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dismay at the matted brown straw. Holding my breath, I dig out the sodden clumps with the spade. When the barrel is empty, I pull handfuls of fresh straw from a bale that sits in the corner and tuck it tightly inside. I resolve to bring down a fresh bucket of salt water later and scrub the floor.
    I take my time dressing, my fingers fumbling over the shirt’s buttons. Barely have I finished knotting my belt when Cook hobbles in. “Hurry up on deck,” he says. “Peep is in a foul mood this day.”
    â€œShall I first gather the eggs?” I ask.
    Cook waves me away. “Best that I do it meself from here on. Yesterday, one had the black rot. You must have used both hands to pick them up. Eggs spoil when two hands touch them,” he declares. “Boils the yolks in the shell.”
    I raise an eyebrow. “I often gathered the eggs with my mother. The yolks never boiled in their shells.”
    â€œDid you use your right hand and your mum her left?” Cook asks.
    â€œI don’t remember.” I shrug. “I just gathered them.”
    â€œThere you go, now,” Cook replies. “You must have used different hands or you would’ve found out about the boiling yolks.”
    I shake my head and turn away. I don’t believe such foolishness, but arguing with Cook is pointless. He is the most superstitious person I’ve ever met.
    Picking up the night bucket, I grab the goat’s leash and head for the door. “Get your oats from the pot,” Cook says, holding a cracked egg up to the light coming through the porthole.
    Solitaire Peep meets me at the hatch. “’Tis time you showed,” he says. “A storm blows in from the north. There’s work to be done before it hits.”
    I look up at the blue sky. The clouds are few and white. Surely Solitaire Peep imagines things. I dump the contents of the night bucket over the side of the ship and then tie a rope onto the handle and lower the bucket again, letting it drag through the strong current. When it is sufficiently clean, I set it to dry in the sun. I eat my oats quickly, feeling a tension on deck I don’t understand. I am scraping up the last spoonful of my meal when Solitaire Peep pushes a stick toward me with a rag tied to the end.
    â€œSwab off the deck. ’Tis splattered with mud and we cain’t be slipping and sliding around like a bunch of fools.”
    I take the stick, grateful for the simple chore. I have scarcely started mopping when Cook comes up on deck. He is holding a large net with tightly sewn threads. “Leave that for now and help me cast the nets. A school of fish follows us. We will catch our dinner tonight and save what’s in the crates.”
    I take the end of the net that he holds out to me, watching as he ties iron weights to each end. “Lift it high over the railing,” he says when he has finished, “then let it drop. The weights will hold it in the water.”
    We lift the net over the railing and cast it away from the side of the ship. It sits for a minute on the surface and then vanishes beneath the water.
    â€œâ€™Twill take a while, but we’ll have a catch come midday.”
    A spirited wind blows across the deck of the ship and fills the sails. The crew is busy at work. Ratty Tom is on the lines. Jabbart hammers new bottoms on several barrels of flour that have been chewed through by mice. I made the discovery two nights earlier. The mice had stepped in the flour and tracked it over the storage room floor.
    I mop around the barrels, dragging the swabbing stick along the bottom of the railing and around the piles of ropes. After several buckets of seawater, the deck glistens. Untying the cloth from the stick, I rinse it in the bucket and place it on the deck to dry. I go to a pile of tangled ropes in the corner and begin unknotting them, stretching them out straight on the deck. I work quickly, pulling and rolling until five neat piles