alert for the Jack, for floating snags, and for the sound that lay before us
where the river’s wide mouth ended. Clearing the river mouth finally we turned
into the main sound.
Midday was past, but no sail lifted against the sky. There were only clouds and
gulls, their white wings catching the modest flash of a sullen sun. Far away to
the east we thought we could see the coastal banks, yet we saw no mast, no dark
hull, only the gray water and behind us the darker green of the shore.
Huddled in the stern I unrolled my charts and gave them study. Two great sounds
were here protected from the sea by narrow coastal islands, and into these
sounds flowed several rivers, large and small. I believed it was the southermost
from which we had come. Several openings through the coastal banks permitted
access to the sounds from the sea, and these as well as some of the rivers were
mapped in astonishing detail. Obviously someone had explored this coast most
carefully, or portions of it, at least.
Through the night we sailed, taking turns at the tiller, the wind holding well.
At daybreak it fell off and we dipped and bobbed in a choppy sea, with the dim
gray line of dawn off to the northwest.
Visibility was poor, yet we saw no ship. The sun arose and after a while we
caught an offshore breeze and worked in closer to the shore, watching for a cove
or bay into which we might go for shelter.
It was a low shore when we found it, a swampy place, yet offering shelter. Sakim
threw a weighted line ashore and let it wind around a tree, then we hauled in
closer. Wading ashore, we made fast with a simple slipknot, knowing well how
swiftly we might leave.
We had a little food. We built a fire, ate, and I worked at making arrows for my
longbow.
We saw no savages. A few ducks and geese flew up from time to time, and one of
the geese I killed with an arrow. Two of us slept onshore, the other on the
boat. We rested, ate, and rested again, and in the evening when I went down to
the sea to look for whatever might be seen, I saw a deer and killed it.
So we skinned it out, stretched the hide, and hung the meat for drying, aiding
the process with smoke.
We had carried our goods aboard the boat, all but the meat, and Sakim was taking
in our line, waiting for Rufisco and me, ready to shove off.
I heard a cry … a choked, hoarse cry.
Turning swiftly I saw Rufisco. There were four arrows in him and a dozen savages
rushing toward us. Sakim fired.
A man spun and dropped, but the others were not dismayed by the sound, and came
on. I caught up my sword and wheeled about, taking a wide slash as I turned, and
severing an uplifted arm holding a tomahawk. Sakim had dropped the one pistol
and lifted the fowling piece, which was charged with shot, and fired it into
them.
They scattered, two dropped, one of them very bloody, and I rushed in and had
Rufisco by the collar. Back I went, sword on guard, dragging him through the
water and into the boat, which Sakim shoved off. A flight of arrows, pursued us.
One scratched me, another lodged in my clothing, but Rufisco was aboard, and
when they rushed again we were well out of their reach, the wind filling our
sail.
Rufisco stared up at me, breathing in hoarse gasps, a bloody froth upon his
lips. “Too late!” he mumbled. “There will be no wine with the passing girls, no
sitting in the sun.”
He was not a man to lie to, and he knew as well as I that with two arrows in his
lungs there was little that could be done. He held on to my hand and I could not
take it from him to do what might be done to make him easier. Maybe the
handclasp was all he wanted at the moment.
“Bury me where I can smell the sea,” he said, after spitting blood.
“We can push the arrows through,” I said. “They’re showing out your back.”
One was through his thigh, and bleeding bad.
“Let me be. The knowledge of death was in me.” He spat again. “At least, I die
with men.”
He lay on his side on the gig’s bottom, and there was no way I could make him
easy without causing more pain. He lay there, eyes closed, breathing hoarsely,
always that bloody froth at his lips. I wiped it away.
He opened his eyes again, strangely quiet. “A gray day, that an Italiano should
die upon a gray day!”
“We can reach the coastal islands,” Sakim said. “There we can find a safe
place.”
I held his hand with my left, and with my right the tiller. It was a long way
across, and somewhere upon the crossing Rufisco died … I do not know when, nor
even where. Except at the last his fingers held no longer to mine, and I placed
the hand down and Sakim looked over at me, but said nothing.
We had lost a comrade, one not easy to lose.
The moon was high when we came up to shore again. It was a long sandy shore on
which the surf of the sound rolled up softly.
We beached the gig and carried a line inland to make fast to a low-growing tree.
Then we carried the body of Rufisco ashore and above the level of the tide we
dug a grave, and there we buried him where he could hear the winds blow, and
feel the pulse of the sea. It would not be too different, I thought, than his
own Mediterranean, for this too was an inland water, and this too, was warm.
Taking a sight upon a tree, I marked the place for memory, but in the morning,
when there was light enough, I carved a name on a slab and placed it there. I
knew not the day of his birth, but gave that of his death. His name, too, I
placed there, although the place a man leaves is in the hearts of those he
leaves behind, and in his work, not upon a slab…
We went back to the boat, then, and shoved off, lifting our sail and pointing
our bows again to the north. And all that day we saw no sail, nor the next nor
the next nor the next.
When again we walked upon land it was on the shores of the northern sound. I
killed a deer there, at ninety paces, with one arrow, and we ate well. Later we
collected the leaves from a plant Sakim recognized and made a tea, and not a bad
one.
We rested on the sand, and Sakim said to me, “It is a good land, this, a fine
land.” He sat up suddenly. “You should stay in this land, this should be your
home.”
“Here?” I was not astonished, for the thought had been in me, too.
“Perhaps. I would like a family. A man should build. He should always build.”
“You want sons?”
“Sons and daughters.”
I raised on one elbow. “I wonder about you, Sakim.”
“There is no need. I was once almost a philosopher, my friend, but there was too
much of the rascal in me. There was also a woman … the daughter of a very
important man. I was rascal enough to woo her, and philosopher enough to leave
quickly when we were discovered.”
“Have you never been back?”
“To be killed by soldiers? Or imprisoned? Besides, she was a philosopher, too.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“When she saw that I was gone she faced the realities and married another man.
Now she is rich, important, and domestic. I would no longer be interested in
her, and she would only be amused by me.”
“You were a student?”
“I was a teacher. My father, my grandfather and my great-grandfather were
judges, and so was I to be.”
“You were fortunate. I had few books, and no school.”
Sakim shrugged. “You had your father, obviously a wise man, and you had a gift.”
“I? A gift?”
“A gift of listening. When men spoke, you heard, and of what you heard, you
thought.” He sat up. “And now,” he smiled wickedly, “Oh, Master of Wisdom, we
should float our craft … We will catch no Tiger on this shore.”
Our sail was no sooner up, our craft before the wind, than we saw her, broad and
beautiful across the way, Captain Brian Tempany’s three-master coming down upon
us, all sails set and a bone in her teeth, as the saying is.
We hove to and, with Sakim at the tiller, I stood by the mast and waved my hat.