Torn-missing 4 by Margaret Peterson Haddix Page B

face.
    “You do not mock your father’s authority!” he screamed. “I am the captain!”
    “Aye, aye,” Jonah said, resisting the urge to put his hand against his stinging cheek. He cleared his throat. “Aye, aye, sir.”
    For a moment he worried that this wasn’t the right thing to say to a ship’s captain in 1611. Maybe “aye, aye, sir” came later. Maybe it would be seen as just more mockery.
    But the look in Hudson’s eye softened a bit.
    “That’s better,” he said.
    Jonah let out the breath he’d been holding without even realizing it.
    Dear old “Dad” has just been thrown off his own ship and then let back on just because of some weird mess with time and history,
Jonah reminded himself.
He’s bound to be a little bit touchy about the whole authority thing.
    “Swab the deck!” Hudson commanded. “Now!”
    “Yes, sir!” Jonah snapped back, trying once again for the very, very obedient military-recruit tone.
    Someone placed a bucket and mop in his hands.
    Jonah looked up and realized it was Staffe, the man who’d taken his side back in the shallop.
    Staffe leaned close to Jonah’s ear. From where Hudson and Prickett were standing, it probably looked as thoughStaffe were just making sure that Jonah had a firm grip on the bucket handle.
    But Staffe was whispering.
    “Don’t stand up for us,” he said in a barely audible tone. “Don’t try to help. It won’t do any good. Not now.”
    And then Staffe turned and walked away, back to repairing a row of pegs on the rail.
    Jonah almost dropped the bucket.
    What was that all about?
he wondered.

“Prickett’s out to get you,” Katherine said.
    Jonah shoved the mop forward, then pulled it back.
    “I could have figured that out all by myself,” Jonah said. “And I’m not even invisible, and I can’t go around listening to what people say without being seen.”
    The coils of dingy braided cloth that made up the mop head got caught on a rough place in the wood, and Jonah had to bend over and pull it free. Jonah could have sworn he could feel someone watching him, but when he straightened up, there was no one else there besides him and Katherine. The leaders of the ship—Hudson, Prickett, and King—had retreated into the captain’s cabin to eat their lunch; the rest of the crew had disappeared into the hold. The weather had warmed up slightly, enough that the water he was swabbing on the deck didn’t instantly turn to ice. But it still wasn’t agreat day for sitting out in the open air eating lunch.
    Or for dipping your hands again and again into a cold bucket of water,
Jonah thought sourly.
    It wasn’t fair that he was stuck mopping, while Katherine could just stand there watching.
    Jonah made a mocking face at his sister, and rolled his eyes just for good measure.
    “Okay, genius, if you’re so brilliant, tell me this:
Why
is Prickett out to get you?” Katherine said. “That’s what I can’t figure out. I heard everything Prickett told Hudson about what you did in the crow’s nest—which everybody’s calling the
top
, for some reason. He made it sound like you practically spit in his eye and defied him and swore at him like … well, like a sailor.”
    “The liar!” Jonah said. He tightened his grip on the mop handle and hit the mop head against the deck with unnecessary force.
    “It took you forever to get down here,” Katherine said. “Prickett had time to tell John King he thought Nicholas Symmes should be promoted to first boy, ahead of you. And to tell that scary-looking cook person that you lost one of the fishing rods. You didn’t even touch a fishing rod, did you?”
    “
I
didn’t,” Jonah said. “But maybe the real John Hudson, before he vanished …”
    Jonah shoved the mop harder. He was okay as long as he focused on minor actions: mopping, moving the bucket, snarling at Katherine. But if he let his thoughts creep toward anything approaching a broader viewpoint, he started feeling weak-kneed and panicked