“As I said,” Hazel murmured behind him.

Several days later, Evangeline awoke to find Hazel on the floor between their berths, hunched over sprigs of dried herbs, crushing leaves with two fingers.

“What are you doing?”

“Mixing herbs for a poultice. That sailor could die if infection sets in.”

Hazel had been right: his leg was badly broken. A convict who brought his meals to the infirmary reported that he was delirious with pain, thrashing and cursing. They’d had to tie him to the bed.

“The surgeon knows what to do, doesn’t he?” Evangeline said.

Hazel gazed at her with those implacable gray eyes. Then she gathered the herbs into a heap on a rag and tied them into a parcel.

Early in the afternoon, Evangeline sat on the main deck with a small group of convicts, mending a sail. She watched Dr. Dunne come up from the tween deck, a grim expression on his face, and vanish around a corner. Putting down her needle and thimble, she told the woman beside her she was going to the privy. She caught up with him at a spot blocked from view by a stack of crates. He stood at the railing, resting his chin on crossed arms.

“How is the sailor?”

He looked up. “Not well.”

She, too, crossed her arms on the rail. “Hazel, the girl—”

“I know who she is.”

“I saw her crushing herbs. For a poultice, she said.”

“She’s not a doctor.”

“Of course not. But if there’s nothing to lose . . .”

“Only a man’s life,” he said in a clipped voice.

“He’s doing poorly, I hear. What harm is there in trying?”

Shaking his head slightly, Dr. Dunne gazed out at the shimmering line between sky and sea.

Back in the sewing circle, Evangeline watched as he called Hazel over, leaning toward her as she pulled a small packet from her apron pocket and opened it for him to inspect. He crumbled the herbs with his fingers, held them to his nose, tasted them with his tongue. Then he took the packet and disappeared down the ladder.

Perhaps the result was circumstantial. Perhaps the sailor would have recovered regardless. But three days later he sat lounging on the main deck in a wooden chair, his splinted leg propped on a barrel, pestering a blond-ringleted convict and bellowing with laughter at her retort.

Medea, 1840

The surgeon had his hands full. All the beds in the infirmary were occupied. Heatstroke, seasickness, diarrhea. Delirium, ulcerated tongues, dislocated limbs. He treated constipation with calomel, made of one part chloride and six parts mercury. For dysentery he prescribed flour porridge with a few drops of laudanum and a tincture of opium. To reduce fever he shaved women’s heads, a treatment they feared more than delirium. For pneumonia and tuberculosis, bloodletting.

Word of Hazel’s miracle cure had spread. Convicts who didn’t want to see the surgeon or who were sent away untreated began lining up to see her. She scrounged herbs from the cook and planted some of the seeds she’d smuggled on board with her in a box of manure: arnica for pains and bruises, mandrake for sleeplessness, and pennyroyal, a flowering mint, for unwanted pregnancy. For dysentery, egg whites and boiled milk. For fainting spells, a tablespoon of vinegar. She created a paste from lard, honey, oats, and eggs as a salve for chapped hands and feet.