Lamont picked up a rock. Looking at it, Jerry thought it had been beach sand not long ago in its geological history—assuming this weird place had a geological history.
“Going to be hell sharpening anything with this,” grumbled Lamont. “I’ll try to rub a hole through it.”
“There are some good rocks back at the stream,” said Jerry.
“Wait a minute,” said Liz. “Do you really think you could make holes through this rock, Lamont?”
Lamont regarded the fist-sized but flattened piece in his hand. “I think so. Why, M . . . Liz?”
“I read every Gerald Durrell book ever written.” She had a nostalgic smile on her face.
The two of them looked at her blankly. “Naturalist. Grew up in Greece. Well, for some of his childhood. And then he collected animals all over the world. Anyway, in the one book about South America he had described this thing called a . . . bolas.”
Jerry nodded. “Ah. Yes. I know what you’re talking about. Weights on a rope that are thrown to entangle things.”
Liz pulled a wry face. “Well, my brother and I made one with ball sinkers. I killed a guinea fowl with it.”
Lamont raised an eyebrow. “Liz, are sure your name isn’t really ‘Indiana Jones’ or something?”
She looked embarrassed. “It was a tame one. And Dad nearly killed us. I cried.”
* * *
Cruz and McKenna had gone off with the newly contrived bolas and, in case that didn’t work, their spears. Lamont had just painstakingly constructed a hook . . . when Jim McKenna realized what he was doing and pulled out a sewing kit which also contained several hooks. But Liz had insisted on using Lamont’s. She was fishing.
Gathering black mussels was all that Jerry was judged to be fit for. It was stationary if wet work. Lamont had first collected some firewood and then promoted himself to gulls’-nest-robber-in-chief on the low crag above their Robinson Crusoe beach-cave camp.
Jerry looked up to see Lamont in the act of discovering that Greek mythworld gulls were just as keen on having their eggs stolen as the ones back home. “Shit. It’s just been sick all over me!” Jerry saw him snatch angrily at the gull. And catch it.
It all happened terribly fast. The ledge, about twenty feet off the beach, was made of the same soft sandstone as the bolas weights. Maybe a piece of it gave way. Maybe the gull pecking furiously at him caused him to lose his grip. Liz, fishing a few yards further out from Jerry on a rock point, and Jerry with a lap full of black mussels, saw Lamont plunge to the sand still clutching a large, angry gull. By a miracle he missed the projecting rocks. The gull’s squawk even eclipsed Lamont’s shriek.
They landed together in a flurry of squawks, yells and flapping wings. By the time Jerry and Liz got there, the gull had clumsily fluttered free. With a derisive final squawk and last vicious peck, it expressed its heartfelt opinion of all nest molesters. The piece of physical opinion landed with a white splat on the rock ten inches from Lamont’s head.
Lamont sat up, amid their anxious entreaties. He waved a rueful handful of feathers. “I thought I had us a bird for dinner.” He held out the other hand. In it was a mottled egg, miraculously intact. “All I got was the egg.”
“Well, now we know which one comes first.” Jerry waved his hand in front of his nose. “Phew. Fish!”
“Yeah. I think I need to wash. Jeeze, that thing made some holes in me.”
“There’s a nice deep spot next to where I was fishing.” Liz cleared her throat, looking shamefaced. “Um. I think I’ve just lost the fishing line and that hook you made me, Lamont.”
“And I’ve lost all those mussels I gathered.” Jerry inspected the older man. He looked, miraculously, none the worse for the fall. “You’ve got all the luck. If it had been me, I’d have dashed my brains out.”
“That might have stopped you punning for ten minutes,” said Liz dryly.
* * *
Most of Jerry’s mussels had indeed washed away. But, to their amazement, Liz’s line was still visible. It was tangled around the seaweed on a wave-washed rock, a few yards off the shore. “I’ll get it,” said Lamont. “I need to wash this stuff off anyway.”
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