Hazel looked at Dunne wordlessly. Olive had given birth less than a week earlier. He nodded: he’d had the same thought. Yes, it was worth a try.

Dunne found a crewman to unbolt the orlop deck. Carrying a candle, Hazel made her way down the narrow corridor to Olive’s berth. Since Olive had lost her baby, she’d been glum and withdrawn. She’d abandoned her sailor’s bed and crept back to her own like an animal licking its wounds. Now she lay hunched under the covers and facing the wall, lightly snoring.

Hazel tapped her back. When there was no response, she tugged her shoulder.

Olive turned toward her. “Fer Chrissakes, what.”

“You’re needed.”

Olive turned. The flickering candlelight cast ghoulish shadows on her face. She peered closer at Hazel. “Are ye . . . crying?”

“It’s—it’s Evangeline.”

Olive didn’t ask any questions. She hoisted herself off the bunk, dragging her blanket with her and pulling it around her shoulders like a cape, and followed Hazel past the rows of sleeping women, up the swaying ladder and into the surgeon’s quarters.

At the sight of Dunne cradling the infant, Olive stopped in her tracks.

“It’s hers,” Hazel said.

“I didn’t know she was ready to—”

“You’ve been a bit preoccupied.”

Olive looked back and forth between them. “Where is she, then?”

There was no easy way to say it. “She’s gone, Olive,” Hazel said.

“Gone?”

It was still so unfathomable to Hazel that she hardly believed it herself. “Buck pushed her over the side.”

Olive looked at Dunne, as if asking him to dispute it.

“I’m afraid it’s true,” he said.

“No.” Olive placed a hand to her forehead.

“She went under and never came up.” He swallowed. “I wanted to go after her, but . . .”

Tears glinted in Olive’s eyes. “No need to explain.”

For a moment all of them were quiet, trying to absorb the enormity of it. Evangeline had been here, and now she was gone. Her life had such little value that the ship wouldn’t even attempt a rescue.

Olive sniffed. Wiping a tear with the back of her hand, she said, “To hell with all of ’em.”

The baby, in the surgeon’s arms, gave a lamblike bleat.

Dunne glanced at Hazel, then back at Olive. “The child is hungry. She needs a wet nurse.”

She squinted at him.

“I thought—well, Hazel and I wondered—”

“It’s a girl,” Olive said.

“Yes.”

“Ye want me to feed it. Her.”

“Yes.”

With a hard look at Dunne, Olive said, “Ye couldn’t save my baby but now ye want me to save Evangeline’s?”

He pressed his lips together. There was no answer to that.

“It’s all terrible, Olive,” Hazel said.

Slowly she shook her head. “I don’t think I can.”

“But—”

“Ye shouldn’t ask me to. Babies survive without mothers’ milk, don’t they?”

“Some do,” Dunne said. “Many don’t.”

Hazel knew that Olive genuinely cared for Evangeline. And yet, like Hazel’s mother, her top priority was her own survival. “I know it won’t be easy. But . . . you’d get extra perks,” Hazel said, glancing at Dunne.