Chapter 7
The Art of Surviving
‘If we get it just right, we should arrive at the edge of the basin just before the bulge comes up, and then slip past it before the whole thing shoots up into the air. We may get a little wet, but it’s better than just staying here.’
‘What can we use to throw over.’ Glyn asked, and they both looked at Brendon who shrank back with a look of horror on his face.
‘Don’t be so silly, we’re only joking, you wouldn’t be big enough.’ Arki felt sorry for the man.
‘Oh, I don’t know, we could get him to wave his tunic just before the whirlpool sucked him into the middle, we should be able to see that from here.’ Glyn couldn’t help having one more go at the gullible unfortunate.
‘How about the remains of the side screen, that’s quite big and should float well.’ someone suggested.
‘Good idea.’ said Glyn, a little hope returning to his voice.
The screen was disentangled from the rest of the wreckage brought about by the shelter hitting the roof of the tunnel, and Glyn stood by with an eye to his timekeeper as the side shield was thrown overboard when the whirlpool went into its spinning action after the collapse of the water column.
They timed its journey down the water slope and along the river to the point where it was pulled into the vortex of the whirlpool, and it then disappeared from sight. A short while later the whirlpool erupted in its customary fashion, but there was no sight of the shield amid the general uproar of the water column as it cleaved the heavens and then crashed back down to the basin.
‘Getting the timing right is going to be crucial if we are to come out of this in one piece.’ Glyn said with little confidence in his voice.
‘I’ve noticed one thing which may help,’ Arki interjected, ‘and that’s when the bulge of water comes up from the hole, it sets up a big wave which bounces around the basin, but on the far side the wave seems to carry on down the river. If we could get the raft into position so that the wave picks it up, we would be quickly swept away from the collapsing water column and on down the river.’
‘I don’t know if we can time it that accurately, but it’s certainly worth a try.’ Glyn said, and then proceeded to tell the others what he proposed to do.
The remains of the shelter was securely lashed down over the backpacks and the remaining food stocks, and everyone was drilled in what they had to do when the raft was released from the rock holding it at the lip of the water slide.
‘Everyone spread out over the raft, and check the lashings around your area are holding securely. Make a loop with any of the new growths or lose ends of the creepers to put your feet in, and make sure you have a good hand hold. If anyone goes overboard, don’t try to save them, you could get swept away as well. If anyone does get thrown off, try to keep afloat and as near the raft as possible, and we’ll pick you up once we’re past the basin. Good luck everyone, and hold on.’
Glyn went through the timing sequence once more, and then he and Arki used the poles to lever the raft free of the rock which had held them safely at the lip of the water slide, and they were off.
The raft gave a sickening lurch as it went over the lip of the slide, and seemed to drop like a stone as it picked up speed on the silently flowing water chute. There were several screams as the raft accelerated downwards, despite the fact that the motion of the raft was as smooth as silk.
As the raft reached the bottom of the water slide and the horizon tilted back to its more normal position, Glyn raised his head a little to see how near the whirlpool they were.
‘I think we’re being swept out to one side of the main swirl.’ he said, as an eerie hissing noise filled the air.
As they raced towards the seething maelstrom of the whirlpool, the raft tilted up on one side, and they were trapped in the swirling waters as they spun ever inwards to disappear down the hole in the centre.
The angle of tilt grew even steeper as the raft was drawn inwards, and all they could see was the opposite side of the dark funnel of water as it spun faster and faster towards the dark abyss of the massive geyser.
Those brave enough to raise their heads to confront what seemed to be the inevitable end to their journey in the new world, were too paralysed with fear to scream, and so the raft spun on downwards to the accompaniment of the ear splitting hiss of the falling waters.
Just when all seemed lost, the raft returned to its level position and then tilted in the opposite direction. The hole was filled, and the bulge had begun.
As the enormous column of water began its journey up from the depths of the hole, the raft tilted even more steeply, and once again they could see the surrounding basin and the river trailing off into the distance.
The bulge in the middle of the whirlpool grew higher, and the raft was lifted up on the wave caused by the change of direction of the water flow.
They had come down the main water slide at a fair speed, but it was nothing compared to the velocity the raft now had as the wave raced away from the huge column of water which was tearing skywards behind them.
The deep gorge they were in narrowed a little, and the wave with the raft atop its crest, sped up as the water tried to find more room for itself in an ever decreasing channel.
Arki let out a yell of triumph as he released the tension which had built up over the last few minutes, and a ragged chorus of cheers rang out from those who had managed to draw enough breath into their lungs to do so.
The sky seemed to darken as the massive water column went ever higher, and then it collapsed. They felt the shock wave before the water hit them in a series of stunning blows which threatened to smash the raft and its travellers into pulp.
The thunderous noise of the water returning to the basin reverberated along the gorge, hurting their ears, but none were willing to chance letting go of their grip on the raft’s lashing to protect their tortured eardrums.
After what seemed an age, the falling mass of water receded to heavy rain, and the wave which had sped them to safety lost momentum as the gorge widened. Glyn stood up carefully to see where they were in relation to the whirlpool. It was now safely some distance behind them, and as he encouraged the others to regain their feet, the rain turned to drizzle and then stopped altogether.
The warmth of the sun was very welcome after the drenching and pummelling they had received, and it wasn’t long before a more cheerful mood had manifested itself, the odd joke being greeted with copious amounts of nervous laughter, thus releasing the tremendous tension they had all been under. ‘I must admit, I did have my doubts as to whether we would make it through that maelstrom of a whirlpool, but we did, so perhaps we can reach the southern areas we were instructed to find after all.’
Glyn was feeling pleased and relieved that they had all survived against seemingly impossible odds yet again, and his old confidence returned.
The raft was back in its drifting mode now, gently guided by two men with poles to keep it not too far from the bank.
A little high cloud had obscured the sun, making it difficult for Glyn to judge what direction they were actually going in, although he assumed that the river was still heading south as they hadn’t encountered any bends in the water flow worth mentioning.
‘I think we should find somewhere to land soon. It would be good to stretch our legs on something solid again after what we’ve been through, and we’ll need to find a place for tonight anyway.’ Glyn was planning ahead again as he assumed responsibility for all those under his care.
The raft drifted on, several streams joining the main flow, but none offering the kind of beach they were looking for. A short way ahead, a rocky outcrop jutted out into the river and the guide poles were used to push the raft out into the main stream to avoid grounding the craft on the rocks.
What they hadn’t seen was the fast moving river exiting into the main flow just behind the rocky promontory, and the raft was whisked out into the middle of the river before they knew what had happened.
/> ‘I can’t reach the bottom,’ one of the 'polers' called out, ‘so I can’t steer the raft. What shall we do?’ There was little they could do, except hope that the current would eventually return them to the bank on one side of the river or the other.
Most of the raft’s occupants were either lying down or sitting with their legs dangling in the warm water, relaxing, when Arki called out with a touch of raw panic in his voice,
‘Look over there, what do you think is causing that?’
About five hundred metres up stream, and heading straight for them, something very big was moving along just below the surface. The bow wave was nearly a metre high, the water humped up and then falling away from the submarine shape, without a sign of foam or other disturbance to the river’s normally smooth surface.
‘Oh no, I thought things were going too smoothly.’ Glyn muttered to himself as he heaved his tired body to its feet.
Whatever it was, had slowed down to almost match the speed of the raft, which was about the same as the river flow. Glyn had now joined Arki at the rear of the craft, and together they armed themselves with poles just in case they could use them to some advantage.
With slow deliberation, the gargantuan grey shape changed course slightly to drift by underneath them, with barely a millimetre to spare.
The raft was quickly lifted up a few centimetres by the surge of water beneath it, although the creature was only travelling a little faster than the raft itself. One of the onlookers standing at the very edge of the craft and paralysed with fear at what he had seen, fell overboard as the huge shape glided beneath them.
Unable to swim, he lay thrashing about in the water and yelling his head off every time he came up for a gasp of air.
‘Calm down,’ Glyn called out, ‘stop waving your arms about and you’ll float, just lie back in the water and we’ll get you out.’ He didn’t know how though, as the man had drifted some distance away by now, and was well out of reach of their longest pole.
The man did as he was bid, only to start yelling again when he realized that help wasn’t forthcoming from the raft as the distance between them slowly increased.
Still the giant shape silently glided by beneath them, with hardly a ripple showing on either side of the raft, and it was only when the tail section passed by that they had some idea of the creature’s overall size.
Arki and Glyn stood looking at each other, dumbfounded.
‘I don’t believe this, nothing can grow that big.’ Arki said, shaking his head in disbelief.
‘Well it moves, it lined itself up with the raft and was careful not to overturn us, so we must assume it has life and some form of intelligence.’ Glyn said, but without much conviction in his voice.
After they had recovered their composure a little, Arki said, ‘What shall we do for our friend in the water, he’s drifting further away by the minute.’
‘Damned if I know,’ Glyn replied, frustrated at not being able to offer help. Just then Arki looked ahead of the raft, and saw the huge underwater creature turn in a great circle, heading for the man in the water, who was now some hundred metres away.
‘Do you think it’s going to eat him?’ asked Glyn, who had now seen the creature as well.
‘Why else would it turn back from its course?’ replied Arki, horrified at what he had just said.
The marine creature manoeuvred itself around until it was in a direct line with the man in the water and the raft, and then it slowly cruised forward towards the living bait which was now in paralytic shock at its impending demise, and lay still in the water.
The metre high ripple on the surface of the river denoting the presence of the submarine creature slowly crept up on its target, and then passed him, the ripple dying away as the colossal shape beneath came to a sudden halt.
The watchers on the raft fully expected to see a cavernous mouth open and swallow the unfortunate man in one piece, but it didn’t. A huge ripple sped away from the pair as the creature changed position, and then a massive smooth dark grey head eased itself out of the water with the luckless man perched on top. Two small but brilliant dark blue eyes looked down on the raft and its occupants, slowly scanning the vessel from end to end.
A slight turbulence in the water behind the creature indicated that it was on the move, and slowly the distance between it and the raft decreased until it was towering above them, completely dwarfing the tiny craft.
The vast creature somehow changed the shape of its head, or maybe it was the creature’s version of a frown, and the man who was perched up on top slid down the slight depression on the front of its head with arms and legs flailing, and landed in the water at the edge of the raft.
Eager hands grabbed the spluttering man and pulled him onboard, they turned to see what would happen next.
Again the turbulence at the rear of the creature, and it slowly slid backwards from them, as if it knew that was the only thing it could do without tipping them all into the water.
Having achieved what it considered to be a safe distance from the raft, the huge creature turned and headed down river at high speed, a two metre high bow wave being the only sign of its existence.
‘I can’t get over the size of it,’ Arki exclaimed, ‘how can such a creature exist? And those eyes! They had the look of intelligence in them, and I found that quite unnerving.’
‘Just as well the creature was friendly, it could surely have made a real mess of our raft, and had us as a snack into the bargain.’ Glyn added, breathing a sigh of relief.
‘What worries me,’ said Arki, ‘is that for a creature that big, there must be an awful lot of others which it eats, and they could well be big enough to eat us, not that I want to spread alarm and despondency.’
‘So far, we haven’t seen anything else, so perhaps it eats plants.’ Glyn said hopefully, and the matter was dropped for the time being.
The raft gently glided on down the river which was getting very wide again, and a concerted effort with the poles was made to try and guide it back towards the bank with little effect, as the poles didn’t have enough purchase on the water to make much difference to the direction of drift.
Brendon finally came to the rescue with an idea which astounded them all, Glyn and Arki in retrospect feeling a bit miffed and surprised that they hadn’t thought of it first.
‘Why don’t we take off our jackets and hold them up for the wind to blow into them, its going in the general direction of the bank and that should pull us along.’ he said with a smile at Glyn.
‘You know, you really astound me sometimes,’ said Glyn, ‘I think we ought to consider making you the leader.’
‘Oh no, I’m not clever enough for that, besides, if I got it wrong, I’d never hear the end of it.’ He was probably right on that point.
Glyn got all the men together and explained the basic idea.
‘If we all take our jackets off and stand in a row holding the jackets stretched out between us, they will catch the wind and hopefully drive us towards the river bank, in fact, if we tie two jackets together one above the other, using the arms, it would be even more effective,’ turning towards Brendon and reluctantly adding, ‘it was his idea.’ patting him on the shoulder. Brendon generously beamed at all and sundry.
With pairs of jackets joined by the arms, and the men strung out along the length of the raft, the gentle wind filled the home-made sails. It was difficult to tell at first if they were making any progress until one bright spark stuck two poles up some distance apart, and by lining them up with his eye was able to tell that the raft was indeed being driven towards the river bank, albeit very slowly.
Once it was apparent that the system was working, volunteers came forward to relieve the aching arms of the jacket holders, the women joining in until everyone had had a spell at being a ship’s mast.
‘The pole is reaching the bottom.’ someone called out, and the sails were returned to their rightful owners, while the 'polers' got to work to bring the raft closer i
nshore.
The river bank had changed in character after passing the promontory where the tributary had swept them into midstream, and was now composed of rocks in the few places where the forest didn’t come down to the water’s edge.
They landed late in the evening, having at last found a stretch of sand to beach the raft on, and then had to eat some of the emergency rations as it was too dark to risk going into the forest to gather fruit.
Next day the food gatherers were doubly keen to replenish their fruit stocks, as they were now more used to a natural diet and much preferred it to the food concentrates brought from the ship so long ago.
Four guards armed with pointed poles accompanied them just to be on the safe side, although they had seen no animals in the forests so far, and later stocks of two new fruits and a different nut were added to their larder.
Later, one of the women came up to Glyn and quietly said,
‘I think Mia is nearly ready to give birth to your child.’
‘I don’t see how that can be,’ replied Glyn, looking surprised, ‘there hasn’t been enough time for the child to fully form yet. Are you sure she isn’t just making a fuss about it to get my attention? I haven’t been very attentive of late I must admit, what with all the problems we’ve had.’
‘No, I don’t think so. I’ve had a child, and I know all the symptoms. I think you should make arrangements for the birth fairly soon, you don’t want it to happen on the raft in the middle of the river when we’re being chased by something.’ The woman turned away, she had said her piece and it was now up to him.
Glyn conferred with Arki about the matter, but he didn’t know any more about it than Glyn did.
They spent the rest of the day at the landing place, building up their food stocks and tightening the bindings on the raft ready for the next stage of their journey.
The big hacking blade made by Arki proved very useful when one of the food parties went a little deeper into the forest to find new food. The undergrowth in some areas seemed to have exploded in growth, and the hacking blade made it possible for them to penetrate far deeper into the forest than ever before.
That evening, Mia was visibly in distress with the huge bulge that was once a flat taut stomach, and Glyn felt sorry for his lack of attention and help in her uncomfortable state, not that there was a lot he could have done about it.
The contractions began a short while after their meal, and before Glyn could work himself up into a total state of panic, he was pushed to one side by two of the women, and told to go and do something useful in no uncertain terms.
They led Mia away to join the rest of the women, who knew what was about to happen.
He had never been spoken to like that before, and the firmness with which they had ordered him away made him realize that leadership was a thing of ephemeral consent, and could easily be blown away by the lightest of winds when the occasion arose.
Glyn and Arki went down to the water’s edge to join a couple of the other men as there was nothing useful they could do, or would be allowed to do. Glyn was satisfied that Mia was in good hands with the other women.
They had been sitting there for a while, just chatting in the half light of evening, when Arki noticed one of the men furthest from him was quietly fiddling away with something. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, having moved along the beach a little to get a better view of what the man was making. ‘I’m going to try and find out if there is any life in these waters. I’ve attached a fine strand of creeper to this stick, and if I can find something alive to put on the end, I’ll dangle it out over the river. If there’s anything hungry out there, it might be tempted to take a bite.’
‘Where did you get that idea from?’ asked Arki, surprised by the man’s ingenuity. ‘I worked it out for myself, it seems quite reasonable to me.’ Arki was impressed at the man’s reasoning ability, and resolved to include him in solving any future problems they might have as they as they made their way south.
‘And just what do you propose to attach to your line Greg?’
‘A wriggling grub like creature. I found one in a rotten log I trod on in the forest, so there should be more.’ Greg replied.
Greg left his stick and the attached creeper line at the water’s edge, and without saying a word to anyone, went up the sand bank towards the glow of the camp fire, and disappeared from view.
‘You know,’ Arki said quietly to Glyn, ‘that’s one bright fellow. I wouldn’t have thought of making a trapping line like that, perhaps we should include him in any future decision making.’
‘Seems a good idea, lets see if he catches anything first.’ They both lay back on the soft sand, looking up at the first of the evening stars which had begun to dust the velvet deep blue of the sky.
A rustle of hurried footsteps awoke them from their reverie.
‘Did you manage to find anything suitable?’ asked Arki, interested in the outcome of the fishing experiment.
‘Yes, I found this.’ Greg held out a white wriggling maggot, which by its gyrations had somehow sensed its forthcoming fate. He wound several turns of the fine creeper strand around the middle of the unfortunate creature, picked up the stick and walked over to a large rock which jutted out into the river.
Glyn and Arki followed, climbing up after the fisherman and positioning themselves either side of him as he sat down to dangle his line in the now black waters of the river.
All three sat there for about half an hour, enjoying the serenity of the scene and the cool breeze which swept in from the river, when Greg’s home-made line gave a twitch.
‘Something’s interested in the bait.’ he said, and gently pulled the line in towards the rock they were sitting on.
The line suddenly went taut, and then twanged as something on the other end sensed it had been trapped. Greg nearly fell into the water as he was about to lean over to get a better view of what he had caught. Arki grabbed his jacket and held him steady as he reached down to get hold of the creeper, and giving it a wrench, swung his catch over his shoulder and onto the back end of the rock.
All three scrambled to their feet and hurried over to where the creature had landed, slowing down as they approached it. A soggy thumping sound came from a long dark body, almost a metre and a half long and as thick as a mans arm, it lay thrashing about in fury on the dark rock, so they were unable to see the finer details of what they had caught.
‘Let’s get it into the light,’ said Arki, ‘it may be equipped with teeth.’ The creature seemed to be firmly attached to the line, so they dragged it up the sand bank and into the light of the camp fire, which was now burning brightly.
When the others around the fire saw what the hunters had brought in they all backed away in a hurry, but curiosity got the better of them, and slowly they drew a little closer as the creature, unused to so much heat and light, lay still.
The creeper line had got tangled around several of the vicious ten centimetre long curved teeth which protruded from both jaws, and a slow trickle of water dribbled out between them to stain the sand with a dark patch around its now still head. Glyn edged a little closer, and gave it a poke.
‘I think it’s dead, at least I hope it is.’ he said, giving it another push with his foot. The creature didn’t move, but Glyn wasn’t taking any chances. Picking up a piece of wood from the edge of the fire, he gave it a smart blow just behind the shiny grey green head, but the only movement they could discern was from the blow. The eyes, as black and evil as they looked, were as dead as the rest of the creature.
‘Do you think we could eat it?’ someone from the back of the crowd asked, ‘if we make it hot first, I don’t fancy it raw.’
‘We can but try,’ Glyn replied, ‘we’ll cook it over the fire to make sure it is sterilized, and if the food test is passed, you can be the first to try some.’
There was no reply from the back of the crowd.
Arki removed the head, as this was the most off putting part of the creature, and t
hen split it from end to end, emptying out the internal organs. Winding it around a thick stick proved a little more difficult than they had imagined, but it was achieved in the end, and then it was mounted just above the flames to cook.
Glyn suddenly remembered Mia, and enquired as to her whereabouts, to be informed that she was with several of the other women and had given birth to a boy. He felt ashamed not to have paid her more attention considering what was about to happen, and now it had happened, and he hadn’t been on hand to help.
And then he remembered the off hand way he had been dismissed earlier by the other two women, but he still felt bad about it.
As he approached the little knot of women on the other side of the camp fire, Mia looked up at him and smiled sweetly. ‘Look what we have got,’ she said proudly, holding up the infant in her outstretched arms, ‘aren’t I clever?’
‘You certainly are.’ was all he could think of to say, and sat down beside her in the space one of the other women had made for him.
After a few minutes of general chat to Mia and the other women, he found himself holding the new infant somewhat awkwardly in his arms, but when it began to cry Mia took it back gently and put it to her breast, and all was peace and quiet around the camp fire once again.
‘Glyn, will you come and have a look at this?’ someone from the other side of the fire called out, and relieved, he excused himself from the company of the ladies to attend to matters more befitting to his gender.
‘I think the thing is cooked,’ said Arki, ‘at least the flesh is soft when I poke it with a stick. Shall we try it?’
‘We’ve gone this far, so why not? I’ll break a little bit off and we’ll do the under the tongue test.’
It took two of them to lift the eel down from its cooking position, and the mouth-watering smell brought the others a little closer.
‘OK, where’s our friend who wanted to eat the creature?’ asked Arki, and after a bit of pushing and shoving, a rather reluctant member of the group stood before them.
‘Don’t look so worried, I’m the official tester,’ Arki said with a laugh, ‘but if it’s safe, you can have the first full portion, OK?’ By the look on the man’s face, he didn’t seem too sure if it was.
Arki did the test, and after the prescribed time, ate a small portion and sat down by the fire to join the others as they went over the day’s events.
Half an hour later, with Arki suffering no ill effects, the eel was considered fit to eat and the reluctant proposer of the idea was winkled out of the crowd once more and offered the first helping.
With all the others looking on, he had little option other than to put a brave face on it and take a bite. After a few chews on the new food, the look on his face had the others queuing up for their ration, and before long there was little left except the bones.
A helping of fruit and nuts finished off the evening meal, and everyone sat back to relax after a long hard day’s work and talk about the gargantuan water monster which had surprised them all.
Just before the night watch was posted and the others took a well earned sleep, Arki quietly took Glyn to one side.
‘Have you noticed that all the woman are pregnant? Some have bigger bumps in front than others, but I’m told they’re all with child,’ Arki said, ‘can’t think why I didn’t spot it before though.’
‘Well, I didn’t spot it,’ said Glyn, ‘but there has been a lot happening lately. Looking back on things, I think when we were on the ship there must have been something in the food or water which prevented pregnancies, and that’s how births were controlled. Now that element is missing, and so there is no control, but what I don’t understand is the speed with which Mia’s child developed and was born. It seemed to take longer on the ship, so how do you explain that?’
‘Can’t really, but then there’s a lot of things I can’t explain.’ Arki was now getting into his stride and looking at things which had been at the back of his mind for some time.
‘Did you notice that the doorway in the concrete building where we sheltered from the storm was made for people nearly twice our height? And the control panels in that strange building on the island, they were far too high for us to operate easily without sitting on very high stools.’ Arki paused for breath, Glyn didn’t say anything, so he continued.
‘I can’t quite put my finger on it, but things here seem to be a bit bigger than I would have expected somehow, and looking back on it, the ship seemed to be a bit more spacious than it needed to be. Do you think we’ve been genetically shrunk for some reason, to conserve supplies when on the ship?’
‘I wouldn’t think so, the ship was designed to cater for our needs, so there would be little point is making us smaller. But maybe something else has had that effect. Now that you mention these anomalies, I can see them too, but I can’t explain them.’
‘I don’t think we should mention these things to the others at this stage.’ Arki said, and Glyn agreed. They went their separate ways for the night, Glyn seeking out Mia and offering a few words of comfort after her birthing ordeal, although she didn’t seem to need them. She had what she had always wanted, and was therefore more content with her lot in life than any of them.
Next day, with the raft checked over for any needed repairs and a good stock of food onboard, they relaunched it, climbed aboard, and set off down the river on the next stage of their journey.
When the wind was in a favourable position, they used the jacket sail method of gaining a little extra speed, but this time people were replaced with poles cut from the forest, and with Greg in charge of positioning the sail and a crude rudder made from poles they had lashed together, they made good progress.
They stopped each evening to replenish their supplies and sleep, but finding suitable places to land the raft was getting difficult as the forest was constantly changing.
At first it just came down to the water’s edge, but as they went even further south, the trees seemed to invade the very waters they floated on, a massive tangle of roots reaching out for several hundred metres into the river.
More than once they had to spend the night on the raft, tying it to the gnarled tree roots so that it didn’t drift away as they slept.
Because of the root tangle reaching out so far into the river, getting ashore to find food was becoming increasingly difficult, and one day Glyn announced that he thought they had reached the most southerly point they were likely to reach unless there was some other means of transport.
The sun was now nearly overhead at noon, and Arki agreed that this was a sign that they had gone as far south as was necessary to comply with the instructions in the back pack so long ago.
It was now just a matter of finding a suitable place to make a permanent camp, and then develop their skills to combat whatever they found which might threaten their survival.
They found one area which at first glance looked promising, at least for landing the raft.
A vast flat expanse of sand stretched inland, the forest fringing it in a curtain of dark green in the distance. As they drew near the beach, the radiation alarm screamed its head off, so they beat a hasty retreat, Glyn having great difficulty in convincing the others that it was dangerous to land there.
It was now blatantly obvious that all the women were with child, and a permanent home site had to be found soon.
Despite the new growth the binding creepers of the raft were putting out enabling them to keep the whole thing together, the raft itself was becoming waterlogged and some of the timbers were beginning to break up, so they now had little option other than to make landfall as soon as possible.
Fresh food supplies from the forest were becoming more difficult to obtain, so what they were able to get was supplemented by fishing, which by now had developed into a fine art. The flat stones which Brendon had suggested they kept came in useful for making the fire on in order to cook the fish, there being little chance of the raft catching fire as the wood was now almost soggy underfoot.<
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At long last, a dark smudge on the horizon broke the monotony of the dark green forest which so densely fringed the river bank, not that they had seen the actual bank for a very long time now.
As they drew nearer, the dark smudge took on a more definite shape, and the hopes of a safe landing increased as a series of rocks reached out into the water towards them. At this point, the river was so wide that the opposite river bank couldn’t be seen, and the feeling that they might be blown out into the ever expanding river by a vagrant wind added to their desire to set foot on terra firma again.
The raft rounded the promontory, hit a submerged rock, and the man standing at the front calling out directions toppled head first into the water. He came up spluttering and trying to spit out the water he had inadvertently swallowed. ‘What ever you do, don’t drink this stuff, it’s foul,’ he said as they hauled him aboard.
Arki knelt down to dip a finger into the water and tasted it. ‘I know what this is, I read about it in one of the books. It’s called a sea, a vast expanse of water which has salt in it. These seas can be huge, hundreds or even thousands of kilometres across, and all rivers run into them. We must have come to the end of the river and this is the beginning of the sea. You can’t drink it or you’ll be ill, so don’t try.’
On the other side of the line of rocks, a long stone slab ran from far up on the land to reach out into the sea beneath them. They turned the raft using the guiding poles, and as the sodden logs hit the sloping stone slab, several broke away, leaving them no option but to disembark for good.
‘This isn’t natural stone,’ Arki announced, ‘it’s the same as the concrete building we were in during the storm, so that means it’s man made. But just look at the size of it!’ he exclaimed.
What it had been they couldn’t even guess at, but they were glad it was there as it gave them a safe open landing place, clear of the ubiquitous forest.