Chapter Twenty Five.
The Sailor’s Home.
There is a “Sailor’s Home,” or “Snug Harbour” tavern in every seaport town, often anything but home, or harbour, in a pleasant sense. This of San Francisco, 1849, is a hostelry, half eating-house, half drinking-saloon, of somewhat unpretentious appearance—being a rough, weather-boarded building, without planing, or paint, and only two storeys in height. But if low in stature, it is high enough in its charges, as Harry Blew has learnt long since; these being out of all proportion to the outside appearance of the place, or its interior accommodation; though quite in keeping with the prices of other like houses of entertainment in the Pacific seaport.
Harry’s original intention was to make only a short stay at the “Sailor’s Home”—just long enough to put him through a bit of a spree; for which twelve months’ pay, received from the frigate’s purser at parting, had amply provided him. Then he would start off for the Feather River, or some other tributary stream of the Sacramento, where gold was being gathered, or dug for.
The first part of this programme he has already carried out, with something besides; that something being the complete expenditure of all his pay—every shilling he received from the ship, and in an incredibly short space of time. He had been scarcely six days ashore when he discovers his cash exchequer quite cleared out. As for credit, there is no such thing in San Francisco. A shop parcel sent home always comes conspicuously marked C.O.D.—“Cash on Delivery.”
Since landing, he has not very carefully kept his dead-reckoning, and is at first somewhat surprised to find himself so far out in it. He has plunged his hands into his pockets without encountering coin. He searches in his sea-chest and every other receptacle where he has been accustomed to carry, with similar disappointing result. What can have become of his twelve months’ wage, drawn on the day he left the Crusader? It has all disappeared!
No wonder he is unable to account for its disappearance; for ever since that day he has been anything but himself—in short, has given way to dissipation of longer continuance than ever before in his life. It has lasted six days, with most part of six nights, at the end of which time he has only pulled up for want of the wherewith to continue it—credit being denied him at the very counter over which he has passed all his pay.
Impecuniosity is an unpleasant predicament in any country, and at all times; but in the San Francisco of 1849 it was a positive danger—where six dollars were demanded, and obtained, for the most meagre of meals; the same for sleeping on a blanketless bed, in a chilly night, within a rough weather-boarded room, or under the yet thinner shelter of a canvas tent. It was a boon to be allowed to lie on the lee-side of a wooden-walled stable; but cost money for the privilege of sleeping in a stall, with straw litter for couch, and the radiating heat from the horses in lieu of coverlet.