Anyway, we weren’t stealing the boat.  It wasn’t the constable’s.  We were merely stealing his fees, which was his particular form of graft.  And we weren’t stealing the fees for ourselves, either; we were stealing them for my friend, Dinny McCrea.

Benicia was made in a few minutes, and a few minutes later my blankets were aboard.  I shifted the boat down to the far end of Steamboat Wharf, from which point of vantage we could see anybody coming after us.  There was no telling.  Maybe the Port Costa constable would telephone to the Benicia constable.  Nickey and I held a council of war.  We lay on deck in the warm sun, the fresh breeze on our cheeks, the flood-tide rippling and swirling past.  It was impossible to start back to Oakland till afternoon, when the ebb would begin to run.  But we figured that the constable would have an eye out on the Carquinez Straits when the ebb started, and that nothing remained for us but to wait for the following ebb, at two o’clock next morning, when we could slip by Cerberus in the darkness.

So we lay on deck, smoked cigarettes, and were glad that we were alive.  I spat over the side and gauged the speed of the current.

“With this wind, we could run this flood clear to Rio Vista,” I said.

“And it’s fruit-time on the river,” said Nickey.

“And low water on the river,” said I.  “It’s the best time of the year to make Sacramento.”

We sat up and looked at each other.  The glorious west wind was pouring over us like wine.  We both spat over the side and gauged the current.  Now I contend that it was all the fault of that flood-tide and fair wind.  They appealed to our sailor instinct.  If it had not been for them, the whole chain of events that was to put me upon The Road would have broken down.

We said no word, but cast off our moorings and hoisted sail.  Our adventures up the Sacramento River are no part of this narrative.  We subsequently made the city of Sacramento and tied up at a wharf.  The water was fine, and we spent most of our time in swimming.  On the sand-bar above the railroad bridge we fell in with a bunch of boys likewise in swimming.  Between swims we lay on the bank and talked.  They talked differently from the fellows I had been used to herding with.  It was a new vernacular.  They were road-kids, and with every word they uttered the lure of The Road laid hold of me more imperiously.

“When I was down in Alabama,” one kid would begin; or, another, “Coming up on the C. & A. from K.C.”; whereat, a third kid, “On the C. & A. there ain’t no steps to the ‘blinds.’” And I would lie silently in the sand and listen.  “It was at a little town in Ohio on the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern,” a kid would start; and another, “Ever ride the Cannonball on the Wabash?”; and yet another, “Nope, but I’ve been on the White Mail out of Chicago.”  “Talk about railroadin’—­wait till you hit the Pennsylvania, four tracks, no water