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Alice had said that she was about to give up hope of ever seeing anybody she knew again. They must have passed an estimated 44,370,000 people, at least, and not once had she seen anybody she had known on Earth. She had seen some that she had mistaken for old acquaintances. And she admitted that she had only seen a small percentage of the 44,370,000 at close range or even at far range. But that did not matter. She was getting abysmally depressed and weary of sitting on this cramped foredeck all day with her only exercise handling the tiller or the rigging or opening and closing her lips with conversation, most of it inane.
Burton did not want to admit it, but he was afraid that she might leave. She might just get off at the next stop, walk off onto the shore with her grail and few belongings, and say goodbye. See you in a hundred years or so. Perhaps. The chief thing keeping her on the boat so far had been Gwenafra. She was raising the little ancient Briton as a Victorian-lady-cum-post-Resurrection-mores-child. This was a most curious mixture, but not any more curious than anything else along The River.
Burton himself was weary of the eternal voyaging on the little vessel. He wanted to find some hospitable area and settle down there to rest, then to study, to engage in local activities, to get his land legs back, and allow the drive to get out and away to build up again. But he wanted to do it with Alice as his hutmate.
"The fortune of the man who sits also sits," he muttered. He would have to take action with Alice; he had been a gentleman long enough. He would woo her; he would take her by storm He had been an aggressive lover when a young man, then he had gotten used to being the loved, not the lover, after he got married. And his old habit patterns, old neural circuits, were still with him. He was an old person in a new body.
The Hadji entered the dark and turbulent cha
The passage took about thirty minutes. It caused anxiety in some — no doubt of Frigate and Ruach being worried — but it also exhilarated all of them. The boredom and the sulle
The Hadji came out into the sunshine of another lake. This was about four miles wide and stretched northward as far as they could see. The mountains abruptly fell away; the plains on both sides resumed the usual mile width.
There were fifty or so craft in view, ranging from pine dugouts to two-masted bamboo boats. Most of them seemed to be engaged in fishing. To the left, a mile away, was the ubiquitous grailstone, and along the shore were dark figures. Behind them, on the plain and hills, were bamboo-huts in the usual style of what Frigate called Neo-Polynesian or, sometimes, Post-Mortem Riparian Architecture.
On the right, about half a mile from the exit of the canyon, was a large log fort. Before it were ten massive log docks with a variety of large and small boats. A few minutes after The Hadji appeared, drums began beating. These could be hollow logs or drums made with ta
On the left bank, the dark figures were launching dugouts, canoes, and single-malted boats.
It looked as if both shores were sending boats out in a competition to seize The Hadji first. Burton took the boat back and forth as required, cutting in between the other boats several times. The men on the right were closer; they were white and well armed but they made no effort to use their bows. A man standing in the prow of war canoe with thirty paddlers shouted at them, in German, to surrender.
"You will not be harmed!"
"We come in peace!" Frigate bawled at him.
"He knows that!" Burton said. "It’s evident that we few aren’t going to attack them!" Drums were beating on both sides of The River now. It sounded as if the lakeshores were alive with drums. And the shores were certainly alive with men, all armed. Other boats were being put out to intercept them. Behind them, the boats that had first gone out were pursuing but losing distance.
Burton hesitated. Should he bring The Hadji on around and go back through the cha
And this craft did seem to be faster than anything the enemy had. So far, that is. Far in the distance, tall sails were coming swiftly toward him. Still, they had the wind and current behind them, and if he avoided them, could they outstrip him when they, too, had to tack? All the vessels he had seen so far had been loaded with men, thus slowing them down. Even a boat that had the same potentialities as The Hadji would not keep up with her if she were loaded with warriors.
He decided to keep on ru
Ten minutes later, as he was ru
Some of the women screamed, and a man shouted. He thought, there is sulfur in this area. Otherwise, they would not have been able to make gunpowder. He called to Loghu and Esther Rodriguez to take over at the tiller. Both women were pale, but they seemed calm enough, although neither woman had ever experienced a bomb.
Gwenafra had been put inside the fo’c’sle. Alice had a yew bow in her hand and a quiver of arrows strapped to her back. Her pale skin contrasted shockingly with the red lipstick and the green eyelid-makeup. But she had been through at least ten ru
The catapult men did not fit another bomb to the machine, Evidently; the bomb had been a warning to stop. Burton intended to stop for nothing. Their pursuers could have shot them full of arrows several times. That they had refrained meant that they wanted The Hadji crew alive.
The canoe, water boiling from its prow, paddles flashing in the sun, paddlers grunting in unison, passed closely to the stern of The Hadji. The two men on the foredeck leaped outward, and the canoe rocked. One man splashed into the water, his fingertips striking the edge of the deck. The other landed on his knees on the edge. He gripped a bamboo knife between his teeth; his belt held two sheaths, one with a small stone axe and the other with a hornfish stiletto. For a second, as he tried to grab onto the wet planking and pull himself up, he stared upward into Burton’s eyes. His hair was a rich yellow, his eyes were a pale blue, and his face was classically handsome. His intention was probably to wound one or two of the crew and then to dive off, maybe with a woman in his arms. While he kept The Hadji crew busy, his fellows would sail up and engage The Hadji and pour aboard, and that would be that.