I went to the recumbent figure of the kennel master. I put my hand on his shoulder. “Awaken, T’Zshal,” said 1. “The lelts have gone.”
T’Zshal opened his eyes. He sat up. With his fingers, and some fresh water, from a skin, he rubbed his eves. He took a drink. He stretched, and stood up on the raft. He studied the waters about the raft, black and quiet. He removed his shirt, and his boots.
The waters were quiet.
He was bare-chested. He wore the kafflyeh and agal. He was barefoot. The dagger was thrust in his sash. He examined the long blade of the lance, running his finger along the edge of the blade. The blade was bound in the shaft by four rivets. From his sash he took a long, narrow lacing of rawhide, which he bound about the base of the lance blade, where it was riveted in the shaft, thus, for about six inches, reinforcing the shaft. He then took fresh water from the skin and soaked the lacing. He then laid the lance over the tops of two of the large retaining vessels, the salt tubs, on the raft.
There was no stirring, or movement, near the raft.
None of the men spoke.
T’Zshal was the first to see it. We saw it only after we sensed his movement, slight.
It was some forty feet away, aft on the starboard side. Then it disappeared.
T’Zshal took the lance, holding the point down. He gripped it in both hands.
“Stand back from the edge of the raft,” he said.
We moved back.
I felt exhilarated. Gone from my mind suddenly were the brooding on realities and truths that might not be disclosed to men. It is enough to know they exist.
One need not stand forever, one’s face pressed against a wall that may not be penetrated. One must turn one’s back in time upon the impenetrable wall, One must laugh, and cry out, and be a man. Man can think; he must act. In the midst of impenetrable mysteries, not caring for him, beyond him, he behaves, he chooses, he acts. Wisdom decrees that the tree of thought must not be planted where it cannot bear fruit. A man may starve trying to feed on the illusion of nourishment. There are realities, truths, which lie open to man. These are those of his species, of his kind of being, of his realm of animal. To know these truths he needs little more than his brain, his blood, his eyes and hands. He listens overmuch to what does not speak to him, to what cannot speak to him.
Within the boundaries of his own being, in that bright realm, let him claim the supremacy which is his; it will remain vacant, unless he seize upon it. It is his; he may take it or not. The choice is up to him. All else is the night and darkness. Music he will make among the stones and silence. He will sing for his own ears; the justification is himself and the song. To what must he be true, if not himself? To what else should he be true? He is born a hunter. Let him not forget the taste of meat.
It erupted from the water not a yard from the raft, hurtling upward, ten feet into the air, towering over the boards and T’Zshal, with a cry of rage, and joy, and I, too, screamed, thrust the lance deep into the body and it turned twisting in the air jaws teeth rows like hooks back bent triangular the gills beneath the jaw the pits in the side of the great head a yard more I could not tell across and then fell back into the water and twisted under the surface and circled away, the dorsal fin, sail-like, scarred from years before, tracing its angry circle.
“Greetings, Old One’’ cried T’Zshal. He held the bloodied lance in his hand, fluid thick, black under the lamps, on the blade.
The Old One now again faced the raft. It scarcely moved in the water. It seemed to be watching us.
“It is not pleased,” said a man. “You have angered it,” said another.
My heart pounded. I thought not then of our comrades of the day before, those slain by the monster in the water. I thought then rather of the beast, the foe, and the bunt. I feared then only that it might forsake the fray.
But I needed not fear, for it was the Old One with whom we dealt.
“Ah, Old One,” crooned T’Zshal, softly across the water, “we meet again.”
I wondered that he had said this.
“Protect the lamps.” said T’Zshal, softly, to us. “Cover them when the water is high.”
If the lamps were lost, and the torches unlit, I did not think it likely we would return to the salt dock.
I saw the water near the tail of the Old One begin to stir. It was moving its tail back and forth. Then it slipped beneath the surface.
“Hold to the salt tubs,” said T’Zshal.
We felt the great body of the Old One twist under the heavy beams of the raft.
Then the raft lifted, to an almost forty-five degree angle as the monster humped beneath it, thrusting it upward. Men slipped, some fell, but none entered the water. Four times the Old One tried to turn the raft. Before we had left the salt docks we had filled the salt tubs with salt. He could not turn the raft. We retained the light on the poles. The Old One circled away and again lay out from us in the water, some fifty to sixty feet distant, seeming to watch.
Then he again slipped from sight. We did not see him for more than a quarter of an Ahn.
Then, suddenly, at the port side, aft, he erupted from the water a dozen feet away and fell back, spattering torrents of water over the raft.
“Cover the torches,” cried T’Zshal. “Protect the lamps!” The lamp at the aft, port corner of the raft, drenched, was extinguished. Men covered the torches with their bodies. The Old One had again disappeared.
“Perhaps he is gone now.” said one of the men.
“Perhaps.” said T’Zshal. The men laughed.
“Aiiii!” cried a man. The Old One rose, twisting, near him, near the forequarter on the port side. He leaped back. The Old One turned, its vast sicklelike tail snapping across the beams. It caught the man’s leg between itself and the salt tub, breaking the leg, turning it suddenly oddly inward below the knee. But it had not been the man, we surmised, that the Old One had wanted. The tail, like a twig, had struck loose the lamp pole, hurling it, spinning, flaming oil spilling, yards away into the circle of darkness outside the ring of lamplight, on the dark, briny water.
“Bring the lamps to the center of the raft,” said T’Zshal. “Stand within the frame of the salt tubs.”
Bits of oil burned briefly on the water scattered from the struck lamp. Then they went out.
I saw the man whose leg was broken. He clung to the side of the salt tub, the salt on the side of his cheek, his arms and chest. He made no sound.