“Is this nand’ Bren’s boat?” Jegari asked. “Nandi, perhaps we should wait.”
“Oh, we shall just sail out a little way.” The tiller was up. The boat was secured by a knot that was easy to pull loose. “Push it out.”
“Are you sure, nandi?” Antaro asked. “Do you know how to manage it? We have never been in a boat.”
“I have,” he said, and went to the stern and moved the tiller the little it would move. “See. This steers it. See the rope there—that pulls on the sail so you can catch the wind. The oars in the bottom are for emergency, to move the boat if there is no wind. The board that sticks up in the bottom of the boat— that goes down into the water when we push off.”
“Nandi, surely we should wait!”
“We shall go out to nand’ Toby’s boat, and when nand’ Bren’s staff comes down, we shall come right back to shore. They will need this boat to get aboard. Come. Push!”
They looked doubtful, but they heaved and pushed until the stern was in the water, and then he got in, and they all got in.
They weighed the boat down, and it only rocked, but they could not rock it off the shore.
“Shove with the oars,” Cajeiri said, picking up one himself, and put it over the side and pushed and shoved until they were out of breath. “No good,” he said. “One of us has to get out and push and then jump in.”
“I will,” Jegari said, and got up to the bow and stepped out and shoved.
Then it went very fast, the board went down, the boom came around, bang! and the boat, tilting a little, began to move off, but Jegari ran and grabbed it, and got aboard, wet to the waist and nearly spilling water into the boat.
That was bad. But Jegari did get aboard. They had dry clothes, but the servants were bringing those down. Meanwhile nobody was steering and Antaro had gotten her oar overside to row, and because of it, they were going around. A stronger breeze caught the sail, and it popped and snapped against the mast, tugging at the rope.
“Take the oar out,” Cajeiri said, settling and tugging at the rope to bring the sail around. Increasingly the tiller was taking hold. “Just sit still, one on a side, and watch out for the boom. It will go back and forth as we go—you have to let it: just duck; and I shall steer with the tiller.”
It was all going much better, except Jegari being wet. He steered, but there was something wrong with the tiller, Cajeiri thought in a little dismay, since he was steering for nand’ Toby’s boat, but they kept going sideways nearly as much as they were going forward.
He steered sharply, and they made it right up alongside nand’ Toby’s boat, and he tried to come in behind it, where there was a ladder, but he ran into a problem, then, and the wind blew them up against Toby’s boat, scraping the hull.
“Get the oars,” he said, “and push off before we scratch the hull.”
They did, and just then they came around the side of the hull to the end and the boom came over, catching Antaro hard in the back, and nearly threw her in. He hauled on the little rope to try to control the boom, but then the wind was in their faces and the boat was coming around.
That was a problem.
Meanwhile Antaro was leaning overside, trying to reach something in the water.
“Keep in the boat, nadi!” Cajeiri cried, making a reach for her, just as Jegari did, all on the same side of the boat, and for a moment he was sure they were going over, but he leaned the other way, and Jegari did, but now they were entirely past nand’ Toby’s boat, so he turned the bow to face it, and the wind blew and they just kept getting farther and farther from the boat.
“You must be doing it wrong, nandi-ji,” Jegari said.
“There is a way to go upwind,” he said. “One is just having a little difficulty.”
“Nandi,” Antaro said, “I have lost an oar off the side.”
“We do still have the other, however,” Jegari said.
“I am going to try going fast, and then turning,” he said. “Maybe we need more speed.”
“Shall I row?” Jegari asked.
“The wind will take us,” Cajeiri said, and turned the bow. The tiller took hold again as the boat gathered speed. More and more speed, as the wind gusted and strained the sail.
“Surely this is fast enough,” Jegari said.
He thought it was, too: the ropes were singing, the way Toby’s big boat could sing when the wind was behind it. He turned, keeping tight control of the boom. But the wind hit the sail, and all that speed faded, so that they were no longer going forward. They had turned, in fact, halfway too far, and the water was even going backward relative to the boat.
Or they were going backward.
“Damn!” he said, one of Bren’s words.
“Are we in trouble, nandi?” Antaro asked.
“I think we are in trouble,” he said. “Jegari, one greatly regrets it, but we need to row: you need to get into the bow and row one side and the other so we do not go in a circle. I shall steer.”
“I shall try, nandi.”
By now nand’ Toby’s boat was much farther away. Worse, nand’ Bren’s boat and the dock looked quite small now.
“The water is all moving,” Jegari said from the stern. “Nandi, one is rowing hard, but the water is taking us with it.”
“Row!” he said to Antaro. “Help Jegari!”
He held to the tiller and tried it this way and that, but it made very little difference—more, when they went sideways in respect to nand’ Toby’s boat; and he began to think that things were getting worse and that if they could steer in any direction at all, they should go that way, so he did, or tried to, but mostly they were going crooked, because of there being only one oar.
They were in serious trouble.
“I am going to try to gather speed again!” he cried. “Give up rowing! I cannot take it straight into the wind! I am going to try to gather speed and angle it to reach the Najida shore. At this point one hardly cares where!”
“Do so, nandi!” Jegari cried, and the two of them settled themselves again, tipping the boat this way and that, and then he brought the bow around and hauled hard on the rope, so that the wind caught them.
At some point, when he had the most speed, they had to turn, and they did. They were closer, now, to the opening of the bay, and in front of them, there was no land.
He turned. He did his best. But it was like magic. Even though the wind was pushing them straight ahead, something else was going on with the boat, and they were moving sideways, too.
Ahead was all blue sky and gray water and it just went on and on, out where the shoreline quit.
That was the sea out there. And they were moving toward it.
Something was very wrong with everything he had read about boats. Something was very, very wrong.
Barb was crying again, and the door had the security lock thrown, which meant Toby was locked out in the suite’s sitting room, and not happy about it. He’d gotten mad enough to hit the door—so Algini said—and Barb had shouted back at him that, Jago’s report, accurately rendered in Mosphei’, he should go to hell.
That was just tolerably lovely, was it not?
But it was useless sorting it out at this point. There was weather moving in, so the report wasc it was going to shorten their fishing trip as was, they were missing the tide; and Bren sighed and asked himself whether he should not just leave the situation, take all his staff with him, and go keep his promise to the youngsters, leaving Toby and Barb to scream at each other in front of the servants.
Damn it all, they still might have to get Toby to the plane. Or Barb, if things went on as they were going, and that relationship foundered. He’d happily buy the one-way ticket.
And hell, Bren said to himself, and when he had that last report from Jago, that was enough. They’d wasted enough time. He knocked on Toby’s door—Toby had the outer door locked, and, with Toby not answering, he hailed him aloud, then indecorously, and in front of at least one embarrassed servant, declared his business from outsidethe door.