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By Root 339 0

overboard? Although he was the kindest of men in his heart of hearts, Mac wasn’t known for his tact. Or even his good sense when it came to matters of manly pride. In the rough Glasgow tenements where he had grown up, tact had not been the most useful commodity, especially for a boy of his short stature. He had found it more to his advantage to hone his scrawny body into wiry fleetness, and to mask his sensitive nature behind a tough façade. These tactics had enabled him to avoid most confrontations altogether, and to hold his own the rare times he could not. He was smart, he was sympathetic, he was as capable as they come, but he had been known to part company with common sense on occasion when someone got his goat. And what they were up against now was no mere squabble with rowdy pub-crawlers, but a group of ruthless drug dealers with their backs up against the wall.

Mac was nowhere below, Dave was sure. He passed several more Floaties as he continued his search. He could tell before he even talked to them which ones had heard the news and which had not. Those who knew had a faint glimmer of hope in their faces, a purposeful way of walking. Don’t look too purposeful, he had to remind them. Just keep walking and spreading the word as quickly as you can, but without appearing to rush—and if you see Mac anywhere, tell him to go to his locker and stay there.

Where else could the man possibly be, Dave wondered—assuming, of course, that he was still among the living? Was it conceivable that he’d secreted himself somewhere in the mess, in some infinitesimally tiny recess—he was a small and agile fellow, after all—and was biding his time now, waiting until it was safe to emerge?

Dave decided to have one more look in the bosun’s locker before searching above again, just in case one of the Floaties had come across Mac and relayed the message to him.

He scurried down into the boxy space again, disappointed but unsurprised to see no sign of the bosun.

“Mac?” he whispered, knowing full well there would be no reply.

A soft nasal rumbling met his ears, followed by a whistle of expelled air.

“Mac!” he started to shout, then modulated his voice into a whispered croak.

“Mac?”

His voice reverberated against the gray steel walls. The metal chair by the small, cluttered workbench was unoccupied. Mac’s jacket lay folded on one of the steel shelves built into the wall, his small kit bag sat on the shelf above.

Dave heard another soft rumbling, faint but unmistakable. Where in the world—?

Along one side of the locker, where two gray steel trunks hugged the wall—that’s where the gentle sound seemed to be coming from. The trunks, Dave knew, were full to the brim with seldom-used tools and emergency equipment. Whatever anybody needed, Mac could find it in there somewhere if he hunted around long enough. On top of the trunks lay a precarious jumble of ropes, wires, and oddly shaped metal doodads of indeterminate usefulness; over them hung several old sails in need of repair.

Dave’s eyes roamed over the piles of stuff. It was a wonder Mac ever found anything at all in this hodgepodge. Funny, though—that one back corner of the trunk on the right, he saw, was clear. It wasn’t a big space, less than a foot long, he’d guess, and not as wide, but not a thing was in it—except a little silver flask, with its lid off.

Dave yanked the sails aside.

“Mac! Wake up! Mac!” he cried, shaking the bosun’s shoulder. Mac grunted, his hand swatting the air around his face as if at a mosquito.

“For God’s sake, Mac, wake up!”

Mac’s eyelids flew open. If he was surprised to find Dave in a dither beside his hideaway, he gave no evidence of it as he unfolded his body and, catlike, hopped from the narrow shelf down to the trunk and then to the floor.

“What’s the matter then, lad?” he asked, now wide awake.

Dave told him, as calmly and concisely as he could.

“Bloody hell,” Mac said.

Melissa sat on one of the lower bunks in her cabin, looking at nothing in particular, clutching Pierre’s hand. Nancy and Michael sat across from them, on the other lower bunk,