"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.