Leslie tells me my sea legs are coming in all right. As if I'm a tadpole sprouting into a frog. As if I'm actually growing new legs. In a way, I suppose it does sort of feel that way. The first day was when they had started to wobble and fail beneath me.

They hadn't been much better the second day, and on the third they had pretty much turned to lead, which had made swabbing the decks (which I apparently have to just keep doing no matter how bloody clean I've made them) quite a challenge. And I'd had to do the dishes, too. I don't mean to whine or complain or whatnot, but Simon was supposed to be cleaning up after the meals, not me. But, there he is, letting me pick up around him without lifting a finger, other than to wave the stupid pistol of his as if it makes him some glorified celebrity. Except, the 'fans' don't rush to him for his autograph; they scatter. He sits and reads and scares people away, and mutters about filth and disease and werewolves.

Then I have to clean up his teacup and his bowl and his spoon, like a servant. Lydia helped me out with the dinner dishes on the second and third nights, Elian Arrow, a kind assistant to Barker, helped me at every meal with the dish washing, and the doctor helped me on the fourth night. He tried to say something to me about not holding anything against Simon, but I didn't listen because it was too late for that. I was hot and bothered, and tired, and sore, and my voice was whining constantly without my say so, so I just shut my trap and avoided speaking. The men laugh at me when my voice cracks and there is nothing I can do about it.

And the captain! The wretch! Whenever he is on the deck, or when he bothers himself to join the crew in the dining area, he is watching me. And when I was, these last days, pushed around by rude, grunting sods, he would just raise an eyebrow, or smirk, or wink. When they made messes especially for me to clean up, for no reason, he'd do nothing. If he's so interested in me, why the hell does he let me get picked on? He doesn't speak to me at all, and he laughed when I tried to speak to him, so, no, I don't feel great about it.

On a brighter note, at least I'm walking confidently on the deck, now, and below, too. No more staggering or vomiting. I've etched six lines into the wall beside my bed. Every morning, when I wake up to the increasingly more sickening fish people fumes, I etch one more line, because there is literally no other way to perceive time. I didn't bring a calendar with me, and I don't know what day of the week it is. Well, I suppose we left on a Tuesday...

As for the fish people, I can't stand to look at them and avoid them like the pox. It isn't difficult, because they tend to disappear, keeping to themselves. Maybe you're curious as to why I'm so put off. I'll tell you why. On the fourth day, see, I'd tromped down to the cabin, and found a green light coming from under the door. I hadn't thought about what it might be and had just barged into the cabin (as I have every right to do at any time, because it's just as much mine as it is theirs!). And Rootwig's giant dopey spectacles were off, and there were just gaping holes for her pupils, with lights shooting from them like lighthouse beams. Light was streaming from her mouth, too, and she was talking in her tongue, but with this dreadful monotone hum hanging over her 'words', and it was like I wasn't even there, but, I was, and it was terrifying and unexplainable, and it shook me so much that I've been checking for light underneath the door before entering ever since. She'd been holding her buoy, and I swear, there were people inside it.

Thenshie has attempted to hail me a few times, probably to discuss what I'd seen, but I keep scampering away and ignoring and avoiding her. She's tried in our room, too, but I feigned being asleep, and she'd given up. I haven't told anyone, but if I have to stay in a room with those psychos for another month, I think I'll lose my mind.

I'm glad they don't join the rest of the crew for mealtimes. According to Leslie, they eat fish stored in barrels in the bilge. Live fish.

With one look to the end of the table, I see that the captain hasn't joined us for brunch, today. Whenever he isn't there, the crew is twice as rowdy. He never limited them when he was around, anyways, but I guess they have the respect for him to hold themselves together better.

Unfortunately, the mess made is a great deal bigger without him. With (I have counted!) eighteen of the forty-five crew as heavy alcoholics, and plenty of the others as social drinkers, when the crew gets 'rowdy', it means that they go wild. Like, keep-your-head-down-and-pretend-you-don't-exist-and-hope-they-don't-notice-you kind of wild. Over the course of the meal, three sailors get onto the table and wrestle each other, two bottles are broken over two heads, and bowls are hurled into faces. Dangerous children in an unsupervised mess hall!

A few bullets whiz past my ears but sitting with our gun-savvy Simon gives me and my savant companions some protection. When a bullet gets too close, he jumps up and curses at the firer.

Harvey Cobbe took a couple of guns away, but for the most part, didn't care for the safety of anyone. He chewed his tobacco, drank his stew, and watched like it was a game. He was the only officer sitting among us at this meal, unless you count Dorian. But Dorian is no officer, just a highly regarded carpenter with the captain's favor. The 'no brawling' rule has never been enforced.

After an hour, Barker shouts at everyone to scram, and shakes his head at his wasted cooking splattered on the walls. He sees to it that every rowdy sailor is out of the mess hall before he leaves himself. The calmer men trickle out in their own time, until it's just Simon and me. Simon and his books and me. As it always is.

I size up the mess. The wooden bowls are all over the place. Spoons are flung everywhere they shouldn't be, and if I thought I was sick of using a mop before, I was spoiling myself, because at least the deck wasn't covered in chunky slop (most of the time). I grimace and look to Simon.

My nose wrinkles. The lazy git.

My bucket and mop (they more or less belong to me at this point) are on the deck where I'd left them. I leave the room to fetch them and return to find Simon waiting for me. Not waiting with his nose in a book, but waiting with his books and his leather-bound notebook stacked in front of him, closed, and his eyes on me, looking over the top of his spectacles in the serious manner that teachers are known for.

I bend down and pick up a bowl at my feet, then move to gather some others, leaving the mop and bucket at the door. Simon's teacher look follows me. It gnaws at me, but he doesn't say anything. Just watches me doing his work, all stern-like. Disapproving.

Until I slam the wooden bowls on the table so hard that the one at the bottom of my pile cracks, and I shout at him, because I'm fuming. "WHAT?"

He flinches, and adjusts his spectacles, which really didn't need to be adjusted. "I'm just curious," he replies calmly.

Panting, I glare at him. All high and mighty, he is. "Why? What for?"

"I'm curious," he says, tucking his spoon into his empty teacup, "as to exactly how long you are going to let me use you."

My breath stops. My eyes bulge. "What?"

Simon shakes his head and superciliously rolls his eyes. He stands up. He's not much taller than I am. "You are too complacent, Walter. Tell me what you want to tell me. Confront me."

"I..." It's surely a trick. As soon as I say anything, he'll rub it in my nose that he's been protecting us with his gun and spending so much of his time looking for some suspicious conspiracy aboard that may endanger us but probably doesn't even exist.

"Confront me," he repeats more forcefully, brows pinching.

I bite my lip and study a smudge on my shoe. "I don't have anything to..."

"That's not what Dr. Oswald tells me." Simon sighs and shakes his head again. He pulls my bowls to his side of the table. "I'll clean up."

It's too good to be true. I stare. "Thank you."

"But, for Laod's sake, Walter. Stop letting people walk all over you."

"Sorry?"

"I've seen how you let those knaves treat you," he insists, "You clean a part of the deck, they pour their drink over it intentionally, and you obediently mop it up like it's your sworn duty."

"Well, it is my sworn duty." I frown. "I have to—"

"Your job is to mop the deck, granted. But it isn't your job to put up with their immature pranks. They make a mess, you tell them to clean it up. You are not their slave."

He is right. I avert my eyes to the table. "Why should you care? I've been your slave for the whole week."

"And it didn't make you feel too good, did it?"

"No. You know, it didn't." It's patronizing.

"But it does make you feel good that I'm going to clean up for you now, doesn't it?"

"Well... obviously," I grumble. "This isn't supposed to be my job."

Simon nods, looking at me as if I'm catching on. "Right. And so it certainly must not make you feel very good when you're cleaning up after bored drunks, because that isn't your job."

"No."

He taps his finger to my chin and lifts my head until I'm looking him in the eyes. He doesn't look kind, exactly. But he does look softer. "Then stop letting it happen. They're not going to stop just because you give them a dirty look, or because you look saddened by their treatment. Speak up for yourself." He lets me go, and I keep our eye contact, because I can't believe what I'm hearing, and I'm fixated. "And if that doesn't work, play dirty. Throw a bottle at them, trip them up, switch out their rum for seawater. Teach them not to mess with you, until they learn."

I swallow and search his serious brown eyes for some sign of ridicule.

He gestures to the door after a while where I say nothing, because I can't think of how to respond. "Go on," he says, eyes down. "I'll clean up. But, if I catch you letting them walk over you again, I'll walk over you, too, and you'll be stuck cleaning the dishes until the day you work up your wits."

I dumbly nod and hug myself uncomfortably. Nodding again, I start for the door, but I stop before I get there, because I don't want to be ungrateful after the hard-ass had broken from his snooty ignorance of me to give me firm-handed advice.

"Thank you," I say. "Thank you, Professor Woods."

And he smiles, because that's the way he likes it.