We had several playgrounds.  The one we liked best perhaps was along the “Bulwark,” at the point where the side street branched off from our house.  The whole surroundings were very picturesque, especially in the winter time, when the ships, stripped of their topmasts, lay at their moorings, often in three rows, the last pretty far out in the river.  We were allowed to play along the “Bulwark” and practice our rope-walking art on the stretched hawsers as far as they hung close to the ground.  Only one thing was prohibited.  We were not allowed to go on board the ships, much less to climb the rope ladders to the mastheads.  A very sensible prohibition.  But the more sensible it was, the greater was our desire to disregard it, and in the game of “robber and wayfarer,” of which we were all very fond, disregarding of this prohibition was almost a matter of course.  Furthermore, discovery lay beyond the range of probability; our parents were either at their “party” or invited to dine out.  “So let’s go ahead.  If anybody tells on us, he will be worse off than we.”

So we thought one Sunday in April, 1831.  It must have been about that time of year, for I can still recall the clear, cold tone of the atmosphere.  On the ship there was not a sign of life, and on the “Bulwark” not a human soul to be seen, which further proves to me that it was a Sunday.

I, being the oldest and strongest, was the robber, of course.  Of the eight or ten smaller boys only one was in any measure able to compete with me.  That was an illegitimate child, called Fritz Ehrlich (Honorable), as though to compensate him for his birth.  These boys had set out from the Church Square, the usual starting-point of the chase, and were already close after me.  I arrived at the “Bulwark” exhausted, and, as there was no other way of escape, ran over a firm broad plank walk toward the nearest ship, with the whole pack after me.  This naturally forced me to go on from the first ship to the second and from the second to the third.  There was no going any further, and if I wished, in spite of this dilemma, to escape my enemies, there was nothing left for me but to seek a hiding-place on the ship itself, or at least a spot difficult of access.  I found such a place and climbed up about the height of a man to the top of the superstructure near the cabin.  In this superstructure was usually to be found, among other rooms, the ship’s cuisine.  My climbing was facilitated by steps built in the perpendicular wall.  And there I stood then, temporarily safe, gazing down as a victor at my pursuers.  But the sense of victory did not last long; the steps were there for others as well as for me, and an instant later Fritz Ehrlich was also on the roof.  Now I was indeed lost if I foiled to find another way of escape.  So, summoning all my strength, I took as long a running start as the narrow space would permit and sprang from the roof of the kitchen over the intervening strip of water back to the second