I did not know this.

And when I did learn it, I was courageous enough not to retreat back to my bestial life at the machine.
I wanted to be where the winds of adventure blew.

And the winds of adventure blew the oyster pirate sloops up and down San Francisco Bay, from raided oyster-beds and fights at night on shoal and flat, to markets in the morning against city wharves, where peddlers and saloon-keepers came down to buy.

Every raid on an oyster-bed was a felony.

The penalty was State imprisonment, the stripes and the lockstep.