Someone was snoring. Opening his eyes, Hearst saw Miphon had gone to sleep; Blackwood was nodding. He noted a flicker of movement: a lizard was daring the sunlight. It was darkish green, with bluish spots on top; patterns reminiscent of gills stippled its sides. It breathed in quick puffs though a toothless mouth; its neck swelled out with every inbreath. Slowly the lizard approached the empty shells left from the travellers' meal, where a few flies savoured shellfish remnants.
A quick tongue flicked out, snatching one of the flies for the lizard's maw. Speed and timing. Perfection. The lizard watched Hearst with beady eyes; he wondered if he would be fast enough to grab it.
He would welcome a change of diet.
Behind them lay three hundred leagues of open beaches, clean and white under the blue dome of the heavens; they had travelled all the way to the Elbow.
In any other geography, the Elbow would have been unremarkable, unless one cared to comment on the way the strata had tilted so they ran diagonally and in places almost vertically. The Elbow was simply a conical rise of rock, no more than a hundred and fifty paces high, upthrust from the sea and connected to the rest of the land by a low spine of rock over which a child could have scrambled.
This piece of rock had been dignified by its own name and marked on maps because it was a major landmark, interrupting the sweep of the sands of the Chameleon's Tongue, and marking the point where the coastline turned north.
The three travellers could see that the Elbow finished in a point deep in the water, but to follow the cliff-edge out to that point would have meant wading waist-deep in water.
'Let's climb to the top,' said Hearst.
So up they went, forcing a way through tough, scrawny vegetation, avoiding those parts that were armed with thorns and spines. From the top, they had an extensive view. To the west and north, the sands of the Chameleon's Tongue stretched away to the horizons. Inland, the ground rose to the heights of the Lizard Crest Rises. Out to sea lay the Teardrop Islands.
'That's where we're going,' said Hearst, pointing north.
It was much the same as the landscape they had already traversed; near the Elbow were small cliffs, some with veins of red ore running through them, but further north the cliffs declined and sand dunes ran alongside the beach again.
'We can get down to the point from here,' said Miphon. 'Those rocks might give us good fishing.'
They climbed down, taking care when easing past a sheer drop to the water. On reaching the point, they saw a huge sea-cave was eaten into the cliff.
The water here was deep, the bottom lost in sightless darkness. The tide was low, revealing orange and yellow growths on rocks usually covered by the sea; there was the smell of sun-dried algae. Peering into the water, Hearst saw a few very small fish, nibbling at rocks or hanging motionless in the water until they sculled away with a flicker of orange fins.
'We can use snails for bait,' said Miphon.
From the rocks, they gathered snails, some rounded and black, others living in conical white shells. They pried stones from between crevices and hammered the snails; the sea creatures writhed and twisted as their shells were broken. Blackwood pitied them, their comfortable lives shattered by hammer-stones, their bodies exposed to the harsh light of the sun – yet he still broke open the shells. He was a human being, a kind of creature that must eat to live.
To cut his bait down to size, Hearst bit into one of the white-shell snails. After a few moments, his mouth started to burn. He swilled it out with salt water and spat.
'Don't touch the white ones,' said Hearst. 'They burn your mouth.' 'All right,' said Miphon.
With hooks baited, they let down their lines. Blackwood and Miphon used thin lines and small hooks, trying for the little fish they could see, but Hearst, with stronger tackle, weighted his line for the depths. Blackwood got the first catch, a small fat fish with dark spots on the top and a pale underbelly.
'Did it give you a hard fight?' said Hearst.
'Oh, it was a memorable struggle,' said Blackwood. 'What kind of luck are you getting?'
'Just nibbles,' said Hearst.
He pulled his line up to have a look; steel glistened water-wet. His bait had been stolen.
'The hook's too large,' said Miphon.
'No,' said Hearst. 'The fish are too small.'
He baited his hook again, then pounded the rocks, hammering barnacles to a white scale-paste, which sifted down through the water. More small fish flickered into view, drawn by this manna. Nothing else. i felt something,' said Miphon, excited.
'Probably something purely stochastic,' said Hearst.
But, when Miphon drew up his line, his own bait was gone. Miphon packed it away.
'I'm going hunting,' he said.
'Alone?' said Hearst.
'The only other thing on the Tongue is our shadows.'
'I don't think it's safe,' said Hearst.
'I'll be the judge of that,' said Miphon.
He turned and clambered up the steep slope, and Hearst, weary with long leagues of marching, did not bother to call him back. The day was too hot and lazy for anyone to imagine danger on the stalk. Hearst concentrated on catching fish.
Three more snail-baits were taken in quick succes sion. Hearst gutted Blackwood's fish – there were five of them by now – slicing from vent to gills, drawing out heart-red organs and thick intestines packed with fragments of barnacles. He scaled them, lightweight fish armour spraying up where his knife skimmed the skin. Then he cut off the head and tails.
After baiting his hook with a bit of fish, Hearst threw a handful of guts, heads and tails into the water. They fell away into the depths, leaving threads of blood near the surface. Hearst threw in his line after them. He got no bites except the tiny infuriating nibbles of the little, thieving fish.
Late in the afternoon, Hearst pulled in his line and wound it up.
'We'll come back by night,' said Hearst. 'When the tide's in. The bigger fish might start feeding then.' 'Good,' said Blackwood.
And Blackwood gathered together handfuls of black snails and dumped them in a splash-fed pool above high water mark, where he would be able to lay his hands on them easily by moonlight. He threw a couple of hammer stones into the same pool. Then the two climbed to the top of the Elbow.
Miphon had garnered a brace of lizards, each as long as a man's forearm. They cooked the lizards and the little, little fish over a small, hot fire which gave no smoke to betray them to the watching world.
'We're going fishing tonight,' said Hearst.
'Are you?' said Miphon.
'There'll be bigger fish by night,' said Hearst. 'All fishermen know that.' iil take your word for it,' said Miphon. 'Myself, I'd rather sleep.'
Hearst and Blackwood got a little sleep themselves as the last of the daylight faded; they woke to the light of the moon's declining quarter. The moon rode battle-high, with streamers of black cloud sliding through the sky on a high airstream; down near the sea, the night was calm, but there was a low swell, and as Hearst and Blackwood climbed down to the point they could hear the swells breaking on the rocks, and the glutinous shifting of masses of water within the sea cave.
Hearst stood on the rocks and relieved himself, an arc of urine spattering into the sea, kicking phosphorescence to life in the water. Phosphorescent creatures gleamed on the rocks as each slow, lazy sea-surge rode home leisurely to end in an echoing thud in the depths of the sea cave.
The two men, shadows to each other in the night, broke open snails and baited their hooks.
T should have saved one of those little fish,' said Hearst. 'That's the best bait.'
'You can have the first one I catch,' said Blackwood.
Soon after, Blackwood handed Hearst a small fish. It quivered in his hand, struggled as the hook went home. Live bait. Hearst swung his line once, twice, three times, then cast it out into the darkness. It fell. The line snaked away as the small fish sprinted in panic. Hearst felt life sing along the line as his bait carried the hook into the depths.