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.
Below the town of Benicia, where the Solano wharf projects, the Straits widen out into what bay-farers call the "Bight of Turner's Shipyard." I was in the shore-tide that swept under the Solano wharf and on into the bight.

I knew of old the power of the suck which developed when the tide swung around the end of Dead Man's Island and drove straight for the wharf.