“Eliot and I had to stand our tricks in thirty knots of wind, but not you. Lubbing it down below, and you weren’t seasick, little brother, you had a brown streak in your drawers. Or maybe yellow’s the right color.”

“And the ocean waves do roll, and the stormy winds do blow, blow, blow,” Eliot sang out suddenly, loudly. “And we pore sailors a skippin’ at the tops while the landlubbers lie down below. C’mon, Nat. Don’t start with him.”

“And it was Dad who let you get away with it,” Nathaniel carried on. “I told him you ought to do your turn, but he said to leave you be on account of—”

“Jiminy, Nat. Stay off him.”

“On account of I don’t have a sailor’s heart,” Drew said. “I heard him. ‘Leave him be. Andrew is a smart boy, he may even be brilliant, but he’s missing something. He lacks a sailor’s heart.’ That’s what he said. I remember every word because I’ve got a photographic memory.”

Then Nathaniel: “And a pretty picture that Kodak takes. In Dad’s book, someone who doesn’t have a sailor’s heart might as well wear petticoats and put his hair in curls.”

Eliot moved his hands in silent applause, after Drew fled below decks to sulk and nurse his cuts.

“Well done. Very captainlike of you.”

“There’s just something about him sometimes. I don’t know. I …”

Nathaniel couldn’t express it. He hated weakness, and hated it because he feared it, and feared it as he would the whooping cough or polio or diphtheria or any other contagion.

“We’ve got to get along, big brother. This isn’t that big a boat. You were in the wrong and you know I’m right.”

A noisy splash not five yards to port startled them. They jerked their heads around to see an osprey, its white breast almost perpendicular to the water, its mottled brown wings beating furiously as it fought for altitude, the fat herring in its talons gleaming in the sunlight like a small silver ingot.

Bending down, Nathaniel shouted through the cabin hatchway:

“Hey, Drew! On deck! You’re more likely to get seasick down there.”

“I’m playing with the cat,” came the reedy voice from below. “He’s my friend.”

“He won’t be if you puke all over him. I hurt your feelings and I am sorry. Kindly accept the captain’s apologies and c’mon up.”

“You didn’t hurt my feelings and you’re no captain. You’re just a big fat jerk.”

Nathaniel put a fist over his mouth and blew through it and then struck himself hard in the chest.

“Yaaaarrgh! An arrow to my heart!”

“You don’t have one. You’re just like him.”

“Now there’s another thing you wouldn’t say if he was here.”