Several bottles of whisky were always to be found on the backs of my pack-horses.

Yet I never broached a bottle for myself, never took a drink by myself, and never knew a desire to take such a drink.
Oh, if a white man came into my camp, I opened a bottle and we drank together according to the way of men, just as he would open a bottle and drink with me if I came into his camp.

I carried that whisky for social purposes, and I so charged it up in my expense account to the newspaper for which I worked.
Only in retrospect can I mark the almost imperceptible growth of my desire.

There were little hints then that I did not take, little straws in the wind that I did not see, little incidents the gravity of which I did not realise.
For instance, for some years it had been my practice each winter to cruise for six or eight weeks on San Francisco Bay.

My stout sloop yacht, the Spray, had a comfortable cabin and a coal stove.