Eliot and Drew must have overheard the conversation below decks, for both their faces appeared in the hatchway to the forward cabin. Eliot took it upon himself to tell their story, and concluded with a statement of their financial condition: Of the thirty dollars their father had given them, a little over twenty-five remained, while their friend Will had about another twenty.

“Well, now, like the Good Book says, the truth shall set you free, but that don’t mean everything comes for free,” said Kincaid. He drew from his trousers pocket a length of twine, and with it and spans of his hand, began to take measurements—a method Drew found woefully imprecise and primitive. “Got me some Georgia pine sawlog over to the mill. Got cracks in it, but if you boys know anything about spar wood, you’ll know the best kind got weather cracks in it and the worst is smooth, same as people. Do the whole job for twenty bucks, fifteen if you do the varnishin’ yourselves.”

“We can varnish,” Nathaniel said. “You have yourself a deal, Mr. Kincaid.”

“Take five up front,” he replied, and then, folding the bill into his shirt pocket, advised that there was no way Frenchy Geslin, reasonable though he was, would cut new canvas for what funds they had left. They would have to find a way to beg, borrow, or steal the money, or work for it. The Beaufort oyster-packing plant was usually in need of new hands, though the work paid so little it could be weeks before the boys saved enough.

This was discouraging news, indeed. Nathaniel foresaw dreary weeks ahead, shucking oysters for pennies, and the end of all his hopes of seeing the Keys and finding the Annisquam. It was either that or make the rest of the voyage and the return without a foresail. Then, despair being parent to inspiration, he had one.

“Might be able to borrow. We’ve got family in Beaufort. Our great-aunt Judith,” he said, more or less thinking out loud.

Eliot scoffed at the suggestion, which he thought typical of his quixotic older brother. They did not know if Great-Aunt Judith was still alive, and even if she was, he said, what were they going to do? Knock at her door and ask for a loan? They had never met her, did not even know her last name.

“Say, you boys sure don’t talk like you got kin in Beaufort,” Kincaid interrupted. “Talk as Yankee as blue-belly prisoners I heard talkin’ durin’ the war.”

Drew, a little offended by the way the man had practically spit out the word Yankee—and by the implication that they were lying—said that their mother had been born and raised in Beaufort, and that her father had died fighting for the South in the Civil War.

“Oh he did, did he?” Kincaid’s expression had darkened. “Died in the what, you say?”

“The Civil War, sir.”