That proved a little difficult, for the man called Mike had turned to put his back to the bar and stare at Nathaniel with a malicious grin. The waiter brought their dinners, but Nathaniel couldn’t eat, not with the roughneck glaring at him with savage merriment. Then, slamming his stein down on the bar, Mike launched himself across the floor and stood with feet planted wide in front of the boys’ table.

“Any lyin’ son of a bitch comes in here don’t get to leave without fightin’ me first,” he said, in a loud voice that caused several patrons at the bar to turn and look. “That’s a rule o’ the house in this place. So put ’em up, Captain, or I’ll bust you up where you sit.”

“My friend wasn’t lying,” said Will, oh so reasonably. “He really did captain a boat down from Maine. Also, he’s only sixteen, so you won’t prove much by busting him up.”

“How about you, boy-o? How old’re you?” the man said, then pivoted and threw a short, crisp right hand that, if he’d thrown it sober, would have caught Will flush on the jaw and knocked him cold. Even so, the glancing blow snapped Will’s head back.

With both fists held at chest level, the man named Mike stepped back to give himself room to swing, in case Will came at him; but Will wasn’t about to do any such thing. All he could do was to sit, stunned, while his mouth gushed blood.

Mike turned to Nathaniel, and with a backward wave, challenged him to come on and fight. He couldn’t move. He had felt fear before his Andover boxing matches, but that fear had been stimulating, a spur to action. What he felt now was a primal, paralyzing terror, as if he were facing a wild animal. The bartender appeared a second later, wielding what looked like a policeman’s nightstick. From behind, he rapped it twice on Mike’s shoulder.

“There’ll be none of your nonsense here tonight, Downey! Take it outside!”

Nathaniel’s relief lasted for as long as it took for Mike Downey to whirl and drop the bartender to his knees with two quick punches to the belly. The nightstick clattered to the floor, wood on tile. Someone yelled, “Fight! Downey’s got a fight again!” The crowd apparently was well choreographed; they cleared away from the bar in seconds, the men forming a kind of arena, with themselves on three sides, the bar on the fourth. Two big customers also blockaded the door.

“C’mon, Captain, c’mon, you lyin’ son of a bitch!” snarled Downey, from a few feet away.