Evangeline was assigned to a work crew of six women. On a revolving schedule they emptied chamber pots, boiled dirty laundry, cleaned the sheep and goat pens, collected eggs from the hens stacked in cages on the main deck. They coiled sodden rope that had been dumped in a tangle and scrubbed the orlop deck with stones and sand and a straw-bristle brush. They washed the main deck and privies with a mix of lime and calcium chloride that made their noses burn and eyes water.

As the days passed Evangeline adjusted to the swaying and creaking, the ebb and flow of the waves. Mimicking the sailors, she began walking flat-footed, rocking her hips and bending her knees with the movement of the ship, anticipating the pitch of the deck as it rolled from side to side. The motion of dancing, she thought. Of courtship. She discovered hidden handholds all over the ship, tucked under banisters and ledges and built into ladders, to grab when the sea was rough. Soon enough, despite her growing bulk, she could climb from orlop to tween, from tween to the main deck, as fast as any crewman. She learned where to sit or stand to avoid the spray, how to dodge puddles, how to navigate around rum barrels and tangles of rope without tripping, where to find sunlight at different times of the day. She skirted the grasping hands of sailors as she passed and avoided their sleeping rooms on the tween deck. She got used to the taste of salt on her lips, which she had to rub with lard and whale oil to keep from cracking. Her hands became tough and red and strong. She got used to the chaos: the toll of the bell every half hour, the constant bleating of goats and honking of geese, the reek of the privies and bilge.

On temperate afternoons the captain brought his orange pet canary in a rusty cage onto the main deck, where it chirped shrilly for hours, perched on its tiny swing.

She got used to the chirping.

As if memorizing subject-verb agreements in Latin, she taught herself the language of sailing. Facing the ship’s front—the bow—port was on the left, starboard on the right. The back of the ship was aft. Windward, naturally, meant the direction the wind was blowing; leeward, the opposite. The horizontal pole at the bottom of the mast, the boom, controlled the wind power of the sails.

The sailors were busy from dawn until dusk, raising and lowering the sails, climbing up and down masts like the acrobats in Covent Garden, patching huge sections of canvas, greasing cables, splicing rope. Evangeline had never seen a man with a needle and thread, and was surprised to learn how adept the sailors were at stitching. Two or three of them would sit amidships on the deck with legs outstretched, mending a sail with long needles and coarse thread, thimbles on the balls of their thumbs attached to their wrists by leather straps.