Ships were lost during these dark voyages, and said to have had their crews sacrificed to the sea, so that the waves would not rage forever in this empty ocean. The _Venture_ was far larger and far safer than my own tiny canoe. I tried to look at it as something I might call my own. Just the ship and the sails could make a girl forget herself for hours. This ship had a captain and a helmsman and a cook, and a man called the lookout. A man called the man at the rudder. And of course there was the captain. _Captain._ He was not a seafaring man, like Captain Gremly, who had a name you could never forget. His name was Mr. Bartholomew Bligh. "My father is Captain Bligh," I said. "My _mother_ 's his wife." "I don't think that ship could ever sail. There's no cargo on her," Captain Bartholomew Bligh said, but I wanted to say that there was a big wooden box on deck, and a whole library of books. I had one tiny box of _my_ own, which I kept carefully folded. It contained some of my mother's precious soap and some of my aunt Lottie's scent. It had been a gift from my mother, who had made the soap from rose petals, like real soap. Now, just like my mother, I had no proper bed to sleep in, and no pillow, only a pile of blankets. The captain had told me that _he_ would make me some new blankets, to replace my old one, but he was very busy. "I don't think he'll do it," I said to myself. "What's that?" Mrs. Bartholomew Bligh said. "I couldn't hear you." She had come up on deck as soon as she heard her husband speak. I remembered her from church: she was a plain woman, plain and short. She was wearing a short sailor's jacket with a high collar, made of the same rough cloth as the men's shirts, tied up under her chin with a bit of rope. She was shorter than me by three or four inches, but even with her shoes on, she seemed too small to live with the Blighs. I imagined them, one day, all together, the little man with his little finger stuck out and the big man with his two hands in a knot on his hip. "It wasn't me," I said. "It was only the wind." I saw her eyes go round, like a couple of saucers, as she thought about me being lost. "The _wind_ ," she said. " _The wind_ is saying things." "What was it saying?" Mr. Bartholomew Bligh asked. "You and the wind in that tiny canoe? We'll hear no end of tales, Bligh." "What nonsense, the lot of you," Mrs. Bartholomew Bligh said. She looked at me once, her eyes going small. "You'll be a great comfort to my daughter, Mr. Bartholomew Bligh. She needs someone to look after her." "There are _five_ of us here now," Mr. Bartholomew Bligh said, "and when the captain comes back, we'll have plenty of help." "Five," she said. "All together in the same cabin. I'm amazed." "One to four," Mr. Bartholomew Bligh said. "So I'm the odd one out." "Yes, that's so," she said. "Still, who would have expected you, my poor child?" Her eyes were so sad that I wondered what could have happened to her. Her cheeks were too round, too thick, like a mushroom that had gone soft and was all rot. But Mrs. Bligh gave me some cake. She put it under a little rag in her jacket and pinned the rag down at the bottom with a couple of short sticks, so that it would not fall to the ground. I looked at the cake, and at the rag, and at the short sticks to hold it down. "I have nothing to do with Mrs. Bligh," I said, and bit off a piece of the cake. "I _have_ a mother," I said. "Yes, I know, my darling," she said. She touched my arm as she always did when she talked to me. Her hands were round and hard, like apples. "You should have your mother here, so that she can work on your shirts and your skirts." Mrs. Bligh always said " _she_ " when she meant " _me_." "My mother's dead," I said, for I always said _dead_ when I meant "she's dead," because they said you were not to say dead out loud. Mrs. Bligh bit off a piece of cake, and then she put her hand on my face. I shrank away from her, because I had never felt such a soft hand as hers. I looked up at her. She said, "You've had a terrible time, haven't you, child?" I said, "No, I haven't. I'm used to it." I had been born on this ship, and for the first weeks of my life the captain had been everywhere, moving from the cabin to the hold. My father had been a carpenter, before he had met his fate. Mrs. Bligh said, "Poor thing." Then she looked about her. "It's a pity I don't have a cup of tea with me. How would you like that?" "I like tea a lot better than chocolate, when it's nice and fresh." "A pity you didn't come with us." "Why?" "I should say: because we've taken you away from your old life." "What did I have before?" "Your parents, I suppose. Your school." I shook my head. I did not want to say anything about my father. The first time he had been gone, I had stood on the deck of our _Venture_ and watched the wind play around the rigging. It had been my father's great-grandfather, and his great-grandfather before him. I knew that when my mother held me, I could see the wind playing around my own hair. Mrs. Bligh said, "Well, it would seem that you've been gone a long time, if we're now a family of five. I didn't imagine it would take this long." She seemed to know a lot. I thought she might know a lot about what happened after my mother went away. She said, "We'll have the captain home, I suppose, and then we'll come home to our ship." "Captain Bligh is coming home tomorrow," I said, even though I had just remembered that this morning he had said, _Someday I will come home._ "I only hope that the captain and his wife come home before the wind has brought us to South America." I shivered. When the sea is at its worst, my head feels it right through my bones, and I am sure that all the little stones under the surface must be sliding. "Do you understand me, child?" she said. I said, "That I'm not going home? Yes. I do understand you." She began to cry a little, like tears were bubbling out of her eyes. She cupped her hand under her face, but I thought that I saw, just for a moment, a glimpse of teeth. Then she wiped her eyes with her sleeve. "All that sea makes me sad." I had eaten too much, and now I felt sick and afraid. The wind made my insides rumble, and the waves crashed against my ears. "It's the sea that makes me sad," I said. She smiled, but I could see that her eyes were full of water. "Good-bye now," she said, and she took my hand. "Be a good girl, Eliza." I said, "Do you call him _Eliza_?" She looked at me as though I was a puzzle. I didn't say anything else, because there was nothing to say. When the boat came, I had been told to stay at home. I would have hated not to see my father, but he never came home, and I was afraid to talk to any man, in case he thought I was going to ask him for money, or food. I knew there were women who came to the ship, and not women like Mrs. Bligh. There was a lot of talk about them, that they were dangerous. But the ship looked safe. She had no sails. She was a big, white thing with a little top on the front, with a chimney on top of that. The Captain had not gone away with the other men. I knew he would not be home until the man called the lookout came back from shore. It was a long time until I saw them. I was frightened to look over the side,