After a while, how long he had no idea, he stopped to see if the rope was beginning to fray. The effort failed. He could not bend his wrists, could barely feel his hands, and his swollen fingers were stiff and helpless. More disappointed than he thought possible, he located the sharp edge of the knot and began again to rub the rope over it.
Sweat poured from him as the day grew hotter. The water sloshing around in the hull made the air damp and sticky.
The moist heat, the intense effort, the confined space sapped his energy. His head ached, his muscles cramped from ex haustion, and thirst besieged him. His stomach was empty, but the sour taste in his mouth drove away all thoughts of food.
Several times he felt the boat swing as if the bow was on a pivot. Each time he started, his heart leaping upward, and he offered a prayer to the lord Amon that the craft would not lose its precarious hold on the land.
He had no idea how long he had been trapped or how far the lord Re had traveled across the sky. Time was impossible to measure inside the dark hull, and his life had become an endless sequence of small movements. How deep was the water inside the boat? he wondered. How deep would it be if the bow broke loose from the land that held it and the vessel sank lower?
He became obsessed with the knot on the wooden rib.
When he could no longer feel it, how could he be sure he was rubbing the rope across it? How could he…? He squashed all thought, gritted his teeth, and kept on dragging his weary arms up and down, up and down.
Bak licked his dry and cracked lips, but no moisture reached them. What could possibly happen if he took a tiny sip of water? He squelched the moment of weakness, reminded himself of the vermin, the sailors who urinated wherever they happened to be, the insects, reptiles, and ro dents that had died among the ballast stones.
No. He would wait. The rope had to break apart soon. It had to.
The boat swung. The bow grated on sand and Bak felt its sudden buoyancy, the freedom he wished for himself. The vessel had pulled away from the shore. Then it bumped the land, wood grated over sand, and it came to rest.
Bak toiled on, rubbing the rope over the knot, or what he hoped was the knot. How much longer would he have the strength to continue? How long before the boat sank? So much water had seeped in that each time he straightened his legs, it touched his feet. From the angle of the centerboard, from the number of rats he heard scampering about in the bow, trying to find a way out, he suspected the stern was by now filled with water.
The rope snapped. Bak lay quite still, unable to believe.
Afraid he might be imagining that it had parted. He pulled an arm forward, shook off the frayed rope, and touched his face.
The fingers were numb, but he felt pressure on his cheek.
He was free! Or almost free.
He felt like sobbing.
Wasting no time, he backed out of the cramped space, slipped into the water, and shuffled down the centerboard.
He had lost all sense of distance, but the hatch could not be far. Raising an arm, hoping he had enough feeling left to lo cate the cover, he ran his hand along the underside of the deck and crept forward. The water level rose rapidly from knees to thighs to waist.
Relieved of his weight, the bow broke free of the shore.
The current carried the boat a short distance, it bumped against land and was caught once again.
He waded on, praying with all his heart that he would reach the hatch before water covered his head, praying he could get the cover off. Again the bow lifted, grated across sand, came to an abrupt halt. He was thrown forward and at the same time a wave that formed inside the vessel struck him hard. He lost his balance. Frantic to save himself, he pushed his numb hands hard against the boards above him.
He felt them raise up. Not much, but enough to know he had found the hatch.
When the frantic sloshing of water subsided, he shoved the cover upward. As before, he could raise it no more than the width of two fingers. Something was holding it in place.
Summoning every bit of strength that remained in his body, he pushed as hard as he could. Something began to slide across the cover. It flew open and whatever had been holding it down fell with a thud onto the deck.
With a vast sense of relief, he hauled himself through the hatch. Rats erupted with him, some so brazen as to use him as a ladder. He did not care. He was too happy to be out of that obscene prison.
Hoisting himself to his feet, he glanced at the lord Re, dropping toward a western horizon totally different than the familiar skyline above western Waset. About two hours of daylight remained. He shuffled to the bow, thinking to see an island or a rise of land on which the boat had gone aground.
He saw nothing but a solid sheet of water, its surface ruffled by a stiff wind. The land holding the vessel was submerged beneath the floodwaters.
What through most of the year was a broad, placid river had grown into a gigantic lake. Its silvery waters appeared to cover the land as far as he could see from the desert on the eastern side of the valley to the foot of the cliffs to the west.
He knew better. The flood was ebbing, the water no longer at its greatest depth. Fields on higher patches of land were draining, almost ready for the farmers to turn the soil over in preparation for planting.
Still, he would have to swim and wade across long stretches of water. He could swim with bound ankles, al though the effort would be considerable. But creeping across the flooded landscape in increments of less than a palm’s width was another story. One he could not imagine.
His hands were too numb to untie a knot, so he scanned the deck, searching for a sharp object to cut through the rope binding his ankles. The stern half of the vessel was under water and swells were threatening to overturn the small shabby deckhouse. Soon the vessel would be submerged.
Ropes darkened by time snaked across the bow, and parts of wooden fittings were strewn about. Somewhere in all that trash he should be able to find what he sought.
He shuffled to the deckhouse, a flimsy construction of poles and worn reed mats. Inside, a thin, filthy sleeping pal let lay spread out on the floor. A brazier had been tipped over and its spilled charcoal was melting into the water washing beneath the walls. Several empty beer jars rolled back and forth in the narrow space between wall and pallet. A man of no means had evidently used the boat as a sleeping place.
Bak wondered what had happened to him. Had he been chased away by gravel voice and his helpers or had he been thrown overboard?
One of the jars bumped against something hard at the edge of the pallet. Bak knelt, pulled the soaked fabric farther from the wall, spotted a harpoon. With his hands nearly use less, he did not know how he could hold it, but somehow he would.
Chapter Sixteen
“The boat sank?” Hori asked.
“It must’ve.” Bak wrinkled his nose at the sour-smelling brownish poultice the scribe had spread on a strip of linen and was wrapping around his lacerated wrist. The knot on his head was tender to the touch and throbbed each time he bent over, his wrists felt as if they were on fire, and his bruised ribs ached; nonetheless, he felt lucky to have es caped so lightly. “Can you imagine how the farmer will feel when the water recedes and he finds a boat that large lying in his field?”
He sat with Hori and Sergeants Psuro and Pashenuro be side the hearth in the courtyard of his men’s quarters, a place he had doubted he would ever see again. His entire company of Medjays knelt and stood around them, hanging on every word. The image of the stranded boat drew their laughter, momentarily wiping away the gravity of his imprisonment.
Even Psuro, who took Bak’s capture very seriously in deed, had to smile. “After you left the vessel, you must’ve been in the water for hours.”