"robber,"
and various other not nice things--all of which was complimentary and
but served to increase the dizziness of the high place in which I sat.
At that time I had not read "Paradise Lost," and later, when I read
Milton's "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven," I was fully
convinced that great minds run in the same channels.

It was at this time that the fortuitous concatenation of events sent
me upon my first adventure on The Road. It happened that there was
nothing doing in oysters just then; that at Benicia, forty miles away,
I had some blankets I wanted to get; and that at Port Costa, several
miles from Benicia, a stolen boat lay at anchor in charge of the
constable. Now this boat was owned by a friend of mine, by name Dinny
McCrea. It had been stolen and left at Port Costa by Whiskey Bob,
another friend of mine. (Poor Whiskey Bob! Only last winter his body
was picked up on the beach shot full of holes by nobody knows whom.)
I had come down from "up river" some time before, and reported to
Dinny McCrea the whereabouts of his boat; and Dinny McCrea had
promptly offered ten dollars to me if I should bring it down to
Oakland to him.

Time was heavy on my hands. I sat on the dock and talked it over with
Nickey the Greek, another idle oyster pirate. "Let's go," said I, and
Nickey was willing. He was "broke." I possessed fifty cents and a
small skiff. The former I invested and loaded into the latter in the
form of crackers, canned corned beef, and a ten-cent bottle of French
mustard. (We were keen on French mustard in those days.) Then, late in
the afternoon, we hoisted our small spritsail and started. We sailed
all night, and next morning, on the first of a glorious flood-tide, a
fair wind behind us, we came booming up the Carquinez Straits to Port
Costa. There lay the stolen boat, not twenty-five feet from the wharf.
We ran alongside and doused our little spritsail. I sent Nickey
forward to lift the anchor, while I began casting off the gaskets.

A man ran out on the wharf and hailed us. It was the constable. It
suddenly came to me that I had neglected to get a written
authorization from Dinny McCrea to take possession of his boat. Also,
I knew that constable wanted to charge at least twenty-five dollars in
fees for capturing the boat from Whiskey Bob and subsequently taking
care of it. And my last fifty cents had been blown in for corned beef
and French mustard, and the reward was only ten dollars anyw