If this were living, I was entirely unenamoured of it.

I remembered my skiff, lying idle and accumulating barnacles at the boat-wharf; I remembered the wind that blew every day on the bay, the sunrises and sunsets I never saw; the bite of the salt air in my nostrils, the bite of the salt water on my flesh when I plunged overside; I remembered all the beauty and the wonder and the sense-delights of the world denied me.

There was only one way to escape my deadening toil.

I must get out and away on the water.
I must earn my bread on the water.

And the way of the water led inevitably to John Barleycorn.