His eyes moved past me. Men were climbing the ladder, up to the weather deck. A few were carried out by their messmates, limp and lifeless. The casualness with which they went about the task shook me.

“Expect that’ll be you in about a month, Salty. Come on. Time to feast.”

I followed Hackett up the ladder, feeling like I was rising from a swamp.

Outside, the air wasn’t fresh, but it was worlds better than what I’d left behind. Marines and sentinels stood on the quarterdeck and on platforms built over the bulwarks. From these lookouts, they watched the sea of prisoners—a sea I was now part of.

Shaky as I felt and full of new fears, a kind of lightness came over me.

I wasn’t Miss Coates anymore.

I could spit if I wanted to. I could sneeze as loud as a trumpet if I wanted to. Jump in circles on one foot, scratch my arse, say “arse” or any number of other coarse things and nobody’d think me vulgar. They wouldn’t even notice. It wasn’t a soaring kind of freedom, but it was something to be glad for.

I stayed close to Hackett as we lined up by mess number before a large cauldron set over a barrel that smoked with a cook fire. Four other men came to stand with us.

“This is Little Salt,” Hackett said, and tipped his head at me. “He’s in our mess now.” Then he introduced them one by one. Red had gingery scruff covering his jaw. The tall man wearing a shabby courtroom wig went by King George. Wilkins had an affliction that caused him to blink like he was trying to clear his eyes but never could. Finally there was Tim, who clutched mess three’s pail to his chest like every man there was trying to steal it.

Not one of them spared me more than a glance. I suspected that, like Hackett, they expected me to die in a matter of weeks.

“Mess one!” shouted the immense black man behind the cauldron.

Six men stepped up to it, one holding a wood bucket. Squinting against the smoke wafting into his face, the cook ladled some kind of gruel into the bucket and passed out pieces of bread.

“Two!” he yelled.

Mess two went. Then it was three’s turn.

As we walked up to the massive copper cauldron, I put myself right in front. I was shortest, smallest, and newest, but I wasn’t about to be overlooked.

“Is that a greenie there, Hackett?” the cook asked as he ladled gray slop into the bucket Tim held out. The gruel was lumpy and thick, and pieces of the cauldron’s corroding copper edges chipped off into it. I swallowed the sick taste in my mouth.

“Nay, Slushy,” Hackett replied. “He was here yesterday. You just didn’t see him ’cause he’s small as a turd.”

The cook snorted and handed us biscuits. “You’re a lying scoundrel, Hackett.”

“You been talking to my mother, Slushy?”