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
th