No answer.  Jayne strode to the gum-line, knelt by the eave of the tongue and lifted it up by the edge.  Through the near black shadows underneath he could just make out the child`s daffodil-yellow body, shuffling further from him.

"Sssh," said Jayne, squatting in place, showing his empty open hands.  "Look.  I won`t hurt you.  See."

The child stared out at him.

"Can you speak?" asked Jayne. 

The child only stared.

"Maybe not," said Jayne.  "Can you understand me?"

The child stared.

Jayne smiled at him.  Then he stood, let the fat tongue fold softly back down over the child`s quivering body.  He looked round the dim-lit mouth for a moment, down at the compass in his hand.  Then he turned and walked back under the baleen, down the throat-way to the splash-pool stomach, and out of the whale.

The fresh sea air blasted him to shivers immediately.  The whale had been warm.  He had to blink as his eyes watered, adjusting to the mid-day spring sun.  Then Elspeth was at his side and asking him quietly, "Well?"

Jayne stepped down from the gash and slicked whale-fat off his hands and arms.  "It`s a child," he said.  Across the tide-line the boilers were rousting up two fire pits in the sand, scouting for tinder, and hoisting up the two black-iron cauldrons on their rimey black tripod legs.

"A child?" asked Elspeth.  "There really is some folk in there?"

Jayne nodded.  "A boy, I think, bright yellow from the whale's stomach juices.  Must`ve been from a wrecking, see this?" he said, showing her the rusty compass.  "And sail cloth torn and sailor-knotted for a hammock in the baleen.  Whale must`ve scooped him off the seafoam after she sank, probably on the Dartmaeus shipping lane to have drifted this close to the city."

"Cavorta's breath," cursed Elspeth, hand over her mouth.  "How long`s he been in there?"

"I don`t know," said Jayne.  "But a while, to be colored so.  And he`s terrified."

"No wonder," said Elspeth.  "Poor thing.  Just a child?"

"Aye," said Jayne. 

"Then I`ll go," said Elspeth, starting for the side-slit immediately.  "I`ll go talk to him."

Jayne shook his head, stood before the slit.