master of life, riding on the back of the unleashed elements, and
John Barleycorn rode with me. Amid dissertations on mathematics
and philosophy and spoutings and quotations, I sang all the old
songs learned in the days when I went from the cannery to the
oyster boats to be a pirate--such songs as: "Black Lulu," "Flying
Cloud," "Treat my Daughter Kind-i-ly," "The Boston Burglar," "Come
all you Rambling, Gambling Men," "I Wisht I was a Little Bird,"
"Shenandoah," and "Ranzo, Boys, Ranzo."

Hours afterward, in the fires of sunset, where the Sacramento and
the San Joaquin tumble their muddy floods together, I took the New
York Cut-Off, skimmed across the smooth land-locked water past
Black Diamond, on into the San Joaquin, and on to Antioch, where,
somewhat sobered and magnificently hungry, I laid alongside a big
potato sloop that had a familiar rig. Here were old friends
aboard, who fried my black bass in olive oil. Then, too, there
was a meaty fisherman's stew, delicious with garlic, and crusty
Italian bread without butter, and all washed down with pint mugs
of thick and heady claret.

My salmon boat was a-soak, but in the snug cabin of the sloop dry
blankets and a dry bunk were mine; and we lay and smoked and
yarned of old days, while overhead the wind screamed through the
rigging and taut halyards drummed against the mast.



CHAPTER XXIII