As the Chinese proverb goes, the hand that strikes also blocks. Straightening my hat, I put on the haughty look Mrs. Sloane used with inferiors, eyes hooded, nose tipped up like a seal’s. After months of assisting the tough old nut, I could do Mrs. Sloane better than she could. “My mother’s loins. And you?”

Someone utters a short laugh. Behind me, leaning against a staircase up to the forecastle, I recognize the slender American woman from the first-class gangway. A fresh cigarette dangles from her red mouth.

The crewman’s eyes narrow into slits. He points a thick finger at the cargo shaft. “No. I saw you come from the hatch. Else why’s your jacket torn like that?”

“Are you suggesting I climbed out from there?” I snort loudly. “I can’t even walk on this slippery deck without falling. Look, I have ripped my jacket.” I crook a finger at his bulbous nose. “You’re lucky I didn’t break my neck.”

Lookouts stationed in the crow’s nest halfway up the foremast peer down at us. I half expect them to start clanging the warning bell from their washtub-like perch. But then an officer emerges from a doorway under the forecastle, his boots jabbing the deck, and I forget all about the lookouts.

A noose of a tie hangs from a severe white collar, and a jury of eight brass buttons judge me from a humorless field of navy. A uniform like that could have me thrown off this boat for a final baptism. “Something the matter here?”

The crewman mops some of the sweat off his face with his sleeve. “Officer Merry. She climbed out of the hatch.”

Officer Merry folds a clipboard into his chest and glares at me. Shapeless eyebrows overhang a dour expression, perhaps caused by the pressure of living up to a name like Merry.

With my hand to my chest, I laugh, but in my nervousness, it sounds more like the honk of passing geese. “Of course I did. Right after I dropped in from my flying balloon.”

“Who are you?” asks the officer.

He will ask for papers. The ruse is up. My leg shakes, but I clamp down on it, forcing it into stillness.

“Should I call the master-at-arms?” asks the crewman.

“For goodness’ sake, I saw the whole thing.” The American with the cigarette sashays up from behind me, her suit as fitted as if it were sewn around her. I’d nearly forgotten about her. “She was just taking some air, same as me, and the poor thing stumbled but caught herself on the lip of that hatch. Lucky for you, she has good reflexes. An accident right before launch could hardly be good press.”

I try not to gape at her.