I stepped along with my chest out and my chin up-tilted.  A few paces behind me a beachcomber wobbled along with my sea-bag on his shoulder—­for what A.B. would demean himself with such labor on pay-day, when moochers abounded at his heel!  I was looking for a boarding-house.

But it was not the Sailors’ Home.  That respectable institution might do very well for boys, and callow ordinary seamen, but it certainly would not do for a newly made A.B.  Nor was I looking for Mother Harrison’s place, as I told Mother’s runner, who stuck at my elbow for a time.  Mother Harrison’s was known as the quietest, most orderly house on the street; it might do for those quiet and orderly old shellbacks whose blood had been chilled by age; but it would never do for a young A.B., a real man, who was wishful for all the mad living the beach afforded.  No; I was looking for the Knitting Swede’s.

Knitting Swede Olson!  Remember him, Briggs?  A fine hole for a young fool to seek!  But I was a man, remember—­a MAN—­and that precious discharge proved it.  I was nineteen years old, and manhood bears a very serious aspect at nineteen.  No wonder I was holding my head in the air.  The fellows in my watch would listen to my opinions with respect, now I was an able seaman.  No longer would I scrub the foc’sle floor while the lazy beggars slept.  No longer would I peggy week in and week out.  I was A.B. at last; a full-fledged man!  Of course, I must straightway prove my manhood; so I was bound for the Knitting Swede’s.

Everybody knew the Knitting Swede in those days; every man Jack who ever joined a ship.  They told of him in New York, and London, and Callao, and Singapore, and in every foc’sle afloat.  The king of crimps!  He sat in his barroom, in East street, placidly knitting socks with four steel needles, and as placidly ignoring every law of God and man.  He ruled the ’Frisco waterfront, did the Knitting Swede, and made his power felt to the very ends of the seas.

Stories about him were without number.  It was the Knitting Swede who shanghaied the corpse on board the Tam o’ Shanter.  It was the Knitting Swede who drugged the skipper of the Sequoia, and shipped him in his own foc’sle.  It was the Knitting Swede who sent the crowd of cowboys to sea in the Enterprise.  It was the Knitting Swede who was the infamous hero of quite half the dog-watch yarns.  It was the Knitting Swede who was—­oh, the very devil!

And it was on this very account I was bound for the Swede’s house.  Very simple, and sailorlike, my motive.  In my mind’s eye I saw a scene which would be enacted on board my next ship.  Some fellow would ask me—­as some fellow always does—­“And what house did you put up in, in ’Frisco, Jack?” And I would take the pipe out of my mouth, and answer in a carefully careless voice, “Oh, I stopped with the Knitting Swede.”  And then the whole foc’sle would look at me as one man, and there would be respect in their eyes.  For only very hard cases ever stopped at the Knitting Swede’s.