There was one other who remained aloof. That was the harpist, Grazoot. He was still sulking at the foot of the mast.
Green decided that he’d better keep an eye on him, especially at night when a knife could be slipped between a sleeper’s ribs and the body thrown overboard. He wished now that he’d not gone out of his way to insult the fellow’s instrument, but at the time that had seemed the only thing to do. Now he had better try to find some way to pacify him.
CHAPTER 13
TWO WEEKS of very hard work and little sleep passed as Green learned the duties of a topsailman. He hated to go aloft, but he found that being up so high had its advantages. It gave him a chance to catch a few winks now and then. There were many crow’s nests where musketmen were stationed during a fight. Green would slip down into one of these and go to sleep at once. His foster son Grizquetr would stand watch for him, waking him if the foretop captain was coming through the rigging toward them. One afternoon Griz’s whistle startled Green out of a sound sleep.
However, the captain stopped to give another sailor a lecture. Unable to go back to sleep, Green watched a herd of hoobers take to their hoofs at the approach of the Bird. These diminutive equines, beautiful with their orange bodies and black or white manes and fetlock, sometimes formed immense herds that must have numbered in the hundreds of thousands. So thick were they that they looked like a bobbing sea of flashing heads and gleaming hoofs stretching clear to the horizon.
To stretch to the horizon was something on this planet. The plain was the flattest Green had ever seen. He could scarcely believe that it ran unbroken for thousands of miles. But it did, and from his high point of view he could see in a vast circle. It was a beautiful sight. The grass itself was tall and thickbodied, about two feet high and a sixteenth of an inch through. It was a bright green, brighter than earthly grass, almost shiny. During the rainy season, he was told, it would blossom with many tiny white and red flowers and give a pleasing perfume.
Now, as Green watched, something happened that startled him.
Abruptly, as if a monster mowing machine had come along the day before, the high grass ended and a lawn began. The new grass seemed to be only an inch high. And the lawn stretched at least a mile wide and as far ahead of the Bird as he could see.
“What do you think of that?” he asked Amra’s son.
Grizquetr shrugged. “I don’t know. The sailors say that it is done by the wuru, an animal the size of a ship, that only comes out at night. It eats grass, but it has the nasty temper of a dire dog, and will attack and smash a roller as if it were made of cardboard.”
“Do you believe that?” Green said, watching him closely. Grizquetr was an intelligent lad in whom he hoped to plant a few seeds of skepticism. Perhaps some day those seeds might flower into the beginnings of science.
“I do not know if the story is true or not. It is possible, but I’ve met nobody who has ever seen a wuru. And if it comes out only at night, where does it hide during the daytime? There is no hole in the ground large enough to conceal it.”
“Very good,” said Green, smiling. Happily, Grizquetr smiled back. He worshiped his foster-father and nursed every bit of affection or compliment he got from him.
“Keep that open mind,” said Green. “Neither believe nor disbelieve until you have solid evidence one way or another. And keep on remembering that new evidence may come up that will disprove the old and firmly established.”
He smiled wryly. “I could use some of my own advice. I, for instance, had at one time absolutely refused to put any credence in what I have just seen with my own eyes. I put the story down as merely another idle story of those who sail the grassy seas. But I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps there couldn’t be an animal of some kind like the wuru.”