they swore, drank, gambled, and womanized as if any night might be their last. “Whenever they have got hold of something, they don’t keep it for long,” wrote one contemporary observer. “They are busy dicing, whoring and drinking so long as they have anything to spend. Some of them will get through a good two or three thousand pieces of eight in a day—and next day not have a shirt to their back.” Mattera had known guys like that
