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The other man told his story with signs and pantomime. He had been fishing when his hook was taken by something so powerful- that it pulled him into the water. Coming back up, he had struck his head on the bottom of the boat and drowned.
The question of what happened to those who were killed in the afterlife was answered. Why they were not raised in the same area as in which they died was another question.
The second event was the failure of the grails to deliver the noonday meal. Instead, crammed inside the cylinders were six cloths. These were of various sizes and of many different colors, hues, and patterns. Four were obviously designed to be worn as kilts. They could be fastened around the body with magnetic tabs inside the cloth. Two were of thi
Mankind gave a collective whoop of delight on finding these "towels." Though men and women had by then become accustomed, or at least resigned, to nudity, the more aesthetic and the less adaptable had found the universal spectacle of human genitalia unbeautiful or even repulsive. Now, they had kilts and even bras and turbans. The latter were used to cover up their heads while their hair was growing back in. Later, turbans became a customary headgear.
Hair was returning everywhere except on the face.
Burton was bitter about this. He had always taken pride in his long moustachios and forked beard; he claimed that their absence made him feel more naked than the lack of trousers.
Wilfreda had laughed and said, "I’m glad they’re gone. I’ve always hated hair on men’s faces. Kissing a man with a beard was like sticking my face in a bunch of broken bedsprings."
13
Sixty days had passed. The boat had been pushed across the plain on big bamboo rollers. The day of the launching had arrived. The Hadji was about-forty feet long and essentially consisted of two sharp-prowed bamboo hulls fastened together with a platform, a bowsprit with a balloon sail and a single mast, fore-and-aft rigged, with sails of woven bamboo fibers. It was steered by a great oar of pine, since a rudder and steering wheel were not practicable. Their only material for ropes at this time was the grass, though it would not be long before leather ropes would be made from the ta
Before they could get it into the water, Kazz made some difficulties. By now, he could speak a very broken and limited English and some oaths in Arabic, Baluchi, Swahili, and Italian, all learned from Burton.
"Must need… wacha call it?… wallah!… what it word?… kill somebody before place boat on river… you know… merda… need word, Burton-naq… you give, Burton-naq… word… word… kill man so god, Kabburqanaqruebemss… water god… no sink boat… get angry… drown us… eat us."
"Sacrifice?" Burton said.
"Many bloody thanks, Burton-naq. Sacrifice! Cut throat… put on boat… rub it on wood… then water god not mad at us…"
"We don’t do that," Burton said.
Kazz argued but finally agreed to get on the boat. His face was long, and he looked very nervous. Burton, to ease him, told him that this was not Earth. It was a different world, as he could see at a quick glance around him and especially at the stars. The gods did not live in this valley. Kazz listened and smiled, but he still looked as if he expected to see the hideous green-bearded face and bulging fishy eyes of Kabburqanaqruebemss rising from the depths.
The plain was crowded around the boat that morning. Everybody was there for many miles around, since anything out of the usual was entertainment. They shouted and laughed or joked. Though some of the comments were derisive, all were in good humor. Before the boat was rolled off the bank into The Rivet, Burton stood up on its "bridge," a slightly raised platform, and held up his hand for silence. The crowd’s chatter died away, and he spoke in Italian.
"Fellow lazari, friends, dwellers in the valley of the Promised Land! We leave you in a few minutes…"
"If the boat doesn’t capsize!" Frigate muttered.
"…to go up The River, against the wind and the current. We take the difficult route because the difficult always yields the greatest reward, if you believe what the moralists on Earth told us, and you know now how much to believe them!" Laughter. With scowls here and there from die-hard religion-ists.
"On Earth, as some of you may know, I once led an expedition into deepest and darkest Africa to find the headwaters of the Nile. I did not find them, though I came close, and I was cheated out of the rewards by a man who owed everything to me, a Mister John Ha
"Good God!" Frigate said. "Would you have him kill himself again with remorse and shame?"
"…but the point is that this River may be one far far greater than any Nile, which as you may or may not know, was the longest river on Earth, despite the erroneous claims of Americans for their Amazon and Missouri-Mississippi completes. Some of you have asked why we should set out for a goal that lies we know not how far away or that might not even exist. I will tell you that we are setting sail because the Unknown exists end we would make it the Known. That’s all! And here, contrary to our sad and frustrating experience on Earth, money is not required to outfit us or to keep us going. King Cash is dead, and good riddance to him! Nor do we have to fill out hundreds of petitions and forms and beg audiences of influential people and minor bureaucrats to get permission to pass up The River. There are no national borders. .
"…as yet" Frigate said.
"…nor passports required nor officials to bribe. We just build a boat without having to obtain a license, and we sail off without a by-your leave from any muck-a-muck, high, middle, or low.
We are free for the first time in man’s history. Free! And so we bid you adieu, for I will not say goodbye. ."
". . . you never would," Frigate muttered.
". . . because we may be back a thousand years or so from now! So I say adieu, the crew says adieu, we thank you for your help in building the boat and for your help in launching us. I hereby hand over my position as Her British Majesty’s Consul at Trieste to whomever wishes to accept it and declare myself to be a free citizen of the world of The River! I will pay tribute to none, owe fealty to none; to myself only will I be true!’
"Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause."
"He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws," Frigate chanted.
Burton glanced at the American but did not stop his speech. Frigate was quoting lines from Burton’s poem, The Kasidah of Haji Abdu AlYazdi. It was not the first time that he had quoted from Burton’s prose or poetry. And though Burton sometimes found the American to be irritating, he could not become too angry at a man who had admired him enough to memorize his words.
A few minutes later, when the boat was pushed into the River by some men and women, and the crowd was cheering, Frigate quoted him again. He looked at the thousands of handsome youths by the waters, their skins bronzed by the sun, their kilts and bras and turbans wind-moved and colorful, and he said,
"Ah! gay the day with shine of sun, and bright the breeze, and blithe the throng "Met an the River-bank to play, when I was young, when I was young.’
The boat slid out, and its prow was turned by the wind and the current downstream, but Burton shouted orders, and the sails were pulled up, and he turned the great handle of the paddle so that the nose swung around and then they were beating to windward. The Hadji rose and fell in the waves, the water hissing as it was cut by the twin prows. The sun was bright and warm, the breeze cooled them off, they felt happy but also a little anxious as the familiar banks and faces faded away. They had no maps nor travelers" tales to guide them; the world would be created with every mile forward.