you up fifteen minutes before your watch. If Joe was lucky, it was one of the older midshipmen, who just gave him a nudge and then vanished; if he wasn’t, it was Fred, who banged in and yelled his good mornings, even though there was nothing good about them, or, in the pitch-dark, anything especially morning-like. He would do it even if Kite was asleep, and he did on the day he bounced in to collect Joe for a navigation lesson.
Fred was lighting lamps. The fizz of the matches sounded loud in the quiet. Kite curled up tighter in the other hammock. Joe was sure he had only just fallen into it.
‘Fred, put those out, he’s trying to sleep,’ Joe whispered. ‘You oblivious little gosling.’
Fred gasped as if he’d hurt himself, but in fact it was a new burst of enthusiasm. ‘I know a goose joke! What do French geese say?’
‘Fred!’ Joe hissed.
Fred was busy writing on Kite’s logbook. When he held it up, it said, HONQUE.
Joe choked, because he hadn’t expected to laugh. ‘Right, good, mate, now fuck off before someone kills you and I’ll be out in a second.’
‘What,’ Fred said, ‘do Indian ducks call white ducks?’
Joe hauled himself up properly and went to see if there was any water left. Not only was there water in the kettle, it was hot, just boiled on Clay’s tiny stove; Kite must have put it on for them just before he went to bed. Joe glanced back at him, feeling much too grateful. Hot water wasn’t something he’d thought about at home, but it made a continent of difference at three in the morning. He made himself a cup of coffee. There was a lot of coffee on board; the free colonies in Jamaica supplied it. Sugar too; but no tea.
‘Go on then, what do Indian ducks call white ducks?’ he said, so that at least Fred wouldn’t reel off onto anything stranger.
Agatha looked around from behind the screen where the washbasin was, in case it was more spelling.
‘Quackers!’ Fred beamed.
‘We could leave you with the French,’ Agatha reflected. ‘It would be an experiment in mental warfare.’
‘Like when Le Monde published all that stuff the French did to Lord Wellington, with all the hot pincers and things, and then they sent four thousand copies to Edinburgh!’
Joe glanced at Agatha, wanting to ask if that was true. The part of him that was still raging decided that a dose of hot pincers would do Kite a universe of good.
‘Thank you for the light, Hathaway. Now wait outside,’ Agatha told him.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Fred said, and clattered off.
There wasn’t enough water on board for anyone to wash properly, and Joe was too seasick even to shave, so getting ready was just a matter of clambering into borrowed cold-weather gear by the light of Fred’s candles. There was a heavy, well-lined coat that was standard issue among the officers, and a safety harness that went on over the top, with sturdy clips that could fasten you to anything close by as the ship ducked and tipped.
The second Joe was ready, Fred, who had hung around just beyond the glass doors buzzing with impatience, seized his sleeve and pulled him out into the frozen night. At the prow, leaning on ropes just above the figurehead, sailors held out lamps over the water to spot anything dangerous in the sea.
Fred hurried him across the deck, too excited to keep quiet. When he was especially happy, he sang. He couldn’t sing. It was more like the droning noise Clay’s cat made if it wanted to be fed.
‘Mr Hathaway, there are people below trying to sleep,’ an officer snapped from the quarterdeck. ‘Keep it down.’
‘Sorry, sir!’ Fred shouted, and then after another ten seconds he forgot about it and started droning again.
They relieved the helmsman, who gave Joe a sympathy grin when he told them their current bearing.
Because the water was rough, it took two people to hold the wheel. It was hard work, so nobody was allowed to do it for more than an hour, but it was a wonderful hour. Fred showed him how to correct the course on the compass, and how, even once you’d moved the wheel, it took the ship twelve or fifteen seconds to start swinging in the direction you wanted. By the time their hour was up, they were soaked and laughing, and in a flying rush, Joe understood why all these people had signed up for such a wet, miserable,