Victory by Susan Cooper Page B

boy.”
    â€œMy mam used to make me help her with sewing,” I said, flushing. “My sisters were too little.” But then I realized with surprise that the expression on his face was not amusement, but interest.
    â€œAnd hast a strong wrist? Push at my hand.” He held out his big hand with the fingers pointing upward, palm toward me, and I held mine the same way and shoved my palm at his. I didn’t last long, of course; he was strong as an ox.
    My uncle shook his wet head, splashing us, and began rubbing himself dry with his dirty shirt. “Arm-wrestling with a boy, William?” he said.
    â€œCharlie,” said Mr. Smith, “I have a mind to steal this lad for a sailmaker.”
    â€œThe service owns him, not me,” said my uncle Charlie cheerfully. “We are not allowed him for roping—he has a talent for chickens.” He grinned at me. He was not totally cast down by life in the Navy, even though he sorely missed my aunt; I think he was relieved to be still doing the work in which he took such pride. And the other men liked him.
    William Smith snorted. “Chickens! When we go into battle the chickens go overboard—and the sails need mending.”
    â€œOverboard?” I said. “Is that true?” I was getting quite fond of my chickens—at least of the egg-layers, which I rarely had to kill.
    â€œAll the livestock,” said Mr. Smith. He gave me a horrid leer, rolling his eyes, but I could see he was telling the truth. “Clear the decks for action, the order goes. Pigs and cannon don’t mix.”
    â€œOh.” I felt sad for a moment. I had heard plenty of bloody stories about battles, from sailors who loved to try and terrify the boys, but nobody had mentioned chickens and pigs.
    â€œSo tha’ll need a second occupation,” said William Smith.
    And that was how I came out of the bowels of the ship into the fresh air, far more often than before—for sailmaking needs space, and the sailmakers worked on deck wheneverpossible. William Smith had only to mention to the bosun, who had charge of all rigging and sails, that I might be useful to him, and half my galley duties vanished away. Every ship depended for its life upon its carpenters and sailmakers, and the masters of those crafts were warrant officers, who would stay with the ship even in peacetime, when the captain and officers would be let go. William Smith got what he wanted.
    The cook grumbled loudly at losing half my time, but they gave him another of the boys, Hugh Portfield from Ireland, who had been cleaning the officers’ cabins, and was glad of the change. And Stephen enjoyed ordering Hugh around. I still slept with the other boys, and big William Pope and I had become almost friends. I was closest to Stephen though. His street tricks were serving him well; he was quick and crafty, good at wheedling favors out of seamen in illegal exchange for his ration of grog—which by the strange laws of the Navy he was supposed to drink himself, even though he was so small that it would make him drunk, and drunkenness was a flogging offense. He was also, I noticed, beginning to pocket an occasional treat from the supplies that passed through the galley from the purser: an egg, or a chunk of the soft bread baked for the officers, or a piece of fruit.
    â€œBe careful,” I would say, and Stephen would laugh.
    â€œCare killed the cat, Sam.”
    â€œI thought it was curiosity killed the cat.”
    â€œWell, it wasn’t pinching an apple.”
    We were growing up fast, we boys, in some ways. We were certainly seeing the world, as Lieutenant Quilliam had promised me. Before long we had not only passed the whole of France, Portugal, and Spain, we had reached the Strait of Gibraltar, and were sailing in past the big rocky fortress that guards the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. Gibraltar being in British hands, we fired them a salute, with no shot in the guns,