What?
Be robbed of my hero's death?
Never.

And I lay on my back in the starlight, watching the familiar wharf-lights go by, red and green and white, and bidding sad sentimental farewell to them, each and all.
When I was well clear, in mid-channel, I sang again.

Sometimes I swam a few strokes, but in the main I contented myself with floating and dreaming long drunken dreams.

Before daylight, the chill of the water and the passage of the hours had sobered me sufficiently to make me wonder what portion of the Straits I was in, and also to wonder if the turn of the tide wouldn't catch me and take me back ere I had drifted out into San Pablo Bay.
Next I discovered that I was very weary and very cold, and quite sober, and that I didn't in the least want to be drowned.

I could make out the Selby Smelter on the Contra Costa shore and the Mare Island lighthouse.
I started to swim for the Solano shore, but was too weak and chilled, and made so little headway, and at the cost of such painful effort, that I gave it up and contented myself with floating, now and then giving a stroke to keep my balance in the tide-rips which were increasing their commotion on the surface of the water.