Suddenly Amra spoke. “Do you think we’re getting close?”
He stopped so suddenly that the entire line lurched into him. Lightning burst again, quite close by. The cat, curled in his coat pocket, spat and tried to shrink into an even smaller ball. Absently, Green patted her from outside the coat. He said, “Your name is Lady Luck. I just saw the village. Now we’re getting some place. I really needed that referent.”
He wasn’t worried about the inhabitants of the village. All were undoubtedly cowering under the roofs of their long houses, praying to whatever gods they worshiped that they would not send the lightning their way. There would be little danger if the whole party were to walk through the center of the village. He planned to take no chances at all, however, and ordered everybody to follow him around the clearing.
“It won’t be long now!” he said to Amra. “Pass the word back and cheer everybody up.”
Half an hour later he wished he’d kept his mouth shut. It was true that he’d followed the wandering path to the cove where their boats were kept. But he’d at once drawn his breath in pain of surprise.
A lightning bolt had illuminated the gray rock walls of the cove, its broad shelf, and the high black iron davits.
But the yachts were gone!
CHAPTER 22
LATER GREEN THOUGHT that if ever the time came when he should have cracked up, that instant of loss, white and sudden as the lightning itself, should have been the one.
The others cried out loudly in their grief and shock, but he was as silent as the empty stone shelf. He could not move nor utter a word; all seemed hopeless, so what was the use of motion or talk?
Nevertheless, he was human, and human beings hope even when there is no justification for it. Nor could he remain frozen until the next stroke of lightning would reveal to the others the state of their leader. He had to act. What if his actions were meaningless? Mere movement answered for the demands of the body, and at that moment it was his body that could move. His mind was congealed.
Shouting to the others to scatter and look about in the brush, but not to scatter too far, he began climbing up the slope of the hill. When he had reached its top he left the path and plunged into the forest to his right on the theory that if the yachts were anywhere they must be there. He had two ideas about where they might be. One was that the Vings had spotted them and had sent in a party aboard a gig to push them over the side of the island. Thus, when the island had begun its nightly voyage it had left the ‘rollers sitting upon the plain. The other theory was also inspired by the presence of the Vings. Perhaps the savages had hidden their craft because of just such an event as his first theory put forth. To do that they would have had to haul the ‘rollers up the less steep slant of the cove.
At the point where he would have looped a rope around a tree and used it to pull a yacht uphill, he saw all three of the missing craft. They were nestling side by side just over the lip of the slope, their hulls hidden by brush piled up before them. Their tall masts, of course, would be taken for tree trunks by anybody but a very close observer.
Green yelled with joy, then whirled to run back and tell the others. And slammed into a tree trunk. He picked himself up, swearing because he’d hurt his nose. And tripped over something and fell again. Thereafter, he seemed to be in a nightmare of frustration, of conspiracy between tree and night to catch and delay him. Where his trip up had been easy, his trip back was a continued barking of shins, bumping of nose, and tearing loose from clutching bushes and thorns. His confusion wasn’t at all helped when the lightning ceased, because he’d been guiding himself by its frequent flashes. And Lady Luck, alarmed at all the hard knocks she was getting, struggled out of his shirt pocket and slipped into the forest. He called to her to come back, but she had had enough of him, for the time being, anyway.