'Oh, the shanty-man just makes it up – anything that keeps them going. Actually I have heard this one before, I believe.'
'Shardik a moldra konvay gow! chanted the leader, as his crew bent forward and took a fresh grip. 'Shar-dik! Shar-dikl' responded the crew, giving two heaves. 'Shardik a lomda, Shardik a pronto!' 'Shar-dik! Shar-dik!'
'What docs it mean?' asked Siristrou, listening carefully to the reiterated syllables.
'Well, let's see; it means "Shardik gave his life for the children, Shardik found them, Shardik saved them" – you know, anything that suits their rhythm.' 'Shardik – who's he?'
Another terrific lurch. Tan-Rion grinned, raised either hand in a gesture of helplessness and shrugged his shoulders. A few moments later he shouted, 'Nearly there!'
Gradually they came into slack water. Over the last hundred yards the men stopped chanting and pulled the raft in more easily. A coiled rope was thrown from the landing stage and a few moments later they had touched. Siristrou gripped an offered hand and for the first time in his life stepped ashore on the right bank of the Varin.
The raft had been drawn into a kind of dock made of stout stakes driven into the shallows. It was the sight of this from the opposite bank which had perplexed him earlier that morning. As the Deelguy labourers clambered to shore six or seven boys, the eldest no more than about thirteen years old, jumped aboard, unloaded the baggage and then, having opened the hinged rings, released the rope and began poling the raft down the dock towards a similar rope at the further end. Siristrou, turning away, saw Tan-Rion pointing back at himself and his party. He was standing a little way off, talking to a black-haired youth who seemed to have some kind of authority on the landing-stage, for he suddenly interrupted Tan-Rion to call out an order to the children aboard the raft. A crowd was gathering. Those working on the half-finished, warehouse-like sheds near by had apparently downed tools to come and stare. Siristrou stared back with a certain perplexity, for most of them were mere boys. However, he had no further opportunity to speculate, for Tan-Rion came up to him, together with the black-haired youth, who bowed rather formally and offered his hand. He was ugly, even forbidding, with a cast in one eye and a birthmark across his face; but his manner, as he uttered a few words of greeting, was courteous and welcoming enough. He was wearing some kind of badge or emblem – a bear's head between two corn-sheaves – and Siristrou, unable to understand his Beklan (which did not sound native), smiled, nodded and touched it with his forefinger by way of a friendly gesture.
'This young fellow's in charge of the harbour lads,' said Tan-Rion. 'His name's Kominion, but most of us just call him Shouter. I've sent a man to tell the governor of your arrival and ask for a house to be put at your disposal. As soon as we know where it is, Shouter will get your baggage up there – you can leave it quite safely with him. It'll take a little while, of course, and I'm afraid you may find your quarters rather rough: this is a frontier town, you see. But at least I can make sure that you get a meal and a fire while you have to wait. There's quite a decent tavern up here, where you can be comfortable and private – a place called "The Green Grove". Now come on, stand back, you lads,' he shouted. 'Leave the foreigners alone and get back to work!'
Glad at least of firm ground after the flood-race in the strait, Siristrou, walking beside his guide, led his men across the waterfront and up towards the town, which looked as busy and ramshackle as a rookery. '- obliged to leave the horses on the eastern bank, and upon my re-crossing intend to despatch this letter by two or three horsemen: though I shall miss them, for all those with me have done well under hard conditions, and I commend them to Your Majesty's favour.
'For the Varin ferry crossing that these people have developed, it is ingenious and gives me hope that we may profit by commerce with so resourceful a people. The Varin here is relatively narrow, the strait being perhaps four and a half hundred yards directly across, from this town of Zeray to the opposite shore. The current, accordingly, flows very fast, too fast for navigation, while below lies the dangerous gorge known as Bereel, of which I have already written and which they greatly fear. Yet this current they have turned to account, for from Zeray they have contrived to stretch two ropes across the river, one to a point on the opposite bank some thousand yards upstream, while the other is secured a similar distance downstream. This, I am told, was effected with great difficulty in the first place by conveying one end of each rope across the river several miles upstream, in safer water, and then man-handling either end downstream along the banks, little by little, to their present anchoring points. Each rope is about twelve hundred yards long and took several months to make.
'There are three ferry rafts, each perhaps five or six paces square, which make a circuit of three journeys. First, the crossing-rope having been secured through iron rings, it is drawn from Zeray across the river, the opposite point being so far downstream that it goes almost with the current. Upon its arrival they release the raft from the rope and then, once unloaded, it is drawn upstream by oxen in the slack water under the shore. The distance must be about a mile and a quarter and over this whole length they have dredged and cleared the inshore water, straightened the shore and paved it for the beasts' hooves. At the upstream point, a thousand yards above Zeray, the raft is secured to the second rope and thus makes the return crossing, once more having the current behind it.
'The ropes, I am told, will need to be renewed once a year, and this means that a principal labour of upkeep is the making, each year, of well over a mile of stout rope. The rafts – the first they have made – are as yet clumsy and precarious, but serve their purpose. The main impediment, I learned, is from floating branches and the like which, drifting down river, foul the ropes and have to be disengaged or cut loose; but these can be avoided to some extent by leaving the ropes slack when not in use.
'We are now installed in a house here: poor enough, for the whole town is but a rough place, but at least sound and clean. Later this afternoon I am to meet the governor and shall, of course, present Your Majesty's message of goodwill. Soon after, I believe, we are to travel westwards some thirty or forty miles to a town called Kabin where, if I have understood correctly, there is a reservoir supplying the city of Bekla. It is here, and in another city which they call Igat or Ikat, that we hope to speak with the rulers about trade with Zakalon.
'There is one feature of this town which Your Majesty, I am sure, would find as puzzling as I, and that is the great number of children who seem to work, sometimes without any grown man in charge, and to carry out on their own account much of the business of the place. Where a task requires skilled direction as, for example, the building of the new warehouses on the waterfront, they work under the bidding of the masons, but in other, simple tasks they seem often to have their own foremen, older children who direct them without other supervision. Their work, though serviceable, is, from what little I have seen, rough, but for this place it does well enough, and certainly the children seem for the most part in good spirits. In this house we are looked after by three grave lasses of no more than eleven or twelve years of age, who take their task very seriously and clearly feel it an honour to have been chosen to tend the foreign strangers. My men stare, but the girls are not to be put out of countenance. They speak an argot and I can understand little of what they say, but it is no matter.'