Slowly, he turned to face Ilaloa at the tiller. His hand lifted and swung down again. She nodded, a fey figure under the moon, and spale to Sean. He and a couple of others fought the sails up.
The boat leaped! Her mast, which had been swinging crazily against the sky, heeled over so that Trevelyan thought she must capsize. The boom reached far out, almost at right angles to the lean hull, and the living ropes hummed. Water slanted icy-white from the bows, the wake coiled in shattered flame behind her, and she ranl
Trevelyan gasped, shaking his drenched head with wonder. “We made it,” he breathed. He di(Wt quite dare believe it yet. “We made it.”
Nicki hugged him, wordlessly. They crawled over their fellows, into the bows where they could see ahead. Spindrift stung their faces, but they looked over the sea and were glad.
The clouds were breaking up and the balfinoon, as big
as Luna at the full, was dazzlingly brilliant. But it was straight ahead, to the northwest, that Trevelyan and Nicki stared. There lay the boats and the way home.
Joachim crept up to the bows, saw the two sitting there, and smiled. Turning, he made his way back sternward, checking on his people. No casualties so far, except poor Alan. Joachim wondered how he was going to tell it to the boy’s
father.
When be came to the stern, be saw Sean and Ilaloa helping each other steer. It was hard to figure how the girl kept her bearings without a compass, but she was doing it. The shore was already lost to sigbt; they were walled in ringing, sundering darkness. The tiller threshed, fighting like a live animal. Sean and Ilaloa were on either side of it, shoulder against shoulder, hands ir@terlocked on the rod. The man had a strained look, but the captain bad seldom seen such inward happiness.
He approached closer, hanging onto the rail with one band and bending near so they could bear him call. “Ho@s it going?” The -,vind yelled aroi-ind his words.
“Pretty good,” answered Sean. “We should raise the island soon. We could see it now if this were daylight.”
Joachim leaned on the pitcbing bulwark, and looked down the length of the vessel. Strange that she wasn’t shipping water-no, the water came inboard and was soaked up, blotted away; a fine rain sprang from the boat’s sides, back down into the sea. She did her own bailing, too.
He looked over the sea as if he stood on a mountain. Overbead was a skv of flickering candle-stars and cloud streamers; under an@ around him the swooping, trampling, sbouting sea, everywhere the wind. It might have been across lightyears that he saw the hazy form of the other boat.
He gripped Ilaloa’s shoulder so that she cried out. Slowly, be pointed, and she and Sean followed the line of his arm.
She stood for a bare second, not moving. He had seen a
man once with a bullet in his heart, not yet aware that he was dead, standing just that way.
Joachim leaned over to shout in Ilaloa’s ear: “Would an@ one else be sailing on a night like this?”
She shook her head.
“Well,” he said between Ms teeth, ‘bang on to your heads, lads, we’re going to make a run for it.”
As they mounted another crest, he saw the island. It was hard to gauge distances, but that sheer loom of rock couldn’t be far now. Peering into the blast, he made out the other vessel.
It closed the gap rapidly, quartering in from portside stern. No windjammer, this; the Alori had sent a real longboat after them. It was big and high-stemmed, no mast, and it was drawn by something that swam. He could only see the great white curve of a back rising from the waves, the thresh of its tail and now and again a monster fluke.
C,anst thou draw out Levianthan with a hook? … Will he make a covenant with thee?
Ilaloa said something to Sean, who nodded and gestured to Joachim. A few rags of words came to the captain’s ears: ‘@take rudder-reef-” He came around and closed hands on the kicking bar. Sean groped to the boom lines. The island was very close now, standing in a white flame of surf. They had to go around it, no doubt, tack-in this weather?