asked Kate. “Beats me,” Terry muttered. She ran over to the mainmast. The old man was nowhere to be seen. Picking up a cannonball at her feet, she hefted it like a shot-put. Where had he gone? Her neck stung, her back ached. Yet those things did not trouble her nearly as much as the disappearance of her prime companion in this strange undersea world. Despite his bizarre manner, she had found herself almost liking Geoffrey. He reminded her a little of her own grandfather, eccentric and vulnerable, or maybe of someone she had known in a story, or a dream. No matter. He was gone. In frustration, she hurled the cannonball into the mass of rigging at the base of the broken mast. Then an idea drifted into her thoughts. Maybe he, too, had fallen through the floor! Maybe even now he lay sprawled on some stack of crates on a lower deck. She started shoving the rigging aside, searching for another hole in the deck. Without a word, Terry came over and started helping. Although he was a bit clumsy without his glasses, he was strong enough to heave aside cases and timbers that she could barely budge.
