Free Blue Sea Burning by Geoff Rodkey Page B

side; fore and aft, there were narrow walkways of the same width separating the compartment walls from the hull.
    As Ismail explained our duties, the reason for that empty space around the hull became clear.
    â€œFirst job of carpenter and mates,” he began, “is plug any hole below waterline. With load we got now, waterline about here”—he reached up on tiptoe, extending his arm to mark a space just below the ceiling—“so no worry about holes on other two decks. Only down here.
    â€œWhen cannonball come through hull, you plug hole. Take you twenty seconds, no problem. Take you forty seconds, you got problem. Take you one minute, whole ship got problem.”
    He held up a canvas sack and pulled out a squat wooden cylinder about ten inches across, wrapped in canvas. “Each of you get sack with plugs. This smallest plug. For eighteen-pound cannonball. Ripper ship mostly fire this. Short-Ear man-of-war . . .” He held up a slightly larger plug. “Fire twenty-four pound. And if we got bad luck . . .” He showed us a plug the size of my head. “Maybe thirty-six. Too many of these, make big problem.
    â€œEvery time you go to hole, take sack with you. Find right size plug, pound in hole with this.” He pulled a wooden mallet from the sack.
    â€œSound easy, yeah? Not so easy. Water come fast. Now—second job of carpenter. Fix masts and yards when they break. Deadeyes, too. This complicated. Take time to teach you. Battle come soon, someone else do job. Just know this—someone on deck yell for carpenter, whoever got him on your back get to deck fast. Anybody got question?”
    Nobody did.
    â€œOkay. Now we train.”
    Within seconds, Ismail had us sprinting every which way at top speed, carrying mallets and bags of shot plugs as we reacted to the shot sizes and locations he called out.
    â€œStarboard magazine, low, twenty-four!”
    â€œBread room, top by ceiling, eighteen!”
    â€œThree holes port side, amidships! Thirty-six all!”
    It was tough work. But it was easy compared to what came next.
    â€œEverybody think they good? Know they job? Yeah?”
    We nodded, wiping sweat from our faces.
    Ismail smiled and pulled three bandannas from his pocket.
    â€œOkay. Now we work blindfolded.”
    It made sense, given how little light reached the hold. But it was disastrous. I banged my limbs every few feet, had a forehead-to-forehead collision with Kira that sent us both sprawling, and I’d never heard Guts curse so much. Which was saying a lot.
    Once the new patch had been sealed over the breach and the
Grift
got under way, Quint joined us. The sailmaker had finished the harnesses, and Ismail had us take turns sprinting up and down the companionways with Quint on our backs. Whoever didn’t carry Quint was given a sack of cannonballs that weighed as much as he did.
    Then Ismail made Quint practice jumping in and out of our harnesses so many times that when we finally stopped for our dinner ration, Quint looked as tired as we were.
    We ate under the moonlight on the weather deck, grateful for the breeze that dried the sweat from our shirts. The
Grift
had taken the long way around Sunrise Island, and even in the dark I could see the craggy outline of Mount Majestic rising to the east, along with a cluster of twinkling lights just above the horizon that must have been Blisstown.
    I wondered if Millicent was somewhere out there.
    And then, for the first time in days, that Cyril fellow popped into my head.
    The older boy. The one who’d grown up with Millicent on Sunrise.
    The one she’d told me was tall, handsome, and rich, and had just gotten himself kicked out of some fancy boarding school in the Fish Islands for doing something terribly impressive.
    The one Millicent had claimed she was going to marry.
    Is she with him right now? Under one of those twinkling lights?
    A little shard of fury went shooting through my