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!
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 night-mare 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.
For a brief moment he thought of the fantastic device of grabbing
hold of her tail and following her through the dark. But she was gone,
and the idea wouldn't have worked, anyway. More than likely she'd have
turned and bitten his hands until he released her.
There was nothing to do but make his own way back.
After ten minutes of frantic struggling, during which he suddenly
realized he'd turned the wrong way and was wandering away from the edge
of the island, he saw the clouds disappear. With the bright moon came
vision and sanity. He turned around and in a short time was back at the
cove.
"What happened to you?" asked Amra. "We thought maybe you'd fallen off
the edge."
"That's about all that didn't happen," he said, irritated now that he
had been so easily lost. He told them where the yachts were and added,
"We'll have to let one down by a rope before we can connect it to the
davits. It'll take a lot of pushing and pulling, a lot of muscle.
Everybody up on the hill, including the children!"
Wearily, they climbed up the slope to the top and shoved one of the
'rollers up the slight incline of the depression to the lip of the
hill. Green picked up one of the wet ropes lying on the ground and
passed it around the tree. Its trunk had a groove where many ropes had
worn a path during similar operations. One end he gave to half of the
party, putting Miran in charge of them. The other end he tied in a
bowknot to a huge iron eye which projected from the stern of the craft.
Then, ordering the other half of the women to help him push, he got the
'roller over the lip and down the slope, while the rope gang slowly
released the double loop around the tree in short jerks.
When the craft had halted by the davits, Green untied the rope. His
next step would be to back the yacht in between the davits so that he
could hook up its ropes and lift it. Fortunately, there was a winch and
cable for this. Unfortunately, the winch was hand-operated and had been
allowed to get rusty. It would work only with great resistance and with
loud squeaking. Not that more noise mattered, for the party had made so
much that only the fact that the wind was from the east could have kept
the savages in ignorance of the survivors' whereabouts.
It was as if his thinking of them had brought them upon the scene.
Grizquetr, who'd been stationed in a tree as a sentinel, called down,
"I see a torch! It's somewhere in the woods, about half a mile away.
Oh! There's another one! And another one!"