The evening outings with Steward invariably led from saloon to saloon, where, at long bars, standing on sawdust floors, or seated at tables, men drank and talked.  Much of both did men do, and also did Steward do, ere, his daily six-quart stint accomplished, he turned homeward for bed.  Many were the acquaintances he made, and Michael with him.  Coasting seamen and bay sailors they mostly were, although there were many ’longshoremen and waterfront workmen among them.

From one of these, a scow-schooner captain who plied up and down the bay and the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers, Daughtry had the promise of being engaged as cook and sailor on the schooner Howard.  Eighty tons of freight, including deckload, she carried, and in all democracy Captain Jorgensen, the cook, and the two other sailors, loaded and unloaded her at all hours, and sailed her night and day on all times and tides, one man steering while three slept and recuperated.  It was time, and double-time, and over-time beyond that, but the feeding was generous and the wages ran from forty-five to sixty dollars a month.

“Sure, you bet,” said Captain Jorgensen.  “This cook-feller, Hanson, pretty quick I smash him up an’ fire him, then you can come along . . . and the bow-wow, too.”  Here he dropped a hearty, wholesome hand of toil down to a caress of Michael’s head.  “That’s one fine bow-wow.  A bow-wow is good on a scow when all hands sleep alongside the dock or in an anchor watch.”

“Fire Hanson now,” Dag Daughtry urged.

But Captain Jorgensen shook his slow head slowly.  “First I smash him up.”

“Then smash him now and fire him,” Daughtry persisted.  “There he is right now at the corner of the bar.”

“No.  He must give me reason.  I got plenty of reason.  But I want reason all hands can see.  I want him make me smash him, so that all hands say, ‘Hurrah, Captain, you done right.’  Then you get the job, Daughtry.”

Had Captain Jorgensen not been dilatory in his contemplated smashing, and had not Hanson delayed in giving sufficient provocation for a smashing, Michael would have accompanied Steward upon the schooner, Howard, and all Michael’s subsequent experiences would have been totally different from what they were destined to be.  But destined they were, by chance and by combinations of chance events over which Michael had no control and of which he had no more awareness than had Steward himself.  At that period, the subsequent stage career and nightmare of cruelty for Michael was beyond any wildest forecast or apprehension.  And as to forecasting Dag Daughtry’s fate, along with Kwaque, no maddest drug-dream could have approximated it.

CHAPTER XVII

One night Dag Daughtry sat at a table in the saloon called the Pile-drivers’ Home.  He was in a parlous predicament.  Harder than ever had it been to secure odd jobs, and he had reached the end of his savings.  Earlier in the evening he had had a telephone conference with the Ancient Mariner, who had reported only progress with an exceptionally strong nibble that very day from a retired quack doctor.