Fergus broke free from them and tried to run, but a crowd blocked his escape.

“You’re not going anywhere!” they said. “There’s another merchant ship passing tonight, and you’re going to help us wreck that one, too!”

“I’d rather die!” Fergus shouted, and then he ran in a direction none of them had expected—toward the water. He splashed into the surf, grabbed a splintered plank from the wreckage, and began to paddle. The wreckers tried to catch him, but Fergus used his talent to make a wave that rolled in reverse, pushing him away from shore rather than toward it, and soon he was far beyond their grasp.

“Idiot!” they shouted after him. “You’ll drown!”

But he didn’t drown. He hung on to the plank for dear life, the wave carrying him past the rocks and far out to sea, into the deep, cold water where ships passed.

He waited, bobbing and shivering for hours, until a ship appeared on the horizon. Then he made another wave and rode it toward the ship, and when he got close he began to shout. The ship was very tall and he was afraid no one would notice him, but finally someone did. A rope was lowered, and Fergus was brought up onto the deck.

The ship was called the Hannah, and it was filled with people who were emigrating to America to escape Ireland’s famine. They had sold everything they owned to buy their passage, and now they had nothing but their lives and the clothes on their backs. The captain was a cruel, greedy man named Shaw, and no sooner had Fergus been pulled from the ocean than Captain Shaw wanted to throw him back again.23

“We don’t allow stowaways on this ship,” he said. “Paying passengers only!”

“But I’m not a stowaway,” Fergus pleaded. “I’m a rescue!”

“I say who’s what around here,” the captain growled, “and all I know is you haven’t paid for a ticket.”

“I’ll work for my passage!” Fergus pleaded. “Please don’t throw me back!”

“Work!” the captain said, laughing. “You’ve got arms like noodles and little chicken legs. What work could you possibly do?”

Though Fergus knew his facility with tides and currents could be of great help to a ship captain, he had learned his lesson back in Skelligeen, and kept his mouth shut about it. Instead he said, “I can work harder than any man here, and you’ll never hear me complain, no matter what you make me do!”

“Is that so?” said the captain. “We’ll see about that. Someone fetch the boy a scrub brush!”

The captain turned Fergus into his personal slave. Every day Fergus was forced to clean the captain’s quarters, iron his clothes, shine his shoes, and bring him his meals, and when he was done with those things, he scrubbed the decks and emptied latrine buckets, which were heavy and sloshed onto his feet as he dumped them overboard. Fergus did more work than anyone else on the ship, but, true to his word, he never complained.