Captain Crow eyed her. The only sounds were the seething spores and the brush scraping back and forth.
At last, the captain pulled a canteen from her belt and took a long drink. It did look like a nice canteen. With leather up the outsides that had feather patterns imprinted on it. Even when exhausted, Tress appreciated a good drinking vessel.
Crow stalked off—and gave no further orders to deal with Tress. The pirates retreated to their posts, and no one tossed her.
She kept working anyway. Scrubbing as Huck whispered encouragement in her ear. She worked well into the night, until—numb with fatigue—she finally curled up in one corner of the deck and fell asleep.
THE CABIN BOY
Tress awoke the next day with a face full of hair. She felt stiff, like a washrag that was long overdue for a turn in the laundry. She unfolded herself from the deck, trying to tie back her hair, and vaguely remembered being kicked during the night and told to move so she wouldn’t be underfoot. She’d done it, but had been kicked awake again for the same reason on two separate occasions. There didn’t appear to be any place on the deck where she wouldn’t be underfoot.
Her next thought wasn’t for food. It wasn’t for something to drink, or other biological needs.
It was for Charlie.
Never had Tress felt so naive. She’d thought she could simply leave her home and rescue someone? Even though she’d never set foot on a ship before? She felt a fool. Worse, she felt pain for Charlie, who must be somewhere frightened, trapped and alone. His agony was her agony.
It might seem that the person who can feel for others is doomed in life. Isn’t one person’s pain enough? Why must a person like Tress feel for two, or more? Yet I’ve found that the people who are the happiest are the ones who learn best how to feel. It takes practice, you know. Effort. And those who （late in life） have been feeling for two, three, or a thousand different people…well, turns out they’ve had a leg up on everyone else all along.
Empathy is an emotional loss leader. It pays for itself eventually.
That wasn’t of much comfort at the time for Tress, miserable on the deck, realizing that—before she could even think of helping Charlie—she was going to have to find a way to save herself. She huddled against the gunwale, and heard someone belowdecks yelling that “first watch” could come to mess.
Huck whispered something to her and scrambled off to investigate. Tress’s grumbling stomach reminded her that the last thing she’d had to eat or drink had been the water that made her see pigeons. So, aching, she climbed to her feet. “Mess” meant food on a ship, right? Maybe they wouldn’t notice if she…
A lanky figure in an unbuttoned military coat stepped in front of her. Bald, with scruff on his chin, the fellow wore a sword at his side and had two pistols tucked into his belt. Laggart, the cannonmaster, was the ship’s first officer. He had wiry muscles, and that long neck and bald head hinted he might have a buzzard somewhere in his family tree.
He looked Tress up and down. “First watch can eat,” Laggart said. “Those are the men and women getting ready to take over sailing for the day. Are you going to be working the sails or the rigging today, honey-hair?”
“…No,” Tress whispered.
“Second shift will eat next,” Laggart said. “They worked all night, and can eat as soon as their replacements arrive.”
“And…what watch am I?” Tress asked softly.
“Captain says you’re third watch,” Laggart said, then smiled as he left.
Eventually second watch was called, and the sailors exchanged places. Tress waited, groggy and stiff. And she waited. And waited. One might say she was quite the waitress that morning.
Third watch was never called. Tress suspected she was the only one “assigned” to it. So she did her best to ignore her stomach, instead observing the pirates at work. Maybe if she learned their tasks, she’d be able to anticipate how to keep out of their way.
She spent the morning so occupied, and fortunately most of them didn’t seem bothered by her. They weren’t a jovial crew, but they were apparently a dedicated one. A few times, Tress caught Captain Crow watching her from the side while drinking from her canteen. Her glare made Tress feel like a stubborn spot on a window.
Best to put herself to work. She rummaged in her sack, checking on her cups, then took out her hairbrush. After beating her hair into submission and locking it away in a braid, she picked up her bucket and floor brush—then realized she didn’t have any more water or soap.