"Tell me about yourself," Fraser said as he inhaled the smoked of a cigarette and watched her eat. "You must be only sixteen. Not even any fuzz on your cheeks yet." He reached a hand over the table and felt them.
Barbara made up a life's story she had thought of in advance. Her name for the crossing was Bob Markey, and she gave him a shorter, happier version of her own teen years in Chicago in which both her parents were still living. She did not want to risk making him feel sorry for her.
When she finished the ice cream, as fast she could so as to get away from him, he put another pint on her plate, this time strawberry. She could hardly finish it, but managed to, along with more of the story of her life if she had been a boy.
As Barbara got up to return to her hammock, Fraser reached out to grab her between the legs. She danced backwards, hit her head on an overhead water pipe, and silently cursed him. He rushed at her and steadied her by grasping her around her waist.
"I won't hurt you, Laddie," he said, moving a hand down onto her right thigh. "I just think you're the best-looking boy I've ever had work for me."
Barbara stumbled against a table and saw a meat cleaver.
She had seen him cut a side of beef with it, before dinner. Picking it up, she waved it at him.
"Keep your hands to yourself, or I'll part your hair with this!"
Fraser backed off. "Okay, no offense, Laddie. Just didn't think you'd mind. Some sailor boys don't, you know."
She was about to say she wasn't a sailor boy, but caught herself.
"Well, I don't. And I'm going to sleep with this."
She did, too, all the way across the Atlantic.
Halfway across the ocean, the Buckingham was invited to join a small convoy of other freighters under Navy escort.
The second afternoon after joining the convoy, the ship's alert whistle sounded. Looking out a porthole from the mess hall, Barbara saw two bombers coming in on the starboard bow.
The Armed Guard aboard began firing its anti-aircraft guns at the Nazi planes as the entire convoy opened fire at the same time. Guns from an anti-aircraft cruiser guarding the convoy opened fire with every gun on her deck and downed one of the planes.
Barbara shuddered as the pilot of the remaining plane did a dive-bombing run at the Buckingham, then burst into flames. It crashed less than 150 yards off the ship's port side without dropping its bomb load.