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nights in a high bed beneath Armand Dupuis.
    There was someone I liked as my friend aboard. His name was Terry Norwell. He was quiet, almost mouse-like, an orphan from London a few years younger than myself. He had dreams of being a navigator. Instead, his job was to help Roger, who had signed on as the ship’s cook. Some said he had run a way to avoid the workhouse. Roger was Captain Gareth’s cook, who was the only one eating decently. He would come to deck burping, the remains of his dinner in his beard and down the front of himself. For the rest of us it was hardtack and cabbage soup made from salt pork. I think I lost a stone in weight the first week. I almost didn’t have to bind my breasts anymore.
    Terry used to look at me strangely in the beginning, so I asked him why he peered at me like a mouse.
    He grinned. “I can’t see well. I once had some spectacles, and they helped a lot.”
    â€œWhat happened to them?”
    â€œI did something the master didn’t like, and he crushed them under his foot. I have part of one of the lenses left.” He showed it to me looped on a string around his neck.
    â€œBastard.” So many bastards in the world to abuse the poor. So few men like Roger. And Armand.
    â€œHas the captain ever touched you?” I asked him one day.
    He seemed perturbed, “He likes lads, he does. But not me. Thinks I’m too ugly.”
    â€œThank God.” I said with a pat on his shoulder.
    â€œHeard him talk about you, though, Kit. He says you’re pretty for a lad. He said he liked you hair and your eyes.”
    I felt my meager ration of food rise up and choke me.
    â€œWatch out for yourself.”
    â€œAye.” I decided I was going to cut off my hair first chance I got.
    â€œIf I ever get the chance, I’m going to jump this ship and join Jean Laffite. He’s said to be a good man, Kit. A fair man.”
    â€œJean Laffite? A Frenchman?” The word Frenchman brought Armand to my mind. I spent nights dreaming of him. Sometimes I thought I would moan his name aloud and wake Terry and the other men. I thought about him a lot. Once, I dreamed that we looted a French vessel. I shook with fear when I saw that he was on it. I saw myself strike him down with his own sword and kill him. He lay face up on the deck, staring at me with those smoky jade eyes. I woke in a sweat.
    But Gareth was such a lousy captain, and the ship so rife with wormholes, we couldn’t catch a French ship if it pinched our butt. The ship was nothing more than a rat infested, dank smelling dungeon. We would sail to Jamaica empty handed.
    Meanwhile, Terry went on about Laffite. Every day he would give me some new bit of gossip. “Laffite’s a privateer. He calls himself an American, for what that’s worth, and sails out of a place called Barataria Bay, south of New Orleans. He was arrested by a certain governor and failed to show up at the trial. The governor set a bounty for him in return. Laffite offered to double that price for the capture of the governor.”
    â€œHe sounds like a good man.”
    â€œAye. Has a fleet of twenty ships now, Kit. None of his men starve, and they all get a good share in any loot taken.”
    I smiled at him. “Maybe things will improve. Maybe some day we will share the loot, a fine island, and a hundred ships.”
    But things got far worse before they did improve.
    ***
    I spent a week below decks coating the insides of the leaking ship with oakum, a mixture of tar, sulfur, and tallow to repair the damage done by the teredo worms. It was slow going work, and the fumes made me sick. The concoction stained my face and my hands black. I couldn’t strip to the waist like the others did to apply it. I had to wear my clothes to protect my identity. I was glad I couldn’t look in a mirror to see the reflection of the girl Armand had once referred to as beautiful. At night in my hammock, I would touch the