I remember it to-day, twenty years afterward, with a secret glow of pride.

It was a purple passage, just as Victor's wrecking of the tea-house in the Bonin Islands and my being looted by the runaway apprentices were purple passages.
The point is that the charm of John Barleycorn was still a mystery to me.
I was so organically a non-alcoholic that alcohol itself made no appeal; the chemical reactions it produced in me were not satisfying because I possessed no need for such chemical satisfaction.

I drank because the men I was with drank, and because my nature was such that I could not permit myself to be less of a man than other men at their favourite pastime.

And I still had a sweet tooth, and on privy occasions when there was no man to see, bought candy and blissfully devoured it.
We hove up anchor to a jolly chanty, and sailed out of Yokohama harbour for San Francisco.

We took the northern passage, and with the stout west wind at our back made the run across the Pacific in thirty-seven days of brave sailing.