The Great Escape Chapter 13, Part 4 of 8

The Great Escape
Chapter 13, Part 4 of 8

The riders were miles ahead by the time the raft cleared the headland. They had planned to walk so they could keep an eye on the raft, but the paddlers had a long detour to begin with.

Wildchild and Tamar wanted to gallop, so they set off to hell for leather and were soon five miles across the plain and far out of sight of Megan and Carlin, who had to go slower because they were tied to the packhorse and its sled.

Carlin had never been on a horse, so Megan went carefully, not wanting to frighten the girl. It turned out that Carlin, despite her shyness and fragile elfin features, quickly got used to being on horseback and was keen to go fast. It disappointed her that Megan hadn't galloped after her friends.

Glad to be on horseback again, Wildchild and Tamar felt like princesses of the plains. Tamar even stopped her chatter to enjoy the ride. Wildchild slowed the horse to a trot, and the girls looked around. They didn't expect to recognize anything, neither the shoreline nor the line of mountains behind the distant forest, but they had a clear idea of what to look for.

They were interested in the small brooks and streams that flowed over the plain toward the sea because they crossed more than one on their journey from the crash site to the Woodlander Camp.

When Megan and Carlin caught up with the girls, it was lunchtime. They stopped in a small, lush valley to let the horses drink and graze. Wildchild stood on a hillock and looked out to the coast, hoping to see the raft, but it wasn't visible.

The rafters didn't stop for lunch but ate as they paddled, making steady progress across a sparking ocean all afternoon. There was no relief from the hot sun and the salty wind, but what relief might heat and a splash of water provide?

Five hard hours later, they'd done about fifteen miles and were exhausted. A strong, cold wind was blowing, making the sea choppy. Waves splashed over the starboard outrigger and soaked the knees of the paddlers. Progress was getting more challenging, and though plenty of daylight was left, it was time to head for the shore and beach the raft for the night.

Kalyndra stood to look around for a good place to stop. The shore was a thin beach leading to dunes that rose steeply to the grassy plain. At the top of one dune, they saw a horse and rider again for the first time in hours. Wildchild had been watching the raft, waiting for them to see her. She waved and signaled them to go further along the shore.

Kalyndra waved back and ordered the rafters to continue. Wildchild trotted down to the beach and emerged from between the grass-tufted dunes. She led the rafters to where a narrow river valley cut the dunes.

It was a good place to stop. They could refill their water bladders, and the deep trench cut through the sand by the river offered good mooring for the night without having to drag the raft up the beach.

The paddlers made a final effort and guided the raft into the shelter, gaining a helpful push from the insistent waves at their back. Having wedged the raft between the muddy banks of the stream, the crew finally stood up and stretched, though Cressi collapsed on the ground, breathing heavily.

"I don't know why I volunteered for this punishment!" the playful girl said, not at all bitterly.

"I'm grateful you did," Ezra said, offering her a hand.

"How grateful?" she asked.

"Not that grateful, Cressi," Devon said. "Take your turn."

Cressi stuck her tongue out at Devon. "Easy for you to say."

"Yes, isn't it?"

The rafters followed Wildchild over a dune to where the riders had set up three tents. The site was a flat grassy meadow fifty feet from the stream, sheltered by a line of high dunes from the wind and sea. A dinner of cold cuts of meat and cheese on dry, soft flatbread with milk to drink was prepared and gratefully eaten.

They all went early to bed in the roomy four-person tents. The Woodlanders Dagma,

Wildchild, Carlin, and Tamar shared one. Kalyndra, Devon, and Ezra were officially bedmates and shared the second tent. Megan, Cressi, and Thalassa shared the third. The lusty Cressi might have thought it was a waste of a night with Ezra to sleep, but Kalyndra and Devon were too tired to do anything. They kissed goodnight and slept, sandwiched together to keep warm.

The following day, the whole group was needed to push the raft out to sea again. The rafters got on board and paddled away, leaving the riders to clear the campsite and pack the tents.

After swimming for a while, the rafters ate a breakfast of dried fish.

"I hope you like fish, Dagma," Devon said, not unkindly, "because it's your lunch as well."

"I love fish," she replied with the diplomatic grace of a chief's daughter.

Taking their time clearing up the camp and meandering slowly to get their bearings by the mountains and brooks, the riders caught up with the rafters by mid-morning and were a few miles ahead again by lunchtime. Tamar rode slowly in front today, allowing Wildchild to stand on the back of the horse and look around better. Wildchild occasionally held Tamar's shoulders for balance.

Studying the line of trees in the distance, the slope of the beach, and the small hills and valleys, she pointed out a stream to Tamar. They left Megan and Carlin to follow the coastline and steered the mare along the stream's valley instead. They'd meandered a few miles and lost sight of the sea when Wildchild mumbled in disappointment. It wasn't the proper valley.

They carried on southward.

They were miles inland when they reached a small ridge of land beside another narrow, meandering stream. Tamar stopped in the middle of the stream and turned the horse around slowly. Babbling water on a leisurely path to the sea lapped over the horse's ankles. The water was clear, and they could see a riverbed of pebbles.

Wildchild stood up again to look along the shallow valley toward the forest. She used one of her scarce stores of words.

"Remember?" she said.

"Yes," Tamar said. "There was a kingfisher."

Heading more west than south from the stream toward the sea, they gradually sped up as they recognized more of the landscape. Eventually, they galloped excitedly when they saw the coast a few miles away. There was a stretch of smooth yellow sand with a long, gentle slope down from the grassland. The shore here made a slight dip in an otherwise flat coastline.

This was the place! They were about thirty miles south of the Mariner Settlement, hidden behind the curving shore and tall headland. Forty miles further south were the Southern Mountains, abutting the sea as cliffs, invisible in the midday heat haze.

The girls went back along the shore to intercept Megan and, they hoped, got a glimpse of the raft. They saw the riders and the pack horse two miles along in the distance. They galloped up, excited to tell their news.

"Well done, girls," Megan said. "Carlin saw the raft no less than an hour ago. Shall we ride on and set up camp?"

They rode on and found a good spot inland from the beach. There was no stream, but lush grass further inland indicated a watering hole or natural spring. They detached the sled from the pack horse and took the horses to drink in the spring, letting them graze for a while.

Back at the campsite, they erected all three tents. Now, they kept an anxious eye on the ocean, not wanting to let the raft pass them by mistake.

With the tents set up, Tamar volunteered to ride along the beach to look for the raft; so it was the blonde adolescent who had the joy, fifteen minutes later, of seeing the raft come into view among the waves, about a quarter of a mile from the shore, taking the shorter route across the crescent coast and avoiding the long-shore drift in the shallows. She stood on the back of her horse, waving and shouting.

At last, someone from the raft noticed her, and Kalyndra ordered: "Oars up!"

The paddles were stowed so they could hear what she said.

"We've found it," Tamar shouted at the top of her fourteen-year-old lungs. "Wildchild found it.

It's two or three miles that way."

She pointed further down the beach. Standing up on the raft, Kalyndra waved to indicate that she understood.

"You all heard that?" she checked. "All right, not far to go. Ready? Oars!"

The crew paddled with a mission while Tamar returned to the camp to give the good news. In an hour, the rafters saw the girls waiting on the beach.

The landscape had changed in the last few miles, from dunes and a sharply rising short beach to a more extended beach that rose gently to the plain. It gradually transformed from golden sand through sea spurge and grassy tufts to a thick carpet of green. It seemed familiar to Ezra, though he couldn't trust his memory of a year ago when he was injured and exhausted.

Kalyndra again ordered the crew to steer the raft toward the shore. They did so gleefully, however tired they were, and with a final lift from a wave, the raft was beached on the sand.

Everyone grabbed a rope or an outrigger and helped heave the raft further up the beach until it was clear of the water.

They planted the oars in the sand between the logs to protect them from the sea when the night rain would whip up the waves, and then they all rested.

All except Ezra. Relieved and happy, he didn't expect such easy success but did not want to be up and doing.

"Show me the spot," he asked Wildchild and Tamar.

They pointed to a place in the shallow sea about ten yards from the raft.

"We think that's where we found you," Tamar said.

"Girls, you're amazing!" he said, adding: "I know I say that a lot, but it's true, especially today."

Ezra stripped to his shorts, which were rather threadbare and no longer entirely respectable, and walked into the water. He swam out a hundred feet and then dived under, surfacing a good way south parallel to the shore. He dived and popped up again. There was a change of direction underwater, and he scouted north of the spot he believed the ship should be. He was having no success.

The Mariners had rested now and thought it was only fair that they should help him. There were a couple of hours of good daylight, and the riders had already set up the tents, so they stripped naked, asked the other women to take their clothes to the camp, and joined him.

"I can't see anything," Ezra told them disconsolately when they reached him.

"How deep is it?" asked Kalyndra.

"About ten feet. I should see her unless she's sunk into the sea floor and been covered by sand."

"Maybe you haven't swum out far enough," Devon suggested.

"Possibly, but I was injured and tired, only half-conscious. I can't have swum far."

"If you were half-conscious, you might have swum further than you realize," Thalassa suggested.

"True. Let's try further out."

They swam in a line underwater, five abreast, about ten feet apart, scanning the sea bottom.

When they'd covered a fifty-yard stretch parallel to the beach, they moved out further and repeated. On the fourth sweep, only Ezra's keenness to continue persuaded them not to give up for now. They were about eighty yards from the shore on the sixth sweep, much further than Ezra thought he'd swam from his ship. Here, they found something.

Cressi saw something glistening in the murky depth. She swam down and began digging in the sandy sea floor. The others noticed and helped her dig. It wasn't long before Ezra recognized a rocket motor's silver cowling and exhaust port. He had no doubt the starboard motor had failed and caused him to crash. It must have broken off when the ship hit the sea.

They looked around for the rest of his ship and found it quite quickly, about twenty yards further out, half-sunk in the sand. It was lying on its port side, having flipped over as it sank.

The hatch through which Ezra escaped from the flooded bridge was still open. A thin layer of green algae clung to every surface, and small fish darted in and out of the hatch, colonizing the ship like a protective reef.

It was light enough to see through the hatch onto the bridge, but it was impossible to explore now. Maybe Kalyndra, who could hold her breath for five minutes, would manage, but no one else. Nonetheless, they'd found the ship. They surfaced and returned to the camp to prepare for a full day's diving tomorrow.

Five triumphant divers walked out of the sea and across the hot sand up to the camp, where they were met with blankets to dry themselves. The same dinner as yesterday was being prepared, and the divers sat with the blankets around them and told them what they'd seen.

"It's about one hundred yards out and in thirty feet of water," Ezra said. "The bridge is well-lighted with a Perspex dome, but it's quite murky that deep, and it'll be very dark further inside, so Kalyndra and I will go in, and Devon and Cressi will pass us the airbags."

"We'll pass the salvage to them to put in a basket, which Dagma will haul up. Thalassa will stay by the air pipes and fill the bags for Cressi and Devon."

Thus, it was agreed that the salvage party went to bed early in the same formation as the previous night. Although there was joy at finding the ship, the crew of the raft had worked harder than yesterday, so even Kalyndra was too tired to goad Ezra into fucking her.

They got up early the following day, fortified themselves with breakfast, and launched the raft.

Dagma, Wildchild, Carlin, and Tamar waded out and got on board, taking up paddles. The divers swam beside the raft and helped push it. Megan alone stayed at the camp, taking the horses to graze and tidying up for lack of something useful to do.

When the divers found the site again, they anchored the raft to the sunken vessel with a dozen strong ropes. Then Ezra climbed aboard the raft and, with help from Dagma and the girls, fitted the two long bamboo pipes together with one more as an extension and a u-shaped end-piece, sealing the joints with gum-soaked cloth strips. Two more pipes, about fifteen feet each, were assembled, and all three were attached to bellows.

The bamboo poles were let over the side of the raft. The most extended tube was hooked inside the escape hatch, and the others were tied to the ropes anchoring the raft.

Wildchild, Carlin, and Tamar sat by the bellows, ready to pump air down the bamboo tubes.

Ezra gave his orders.

"Wildchild, will you try pumping the bellows a few times, please? Kali, dive down to the ship and see how much air comes out."

She took a deep breath and did an elegant flip to dive underwater. Wildchild began pumping.

"Don't worry if it's too difficult," he told her. You're pushing against a lot of water pressure. It may not work."

However, she seemed to have no difficulty. As usual, Ezra was amazed at Wildchild's strength. Pleased, he dived underwater and followed the tube to the ship, checking for leaks.

He met Kalyndra coming the other way. She gave him the thumbs up. They surfaced together.

"There's a good stream coming out," she said, "and you can see it collecting on the roof."

Ezra hoped Wildchild's tube would create an air reservoir on the bridge's roof, which the ship's crew could use.

"Good," he said, "I think we're set. Thalassa, Cressi?"

The girls gathered the bags they would fill with air from the pipes and carried them to the divers in the ship. They swam to their positions, holding the anchoring ropes, ready to submerge to the ends of the poles.

"Kalyndra, Devon?"

They also took their positions, ready to dive to the ship.

"Dagma?"

She took the end of a strong rope tied in three places to the rim of a loose-woven basket.

Then, she lowered the basket over the raft's side and placed it on the ship near the hatch.

"Ready, Ezra," she said when the basket hit bottom.

"Girls, are you ready?"

The three Woodlander girls gave him the thumbs up.

"All right, then. We're all ready."

He swam out, positioned himself to dive, and gave the final order.

"Man, the pumps!" he said.

Instead of starting to work the bellows, however, the girls collapsed in giggles.

"All right, what's so funny?" he asked them.

"You said man the pumps, but we're not men," Carlin explained.

"You should have said, Girl, the pumps!" Tamar helpfully added.

"It means Hands to the pumps," he explained.

"How does man mean hand?" Tamar asked.

"I don't know, but it does."


To be continued