We met by appointment, early Monday morning, to complete the deal, in
Johnny Heinhold's "Last Chance "—a saloon, of course, for the
transactions of men. I paid the money over, received the bill of sale,
and French Frank treated. This struck me as an evident custom, and a
logical one—the seller, who receives the money, to wet a piece of it in
the establishment where the trade was consummated. But, to my surprise,
French Frank treated the house. He and I drank, which seemed just; but
why should Johnny Heinhold, who owned the saloon and waited behind the
bar, be invited to drink? I figured it immediately that he made a profit
on the very drink he drank. I could, in a way, considering that they
were friends and shipmates, understand Spider and Whisky Bob being asked
to drink; but why should the longshoremen, Bill Kelley and Soup Kennedy,
be asked?
Then there was Pat, the Queen's brother, making a total of eight of us.
It was early morning, and all ordered whisky. What could I do, here in
this company of big men, all drinking whisky? "Whisky," I said, with the
careless air of one who had said it a thousand times. And such whisky! I
tossed it down. A-r-r-r-gh! I can taste it yet.
And I was appalled at the price French Frank had paid—eighty cents.
EIGHTY CENTS! It was an outrage to my thrifty soul. Eighty cents—the
equivalent of eight long hours of my toil at the machine, gone down our
throats, and gone like that, in a twinkling, leaving only a bad taste in
the mouth. There was no discussion that French Frank was a waster.
I was anxious to be gone, out into the sunshine, out over the water to my
glorious boat. But all hands lingered. Even Spider, my crew, lingered.
No hint broke through my obtuseness of why they lingered. I have often
thought since of how they must have regarded me, the newcomer being
welcomed into their company standing at bar with them, and not standing
for a single round of drinks.
French Frank, who, unknown to me, had swallowed his chagrin since the day
before, now that the money for the Razzle Dazzle was in his pocket, began
to behave curiously toward me. I sensed the change in his attitude, saw
the forbidding glitter in his eyes, and wondered. The more I saw of men,
the queerer they became. Johnny Heinhold leaned across the bar and
whispered in my ear, "He's got it in for you. Watch out."
I nodded comprehension of his statement, and acquiescence in it, as a man
should nod who knows all about men. But secretly I was perplexed.
Heavens! How was I, who had worked hard and read books of adventure, and
who was only fifteen years old, who had not dreamed of giving the Queen
of the Oyster Pirates a second thought, and who did not know that French
Frank was madly and Latinly in love with her—how was I to guess that I
had done him shame? And how was I to guess that the story of how the
Queen had thrown him down on his own boat, the moment I hove in sight,
was already the gleeful gossip of the water-front? And by the same token,
how was I to guess that her brother Pat's offishness with me was anything
else than temperamental gloominess of spirit?
Whisky Bob got me aside a moment. "Keep your eyes open," he muttered.
"Take my tip. French Frank's ugly. I'm going up river with him to get a
schooner for oystering. When he gets down on the beds, watch out. He
says he'll run you down. After dark, any time he's around, change your
anchorage and douse your riding light. Savve?"
Oh, certainly, I savve'd. I nodded my head, and, as one man to another,
thanked him for his tip; and drifted back to the group at the bar. No; I
did not treat. I never dreamed that I was expected to treat. I left
with Spider, and my ears burn now as I try to surmise the things they
must have said about me.
I asked Spider, in an off-hand way, what was eating French Frank. "He's
crazy jealous of you," was the answer. "Do you think so?" I said, and
dismissed the matter as not worth thinking about.
But I leave it to any one—the swell of my fifteen-years-old manhood at
learning that French Frank, the adventurer of fifty, the sailor of all
the seas of all the world, was jealous of me—and jealous over a girl
most romantically named the Queen of the Oyster Pirates. I had read of
such things in books, and regarded them as personal probabilities of a
distant maturity. Oh, I felt a rare young devil, as we hoisted the big
mainsail that morning, broke out anchor, and filled away close-hauled on
the three-mile beat to windward out into the bay.
Such was my escape from the killing machine-toil, and my introduction to
the oyster pirates. True, the introduction had begun with drink, and the
life promised to continue with drink. But was I to stay away from it for
such reason? Wherever life ran free and great, there men drank. Romance
and Adventure seemed always to go down the street locked arm in arm with
John Barleycorn. To know the two, I must know the third. Or else I must
go back to my free library books and read of the deeds of other men and
do no deeds of my own save slave for ten cents an hour at a machine in a
cannery.
No; I was not to be deterred from this brave life on the water by the
fact that the water-dwellers had queer and expensive desires for beer and
wine and whisky. What if their notions of happiness included the strange
one of seeing me drink? When they persisted in buying the stuff and
thrusting it upon me, why, I would drink it. It was the price I would
pay for their comradeship. And I didn't have to get drunk. I had not
got drunk the Sunday afternoon I arranged to buy the Razzle Dazzle,
despite the fact that not one of the rest was sober. Well, I could go on
into the future that way, drinking the stuff when it gave them pleasure
that I should drink it, but carefully avoiding over-drinking.
