"Well, hello there," nine-year-old Jack said happily as he climbed into the crow's nest. "Come to keep me company up here?"

He lifted the weakly flopping bird from the bottom of the lookout post. "Fancy that! A bird comes to the nest."

Jack frowned at the bird trembling in his cupped hands. "Except you're not a crow. You're a sparrow. And your wing is hanging funny."

"Ho! Jack!" Captain Teague's voice rang from the ship, far below. "Who are you talking to up there?"

"Should I tell him?" Jack asked the bird conversationally. He chewed his lip a moment."No, I don't think I will."

He bent over the edge of the nest. "No one," he hollered down. "Though there are some lovely cloud formations up here."

The captain yelled something back, then lost interest and turned to deal with a sailor.

"What am I going to do with you?" Jack mused as he sat down, examining the bird curiously. "I've never had a pet before, unless you count my old cat, Sea Terror. I called him Sea Terror because he was a terror to the sailors and terrified of the sea. But we had to eat him a few years ago because we were on a long voyage and ran out of food."

He paused, licking his lips thoughtfully. "He didn't taste very good."

The sparrow cheeped. Jack grinned at it.

"Are you telling me to stop talking? Everyone else does. I don't go a day without someone yelling at me to be quiet. But they usually yell it with some other words."

The sparrow cheeped again. Jack turned his attention to the injured wing.

"Maybe I could sort of bind it up," he said thoughtfully. He cut a strip off the bottom of his oversized shirt, sliced off a chip of wood from the lookout, stuck it under the wing, and wrapped the whole apparatus tightly to the small, quivering body. "Is that better?"

Cheep.

Jack frowned. "You know, I wish you'd give me a straight answer now and then."

He set the bird on his shoulder and climbed down the ratlines. "Let's see if I can find you some vittles."