Free Street Child by Berlie Doherty

lined up outside and Best Coals of Cockerill and Co. painted on them, the letters gleaming whiteout of the gloom. A man was leading a cart-horse out of a barn, and grunted to Nick.
    ‘Thought you weren’t coming no more,’ he said, his voice hollow still with sleep.
    ‘Damn you,’ said Grimy Nick. ‘You’d think the worst of the Angel Gabriel, you would.’
    He took Jim round to the front of the warehouse, where it overhung the river, and jumped onto the deck of a lighter that was moored there. It was a flat-nosed boat about eighty-foot long. Jim had seen plenty of them working their way backwards and forwards with the tide, loaded up with tons of cargo from the big ships. It had the name Lily painted on its side. It lay in the mud, deep in the stench of the raw sewage that piled against the banks at low tide.
    ‘Get on,’ Nick growled, and Jim jumped onto the narrow coaming boards that ran round the side of the boat, and looked down into it. Covering one end were planks of wood used for hatch boards, and across these was a long oar. Swinging from the oar was a lantern, casting a dim light into the huge hold, which was piled high with coal. A large, yellow-eyed dog rose on its haunches as soon as Jim jumped onto the hatch, squaring itself to leap. A deep growl rumbled from it and its teeth shone wet. Jim started back from it. Nick swung round, took him by the shoulders and pushed him face down towards the dog. He could smell its sour breath. The dog flattened its ears back and whined.
    Nick let go of Jim. ‘Now he’s smelled yer, he’ll never forget yer,’ he said. ‘Never. He’ll know you belong on here, see?’
    ‘Yes,’ whispered Jim.
    ‘Which means,’ said Nick, ‘that if yer tries to run away, he’ll be after yer, and he’ll probly eat yer alive. The faster yer runs, the faster he runs. See?’
    Jim nodded again.
    ‘So yer’d better not try. Just let him taste yer, to sharpen his smell.’ He pushed Jim’s arm down towards the dog. ‘Bite!’
    The dog snapped his jaw so his teeth rested round Jim’s wrist. He would have sunk his teeth right in if Jim hadn’t held himself steady, though every nerve in him was screaming out.
    ‘Leave!’ Nick said, and the dog sank back onto his haunches again, snarling. Jim nursed his arm. The teeth had just punctured the skin, and little points of blood were oozing there.
    ‘He’s quite friendly,’ Nick said. ‘Just so long as you’re friendly to me. See?’
    Jim nodded. He was too afraid to speak.
    ‘Well, we’ll get along very well, in that case,’ Nick said. He straightened himself up, took hold of his lantern and held it up, swinging it slowly from side to side. High up in Cockerill’s warehouse a shutter opened and a white face peered out.
    ‘Don’t tell me you’re ready!’ the white face shouted. ‘If we don’t get this load out we’ll have lost tomorrow’s tide as well as today’s.’
    ‘I knows that,’ Nick shouted back. ‘I’ve been training my new boy.’
    The white face disappeared and a door opened next to the window. A large wicker basket that was roped to a winch was lowered slowly down, creakingas it came. Nick jumped down into the hold on top of the coals.
    ‘Lantern,’ he grunted, and Jim passed it down to him. ‘Well, get in.’
    Jim scrambled down beside him, his feet slipping on lumps of coal as he landed. The inside of the lighter was like a black cave, gleaming with heaps of coal. It smelt of damp and sulphur. Nick thrust a shovel at Jim. The basket hovered just above the hold and Nick eased it down, steadied it, and started shovelling coal into it, his body swinging into a deep, easy rhythm. Jim stabbed at the coals with his shovel. He had to lift it nearly as high as himself before he could tip it into the basket, and the few coals he managed to lift slid off and bumped against him. He gave a little yelp of pain and Nick stopped shovelling for a moment. He whistled in contempt.
    ‘Get on with it!’ he