“We have creatures we call whales,” Brassey admitted thoughtfully, “but they may not be precisely the same. I’ve seen drawings in books of the whales from… our old world-from the time before the Passage-and we have similar things…” He grew silent as his eyes sought out what Abel had seen. “Look! There! I see them too!” He moved slightly forward, pushing some of the purple flowers aside. “It may well be an entire skeleton, fully articulated!” He gestured around. “It’s as if all this viny grass has grown up around it.”
Abel slung his musket onto his shoulder and began parting the flowers as well. Larry crouched, sniffing, staring into the shadows beneath the grass around the bones.
“Come on, boys,” badgered Silva, growing impatient. “So there’s some old bones. Quit foolin’ around.”
“Wait,” said Abel, “there’s something-Ow!”
“What? What is it? Are you all right?” asked Brassey.
“Yes, yes, I’m fine. Something poked my finger. One of these little thorny things, I believe. I thought for a moment I saw something moving in there. You may think me mad, but it looked quite like a fox!” He held up his hand and examined it, finding a tiny thorn in his left pinky. “You see? It’s nothing. It doesn’t even hurt.” He removed the thorn and cast it away. Just before a tiny drop of blood welled up, he thought he might have seen a dark speck within the wound, but he shrugged it off. “Come on, Brassey, we mustn’t anger Mr. Silva. Perhaps we can look again when we return this way.”
Reluctantly, Brassey agreed and the two boys moved back toward where Silva and Rajendra stood. For a moment longer, Larry continued to stare at the kudzu, until Silva whistled at him. Tossing his head, he bounded back through the tall grass to rejoin his companions.
“Next best thing to a dog,” Silva said, laughing. “Next best.”
“What is a dog?” Larry asked, suspicious.
“Man’s best friend,” Silva said, his grin fading. “If you saw a dog you’d prob’ly chase him down and eat him, but dogs are the best. I guess you’ll just have to do for now.” Larry looked at Silva as if unsure whether he was being mocked or complimented. His uncertain pose provoked another laugh and Dennis ruffled his crest. “Don’t worry, you make a pretty good dog substitute. You can’t help what you are any more than I can. Just wag your tail now and then and you’ll be close enough as to make no difference. ’Specially if you don’t talk so much.”
Larry glanced at his slightly feathery tail and twitched it experimentally.
“Can we please resume our march now?” Rajendra demanded exasperatedly.
“Why, by all means!” Dennis said. “In fact, why don’t you lead the way, Captain Rajendra? With them two pistols, you can pro-tect us from the boogers.”
Meeting the challenge, Rajendra stepped off and led them across the remainder of the clearing. They passed several more clumps of the strange kudzulike grass, and it looked like there were more bones in at least a couple of them. Abel and Brassey chatted excitedly about what it might mean, clearly hoping to crawl all through the things as soon as they could. The little thorn that had pierced Abel’s finger was already forgotten.
As Silva had predicted, the stretch of jungle was not very wide, and though they traversed it with care they soon saw the sea through dwindling brush. Without a word, Silva resumed the lead and stepped out from the cover of the jungle alone. Intently, he scanned the beach in both directions for some time, looking for telltale tracks or marks in the sand. They saw them sometimes, even near camp. When they did, they knew they had to be extravigilant that day. Who knew what improbable, screwy, terrifying damn thing might have squirmed up out of the sea during the night? God knew the island was dangerous enough without the shiksaks it was beginning to draw.
A mighty bolt of lightning seared the guts of a distant, spreading thunderhead and lashed the sea behind a black curtain of rain. Except for that one squall, however, the sky remained mostly clear and the fierce sun baked the sand around him. Silva saw no evidence that shiksaks or anything else had come ashore nearby, and he motioned his companions to join him.
“Well, here we are, Mr. Silva,” Rajendra growled irritably. “I do hope you haven’t had us thrashing about for most of a day merely so you might view yet another beach-that looks quite identical to the one we left this morning, I might add.”
“As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what we’re doing here.” Silva waved out to sea. “You’re a sailor. You’ve seen the beach we came ashore on. There’s breakers, coral heads or something like them, for a mile or more offshore. No way we’re gonna get the boat back through that even after we’re done fixin’ it. It was some sort of biblical miracle we came across in one piece the first time. I guess the tide was running and them big waves helped a bunch, sort of tossed us over the reef, or something. Anyway, like I said, we’re going to have to break out somewhere.” He nodded beyond the beach. “This might not be it either. If you look over there, the breakers seem to run even farther out to sea.” He pointed southwest along the beach. “That might not be too bad over there, though, see? The tide’s not out, but it’s on the ebb. I don’t see anything but happy beach waves there. We take the boat out at high tide, we might just make it.”
Rajendra spluttered. “Are you suggesting we attempt to move the boat through… I don’t know, miles of terrifying jungle, full of even more terrifying creatures? I consider you an evil man, Mr. Silva, but not an idiot. It simply can’t be done.”
“It ain’t ‘miles,’ an’ not that much is even jungle. Did we just come the same way? Besides, there you go about ‘evil’ again,” Dennis said, shaking his head in frustration. “It’s been maybe a month since I blew up your ship! Give a guy a break! You blew up Cap’n Lelaa’s ship first, and helped start this whole mess, but she doesn’t whine and moan about it on and on like you do. She’ll probably kill you someday when this is over, but for now she’s put all that aside to get the princess and Miss Tucker off this damn bump. Why don’t you do the same?” He paused, reflecting. “I never said I ain’t an idiot, though. If you can think of a better idea, maybe we’ll give it a shot. Ain’t you been thinking about anything? Larry says this joint’s gonna be jumpin’ with shit-sacks soon, and we can’t be here when that happens.”
Rajendra surveyed the apparent passage in the breakers. “Perhaps we could launch the boat where it is and sail it around to this point,” he speculated.
“Might work,” Silva admitted. “I’ve walked the beach this far a couple of times, and the patch this side of the breakers is real calm in places. The rough stuff’s just too damn close in others. We’d have to land the boat and cart it around a few times. Amounts to about halfway. I’m not sure if that would be easier or harder. I’ve walked a lot farther in the other direction, north, and it’s the same deal, except I bet the breakers run two miles out to sea, and I never saw a hole in ’em. This is the only place I’ve found so far. We can keep looking, but anything we find is just going to be farther and we’re runnin’ out of time. Unless you can come up with a better stunt, moving the boat, one way or another, to launch it here is what we have to work on.
“Now, one other possibility might be to break it up and wag it over here in pieces, since we’ve got it apart to fix it anyway. Bring it across a piece at a time and rebuild it here. It’s either that or try to move it in one piece. Float it and drag it, or drag it all the way. Personally, I’m for bringin’ it overland. Less complicated. All we have to do is clear a bigger trail and use rollers or somethin’. I know it’s too heavy to carry, push, or drag without rollers.” He shrugged. “Those are the schemes I’ve come up with. You conjure up something better, we’ll do it.”
Rajendra was silent for a long moment, staring at the shoreline, the breakers, and the waves. Absently, he twisted the ends of his mustache probably out of what was an old habit. He sighed. “The shattered planks on the bottom of the launch have been removed. Sadly, there were quite a few. Like you, I confess to believing only a miracle delivered us across the breakers. The carpenter has been shaping planks from what he hopes will be suitable trees-it is so difficult to tell with these unknown woods-but even with the existing repairs, he fears an inadequacy of fasteners. Nails. I don’t see how we can disassemble the boat further without damaging or destroying even more fasteners. That’s one thing we didn’t think to carry away much stock of.”