"Sorry… Skipper," Walker wheezed.

Wheeze he should, Doreen thought indignantly. That last backfist hadn't been pulled. Lousy control, for all he's fast. Serve him right if the captain hadn't pulled her thrust-kick, and given him a ruptured gut or broken pubic bone instead of just the wind knocked out of him.

"No problem, Mr. Walker," Alston replied. "And now I think we have work to do."

"Scumbag," Swindapa muttered beside Doreen, glaring, her hands clenching. She'd picked up bits and pieces of English from other members of the crew besides her official teachers. "T'row in water one him over side, fuckin' A."

"Ah, Swindapa, that's not a… nice thing to say," Doreen said.

The guileless blue eyes met hers. "Nice?"

"Not… ah, 'fuckin' A' is low." She held her hand down by her knees. " That's right,' or 'A-OK,' are better-are high." She held her hand up.

Swindapa shrugged. "Captain give life me," she said. "Cut one him neck-" she made a violent slitting gesture while she glared at Walker-"A-OK. That's right."

Isketerol picked himself up and rubbed his neck ruefully. And here I thought I was a good wrestler and boxer, he thought, squinting against the sun. He'd practiced at home, as any boy of good family did, learned tricks from Ugarit to Pi-Ramses, and by the time he was a man grown he'd been able to hold his own in a tavern brawl in Memphis with off-duty nakhtuaa of Pharaoh's guard, the well-named strong-arm boys. Those tricks had saved his life more than once, and let him put much bigger men on their backs among savages like the Iraiina. Which had been useful in winning respect, and hence profit. But this…

The challenge to the Eagle's captain caught him by surprise. For the captaincy? he thought wildly, moving back. Then: Surely not. Even the Iraiina weren't quite that primitive. No. Why, then?

Perhaps for face, in a campaign of prestige? He knew an ambitious man when he saw one, even if the nuances must wait. I must learn Inglicks-no, that's Eng-il-ish-faster. He already understood it far better than he spoke, or than anyone suspected, but the "sh" sound was maddening.

The brief fight ended. Isketerol's eyes widened. The Nubian had nothing worse than a nosebleed. Walker wasn't bleeding, but he'd been helpless for a few seconds, and seconds was all it would have taken to kill. He stepped back as the young officer went by. There would be a time later to talk to this Walker. A dissatisfied man could be a useful man, to the Tartessian.

Marian Alston toweled herself down quickly and thoroughly, enjoying the sensation of the rough cloth against clean skin and exercise-warmed muscle. The captain's quarters of the Eagle were spartan enough, but they did rate a private bathroom with a shower.

"That's one problem solved… for now," she said to her reflection in the mirror, feeling at her nose.

Swollen a little, but that would pass-and her nose was wide-arched and set close between high cheekbones, harder to injure than a long thin buckra beak. Lieutenant Walker was good, as well as more than a decade younger. She didn't know why he'd taken up the Art seriously. Going beyond the rudimentary basics taught by the military ate a lot of an officer's sparse spare time. But he had, and not wasted his lessons, either.

Alston herself had decided in her teens that men were bigger and heavier and usually stronger. If she was going to make her way in the world she had to have something in reserve to compensate for it, as much for the confidence-breeding knowledge at the back of her mind as for the extremely rare actual violence. The more so when she decided to enlist as her ticket out of the Carolina low country; she'd picked the Coast Guard at the time because she loved the sea and the Navy had still barred women from operational assignments. Well worth the effort and trouble in different dojos since, although it was easier to make the fourth dan above black belt for people like her with no social life to speak of. Even in the Guard, it still helped to know deep down that you could handle men without the protection of the uniform and the rules when push came to shove.

The only man who'd ever struck her and gotten away with it had been her husband, and that for the sake of the children in the brief while before the divorce. Everyone was entitled to at least one major misjudgment in her life, though.

So Walker got his little lesson, she thought. And I will watch him. Probably he'd just wanted her to lose face, but that indicated some sort of long-term plan. And she was on her own now. No high command to back her up, unless you counted Cofflin on the island-and how could he have enforced orders, if whoever ran the Eagle simply decided to sail away? Walker had had fun in England-you could see the possibilities churning behind his glass-green eyes. Walker wanted power badly, and would use it badly-because his only loyalty was to William Walker.

She dressed quickly in the little white-painted cabin, feeling loose and relaxed except for the slight throb of her nose, a spring in her step as she walked the dozen steps to the wardroom. One of the shoats had broken its fool neck yesterday, climbing out of its pen, and she thought that contributing ribs and crackling was the least it could do to make up for the clutter and stink its kind had made on Eagle's decks. It had dressed out at about a quarter pound per head for the crew, counting chitterlings.

They sat; lunch started when the captain appeared. Walker was his smiling self, cheerful, polite… and you'd better stay that way, buckra boy. The professor and Rosenthal were at the table, along with the two locals, as guests of the ship, which made things a little crowded. A cadet came up to the table as she was shaking out her linen napkin, another of the ship's old-fashioned touches.

"Good morning, Captain. The officer of the deck sends his regards and announces the approach of noon. Chronometers have been wound. Request permission to strike eight bells."

"Make it so," Alston said, with a mild enjoyment of the small ritual.

It was homelike; about as homelike as they could get, now. The whole daily routine was invaluable, from reveille through falling in for quarters after lunch to the clean sweepdown fore and aft. Ordinarily they'd have tested the ship's alarms and whistles, too, but the electrical systems were powered down as far as was possible without actually endangering the ship.

"Excuse," Isketerol said. He was handling knife and fork with some skill and confidence now. "Why is high sun… noon… why is noon big?" She looked at him. "Excuse, why im-por-tant."

"Navigation," she said, taking a mouthful of the pork and swallowing. The crackling was exactly right, and the meat was good too, although stronger-tasting and stringier than the pork she was used to. When Isketerol looked blank she went on: "Finding where the ship is."

"Ahhh. How?"

Isketerol might be loathsome to modern sensibilities- she was never, ever going to find it in her heart to think well of a slave trader-but he was a seaman, in his way. She went on:

"First, the world is round-like a ball. You understand?"

Ian Arnstein looked as if he would like to make shushing noises. Both Isketerol and Swindapa looked at her with shocked surprise.

"Captain knows true?" Swindapa said.

Alston looked at her and smiled back, which was easy enough. Can't say it's unpleasant to be hero-worshiped. Embarrassing, but not unpleasant…

"It is true," she assured her.

"No-I-" She looked frustrated, and then marshaled her thoughts. "People Swindapa… Swindapa's people know round earth. Swindapa… did… not… know… Captain know."