The Human Drift | Page 8

of
twelve, with a decked-over, fourteen-foot, centre-board 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
hair-raising 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, open-mouthed, 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 centre-board 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 mast-step. And yet he was a really truly sailor fresh from the
vasty deep.
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 oyster-pirate sloop. By the time I was sixteen I
was sailing in scow-schooners, 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 the ocean in my life.
Then, the month I was seventeen, I signed before the mast as an able

seaman on a three-top-mast schooner bound on a seven-months' 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 small-boat 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 "full-and-by" and "close-and-by," 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
seven-months' cruise, except fancy rope-sailorising, such as the more
complicated lanyard knots and the making of various kinds of sennit
and rope-mats. The point of all of which is that it is by means of
small-boat 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 be found for small-boat sailing.
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 "sea-breeze," 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