“At least she made ye smile,” Hazel said.

Medea, 1840

The convicts had learned to watch the sky as closely as the sailors. So three days later, when the sky turned a sickly yellow, they knew that a big storm must be on the way. In early afternoon they were sent below decks. Wind lashed the sea into huge waves, sending the ship plunging into a deep crevasse, only to be borne to the crest and dropped again. Lightning tore through the sky, forking over the ship. The rain fell in torrents as sailors skidded along the deck, wrangling ropes and pulleys. Climbing the shroud of the foremast, they swayed like flies in a spiderweb.

As the ship lurched and tilted, the orlop deck was thrown into chaos. Women were dumped from their berths, groaning with seasickness, screaming and crying in terror. Water seeped through cracks above, streaming onto their heads. Bibles flew through the air; children wailed. Evangeline tied a corner of her blanket to her bedpost and tucked the rest around her, a makeshift hammock. She huddled close to the wall, fingers in her ears, and somehow, improbably, drifted to sleep.

Some hours later she was woken by a searing pain in her abdomen. She lay still for a moment, listening to the thrumming rain, trying to decide what to do. It was so dark she couldn’t even see the ribs of the bunk above.

“Hazel.” Leaning out of her berth, she reached across the aisle and poked the place she knew the girl would be. “Hazel. I think it might be time.”

She heard a rustling. “What does it feel like?” Hazel’s voice was groggy.

“Like what I did to Buck.”

Hazel laughed.

“I’m not joking.”

“I know you’re not joking.”

Over the next few hours, as waves pounded the hull and the ship pitched in the sea, Hazel talked Evangeline through the clenching and unclenching. Breathe, she told her; breathe. The pain in Evangeline’s gut spiked and ebbed. When the hatch of the orlop deck was finally unlocked, Hazel helped get Evangeline up the stairs. “The air will do ye good,” she said.

The women around them were mostly silent. Everyone knew what had happened to Olive.

The sky was the colors of a bruise, yellow and purple, the dark sea strafed by wind and sudsed with white. The air was thick with brine. Sailors shouted from pulpit to jib, tightening the sails as the ship heaved and slashed through the waves.

Hazel and Evangeline paced the deck, pausing when the pain surged or a cloud emptied rain. Sips of tea, a bite of hardtack. Trips to the privy. A distracted game of whist. In midafternoon a commotion lured them toward the stern: Buck—filthy, wiry, with matted hair and sunken eyes—had been released from the hold. Twenty-one days it had been.

He narrowed his eyes at them. Spit on the deck.

“Mr. Buck.”

Evangeline turned.

Dr. Dunne stood several feet away, hands clasped behind his back. “Consider this a warning. Stay away from these prisoners or you’ll be back in the hold.”