Abraham pinwheeled with his arms, his feet unable to step backwards to recover his balance. He toppled over the side of the flatboat and into the Mississippi river, surfacing from the muddy water coughing and spluttering to hear the rest of the flatboat crew, half a dozen lads his own age or thereabouts, guffawing with laughter.

Jacques bellowed at them to get back to work and they resumed tossing the bales of pelts from one to the other ashore on to the busy dockside.

Abraham pulled himself, dripping and still spluttering, on to the wooden planks of the dock, his hot temper doused for now by the cool river. He turned to Jacques, the man’s broad shoulders shaking with poorly concealed laughter.

‘It ain’t fair, I tell you!’ He pushed a tress of dark sopping hair out of his eyes and glared back at the captain. ‘Hell’s teeth, sir … you are even paying a negro more than I!’

Jacques turned to look at the one dark-skinned member of his crew. He shrugged at that. ‘He a better worker than you, boy.’

Abraham realized by the Frenchman’s undaunted, wrinkled smile that he was not going to get anywhere with him. ‘Well, to Hell with you, then!’ He spat. ‘Crook! You thieving piratical parasite!’ He stood on the edge of the wooden jetty, standing as tall and defiantly as his six-foot-four-inch frame would let him. ‘I shall … I shall go find other work, then!’

Captain Jacques’s bearded smile only widened further. ‘As you wish.’ He waved a hand at him. ‘Good luck, mon ami. You will need it.’

CHAPTER 4. 2001, New York

Liam found himself drawn back to the main hall and that splendid brachiosaurus skeleton erected in the middle of it. He was staring up so long at the long arch of vertebrae that comprised its neck that he failed to notice another bustling class of elementary students gather round him, just like the other class, all carrying bright orange activity clipboards. They cooed and orrrrred as the others had, craning their necks to look up at the Cretaceous leviathan.