As it turned out, there's not a lot to do on a small boat except clean and eat. Luckily, Clarence was an excellent cook with a specialty in Asian Cuisine. Billy's favorite meal was pan seared grouper in a light sesame soy marinade served on a bed a shredded and lightly pickled cabbage. He also liked the ginger miso soup and the wasabe rice salad. And Clarence's green tea ice cream was delightfully sweet though Billy could not quite get used to the black shreds of seaweed mixed in.

    But after five days of even the best meals, Billy was growing weary of being at sea. Even though he had been twice as bored on the Queen Bethesda, he would have been in Europe by now if he hadn't been washed overboard.

    After lunch on his fifth day on the Golden Butterfly, he hazarded to ask the captain, "When are we going to get there?"
    "And where might that be?" the captain asked.
    "Europe, of course."
    "Is that where you're headed?"
    "Yes," said Billy, "I have to go to school there for a proper education."
    "What do you want with school?" asked the captain.
    Billy thought this was odd question, "To learn stuff, of course."
    "What can you learn at school that you can't learn at sea?"
    "Science," Billy said, "and Latin."
    "Latin! What good is Latin?"
    "It's a dead language," Billy said.
    "Why would you want to know a dead language?" he captain asked.
    This seemed obvious to Billy. "Because when you talk in Latin no one ever knows what you're saying
    "Tell me something in Latin, then."
    "Hmm . . ." Billy thought. "Semper ubi sub ubi," Billy said and laughed.
    "And what does that mean?"
    "You don't know, do you?"
    "No, I don't."
    "I could have just insulted your mother."
    "Did you?"
    "You'll never know, will you?"
    The captain nodded thoughtfully. "Very well then," he said, "I'll take you to Europe so you can learn Latin . . . but first we have to pirate something!"