“Sure. But we’re not staying ashore. On a boat.”

“Then give her name and to where she’s moored. That’s in case you don’t show up on time and I have to send someone to roust you out.”

They gave the required information, and Carey told them the day began at eight and ended at six and that their pay would be five dollars a week for a six-day week. They were to proceed to the dock and see a man named Sweeting, who would show them what to do.

“You mean we’re hired? Just like that?”

Carey, lowering an eyelid at Nathaniel: “What the hell do you expect, son? The U.S. Navy band to play a fanfare?”

“No, sir. Could I ask, do you know a man called Artemis Lowe? We’ve heard he’s a sponge fisherman around here.”

“Sure. Only nigger sponger on the island. Rest are Cubans, Greeks, or Conchs. He’s up to Big Pine right now, due back today or tomorrow.”

“So he really does still live here?”

“Has for years.” Carey spun his swivel chair and made a show of reading some paperwork. “Stop askin’ so many questions and get to work. You’re on company time as of now.”

After Sweeting, the balloon-bellied foreman, had told them what their jobs would be, he apprenticed them to a short, red-haired man called Popeye for the froglike bulge of his green eyes, and a muscular white Bahamian whom Sweeting addressed as “Doris,” and who told the boys he had come to Key West five years ago from Great Abaco by walking across at low tide. Doris (no one explained how a man built like a wrestler had acquired such a nickname, nor why he stood it with such good humor) sat them on stools in front of tall straw barrels filled with sponges. “See these ’ere?” he said in his Bahama cockney, holding a sponge in either hand. “This ’ere nappy one is called a Sheepswool, and this ’ere yella one is called a Yella sponge. We want them sorted out from the rest, ’cause they’re the best kind for bathin’, washin’ horses, cleanin’ a wall. They’re smooth, don’t scratch.”