"Better wait a day or two if it's any favor you want to ask the old man," advised the seaman. "Let his coppers get cooled first. A better navigator than Cap'n Peters never stepped, and he don't lush none 'twixt port and port; but he's no mamma's angel child when his coppers is hot, believe me!" "Thanks. I'll remember," Drew said. "Of course you did not notice the young lady who came aboard here yesterday afternoon just after I left?" "Didn't I, though?" responded the second officer of the _Normandy_. "My eye!" "Do you know who she is?" blurted out Drew. "No, sir. But the skipper does, I reckon." "All right," Drew said, and turned to descend the plank to the dock. As he did so he found himself confronting the one-eyed man who had figured in the incident on the dock the previous afternoon. The fellow's countenance was raised to his own as Drew came down the plank, and the latter obtained a good view of the scarred face. It was almost beardless, and even the brows were so light and scanty that they lent no character to the remaining shallow, furtive blue eye. The empty socket gave a horribly grim appearance to the whole face. Momentary as Drew's scrutiny was, he saw that the one-eyed man was intoxicated. Not desiring to engage in a controversy with a stranger in that condition, he would have passed on quickly, but the fellow would not step aside. "Just let me pass, will you?" Drew said, eyeing the other warily. "You lubberly swab!" the one-eyed man said thickly, and with it spat out a vile epithet that instantly raised a flame of hot anger in Allen Drew. He plunged down the plank, his fists clenched and his eyes ablaze. The one-eyed man was by no means unsteady on his legs; he met the charge of the young fellow boldly enough. But Drew dodged his swing, and having all the push of his descent of the plank behind the straight-arm jolt he landed on the other's jaw, the impact was terrific. "Whee!" yelled the second officer of the _Normandy_, leaning on the rail, an interested spectator. "That's a soaker!" Others came running to the scene. A fight will bring a crowd quicker than any other happening. The one-eyed man had been driven back against the nearest pile of freight. Drew was after him before he could recover from that first blow, and he got in a couple of other punches that ended the encounter--for the time being, at least. His antagonist went to the floor of the dock and stayed there. "Beat it, 'bo!" advised a seaman at the _Normandy's_ rail. "Here comes the cop." Drew accepted the advice as good, dodged around a tier of freight, and so escaped. He was not of a quarrelsome disposition; yet somehow the memory of those three blows he had struck gave him a deal of satisfaction.