Despite her own sizable stomach, within a few weeks Olive had taken up with a barrel-chested, much-inked sailor with a snaggletoothed smile and a ruddy neck called Grunwald. She rarely slept in her own berth.

“I hope that sailor is nice to her,” Evangeline said to Hazel one afternoon as they sat in the stern behind a wall of chicken crates, an out-of-the-way place they’d discovered to meet after their chores were done. Evangeline was working on her quilt, Hazel copying words from the Bible onto the slate with a nub of chalk.

UNTO. DAY. GOD. LORD.

“Let’s just hope he leaves her alone for a spell to mend after the baby is born.”

Evangeline arranged a section of fabric squares and started pinning them together. “Surely he will.”

Hazel grunted. “Men do as they please.”

“Come, now,” Evangeline said. “Not all men.”

“Yours did, didn’t he?”

The observation stung. Evangeline concentrated on her stitches, inserting the needle in the front of the fabric, grabbing a bit of the back, running the thread through the layers. “Is anybody giving you trouble?”

“Not really.”

“What about Buck?”

Hazel shrugged. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

Evangeline turned the fabric over, inspecting the line of stitches. “Be careful.”

“Careful,” Hazel scoffed. Reaching into her apron pocket, she pulled out a silver folding knife with a mother-of-pearl handle and held it on the flat of her palm.

Evangeline gaped. “Where’d you get that?”

“I’m a pickpocket, remember?”

“A failed one. For goodness’ sake, put that away.” Both of them knew that if Hazel were found guilty of theft from a sailor, she’d wear a placard and shackles in the hold until her feet touched land.

“No one but you will ever know,” Hazel said, slipping the knife back into her pocket. “Unless I need to use it.”

One afternoon a sailor lost his footing and fell from the yardarm to the deck, a distance of about twenty feet, near where Hazel and Evangeline sat together prying apart wet rope. They looked up. No one was coming to his aid. Hazel dropped the rope and went to his side, leaning close and whispering in his ear. The sailor howled and groaned, clutching his leg.

Just then the surgeon emerged from the tween deck. Seeing Hazel bent over the sailor, he called, “Move aside, prisoner.”

At first Hazel ignored him, running a hand down the crewman’s leg to his shin, probing it with her fingers. A small crowd had gathered. Looking up at the surgeon, she said, “His leg is broken and needs to be reset.”

Evangeline was struck by the girl’s expression: an air of practiced attentiveness that gave her an unexpected authority.

“I’ll determine that,” the surgeon said.

The sailor groaned.

“He’ll require a splint. And some rum,” Hazel said.

“What experience have you?”

“My mother is an herbalist. A midwife.”

The surgeon flicked his hand at her. “Stand over there.” Crouching over the sailor, he repeated Hazel’s movements: he felt down the man’s leg, grasped it between his fingers, put a flat hand to his forehead. Sitting back on his heels, he said, “Someone find a board to transport him to my quarters.”