Free The navigator by Eoin McNamee Page A

their feelings be known to each other without saying anything, almost like a crowd at a football match.
    "I think we need to arm Boat," Wesley went on, "for if she is sunk, we are all sunk."
    This time the feelings of the children were confused. Some seemed angry, others resigned, others seemed to feel a deep, deep sadness. Wesley held up his hand.
    "I know that it is against us and the Code of Boat to use weapons, but we done so before and now we need it more than ever. All our crew could've died out there today. This is what I thinks. I thinks we give magno bows
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    to Uel and Mervyn, and them two boys go out every time with Boat. We can trust them, though it is a hard enough task for them two boys."
    Children moved away from two tall, solemn boys standing in their midst. Owen felt that the crowd was questioning them with love and concern, asking them if they wanted to do this thing. "Brothers," Silkie whispered in his ear. "There used to be three, but one of them got killed in fighting with Johnston. They don't like fighting. That's why Wesley is asking them. He knows they'll only fire if they have to."
    The two brothers looked at each other before nodding slowly. Owen could feel the relief and approval in the room. The children round the two boys touched them on the shoulders and took their hands, and they smiled shyly back. Wesley removed a wooden box from an alcove in the fireplace. He unlocked the ancient lock on it with a key that hung from a chain round his neck. Owen saw that the box was full of small bows, like crossbows. Wesley removed two and carefully locked the box again. He brought it back to the alcove, then returned with a smaller box, which he unlocked with the same key. As he did so, Owen examined the crossbows. They looked very old and deadly, made of age-darkened wood with a brass-colored metal spring, the wood engraved here and there with silver writing too small to read. Wesley had meanwhile removed handfuls of crossbow bolts from the other box. The bolts were brass arrows, about
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    the length of Owen's forearm, and instead of a point, they had a small glass vial filled with a tiny amount of the blue substance that Owen had seen everywhere in the Workhouse. Owen decided that he would ask about it later.
    Wesley called Uel and Mervyn forward and gave them each a bow and a handful of bolts. The boys seemed reluctant to touch them, but when Wesley told them to make sure that the crossbows were working properly, they handled them in a way that left no doubt that they knew what they were doing.
    The children started to drift away. Wesley said he was going outside to look at the damage to Boat. Silkie asked Owen if he would like to look around. He followed her up one ladder and then another, leading from room to room, most of them taken up with sleeping quarters. There were wooden beds and coverings stitched together from strange, rough materials that Owen did not recognize, with drawings of stars and crescent moons on them. The rooms shared by younger children had bright drawings on the walls and wooden toys that looked as if they had been made by the older ones. There were horses and dollhouses and many different versions of Boat in many sizes. Looking at Boat made Owen think of the question he had.
    "You know the blue stuff you see everywhere?" he said. "What is it?"
    "Oh, you mean magno," replied Silkie. "I can't tell
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    you just what it is, for I don't know, but I can show you what it does."
    She reached into her pocket and took out a small brass box. Inside was a little piece of the blue material held by two sturdy brass bolts. Silkie pointed it toward a lump of iron in the corner that looked as if it came from a ship and would take four men to lift. She gripped the box tightly. Owen saw the metal begin to rock backward and forward, then start to slide toward them, slowly at first, then faster and faster, and at the same time Silkie was drawn across the floor, her shoes slipping on it, almost out