The song stopped. Al drank the last of the arris. Then he stood up and staggered toward the well. Hildy and Ynen, both thoroughly frightened, pressed back against the stern and stared up at his swaying, grinning face. There was simply no knowing what Al would choose to do next.
“Funny thing, guvnor and little lady,” Al said slurrily. “You look as though you seen a ghost. Another funny thing—I don’t feel quite myself. Think I’ll go and lie down.” He came off the edge of the roof and collapsed on his knees in the well. Neither Hildy nor Ynen could bear to touch him. They turned their feet sideways out of his way, as he floundered round and crawled into the cabin. After two attempts he got onto a bunk and was shortly snoring.
“The gun’s underneath him again,” Hildy said hopelessly.
They waited for Mitt to come back to the well. It seemed the most important thing in the world that Mitt should come and be friendly with them. It had nothing to do with the fact that they were both sure Mitt was the only one who might get the better of Al. It was that if Mitt disowned them, then they were disowned indeed. But Al snored for two hours before Mitt moved. Old Ammet was as little help to Mitt’s misery as Libby Beer had been, although Mitt reached out several times and pleadingly touched the stiff, salty straw of him. Mitt knew he would have to talk to someone. The only way he could think was aloud.
Wind’s Road’s movement altered. The dip and swing of her became shorter and stronger, though the wind was still the merest chilly breeze. Mitt knew they must be in coastal waters again. He jumped up, but there was still no sign of land. He hurried across the cabin roof to tell Hildy and Ynen what he thought, but when he looked at them, below him in the well, he wondered if he was going to be able to speak to them at all. Their searching expressions, and their very faces, put him off. Ynen’s nose had blistered in the weather, but it was still Hadd’s nose. Hildy’s two pigtails were loose and puffy, and wisps of black hair blew across her narrow cheeks, but the sharp, tanned face was like Harchad’s even so.
Hildy made an effort to talk about Navis. “I know what you’re thinking—” she said to Mitt.
“I’m no good at thinking,” Mitt said sadly. “Not like you.” It sounded much nastier than he intended. Hildy took it for a snub and did not go on.
After that none of them tried to talk about any thing important, much as they all wanted to. The things Al had said were like a sore place none of them wanted to touch. This had a very odd effect. They found themselves chattering, and even laughing, about things that were not important, so that someone who did not know might have thought they were three great friends. They got the pies out again and picked out the parts that were still good. The rest—more than half—they had to throw in the sea.
They had just finished eating when Hildy exclaimed, “Seagulls!” White birds were bobbing on the water behind, riding high and light like Wind’s Road herself. Others wheeled above the well on big bent wings, each with a bead of an eye watching for more pie. Ynen looked at Mitt.
“Land,” said Mitt. “Can’t be too far off.”
They exchanged excited looks. Not only was the long voyage nearly over, but if they could reach land while Al was still asleep, they had a real chance of getting away from him. Ynen tiptoed into the cabin and rustled all the charts there were off the rack above Al’s bunk. Al did not move. He tiptoed back to the well with them. Most of the charts, naturally enough, were detailed maps of the water round Holand, but there was one which showed the whole curved coastline from Aberath in the far North to the sands round Termath in the South. Just above the middle of the curve, there was the large diamond-shaped block of Tulfa Island, about thirty miles out from Kinghaven. Below Kinghaven was the wicked spike of the Point of Hark, dividing North from South Dalemark waters. Below that again, much closer inshore, was a scatter of small and large blobs that were the Holy Islands.
“We should recognize that,” Ynen whispered, pointing to Tulfa Island, “and I think we’d know the Point of Hark, too. It looks like sheer cliff. I wish we knew how far North we’d come.”
“There’ll be light on Tulfa, if—” Mitt began.
Al surged out of the cabin like a bloodshot bear. “What’s all this whisper, whisper, guvnor? Can’t a man sleep?”
The three of them exchanged baffled looks. “Seagulls wake you?” asked Mitt.
“You don’t get charts out for seagulls,” said Al. He gave the horizon the benefit of his bloodshot look, and seemed as annoyed as they were at finding no land there. “Fuss about nothing. Where’s the food?”
They took pleasure in assuring him that all the pies were gone. There was, in fact, a hunk of cheesecake left, but none of them saw any reason to waste it on Al. Al annoyed them by taking the news philosophically. He said his stomach was not too good, anyway, and turned to go back to his bunk.
It occurred to Ynen that if Al was this alert, the thing to do was to make use of him. “How well do you know the coast?” he asked him.
“Like the back of my hand,” Al said over his shoulder. “Told you I’d been around, guvnor.”
“Then could you stay on deck?” said Ynen.
Al said nothing. He simply went into the cabin and back to sleep again.
But as things turned out, they had no need of Al, nor of the charts, that day. The wind continued light. No land appeared. It was clear that they were in for another night of standing watches.
“We’d best turn due North,” Mitt said. “We could run aground in the night on this course.” And again he settled to take the dawn watch.
Ynen called Mitt earlier than usual. The sky was hardly beginning to pale. But Ynen was horribly sleepy. He kept nodding off and kept feeling that gentle nudge in his back from Libby Beer. The last nudge was not quite so gentle. Ynen jumped awake, into air that was chilly and muggy at once, and knew something was different. Wind’s Road was riding in a high, jerky way. Ynen had not felt the like since the day they picked up Poor Old Ammet, and, for a moment, he was as terrified as he had been that first night, when there was space all round him and Mitt crying out in the cabin. He put his hand on Libby Beer to steady himself and realized that the only thing to do was to wake Mitt.
“I think we must be in coastal waters,” he said to Mitt as he fell onto the warm bunk Mitt had just left.
Mitt knew they had been in coastal waters since yesterday. He got to the tiller before he was really awake. While he was furiously jerking the rope from the mainsail, which Ynen had tied in a manner Siriol would have given him the rope’s end for, Mitt could tell Wind’s Road was in alarmingly shallow water. He searched that paler side of the sky, but there was only misty darkness. Yet while he searched, he could hear the roar and rumble of waves breaking.
“Flaming Ammet! That’s a reef somewhere,” Mitt said. He wiped a sudden sweat out of his eyes and stared forward into the paling dark. He thought his eyes were going to burst out of his head with the strain. He could hear the waves clearly, but he could not see a thing.
The figure with flying light hair, half hidden by the foresail, was pointing right and slightly forward. Yes, but which? Rocks there, or go there? Mitt wondered frantically. The tiller swung firmly left under his hand. Wind’s Road leaned right, in the crisp wash and guggle of a current. Waves crashed over to Mitt’s left, and he saw the dim white lather above the rocks she had only just missed.
“Phew!” said Mitt. “Thanks, Old Ammet. Thanks, Libby. Though I don’t know what call you have to keep on helping, with me and Al on board. I suppose you got Ynen and Hildy to consider. Thanks all the same.”
He heard the waves round more rocks ahead as he said it. This time he did not hesitate to turn Wind’s Road as soon as he saw the light-haired figure pointing. He was pointing the other way almost at once. Waves crashed on both sides of Wind’s Road, and the white spray showed whitish yellow in the growing light. Mitt found he was following Old Ammet’s pointing arm through a maze of rocks it made him sweat just to think about. Once or twice, in spite of Old Ammet’s care, Winds Road’s deep keel grated, and she was snatched sideways in an undertow. Then Mitt would feel Libby Beer’s strength on the tiller, pulling them to rights. Frightened as he was, Mitt smiled. The light was growing all the time. If this kept on, he was going to see them as they really were. Old Ammet looked more of a man every second. If Mitt pushed his eyes sideways, he had glimpses of a long white hand behind his on the tiller. It was worth the danger.