Free The Odyssey of Ben O'Neal by Theodore Taylor Page A

away from Mrs. Crowe's.
    I shook my head in frustration. For the sake of everyone, that girl should have remained in her catatonic state, which was her frame of mind when Boo found her sprawled out on the November beach. It was only March, and I felt fifty years older.
    "Did you tell the cap'n you were a fugitive from justice?" I asked, thinking that might bust her bubble.
    "The subject didn't arise," Tee answered, not at all shaken.
    I sat there looking at her for a while and then said, "One thing is certain, and it is this: You and I part company in the Barbadoes. Forever."
    Tee replied tardy, "How can we part company if we've never been together?"
    At every turn she was sticking her long pins into me, for no good reason, and I was just about to chase her away when the bosun came lunging up, screaming about coal dust on the deck outside the forward hatch. Grabbing me by the collar, jerking me up, letting loose a few German oaths first, he roared, "You swab de deck til dere iss not a speck in sight."
    Gasping for breath, I nodded.
    Just then, Tee addressed him, saying something like "
Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
"
    I was slowly released to my feet as he turned toward her, very surprised. "
Ja,
" he said, and with new interest.
    Then she began to rattle it out, and they talked for about ten minutes by my pile of potatoes. I just sat there and held my head. She'd won another heart.
    The bosun finally said something like, "
Danke, Frdulein, auf baldiges Wiedersehen,
" and departed, smiling for the first time since I'd seen him. A smile on that porker face was the same as cracks in old concrete.
    Feeling like a mudsucker's bottom fin, I asked, "What did he just say?"
    "'Thank you, lady, see you later.'" Then she smiled sweetly down at me. "No one had spoken German to him for a long time. Such a nice man."
    I had to know, and asked tiredly, "Tee, how did you learn to speak German?"
    "From Muttie, our cook," she replied. "She's from Berlin and has been with us for ages. But I really don't speak German very well. My French is much better."
    "Oh, I didn't know that," I said as cuttingly as I could.
    "Heavens, it's teatime," she said, and did a little good-bye wave with her fingers, a toodle-oo, I suppose, and then continued on her promenade with that dog, nodding and smiling to everyone on deck.

13
    A BOUT SUNDOWN , with the
Conyers
racing east and south in fine weather, every sail bellied out, the Bravaman began serving supper to the crew through the "pie hole," which is a small, sliding-door space in the bulkhead separating the galley from the crew's quarters. He pounded on the wood wall and yelled, "Come 'n' get it."
    At the same time, I began making my trips to the afterhouse with warmers of food, balancing against the plunge and twist of the ship. To those who have never sailed as a galley boy on a four-master bark, you take the hot food aft, then dish it out on plates and platters in the pantry, then serve it. Then keep your mouth shut. And who was sitting at the table in the dining saloon with the captain, mates, and bosun? Tee. Who else?
    And over at one side of that splendid cabin slept Boo Dog, contentedly alongside the cat. Anyone on the Outer Banks from Chicky village north to Pea Island, south to Hatteras Inlet, can testify that Boo chased cats in and out of wrecks, up and down lighthouse steps, all his life. Now he was two inches from that saffron-eyed, mangy old Siamese, and snoring.
    What's more, I soon found out that he was using the cat's sandbox, which I had to empty daily, to the lee of the after cabin. On the Banks, Boo "went" everywhere, even on gravestones and the steps of the Hatteras meeting hall, and now, in less than a half day, she had trained him in nature's calling. I swear that girl was a witch.
    As I placed the captain's plate down, he gave me a swift, upbringing look, and said, "Ladies first."
    So I went around and put the plate down in front of Tee. She smiled at me and said, "Thank you, waiter; such good