n's the best time for light
plunder--ropes an' such. But I went in for reg'lar doin's--bags of
coffee or spice, or anything goin'. We had a dodge for a good while they
couldn't make out--goin' along soft, oars muffled, hardly drawin' a long
breath, till we'd got under the dock, where I'd seen the coffee-bags
lie, an' a man on 'em with pistol cocked. Then, slow an' easy, bore with
a big auger up through them beams and straight into the bag, an' the
coffee'd pour down into the bag we held under. Went off with seven bags
that very way one night, an' I was that full of laugh! I walked back
down the dock when we'd landed 'em, an' saw the watchman jest dancin'
an' swearin', he was so mad.

"'What's up?' I says, innocent as could be, goin' up to him.

"'It's them d---- river-thieves,' he says, 'with a new kink,----'em!
I'll be even with 'em yet. Here's seven holes right up through, an' the
Lord only knows how they could do it an' I not hear 'em. They're that
thick I believe there's one to every bag of coffee on ship or off; but
I'll get 'em yet.' He looked at me sharp as a rat, but I kept my face
straight till I'd walked off, an' then I believe I laughed a day without
stoppin'.

"That went on three years. I'd got to think no man alive could take me,
for I'd been grabbed a dozen times, an' always slipped out somehow. I'd
been shot at, an' hit twice; been knocked overboard, an' swum under the
dock--'most froze an' stiff with ice before I could get out. An' then to
think that it was only a coil of rope took me at last! I thought 'twas
spices, but the captain'd been too quick for us, an' every bag was in
the government storehouse. I crawled up the side like a cat an' felt
round, mad enough to find only that rope; an' I'd just dropped it over
the side when there was a light, an' three men on me. I dropped, but
they had me. I fought like mad, but the handcuffs were on, an' I was
marched off quicker'n I can tell it. An' one was the very man that had
sworn to be even with us, an' he knew me on the spot. That trial didn't
take long. 'In consideration of my youth,' the judge said, I was to have
'only ten years.' Only ten years! He didn't know how it looked to me,
that loved my own life an' freedom so't I couldn't bear a house over me
even a day, but must be out in the air. I swore I'd kill whoever took
me, an' I fought with the keeper till they chained me like a wild beast;
an' that's the way I went to Sing-Sing, an' all warned they'd