Ship Breaker Chapter 8 Summary

  • Nailer and Pima run to the ship, admiring its beauty.
  • Although neither can read, Pima recognizes that the ship is from Boston because she knows a few letters, and Nailer says clippers shouldn't wreck because they're too technologically advanced.
  • Pima wonders how long they can keep the clipper a secret from the rest of the people on the beach, and Nailer says only a couple days. Both realize that other interested parties will be looking for the clipper.
  • Both Pima and Nailer wonder if this is their ticket out of the light crew, but they don't know how to get the scavenge off the ship without other people taking claim to it.
  • Nailer and Pima board the ship and find spoiled food in the kitchen… and bodies all over.
  • Even though they scavenge the bodies, they feel uncomfortable doing it.
  • Nailer considers his luck—and the captain's poor luck—as he and Pima search the swank and almost too nice boat.
  • They find dead half-men in the engineering rooms but leave them alone, and then they find silver in the dining room and realize that it's enough to pay their work debts off and become their own people.
  • While Pima gathers the stuff, Nailer keeps searching the ship. He finds a bedroom and a dead girl on the bed with gold on her throat and fingers.
  • Pima pulls the necklace off, and they decide to cut off the fingers to get the rings. But as Nailer begins to cut, the dead girl blinks.