Ishmael and Namalee pushed through the interweaving growths toward where they thought the men had been thrown. After casting about for some time, they found one. His bones were broken throughout his body; he had been cast through a funnel of vines straight onto the ground. The second man was crying for help.
He lay on a crushed bush and above him were the creepers and vines sheared off by the impact of his body. But he had only a broken leg and many bruises.
The third man was lying in the middle of a great pile of vegetation. He had brought down a whole complex, leaving an empty area in the middle of the jungle. Air sharks, having appeared from nowhere seemingly, were dipping down into the depression and attempting to bite him.
Ishmael and Namalee started to drag him into the shelter of the plants standing at the edge of the cavity. He was half-conscious and groaning. The side of his head was bloodied, as if it had struck a hard-stemmed plant. He wore a kilt of bright blue on which was a black wind whale and a harpoon. A purplish whale was tattooed across his chest and smaller whales to the number of fifty were tattooed down his arms and legs. These indicated the kills he had made during his career.
"He is Chamkri, a great harpooner," she said. "Surely his ship has not heard the news, or it would be speeding homeward, not hunting."
"Here comes a shark," Ishmael said and increased the speed with which he was dragging Chamkri. Then, seeing that the beasts would be on them before they reached the wall of vegetation on the edge of the clearing, he dropped Chamkri. The air shark dipped down over the tops of the trees and folded its wing-sails to its side and glided swiftly downward, gas hissing from a bladder. Ishmael picked up a long bare plant and cut away the vines and creepers wrapped around it. When he saw that the wide jaws were about to close down on him, he thrust the pole deep into the gaping mouth. It drove past the ribbon-like pale yellow tongue and into the throat, and then the mass of the shark knocked him down.
The shark slid over him, but only a small part of its weight came down. Nevertheless, his face and hands were bloodied, the creature having a skin almost as sandpapery as its counterpart of the ancient seas.
The harpooner having been dragged to safety, Ishmael approached the shark through the jungle. Other sharks swooped over it and snapped at it, but none came close. They dreaded being entangled too, and they never voluntarily settled down on the ground unless their intended meal was dead or helpless and they were free of attack.
Ishmael stepped out by the grounded shark, but not close enough to be struck by the thrashing of the tail. Though the hollowness of the tail and the lightness of its bones meant that the tail lacked massiveness, its abrasive skin was to be avoided. He threw another branchless stem straight into the gaping mouth of a shark diving at him. The jaws closed, and the plant broke in half; the shark swallowed the part in its mouth. Ishmael leaped back into the jungle. A moment later, he saw the beast writhing as if its entrails had been pierced, which was probably the case. The other sharks closed in upon it, biting large pieces of its wing-sails, its tail and its head. The wind carried the dying monster and its raveners out of sight.
Presently two whaling boats descended, tacking, and one settled down into the clearing while the other stayed fifty feet up, its sails furled and an anchor made of many hooks entangled in the vegetation.
Namalee recognized the first mate, a Poonjakee, who got to his knees and bowed until his head touched a pile of vegetation. He was overjoyed that the daughter of Sennertaa had been rescued but distressed that she should be in such a situation. He eyed Ishmael curiously, though the fact that the girl regarded Ishmael as a friend reassured him. But the happiness of the sailors turned to horror when Namalee, talking so swiftly that Ishmael could not follow her, told of what had happened to their mother city. Their brown skins turned gray and they wailed, throwing themselves on the vegetation and beating with their fists. Some pulled out their bone knives and gashed themselves on the arms and the chests.
Grief must pay homage, like everything else, to necessity, which is governed by time. The men ceased their wailing and applied webs to the wounds. These, Ishmael was to learn, were woven by a wingless, featherless, fuzzy bird-thing.
While two sailors cut out pieces of the shark's heart, lungs and liver and removed its stomach, others searched for the fourth man. After about fifteen minutes, he was found under a canopy of vines and great leaves. He had crawled there and died while creepers entered his wounds and sucked.
The boat in the air was drawn down and Chamkri and the injured sailor were taken aboard. Namalee and Ishmael got into the first boat, where they sat on the thin transparent skin that was both the deck and the bottom of the hull. They secured themselves with a fragile-looking but tough skin belt around their waists. The belt had a buckle of bone and its other ends were sewn into the deck-skin.
The first mate ordered that more meat be fed to the amorphous russet and pale green lump of flesh attached to the neck of each of the six bladders secured around the periphery of the boat. Presently the boat began to rise as the bladders swelled. Both vessels unfurled their side sails and, later, the undermast and its boom were lowered through the central shaft in the deck. The shaft was of hollow bone and was the center of twelve spokes which ran to the sides of the boat, where they were connected to the rim of bone which gave the boat its elongated oval shape. The mast was secured to the shaft with a bone pin, and the boom was lowered. Then the sail of the undermast was pulled up to catch the wind.
Some boats, as he was to find out, also had an upper fore-and-aft rigged mast, though this was always shorter and carried less sail than the undermast.
The ascent to the ship took two hours and several more feedings of the gas-generating animals attached to the bladders. Ishmael sat patiently, having mastered the art of waiting during his whaling voyages. Evidently, the sea of the air demanded even more acceptance of the demands of time.
At last, the boats approached the ship at the same altitude and on a parallel course. Lines were thrown from the boat to the ship, where sailors stood inside an enclosure of bone with three sides and a deck. These sailors were tied to the bone beams by lines around their waists so that they would not be pulled out into the air if a gust of wind or an air pocket jerked the boat outward or vertically.
Ishmael found himself inside a long open corridor which was the main walkway. There were catwalks and ladders running up and down and horizontally and at angles all through the vessel. All were made of hard but hollow and thin-walled bones, most of which came from various species of the wind whales. The great gas bladders were secured in the upper part of the ship in two long rows of ten each. At the base of each was a round broad-mouthed beast.
Ishmael had expected the ship to be covered entirely with skin. But it was a skeleton of a ship with patches of skin here and there, most notably on the bow and aft. The central part was the most open, and this was so because the wind must not be barred from going through to push against the sails on the leeward side. Your ship of the water has no need to consider such a design, since the masts are sticking above the surface and exposed on every side to the wind. But the ship of the air had to be as drafty as possible to sail close-hauled and at the same time permit the wind to push against the square-rigged sails on both port and starboard.