Little I guessed how all the warp and woof of that man-world was entangled with alcohol.
So, one day, as I hoisted sail on my skiff, I met Scotty.

He was a husky youngster of seventeen, a runaway apprentice, he told me, from an English ship in Australia.

He had just worked his way on another ship to San Francisco; and now he wanted to see about getting a berth on a whaler.
Across the estuary, near where the whalers lay, was lying the sloop-yacht Idler.

The caretaker was a harpooner who intended sailing next voyage on the whale ship Bonanza.

Would I take him, Scotty, over in my skiff to call upon the harpooner?
Would I! Hadn't I heard the stories and rumours about the Idler ?--the big sloop that had come up from the Sandwich Islands where it had been engaged in smuggling opium.