“He means to say you need a mess,” said the man beside him—so filthy he looked like a shadow with eyes. “A mess is a group of six men. That’s how we eat, sleep, and suffer in here, and Barck’s right: best you hasten and find one.” All across the hold, I noticed, men were gathering in groups. “You miss out on day one and everyone’ll think you got no will to live. Then you’ll never find a mess, and that means a quick death—sorry to be blunt, but that is what it means. Go see Turtle over there with the humped back.” He pointed a long, bony finger. “He lost a messmate yesterday. And hurry.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

“No sir in here, Greenie. Not even with the officers. We’re all brothers.”

“Thank you,” I said again. Then I threaded my way toward the man named Turtle, deep in the back. Behind him, toward the stern, I saw what remained of a captain’s cabin. The opening for the door had been widened and the stern windows boarded up. There wasn’t a single piece of furniture inside. Only more men milling about.

“You can stop right there,” said Turtle when he saw me coming. “I already got a new sixth.”

“Well, then make me your seventh.” I felt a dozen stares on me. “Or tell me who else can I ask,” I added.

“How old are you, boy?”

I scratched my jaw, pretending to think. “Fifteen, I think? I don’t know—what day’s it?”

Just as I’d hoped, a discussion arose about the day. Was it July thirty-first? Or was it already August?

A few of the men were still watching me and I didn’t know why—because I hadn’t found a mess? Because they knew I was a girl? Panic shortened my breath. I turned to a black man wearing a kerchief as an arm sling. “Where can I find a mess that’ll take me on?”

He lifted his unbound shoulder. “Might try asking the king of England. Anybody know where’s King George?” he called out.

“Here! I am here, my faithful subjects!” someone piped in the dimness. Laughter rippled across the deck.

I forced myself to appear calm. If I didn’t settle this now, I was finished. I needed allies or I wouldn’t stand a chance. “You have to help me. I have to find a spot in a mess.”

“I’ll take you on, whelp,” someone said behind me.

I whirled. A man came forward from the gloom of the stern cabin with an exaggerated stride. A swagger I recognized instantly.