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?”

The cook laughed. “Get out of here.”

As I followed my messmates to a bare spot on the deck, my fist closed protectively around the nourishment I desperately needed, I glanced at Hackett.

“Something on my face?” he asked, without looking over.

What I wanted to see on it was trustworthiness. “No,” I said.

We sat in a half circle on filthy cracked planks, and Tim handed me the pail. “First day aboard, first one to eat.”

Relief hit me, and I sighed in spite of myself. I stared into the pail, too hungry to care what the gruel looked or smelled like anymore.

“No spoons, Salty,” Hackett said. “Use your bread.”