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Updated: May 7, 2025
My memories of San Francisco are at any rate a trifle hazy now, for it is many, many years since I last saw the sun set over the Marin hills. An era has passed since the glamour of the Coast of High Barbaree claimed my youthful attention. But I remember a city as evil within as it was lovely without, a city where were gathered the very dregs of humanity from the four corners of the earth.
Then again he'd sing that Barbaree song until I'd go out and look at the old Colorado flowing by just to be sure I hadn't died and gone below. Or else he'd just talk. That was the worst performance of all. It was like listening to one end of a telephone, though we didn't know what telephones were in those days. He began when he was a kid, and he gave his side of conversations, pausing for replies.
I've a fine collection by now, Guy you've no idea ringing chanties to get a ship under way, and roaring staves of the High Barbaree, ballads of the gale, and lullabies of west winds and summer nights. And your children, Guy, will grow up none the less brave gentlemen and fine ladies for the strengthening salt of the sea in their blood and the clearing whiff of the gale in their brains.
Evening coming on, and feeling in high spirits and no ways disposed to sleep, they concluded to make a night of it; which they did; all hands getting tipsy, and the two masts going over the side about midnight, to the tune of "Sailing down, sailing down, On the coast of Barbaree."
Then we had a mouth-organ solo or two, which naturally led on to songs. My turn came. I struck up the first verse of a sailor chantey as possessing at least the interest of novelty: Oh, once we were a-sailing, a-sailing were we, Blow high, blow low, what care we; And we were a-sailing to see what we could see, Down on the coast of the High Barbaree.
When Joe began crying "Barbaree," he summoned a troop of ghosts, and the pack went scampering through the spectre town in the starlight; and when that game had tired him the voice began to chatter of "Slap-and-a-kick," and "Foot-and-a-half," and of "Rolly-poley," and of the ball games "Scrub," and "Town-ball," and "Anteover," each old game conjuring up spirits from its own vasty deep until the room was full of phantoms and the watcher's memory ached with the sweet sorrow of old joys.
Then, after a while, if you had been standing on the strand opposite, you would have heard scraps of song borne across the quivering water of the lagoon. "Sailing down, sailing down, On the coast of Barbaree." Whether the coast of Barbary in question is that at San Francisco, or the true and proper coast, does not matter.
And the quarter that we gave them was to sink them in the sea: Down on the coast of the high Barbaree-ee." Long-drawn, like the mockery of a wail, the minor cadence wavered through the stillness, and died away. "The High Barbaree!" cried Trendon. "You know it?" asked the captain, expectant of a clue. "One of those cursed tunes you can't forget," said the surgeon.
It was another one further along, that went like this: Their coffin was their ship, and their grave it was the sea, Blow high, blow low, what care we; And the quarter that we gave them was to sink them in the sea, Down on the coast of the High Barbaree.
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