muttered. "Take my tip. French Frank's ugly. I'm going up river
with him to get a schooner for oystering. When he gets down on
the beds, watch out. He says he'll run you down. After dark, any
time he's around, change your anchorage and douse your riding
light. Savve?"

Oh, certainly, I savve'd. I nodded my head, and, as one man to
another, thanked him for his tip; and drifted back to the group at
the bar. No; I did not treat. I never dreamed that I was
expected to treat. I left with Spider, and my ears burn now as I
try to surmise the things they must have said about me.

I asked Spider, in an off-hand way, what was eating French Frank.
"He's crazy jealous of you," was the answer. "Do you think so?" I
said, and dismissed the matter as not worth thinking about.

But I leave it to any one--the swell of my fifteen-years-old
manhood at learning that French Frank, the adventurer of fifty,
the sailor of all the seas of all the world, was jealous of me--
and jealous over a girl most romantically named the Queen of the
Oyster Pirates. I had read of such things in books, and regarded
them as personal probabilities of a distant maturity. Oh, I felt
a rare young devil, as we hoisted the big mainsail that morning,
broke out anchor, and filled away close-hauled on the three-mile
beat to windward out into the bay.

Such was my escape from the killing machine-toil, and my
introduction to the oyster pirates. True, the introduction had
begun with drink, and the life promised to continue with drink.
But was I to stay away from it for such reason? Wherever life ran