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playing on a friend who had drunk too much cider. He was trussed like a roasting pig to the bowsprit and left there.
    Before long, the petrels that follow us converged upon him and began to make tentative jabs at his face. By evening the opium had worn off. He was entirely occluded by a frenzy of feathers, and I had to wad paper into my ears to block out his screams.
    I moved as far as I could from the horror and encountered Mabbot at the stern bulwark overlooking a sea the color of jade.
    “So gruesome,” I moaned.
    “I should have him write his lessons on a slate? Bend him over my knee for a paddling? He knows the law. He made a choice. Not all of us get to choose our death.”
    “A death sentence! For such a petty crime?”
    “Petty?” Mabbot’s own cheeks flushed. “For this pettiness ten million Bengalis starved in their own fields because the Pendleton Company forced them to grow opium instead of food. China herself is capsized! She can trust none of her officials to keep the tide of smugglers out. She has sprung a leak the size of the Pearl River and has lost all of her wealth to England’s avarice. In a few years she will be a derelict. Look around you; not a few of these men have lost their homes and families to this pettiness. It won’t happen to my ship.”
    “But surely he has learned his lesson by now.”
    “The lesson is not for him.”

    A month would not be enough time to prepare a kitchen here, and yet, with days left, I find myself loafing in despair, unable to begin the Herculean task.
    Joshua showed up for reading practice again as if he were a paying pupil. Our lesson was slow and rudimentary, but it was a relief to forget my misadventure as we focused on a simpler world. Go to market : this one sentence required our entire attention for half an hour, and simply imagining life on land—the shady path I took past the church on my way to buy kale and a silverside of beef—was a welcome break indeed.
    Joshua is quick to smile and has the devil’s humor. He switched my panch with brine just to watch me pucker and sputter, then laughed like a crow in the corn. Here is a laugh to wake the dead; I suppose it is precisely because he cannot hear it himself that the bray is so utterly unfettered, loud, and raw.

    The door to my cell is secured by a simple bolt. A monkey could manipulate it from the outside, but as long as I was on the inside, it was beyond my power. Until tonight, that is.
    Due to my peculiar status as Mabbot’s chef, and as only a madman would leap overboard, I am free to roam the ship except at night or when Mr. Apples considers it necessary to confine me. Nevertheless, if I am to have any chance of escaping, I must have my own key.
    To that end I have stolen a cheap tin spoon from the berths, which I was able, after an effort, to flatten under my boot. This fits, as my comrade promised, between the cell door and the frame. By working it to and fro in agonizing increments, I can, with patience, free the bolt—or almost free it. I have chosen not to open the door completely for fear of revealing myself—once the door swings, I would have no way to lock myself in again, and my trick would be exposed. I must save this for a crucial moment.

4
    FIAT LEAVEN
    In which I make contact with a fellow prisoner
    Tuesday, August 24
    I have made myself a rudimentary calendar, little more than a series of grids on paper, and it is a frightening thing to mark every morning another day’s distance from home and happiness.
    After relieving myself over the bowsprit in the barbaric manner common here, I caught a glimpse of my fellow abductee shackled to the mast. He is a round man (though, judging by the hang of his clothes, he has lost weight) with an ample face and muttonchop whiskers. His naval officer’s uniform is soiled and torn, but his jacket, despite the heat, is properly buttoned to the top.
    When he spotted me and recognized, by my lack of response to the watch gong, that I was a