"When we came down from the Bering in September, we sold our furs to a Jap syndicate in Hakodate. The captain has dealt regularly with that Jap firm—they pay good prices, and ask few questions. Then we left Hakodate on our Winter trip—captain had the idea that he might run across something worth while in the neighborhood of Torres Straits. But, let me mention in passing, before we sailed we shipped a cook. He was a Jap named Ichi, an affable little man who couldn't speak very good English, who seemed rather dull-witted for his race. More of him, later on.
"Down South we had the accident, and the captain's eyes were injured. We made a record passage to Honolulu, arrived there the first week in January, and the captain went ashore to the hospital. The bosun and I snugged down everything on board, and then I succumbed to my habit. I went ashore and tried to place Honolulu in the dry column by swallowing all the whisky in town. I suppose I had a glorious time—I don't remember much about it. But about a week later I came to one evening in Kim Chee's place, with a dollar and five cents in my pocket, a blazing stomach, and a troupe of goblins affixed to my person as a retinue.
"Kim Chee is the oldest, most wrinkled-up Chinaman in the world. He has had that drinking den in Honolulu for forty years—ran it in the old days when the King and the Opium Ring governed Hawaii. It has always been a sailor resort; in the old days it was a whalemen's rendezvous. Fine old gentleman, Kim Chee.
"I couldn't drink any more, and I was jumpy. So Kim Chee ushered me into his Chamber of Horrors. The Chamber of Horrors is an institution at Kim's place. It is a rubbish room, filled with the junk the old Chinaman has collected during a lifetime, and whenever one of his patrons gets the horrors from imbibing his bottled dynamite, Kim chucks him into this room to die or get over it as the Fates decree.
"So I found myself in this room, with an old lantern for light. I was in a bad way. I was seeing things. Not alligators or monkeys, such as the conventional drunk is supposed to see, but Things, faceless formless Things who brushed against me and leered at me out of the corners. Urrgh! The memory makes me quake.
"I was afraid of losing control of myself, and to keep myself occupied, and my tormentors in the background, I commenced to paw over the junk pile. I was searching for something to read.
"Well, there was an assortment in that room that would have gladdened the heart of any collector—native weapons from all the islands of the Pacific, carved whalebone from the North, knickknacks from wherenot, everything that a couple of generations of sailormen could leave behind them. There were sea-chests and sea-bags that belonged to men who, I doubt not, were drowned before I was born. But nowhere did I find what I sought—something to read.
"I was about to give up the search when I picked up a small package, oilskin-wrapped and securely tied with marlin. It had lain in that corner for a long, long time. It was covered with dust, and the oilskin was brittle dry. The package felt like a book. I opened it, and found I had John Winters's diary in my hand.
"I read that inscription on the fly-leaf, but I must confess that I didn't think of Fire Mountain at the moment. That came later. But I was interested—a sailor's private log always interests a man who knows the sea. I sat down on one of the old chests, drew the lantern close and commenced to read. And as I read, I forgot my ills entirely.
"Now, I'll read you portions of this little book. Afterward, if you wish, Blake, you may read it through yourself. It is worth while—the record of a whaling voyage. But just now I will confine myself to the parts that directly affect us. Queer thought, isn't it, that the words this chap wrote a quarter of a century ago, whose face none of us has ever seen, who is also twenty-five years dead, should affect our several destinies? Fate is a strange jade!