I used to row about a good deal, when I had money enough to hire a boat—good boats were ten cents an hour—or when I thought I could depend upon the good nature of Al Soule, who had boats to let. I could not swim a stroke. It is not unusual for men who have much to do with the water to neglect to learn to swim. For a sailor, what use is it?—they ask. He is apt to be weighed down with sea boots and heavy clothes, and the weather is usually such when a man falls overboard that it is impossible to pick him up anyway. Mind you, these are not my own ideas I am giving. A whaleman needs to know how to swim, if he would save his life, and not depend too nearly upon others. It is a good thing for a boy to know, even if he is not going whaling. I would have a boy learn as soon as he can walk—or a girl either. It is the source of a great deal of pleasure. It happened that the father of my best friend had a boat, a thirty-five-foot sloop. Naturally enough I was {8} asked to go sailing in it whenever Jimmy went. Jimmy Appleby was the boy’s name. The sloop was rather old-fashioned, even for those days, and our going out in her was not all play. John Appleby found us of some help even when we were only ten, and we learned quickly to help in hoisting sail, and to tend sheets, and to reef, and to steer, and to do the other little odd jobs in connection with sailing a boat. I have gone out on the footropes of the bowsprit many a time when I was not turned twelve, and it had come on to blow, and she was plunging into a head sea—she pitched fearfully, with her shallow body, and a head sea just about stopped her—and I have been trying to stow the jib—not to furl it, just to tie it down any way—and holding on for my life, and have been plunged to my neck in one sea after another as she dived into them. That sloop was the champion high diver. I do not think that that experience ever imbued me with the desire to learn to swim. I was concerned only with holding on and getting my job done as soon as possible. I have no clear recollection of my usual standing at school, except that I have the impression that I was apt to be in hot water from one cause or another. I must have done reasonably well in my studies, for I graduated from the Grammar School before my fifteenth birthday, but my active interests were not there. The memories that surge up and clamor to be let loose are those of the water-front, the wharves, the ships, the harbor, and the bay. {9} CHAPTER II