“We can toss you overboard.” The captain flicked ashes over the rail. “Considering you’re a bloody mess, the sharks would get you before you drowned, even if you didn’t know how to swim.”

Ollie swallowed.

“Or we can put you to work.”

“I’d prefer to work, sir.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say.” The captain scratched the stubble on his face. “I normally wouldn’t give you an option, but I had a deckhand quit.”

Ollie hoped the captain wasn’t serious about throwing him overboard, but he didn’t want to find out. He retrieved his suitcase and followed the captain inside. Along the way, the captain laughed more about Ollie’s plan to be a pilot for the Royal Air Force, commenting that Ollie looked more like a rodent catcher than an aviator. Ollie didn’t understand the man’s humor, or what exactly a rodent catcher would look like, if there was such a profession. But regardless, if the captain had decided to keep him onboard as labor, or for amusement, Ollie gratefully accepted the man’s offer to work in exchange for one-way passage to Halifax.

In the galley, the captain introduced him to a cook he called Beans, a short, elderly man who was stirring a steaming pot of oatmeal. “See what you can do to fix him up, then send him topside,” the captain said. “We’ll give him Willie’s chores.” The captain puffed his cigar and left.

Beans pointed his wooden spoon, covered in clumps of oatmeal, and gestured for Ollie to take a seat. The cook put down his spoon and retrieved a bottle of alcohol and a cloth from a cabinet. “Let me guess, bar fight or running from the law.”

“Neither,” Ollie said.

Beans raised his eyebrows. “This will burn.” He splashed alcohol on Ollie’s wound and quickly covered it with the cloth.

Ollie grimaced.

“What happened?” Beans asked as he inspected the wound.

Ollie told Beans about his parents and his plans to join the Royal Air Force before realizing that Beans was referring to the gash in his head. “I believe it was a milk bottle,” Ollie added.

“I’m sorry.” Beans put down the cloth. “About your parents, I mean.”

Ollie nodded.

Beans sewed the gash in Ollie’s head with a fishing hook and some thread from the hem of his trousers. It turned out that Beans had been a tailor in his younger years, until the Depression had shut down the store where he was employed. Desperate for work, Beans accepted a position as the ship’s cook. He expected the job to be temporary, but that was a decade ago.

Beans stuck the hook into Ollie’s forehead.

Pain flared. “What’s your real name?” Ollie asked, gritting his teeth.

“Ben.” The cook tightened a stitch.

Ollie gripped the arms of his chair.