled51 half drunk all the time. And without the whisky we could not have passed the coal.
This strength John Barleycorn gives is not fictitious52 strength. It is real strength. But it is manufactured out of the sources of strength, and it must ultimately be paid for, and with interest. But what weary human will look so far ahead? He takes this apparently53 miraculous54 accession of strength at its face value. And many an overworked business and professional man, as well as a harried55 common labourer, has travelled John Barleycorn's death road because of this mistake.
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1
unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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2
malice
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| n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋 | |
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cleansed
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| 弄干净，清洗( cleanse的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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alcoholic
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| adj.（含）酒精的，由酒精引起的；n.酗酒者 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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7
luncheons
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| n.午餐，午宴( luncheon的名词复数 ) | |
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8
yearning
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| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
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ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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10
temperate
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| adj.温和的，温带的，自我克制的，不过分的 | |
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11
latitudes
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| 纬度 | |
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12
overhauling
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| n.大修；拆修；卸修；翻修v.彻底检查( overhaul的现在分词 )；大修；赶上；超越 | |
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13
galley
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| n.（飞机或船上的）厨房单层甲板大帆船；军舰舰长用的大划艇； | |
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locker
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| n.更衣箱，储物柜，冷藏室，上锁的人 | |
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itch
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| n.痒，渴望，疥癣；vi.发痒，渴望 | |
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ranch
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| n.大牧场，大农场 | |
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geniality
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| n.和蔼，诚恳；愉快 | |
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18
scorched
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| 烧焦，烤焦( scorch的过去式和过去分词 )； 使（植物）枯萎，把…晒枯； 高速行驶； 枯焦 | |
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19
inordinate
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| adj.无节制的；过度的 | |
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outfitted
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| v.装备，配置设备，供给服装( outfit的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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21
scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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befuddlement
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| 迷惘，昏迷，失常 | |
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descends
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| v.下来( descend的第三人称单数 )；下去；下降；下斜 | |
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24
jingle
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| n.叮当声，韵律简单的诗句；v.使叮当作响，叮当响，押韵 | |
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25
nausea
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| n.作呕，恶心；极端的憎恶(或厌恶) | |
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26
discreet
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| adj.(言行)谨慎的；慎重的；有判断力的 | |
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canny
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| adj.谨慎的，节俭的 | |
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abstemious
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| adj.有节制的，节俭的 | |
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spectrum
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| n.谱，光谱，频谱；范围，幅度，系列 | |
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radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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31
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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32
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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irritable
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| adj.急躁的；过敏的；易怒的 | |
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sojourn
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| v./n.旅居，寄居；逗留 | |
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doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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forestall
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| vt.抢在…之前采取行动；预先阻止 | |
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malaria
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| n.疟疾 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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navigate
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| v.航行，飞行；导航，领航 | |
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40
vessel
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| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
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41
ticklish
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| adj.怕痒的；问题棘手的；adv.怕痒地；n.怕痒，小心处理 | |
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42
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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43
ulcers
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| n.溃疡( ulcer的名词复数 )；腐烂物；道德败坏；腐败 | |
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44
smote
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| v.猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去式 ) | |
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45
vessels
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| n.血管( vessel的名词复数 )；船；容器；（具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的）人 | |
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46
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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47
fathoms
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| 英寻( fathom的名词复数 ) | |
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48
gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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49
jolts
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| （使）摇动， （使）震惊( jolt的名词复数 ) | |
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50
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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51
toiled
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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52
fictitious
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| adj.虚构的，假设的；空头的 | |
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53
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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54
miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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55
harried
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| v.使苦恼( harry的过去式和过去分词 )；不断烦扰；一再袭击；侵扰 | |
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