They could neither scrape together the passage money, nor get a chance to work their passage.

The country was too overrun by poor devils on that "lay." I was on the seafaring-man-who-had-lost-his-clothes-and-money tack, and they all condoled with me and gave me much sound advice.

To sum it up, the advice was something like this: To keep out of all places like the spike.

There was nothing good in it for me.

To head for the coast and bend every effort to get away on a ship.