Read Zia for Free Online Page B

drowning of the mate that gave us a chance to escape from the Boston Boy.

    The crew spent the rest of the afternoon searching for his body. They rowed in ever widening circles around the ship, using all of the longboats, of which they had five, including ours.
    They searched until dusk when hunger drove them back to the ship. I was in the galley with the cook, the only sailor aboard who did not man an oar, except my brother and the captain, who kept mostly to his cabin, which was astern of us. From time to time during the afternoon he would appear on deck, hoist a spyglass to his eye, search the movement of each boat and then disappear.
    Between peeling potatoes and cutting up strips of salt pork I had an opportunity to speak to Mando. After the third day the captain had decided to make him a cabin boy. I guess he had seen him tending fire under the trying pots and was taken by the way he did his work.

    In any event the captain had him dressed up in a white sweater and white pants—the only pants that Mando had ever owned—and kept him busy running errands. One of the errands that afternoon brought Mando to the galley for a cup and a crock of tea.
    After the cook had made the tea and given it to my brother I followed him to the deck. He hurried along, me at his side, but we had a brief chance to speak.
    "I heard the captain talking," said Mando. "He was talking to the second mate who is the first mate now. He said that the casks were full of oil and that they would sail for home tomorrow and for him to get everything ready."
    "Then this is the last night we will have a chance to flee," I said.
    "The captain also told the new mate that he was taking us with him to Boston. Wherever that is."
    "I think it is far away," I said. "But wherever it is I am not going. I will jump overboard first and swim to the island."
    "It is a long swim," Mando said. "And what would we do on the island?"
    "We could find enough food to eat. We would wait until someone at the Mission found us. We could make fires and signal them," I said.

    "There are many sharks out there, Zia. They were gnawing hunks out of dead whales all day. One of the men shot three, but more, many more, came back to eat."
    There was a look in his eye and a tone to his words that surprised me and suddenly made me suspicious. "You are not thinking of going with the ship?"
    "I have thought of it," Mando said.
    "But you are not going?"
    "I have no choice in these matters. Nor do you. We are the captives of the white men."
    The idea of being a captive was something new for him. He seemed to like it.
    "No," I said, "I am not a captive. Nor are you."
    He began to move away. "I have to take the tea to the captain," he said.
    "The captain can wait for his tea. Do you think we can find our boat in the dark?"
    Mando stopped. "We can find it, but it will have no oars. They take all the oars on the ship at night."
    "Because there are others who would like to escape also," I said. "That is why they hide the oars?"
    Mando shrugged and started on his way. I followed him along the deck, within a few feet of the captain's door.

    "Where do you sleep at night?" I said.
    "In a locker over there." He pointed to a shelter nearby, without a door.
    "Do you hear the ship's bell when it strikes?" I said.
    "Sometimes I hear it. Sometimes not when I am sleeping."
    "Tonight stay awake and hear it," I said, "when it strikes six times." I held my hands out and counted six on my fingers. "Six times means it is eleven o'clock."
    "At the Mission six bells means six o'clock," said Mando. "Time to go and eat."
    "Here they mean eleven o'clock. By then everyone will be asleep, except the man who watches the deck. Meet me here at the rail when you hear the six bells. And bring your knife."
    "What if I do not choose to hear the bells," Mando said.
    "You are eleven years old but you have not reached manhood," I said.
    "I will be twelve in a moon or so," Mando said defiantly. "So I am twelve."
    He lingered. "How