I was barely turned fifteen, and working long hours in a cannery. Month
in and month out, the shortest day I ever worked was ten hours. When to
ten hours of actual work at a machine is added the noon hour; the walking
to work and walking home from work; the getting up in the morning,
dressing, and eating; the eating at night, undressing, and going to bed,
there remains no more than the nine hours out of the twenty-four required
by a healthy youngster for sleep. Out of those nine hours, after I was
in bed and ere my eyes drowsed shut, I managed to steal a little time for
reading.
But many a night I did not knock off work until midnight. On occasion I
worked eighteen and twenty hours on a stretch. Once I worked at my
machine for thirty-six consecutive hours. And there were weeks on end
when I never knocked off work earlier than eleven o'clock, got home and
in bed at half after midnight, and was called at half-past five to dress,
eat, walk to work, and be at my machine at seven o'clock whistle blow.
No moments here to be stolen for my beloved books. And what had John
Barleycorn to do with such strenuous, Stoic toil of a lad just turned
fifteen? He had everything to do with it. Let me show you. I asked
myself if this were the meaning of life--to be a work-beast? I knew of no
horse in the city of Oakland that worked the hours I worked. If this
were living, I was entirely unenamoured of it. I remembered my skiff,
lying idle and accumulating barnacles at the boat-wharf; I remembered the
wind that blew every day on the bay, the sunrises and sunsets I never
saw; the bite of the salt air in my nostrils, the bite of the salt water
on my flesh when I plunged overside; I remembered all the beauty and the
wonder and the sense-delights of the world denied me. There was only one
way to escape my deadening toil. I must get out and away on the water.
I must earn my bread on the water. And the way of the water led
inevitably to John Barleycorn. I did not know this. And when I did
learn it, I was courageous enough not to retreat back to my bestial life
at the machine.
I wanted to be where the winds of adventure blew. And the winds of
adventure blew the oyster pirate sloops up and down San Francisco Bay,
from raided oyster-beds and fights at night on shoal and flat, to markets
in the morning against city wharves, where peddlers and saloon-keepers
came down to buy. Every raid on an oyster-bed was a felony. The penalty
was State imprisonment, the stripes and the lockstep. And what of that?
The men in stripes worked a shorter day than I at my machine. And there
was vastly more romance in being an oyster pirate or a convict than in
being a machine slave. And behind it all, behind all of me with youth
abubble, whispered Romance, Adventure.
So I interviewed my Mammy Jennie, my old nurse at whose black breast I
had suckled. She was more prosperous than my folks. She was nursing
sick people at a good weekly wage. Would she lend her "white child" the
money? WOULD SHE? What she had was mine.
Then I sought out French Frank, the oyster pirate, who wanted to sell, I
had heard, his sloop, the Razzle Dazzle. I found him lying at anchor on
the Alameda side of the estuary near the Webster Street bridge, with
visitors aboard, whom he was entertaining with afternoon wine. He came
on deck to talk business. He was willing to sell. But it was Sunday.
Besides, he had guests. On the morrow he would make out the bill of sale
and I could enter into possession. And in the meantime I must come below
and meet his friends. They were two sisters, Mamie and Tess; a Mrs.
Hadley, who chaperoned them; "Whisky" Bob, a youthful oyster pirate of
sixteen; and "Spider" Healey, a black-whiskered wharf-rat of twenty.
Mamie, who was Spider's niece, was called the Queen of the Oyster
Pirates, and, on occasion, presided at their revels. French Frank was in
love with her, though I did not know it at the time; and she steadfastly
refused to marry him.
French Frank poured a tumbler of red wine from a big demijohn to drink to
our transaction. I remembered the red wine of the Italian rancho, and
shuddered inwardly. Whisky and beer were not quite so repulsive. But
the Queen of the Oyster Pirates was looking at me, a part-emptied glass
in her own hand. I had my pride. If I was only fifteen, at least I
could not show myself any less a man than she. Besides, there were her
sister, and Mrs. Hadley, and the young oyster pirate, and the whiskered
wharf-rat, all with glasses in their hands. Was I a milk-and-water sop?
No; a thousand times no, and a thousand glasses no. I downed the
tumblerful like a man.
French Frank was elated by the sale, which I had bound with a
twenty-dollar goldpiece. He poured more wine. I had learned my strong
head and stomach, and I was certain I could drink with them in a
temperate way and not poison myself for a week to come. I could stand as
much as they; and besides, they had already been drinking for some time.
We got to singing. Spider sang "The Boston Burglar" and "Black Lulu."
The Queen sang "Then I Wisht I Were a Little Bird." And her sister Tess
sang "Oh, Treat My Daughter Kindily." The fun grew fast and furious. I
found myself able to miss drinks without being noticed or called to
account. Also, standing in the companionway, head and shoulders out and
glass in hand, I could fling the wine overboard.
I reasoned something like this: It is a queerness of these people that
they like this vile-tasting wine. Well, let them. I cannot quarrel with
their tastes. My manhood, according to their queer notions, must compel
me to appear to like this wine. Very well. I shall so appear. But I
shall drink no more than is unavoidable.
And the Queen began to make love to me, the latest recruit to the oyster
pirate fleet, and no mere hand, but a master and owner. She went upon
deck to take the air, and took me with her. She knew, of course, but I
never dreamed, how French Frank was raging down below. Then Tess joined
us, sitting on the cabin; and Spider, and Bob; and at the last, Mrs.
Hadley and French Frank. And we sat there, glasses in hand, and sang,
while the big demijohn went around; and I was the only strictly sober one.
And I enjoyed it as no one of them was able to enjoy it. Here, in this
atmosphere of bohemianism, I could not but contrast the scene with my
scene of the day before, sitting at my machine, in the stifling, shut-in
air, repeating, endlessly repeating, at top speed, my series of
mechanical motions. And here I sat now, glass in hand, in warm-glowing
camaraderie, with the oyster pirates, adventurers who refused to be
slaves to petty routine, who flouted restrictions and the law, who
carried their lives and their liberty in their hands. And it was through
John Barleycorn that I came to join this glorious company of free souls,
unashamed and unafraid.
And the afternoon seabreeze blew its tang into my lungs, and curled the
waves in mid-channel. Before it came the scow schooners, wing-and-wing,
blowing their horns for the drawbridges to open. Red-stacked tugs tore
by, rocking the Razzle Dazzle in the waves of their wake. A sugar barque
towed from the "boneyard" to sea. The sun-wash was on the crisping
water, and life was big. And Spider sang:
"Oh, it's Lulu, black Lulu, my darling,
Oh, it's where have you been so long?
Been layin' in jail,
A-waitin' for bail,
Till my bully comes rollin' along."
There it was, the smack and slap of the spirit of revolt, of adventure,
of romance, of the things forbidden and done defiantly and grandly. And
I knew that on the morrow I would not go back to my machine at the
cannery. To-morrow I would be an oyster pirate, as free a freebooter as
the century and the waters of San Francisco Bay would permit. Spider had
already agreed to sail with me as my crew of one, and, also, as cook
while I did the deck work. We would outfit our grub and water in the
morning, hoist the big mainsail (which was a bigger piece of canvas than
any I had ever sailed under), and beat our way out the estuary on the
first of the seabreeze and the last of the ebb. Then we would slack
sheets, and on the first of the flood run down the bay to the Asparagus
Islands, where we would anchor miles off shore. And at last my dream
would be realised: I would sleep upon the water. And next morning I
would wake upon the water; and thereafter all my days and nights would be
on the water.
And the Queen asked me to row her ashore in my skiff, when at sunset
French Frank prepared to take his guests ashore. Nor did I catch the
significance of his abrupt change of plan when he turned the task of
rowing his skiff over to Whisky Bob, himself remaining on board the
sloop. Nor did I understand Spider's grinning side-remark to me: "Gee!
There's nothin' slow about YOU." How could it possibly enter my boy's
head that a grizzled man of fifty should be jealous of me?