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to be away. But I’d never been away from Mum at all, ever, not even for one night. We was very close to each other. My daddy was gone so much at sea or in the army that Mum and me had only each other most of the time. We had to look after each other. We didn’t have anybody else. Of course at first, when I was little, Mum was the one who did the looking after. But then when I began to grow some, it came to me that I could look after her, too. Sometimes when Mrs. Ivers put a heavy load of washing on her, and she was likely to go on working into the night, I’d help her so she could finish in time to get her supper. Or if she got sick, I’d get up before dawn and do her hoeing for her, so she could get some rest. And she’d look out for me the same way. She’d save special pieces of meat for me, so I’d grow up big and strong, and she put aside cloth when she could to make me a warm coat for winter. We looked after each other. We had to. We was all we had.
    So it made me feel peculiar, knowing that I wasn’t going to see her for a while. But on the other side of it, I was pretty excited about getting a chance to learn how to be a sailor, like my daddy was.
    When I got back to the brig, the men were lounging around on deck, taking it easy. Birdsey took me down into the crew’s quarters and showed me my bunk and a space in the locker for my spare clothes. With Birdsey standing next to me, there wasn’t any way I could unwrap the notes from my clothes and hide them, but in a minute he went back up on deck. I looked around. There wasn’t too many hiding places in the crew’s quarters. It was going to be safer to tuck them down amongst the cargo when I had a chance. I was thinking about this when Big Tom came down the ladder. Standing up, he looked even bigger, and that scar was bright as a flame in his forehead. He stared at me hard for a minute and then he said, “You’re Jack Arabus’s boy.”
    â€œYes,” I said.
    He went on staring at me. “I hear you’re a troublemaker.”
    â€œWho told you that?” I said.
    â€œNever mind where I heard it. I heard it.”
    I reckoned it was Captain Ivers who had said that. “Well, it ain’t true,” I said.
    â€œWhat happened to them soldiers’ notes?”
    Then I knew Captain Ivers had been telling him things. Right away I didn’t trust him, black or not. “I don’t know nothing about them,” I said.
    He laughed. “Maybe you can get the white folks to believe your stories, but don’t try them on Big Tom.”
    â€œHonest, I don’t know nothing about them.”
    â€œCome on, Arabus, I know you got them, and you know I know. Where’d you hide them?”
    I shook my head. “I never touched them. Probably Mrs. Ivers just plain lost them. They wasn’t hers anyway.”
    He stared at me. “Are you saying that Mrs. Ivers stole them notes?”
    I sort of blushed. “They ain’t hers. They belonged to my daddy.”
    He stared at me some more. “Now looky here, Arabus,” he said in a quiet voice, just in case anyone was listening. “I been shipping out of Stratford for seven, eight years now. I’ve got me a little money saved, and soon’s I get a little more, I’m going to buy me a fishing dory and some nets and set up in business for myself. The one thing I don’t want is an uppity nigger causing trouble with the white folks. Things is nice and peaceful between white and black around here right now, and that’s the way I want them to stay. If you start a ruckus you ain’t going to have trouble just with the Captain, you’re going to have trouble with me, too. Understand?”
    I looked at him and then I looked down at the floor. But I kept quiet, and in a minute he climbed up the ladder onto the deck, and by and by I went up, too. I reckoned I was lucky that he’d come out that way about