library. Crew weren’t allowed many books aboard, as they were just extra ballast, so I only had a few. I’d chosen the ones my father had kept with him aboard the Aurora. How I loved having them here, their leatherbound spines and tooled titles like friends waiting for my return. Sometimes I just liked taking them down and holding them between my hands, even if I was too tired to read. I was lucky to have them. Eight I had, and each read many times.
With my cheek on the pillow, I could see straight out my porthole. Sky and cloud—and, if I pressed my nose to the glass, I saw the aft engine car, its propeller awhirl, and below the water of the Pacificus. I squinted at the clear sky.
There was something flying out there.
No, it was just a trick, a little crease of shadow on the cloud’s underside. But for a moment it had looked like something large and winged. I wondered if this is what Kate’s grandfather had seen. Cloud mirages. I wanted to know more and wondered how I’d get a chance to talk to Kate again, without her appalling chaperone.
“You want me to do yours?” Baz asked when I swung myself out of bed. I thanked him and handed over my white serving shirt for him to iron. I was lucky to have Baz Hilcock as my cabin mate. He was kind, funny, and always in a good mood. He shimmied as he ironed, humming some catchy show tune. He was eighteen and from Australia. When we reached Sydney he was off on shore leave for a month.
“Three more days, I’ll be with Teresa,” he said, giving me a wink. Teresa was his sweetheart. Her picture was taped to the wall beside his bunk. She was in a daring one-piece bathing suit, laughing, her skin all tanned, and she looked so womanly that it made me uncomfortable to gaze at it too long—though I wanted to—as though I was peeping at something I shouldn’t. Baz liked talking about her, and I mostly liked listening, glad he confided in me,reading out bits of her letters.
Baz looked up from his ironing and grinned at me.
“Know what, mate? I’m going to propose to her.”
“You are?” I said, amazed. Getting married seemed big, and more grown-up than I wanted to contemplate. I felt a fierce twinge of sadness, like Baz had just said good-bye to me for good, and was bound someplace I could never follow.
“Sure,” he nodded, buttoning up and checking his hair in the tiny mirror that hung from the back of our door. “We’ve been talking about it, and I figure it’s high time. I’ve got a good job, and in all likelihood I’ll make second steward in a year or two when Cleaves finally jumps overboard. Sooner probably—he looks so frazzled.”
I laughed as I pulled on my blue trousers. I looked at my shoes and decided they could go another night without a polish. I slipped on my vest.
“So, what’s up with you?” Baz asked. “You looked glum when you came in.”
“I’m not junior sailmaker,” I said and told him about my talk with the captain.
“I think I’ve seen the fellow,” Baz said. “Ten to one he’ll fall off the ship before we make land. I’m sorry, Matt. Doesn’t get more rotten than that.”
“The captain says he went to the Academy.”
“Oooh, yes, the great Academy,” sang Baz in a high fluting voice. “The Academy where one learns how to say please and thank you while in flight.”
I chuckled, but the fact was I longed to go to the Academy. A place where I could learn how to be a rudder man or an elevator man, and be certified. But it was expensive. Most of my wages I sent back home to my mother. She and Isabel and Sylvia needed it more than me. I didn’t need money up here—all my meals and clothing were taken care of by the Aurora.
Baz winked at me. “Don’t fret, Matt. You’re a sailor through and through. There’s no keeping you back. I bet my molars and a leg you’ll be flying the Aurora within ten years. And remember, you’re still young! The baby of the ship! Why, I remember when we first brought you aboard,
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