The boys found an empty table. A waiter with a bushy blond mustache gave them menus, which turned out to be a formality, because only one dish was being served that evening—fried fish and potatoes for seventy-five cents. Will asked if the offer of free lunch and a schooner applied to dinner as well. The waiter replied, “No free dinner, want free beer, you ask bartender, maybe he giff you one.”

Shouldering through the patrons, Will and Nathaniel posed the question to the bartender, a jowly man sporting a Vandyke beard. He shook his head, telling them to come by tomorrow noon, if it was a free schooner they wanted. Then, squinting at them, he added that the offer was extended only to sailors and stevedores.

“What do you suppose we are, lubbers?” said Nathaniel, in an offended tone. “I just skippered a fore-and-after down from Maine, and this man’s my navigator, and we’re Florida bound from here.”

“Look a shade young to be a skipper,” the bartender remarked, with a crooked grin. “Shade young to be drinking beer, come to think of it.”

He walked away to take care of another customer.

“Now there goes a man with a fine eye for judgin’ men.”

The comment, made with a trace of brogue, came from a man standing beside Will. He looked to be about twenty-five and was of middling height, but his back was broad and his fingers thick as cigars. A black, sweat-stained derby was cocked over a scarred eyebrow.

“Wouldn’t you say so, Jim?” he asked an older companion. “Wouldn’t you say George has a fine eye for sizin’ a man up? He can tell a fraud from the real thing with just one look, wouldn’t you say?”

The older man said nothing, took a sip of his beer, and licked the foam from his lip.

“Are you talking about me?”—Nathaniel, a sudden thrumming in his chest.

“Hell, no, I was talkin’ about George,” said the young man in the derby hat. “I don’t know you from a load o’ horseshit. It’s George with the fine eye for judgin’ men. For an example, George could look at a chump like you and he’d know straightaway that you ain’t no kinda a sailor, much less a skipper.” Reaching past Will, he poked Nathaniel where the thrumming was. “And lookin’ at ya meself, I’d hafta say George is right. You ain’t no skipper, but a lyin’ son of a bitch.”

The older man said, “Ah, c’mon, Mike, don’t start. He’s just a boy,” while Will, tugging at Nathaniel’s sleeve, pulled him back to the table.

“What’s the matter with him?” Sitting down, Nathaniel was baffled by the man’s animosity.

“He’s a roughneck and drunk. Just ignore him,” Will counseled.