“All right,” laughed romantic-minded Bob, “I’ll promise. No more books for me until further orders. But,” he added, to himself, “I guess I won’t need any books when I get down there where Spanish buccaneers used to prowl around and where the last American pirates did business.”
On the second day after Mrs. Balfour and Bob reached the ancient Spanish-founded city, they secured lodging just beyond the business center of the town. Having comfortably established themselves, the evening meal was scarcely over before Bob cajoled his mother into permitting him to take a stroll.
Bob and his mother had planned to begin their sight-seeing the following day. Their first expedition was to be by launch from Long Wharf down the bay to the navy yard and Fort Barancas. For that reason, he hastened at once toward the wharf, determined to secure all the information he could concerning the launch and the hour of its departure.
The orders of the Balfour family physician prohibiting the use of books had not been so imperative as to preclude Bob reading a “Florida Guide Book”. Therefore, as he approached the shipping end of the city’s main street, his ears were open and his eyes were alert for traces of the picturesque past.
Although he had just left the Plaza Ferdinand VII, with its illuminated fountain casting its scintillating rays on beds of narcissus, hydrangea and roses, it would not have struck Bob wholly out of place to have stepped at once into an old sailor rendezvous redolent of pitch and bilge water. On the contrary, he found, in the main, nothing but modern lunch counters, commonplace pool rooms and beer saloons.
Long Wharf itself was dark and the excursion boat piers were deserted. Deciding that the vicinity was no place for a boy of his age, particularly a stranger, Bob turned and retraced his footsteps on the opposite side of the street. Within two blocks, he noticed the creole coffee house.
There were neither door nor window screens, and, in spite of a modern lunch counter on one side of the room, Bob saw, on the opposite wall, several old fashioned prints of sailing vessels. Beneath these were several tables. At one of them, with a steaming cup before him, sat a man gazing toward the door. What instantly fixed Bob’s eye was that, for the first time in his life, he was looking at a genuine old salt-water sailor.
At the lunch counter, were two boys, but before the curious Bob could give them a second glance, he was surprised to see the man straighten in his chair and, with the slow motion of a weather beaten forefinger, beckon to him.
“I mean ye, lad. Come in,” said the sailor, throwing his head back by way of invitation. It wasn’t a bad face the sailor had. An old yachting cap lay on the table before him. But what had been immediate notification to Bob that the man was a sailor was the fact that he wore small gold earrings, and that, beneath his loosened shirt, were the tattooed outlines of a ship.
The room was well lighted, and, although Bob was conscious that the two boys were near by, the picturesque “old sea dog” (for such, the romantic Bob at once dubbed the stranger in his always active imagination) was irresistible. The boy stepped into the coffee house and approached the sailor’s table.