第 三 章 · BOOK I CHAPTER III

It was on a day of early Autumn when I stood knee-deep in the heather of

Glengyle, and looked wistfully over the grey sea. 'Twas but a month

later when, homeless and friendless, I stood on the beach by the Cliff

House of San Francisco, and gazed over the fretful waters of another

ocean. Such is the romance of destiny.

Consigned, so to speak, to my cousin the sheep-raiser of the

Saskatchewan, I found myself setting foot on the strange land with but

little heart for my new vocation. My mind, cramful of book notions,

craved for the larger life. I was valiantly mad for adventure; to fare

forth haphazardly; to come upon naked danger; to feel the bludgeonings

of mischance; to tramp, to starve, to sleep under the stars. It was the

callow boy-idea perpetuated in the man, and it was to lead me a sorry

dance. But I could not overbear it. Strong in me was the spirit of the

gypsy. The joy of youth and health was brawling in my veins. A few

thistledown years, said I, would not matter. And there was Stevenson and

his glamorous islands winning me on.

So it came about I stood solitary on the beach by the seal rocks, with a

thousand memories confusing in my head. There was the long train ride

with its strange pictures: the crude farms, the glooming forests, the

gleaming lakes that would drown my whole country, the aching plains,

the mountains that rip-sawed the sky, the fear-made-eternal of the

desert. Lastly, a sudden, sunlit paradise, California.

I had lived through a week of wizardry such as I had never dreamed of,

and here was I at the very throne of Western empire. And what a place it

was, and what a people--with the imperious mood of the West softened by

the spell of the Orient and mellowed by the glamour of Old Spain. San

Francisco! A score of tongues clamoured in her streets and in her

byways a score of races lurked austerely. She suckled at her breast the

children of the old grey nations and gave them of her spirit, that swift

purposeful spirit so proud of past achievement and so convinced of

glorious destiny.

I marvelled at the rush of affairs and the zest of amusement. Every one

seemed to be making money easily and spending it eagerly. Every one was

happy, sanguine, strenuous. At night Market Street was a dazzling alley

of light, where stalwart men and handsome women jostled in and out of

the glittering restaurants. Yet amid this eager, passionate life I felt

a dreary sense of outsideness. At times my heart fairly ached with

loneliness, and I wandered the pathways of the park, or sat forlornly in

Portsmouth Square as remote from it all as a gazer on his mountain top

beneath the stars.

I became a dreamer of the water front, for the notion of the South Seas

was ever in my head. I loafed in the sunshine, sitting on the pier-edge,

with eyes fixed on the lazy shipping. These were care-free,

irresponsible days, and not, I am now convinced, entirely misspent. I

came to know the worthies of the wharfside, and plunged into an

under-world of fascinating repellency. Crimpdom eyed and tempted me, but

it was always with whales or seals, and never with pearls or copra. I

rubbed shoulders with eager necessity, scrambled for free lunches in

frowsy bar-rooms, and amid the scum and debris of the waterside found

much food for sober thought. Yet at times I blamed myself for thus

misusing my days, and memories of Glengyle and Mother and Garry loomed

up with reproachful vividness.

I was, too, a seeker of curious experience, and this was to prove my

undoing. The night-side of the city was unveiled to me. With the

assurance of innocence I wandered everywhere. I penetrated the warrens

of underground Chinatown, wondering why white women lived there, and why

they hid at sight of me. Alone I poked my way into the opium joints and

the gambling dens. Vice, amazingly unabashed, flaunted itself in my

face. I wondered what my grim, Covenanting ancestors would have made of

it all. I never thought to have seen the like, and in my inexperience it

was like a shock to me.

My nocturnal explorations came to a sudden end. One foggy midnight,

coming up Pacific Street with its glut of saloons, I was clouted

shrewdly from behind and dropped most neatly in the gutter. When I came

to, very sick and dizzy in a side alley, I found I had been robbed of my

pocketbook with nearly all my money therein. Fortunately I had left my

watch in the hotel safe, and by selling it was not entirely destitute;

but the situation forced me from my citadel of pleasant dreams, and

confronted me with the grimmer realities of life.

I became a habitue of the ten-cent restaurant. I was amazed to find how

excellent a meal I could have for ten cents. Oh for the uncaptious

appetite of these haphazard days! With some thirty-odd dollars standing

between me and starvation, it was obvious I must become a hewer of wood

and a drawer of water, and to this end I haunted the employment offices.

They were bare, sordid rooms, crowded by men who chewed, swapped

stories, yawned and studied the blackboards where the day's wants were

set forth. Only driven to labour by dire necessity, their lives, I

found, held three phases--looking for work, working, spending the

proceeds. They were the Great Unskilled, face to face with the necessary

evil of toil.

One morning, on seeking my favourite labour bureau, I found an unusual

flutter among the bench-warmers. A big contractor wanted fifty men

immediately. No experience was required, and the wages were to be two

dollars a day. With a number of others I pressed forward, was

interviewed and accepted. The same day we were marched in a body to the

railway depot and herded into a fourth-class car.

Where we were going I knew not; of what we were going to do I had no

inkling. I only knew we were southbound, and at long last I might fairly

consider myself to be the shuttlecock of fortune.