" he demanded. "Talkin' like that to Tom
Mowbray! Don't ye know that's the way to fix him to ship ye aboard
the 'Hell-packet?'"

"He can't ship me aboard any 'Hell-packet,'" answered Goodwin
serenely. "When I ship, I ship myself, an' I pay my board in cash.
There ain't any advance note to be got out o' me."

The other halted and drew Goodwin to halt, facing him at the edge of
the sidewalk, where a beetle-browed saloon projected its awning above
them. Like Goodwin, he was young and brown; but unlike Goodwin there
was a touch of sophistication, of daunting experience, in the
seriousness of his face. The two had met and chummed after the
fashion of sailors, who make and lose their friends as the hazard of
the hour directs.

"You don't know Tom Mowbray," he said in a kind of affectionate
contempt. "He's, he's a swine an' he's cute! Didn't you hear about
him shippin' a corpse aboard o' the Susquehanna, an' drawin' three
months' advance for it? Why, you ain't got a show with him if he's
got a down on ye."

Goodwin smiled. "Maybe I don't know Tom Mowbray," he said; "but it's
a sure thing Tom Mowbray don't know me. Come on an' have a drink,
Jim. This thing of the Etna it's settled. Come on!"

He led the way into the saloon beside them; Jim, growling warningly,
followed him.

At twenty-six, it was Goodwin's age, one should be very much a man.
One's moustache is confirmed in its place; one has the stature and
muscle of a man, a man's tenacity and resistance, while the heart of
boyishness still pulses in one's body. It is the age at which
capacity is the ally of impulse, when heart and hand go paired in a
perfect fraternity. One is as sure of oneself as a woman of thirty,
and with as much and as little reason. Goodwin, when he announced
that he, at any rate, would not be one of the crew of the Etna, spoke
out of a serene confidence in himself. He knew himself for a fine
seaman and a reasonably fine human being; he had not squandered his
wages, and he did not mean to be robbed of his earnings when he
shipped himself again. It was his first visit to San Francisco; the
ports he knew were not dangerous to a man who took care of himself,
who was not a drunkard, and would fight at need. He showed as
something under six feet tall, long in the limb and moving handily,
with eyes of an angry blue in a face tanned russet by wind and sun.

In the saloon he laughed down Jim's instances of Tom Mowbray's
treachery and cunning, lounging