"Dig," said a nearby askari.
With a feeling of satisfaction, and pleasure, I then thrust the shovel deep into the mud at my feet.
We sat in the long cage, bolted on the extended raft. I ran my finger under the collar, to move it a bit from my neck. I could smell the marshes about.
With a movement of chain, he crawled toward me in the darkness. With my fingernail I scratched a bit of rust from the chain on my collar. Far off, across the marsh, we could hear the noises of jungle birds, the howling of tiny, long-limbed primates. It was about an Ahn after the late evening rain, somewhere about the twentieth Ahn. The sky was still overcast, providing a suitable darkness for the work which must soon be at hand.
"I must speak with you," he said, in halting Gorean.
"I did not know you could speak Gorean," I said, looking ahead in the darkness.
"When a child," he said, "I once ran away. I lived for two years in Schendi, then returned to Ukungu."
"I did not think a mere village would content you," I said. "It was a long and dangerous journey for a child."
"I returned to Ukungu," he said.
"Perhaps that is why you are such a patriot of Ukungu," I said, "because once you fled from it."
"I must speak with you," he said.
"Perhaps I do not speak with members of the nobility," I said.
"Forgive me," he said. "I was a fool."
"You have learned, then," I said, "from Bila Huruma, who will speak to all men."
"How else can one listen?" he asked. "How else can one understand others?"
"Beggers speak to beggers, and to Ubars," I said.
"It is a saying of Schendi," he said.
"Yes," I said.
"Do you speak Ushindi?" he asked.
"A little," I said.
"Can you understand me?" he asked, speaking in the dialect of the court of Bila Huruma.
"Yes," I said. Gorean was not easy for him. Ushindi, I was sure, was no easier for me. Ayari, to my right, knew Ushindi well enough to transpose easily into the related Ngao dialect spoken in the Ukungu district, but I did not. "If I cannot understand you, I will tell you," I said. I had little doubt but what, between his Gorean and my understanding of the Ushindi dialect spoken at the court of Bila Huruma, we could communicate.
"I will try to speak Gorean," he said. "That, at least, is not the language of Bila Huruma."
"There are other things in its favor as well," I said. "It is a complex, efficient language with a large vocabulary."
"Ukungu," he said, "is the most beautiful language in all the world."
"That may well be," I said, "but I cannot speak it." I, personally, would have thought that English or Gorean would have been the most beautiful language in all the world. I had met individuals, however, who thought the same of French and German, and Spanish, and Chinese and Japanese. The only common denominator in these discussions seemed to be that each of the informants was a native speaker of the language in question. How chauvinistic we are with respect to our languages. This chauvinism can sometimes be so serious as to blind certain individuals to the natural superiority of English, or, perhaps, Gorean. Or perhaps French, or German. or Spanish, or Chinese, or Japanese, or, say, Bassa or Hindi.
"I will try to speak Gorean," he said.
"Very well," I said, generously. I breathed more easily.
"I want to escape," he said. "I must escape."
"Very well," I said. "Let us do so."
"But how?" he asked…
"The means," I said, "have long lain at our disposal. It is only that I have lacked the cooperation necessary to capitalize on them."
I turned to Ayari. "Pass the word down the chain," I said, "in both directions, in various languages, that we shall escape tonight."
"How do you propose to do this?" asked Ayari.
"Discharge your duties, my friendly interpreter," I said. "You will see shortly."
"What if some fear to escape?" asked Ayari.
"They will then be torn alive out of the chain," I told him.
"I am not sure I am in favor of this," said Ayari.
"Do you wish to be the first?" I asked him.
"Not me," said Ayari. "I am busy. I have things to do. I am passing the word down the chain."
"How can we escaper asked Kisu.
I reached out and measured the chain at his collar, and slipped my hands down the chain until, about five feet later, it lifted to the collar of the next man. I pushed them closely together, to drop the chain, in a loop, to the log floor of the extended raft. By feeling I dropped the loop between the ends of two logs and drew it back, about two feet in from the end of the log it was now looped beneath. The bottom of the loop was then under water and about one log. I put one end of the chain in the hands of the powerful Kisu and took the other end in my own hands.
"I see," said Kisu, "but this is an inefficient tool."
"You could ask the askaris for a better," I suggested.
We then began, smoothly and firmly, exerting heavy, even pressures, to draw the chain back and forth under the log. In moments, using this crude saw, or cuffing tool, we had cut through the bark of the log and had begun, rhythmically, to gash and splinter the harder wood beneath. The spacing and twisting of the links, in the motion of the metal, served well in lieu of teeth. There was an occasional squeak of the metal on the wet wood but the work, for the most part, was accomplished silently, the sound being concealed under the surface of the water. It was a mistake on the part of the askaris to have left us in neck chains in a cage mounted on a log platform. We ceased work, once, when a canoe of askaris, on watch, paddled by.
My hands began to bleed on the chain. Doubtless Kisu's hands, too, were bloodied.
One man crept close to us. "This is madness," he said. "I am not with you."
"You must then be killed," I told him.
"I have changed my mind," he said. "I am now with you, fully."
"Good," I said.
"The sound will carry under the water," said another man. Sound does carry better under water than above it, indeed, some five times as well. The sound, of course, does not well break the surface of the water. Thus the sound, though propagated efficiently either beneath or above the surface, is not well propagated, because of the barrier of the surface, either from beneath the surface to above the surface, or from above the surface to beneath the surface.
"It will attract tharlarion, or fish, and then tharlarion," he said.
"We will wait for them to investigate and disperse," I said.
Ayari was near to me. "It is dark," he said. "It is a good night for raiders."
A bit of wood, moved by the chain, splintered up by my feet.
I slid the loop of chain down toward the end of the log, near the end of the other log, to which it was adjacent.
The chain, thus positioned, might exert more leverage. "Pull," I said. Kisu and I, drawing heavily on the chain, splintered the log upward, breaking off some inches of it. With my foot and hands I snapped off some sharp splinters.
"We will now wait for a time," I said.
We heard a tharlarion, a large one, rub up against the bottom of the raft.
I looped the chain in my bloody hands, to strike at it if it should try to thrust its snout through the hole.
"Cover the log. Seem asleep," whispered a man.
We sat about the piece of log, our heads down, some of us lying on the floor of the log raft. I saw the light, a small torch, in the bow of another canoe pass us, one containing ten armed askaris.
They did not pay us much attention.
"They fear raiders," said Ayari.
After a time, when it seemed quiet, I said, "Bring the first man on the chain forward."
He, not happy, was thrust toward me. "I will go first," I said, "but I cannot, as I am toward the center of the chain."
"What about the fellow at the end of the chain?" he inquired.