and the way in which the Knitting Swede put us on board the Golden Bough.  Surprising incidents.  But this refusal of my new shipmate to drink with me was most surprising.  Think of a sailor, a hard case, too, moping alone in his room on the day he shipped, when downstairs he could wassail away the day.  I was surprised and resentful.  It is hard for a nineteen-year-old man to stand alone, and I felt that Newman, my shipmate, should give me the moral support of his companionship.

I strutted away the day in lonely glory.  I had not the courage to violate the hoary traditions of the foc’sle and join my ship sober, so I imbibed as steadily as my youthful stomach permitted.  Towards evening I was, as sailors say, “half seas over.”

I was mellow, but not befuddled.  I saw things clearly, too clearly.  Of a sudden I felt an urgent necessity to get away from the Swede’s barroom.  I wanted to breathe a bit of fresh air, I wanted to shut out from my mind the sights and sounds and smells of the groggery, the reek and the smut and the evil faces.  Above all, I wished to escape the importunities of the little Jewess.  She had gotten upon my nerves.  Oh, I was her fancy boy to-day, you bet!  I was spending my advance money, you see, and this was her last chance at my pocketbook.

So, when opportunity offered, I slipped away from the crowd unobserved, and went rolling along East street as though that thoroughfare belonged to me.  And in truth it did.  Aye, I was the chesty lad, and my step was high and proud, during that stroll.  For men hailed me, and pointed me out.  I was the rough, tough king of the beach that hour; I was the lad who had whipped the Knitting Swede’s bully, and shipped in the Golden Bough.

Upon a corner, some blocks from the Knitting Swede’s house, I came upon a fellow who was spitting blood into the gutter.  He was the sorriest-looking wretch I had ever seen, the gaunt ruin of a man.  He drew his filthy rags about him, and shivered, and prefaced his whine for alms with a fit of coughing that seemed to make his bones rattle.

I can’t say that my heart went out to the man.  It didn’t.  He was too unwholesome looking, and his face was mean and sly.  His voice was as remarkable as anything about him; instead of speaking words, he whined them, through his nose it sounded like, and though his tone seemed pitched low, his whine cut through the East street uproar like a sharp knife through butter.

Well, he was a pitiful wreck.  On the rocks for good, already breaking up and going to pieces.  Without thinking much about it, I emptied my pockets of their change.  He pounced upon that handful of silver with the avidity of a miser, and slobbered nasal thanks at me.  I was the kindest-hearted lad he had met in many a day, he said.

We would have gone our different ways promptly but for a flurry of wind.  I suspect that, with the money in his hand, he was as eager to see the last of me as I was to see the last of him.  But I felt ashamed of my distaste of him; it seemed heartless.  And when the cold wind came swooping across from the docks, setting him shivering and coughing, I thought of the spare pea-coat I had in my bag.  It was serviceable and warm, and I had a new one to wear.