Margo was three-quarters asleep under a starry sky when their raft eddied down the last few miles of the Limpopo. Kynan Rhys Gower shook her gently and pointed. Margo blinked and rose awkwardly. She ached everywhere, making movement difficult, and the hunger gnawing at her had left her muzzy-headed. She stared down the moonlit river for several moments before realizing why it looked so wide.
They had come within sight of the sea.
”Oh, thank God!”
Then another frightening thought hit her.
The mouth of the Limpopo was nearly a hundred miles up the coast from Delagoa Bay and the gate. A hundred miles on a raft on the open sea with no real way to steer and no food or water?
”Kynan! We have to get to the bank!”
Kynan puzzled out her meaning, then nodded and began to paddle. Margo dug her paddle into the current until her shoulders and back were on fire. They moved slowly nearer the bank-but not fast enough. The current was sweeping them inexorably out to sea. Maybe they could swim for it ….
Koot couldn’t swim. And when she looked closely, Margo saw the gleam of crocodile eyes in the water. Terror choked her breath off. We’ll drift into the Indian. Ocean. My God, we could end up anywhere … At the last moment, she thought to fill water cans with river water. Then they were wallowing in rolling swells. The current carried them farther from land.
”A sail,” Margo muttered, “we need a sail…” Malcolm had taught her how to sail. But not how to build a sailboat out of a PVC and Filmar raft. “Doesn’t matter. Gotta have a sail.”