Nab turned to Beth. ‘I’ll help you down,’ he said, trying to appear brave and unconcerned but in truth as apprehensive and frightened as everyone else. Beth in fact was perhaps the least nervous because she had been out in a yacht once or twice with her father when they had been on holiday with some friends who lived by the sea, and also she was able to swim quite well. Holding on to Nab’s hand she climbed backwards down the rock until she felt her boots in the water and then she managed to get one of her legs on the other side of the seal who had swum over and was using his flippers to keep himself steady alongside the rock. She lowered herself down on to his back and then with her legs wrapped tightly round him she let go of Nab’s hand and found herself bobbing up and down very comfortably except for the fact that her jeans were wet up to her knees and felt cold and clammy against her legs.
‘I’ll go with you,’ said Perryfoot urgently and Beth smiled up at him.
‘All right, you lazy old thing: hop on,’ she said, and Nab handed him down to her. Beth held him cradled underneath her while she bent down and put both her arms around the seal’s neck so that her face was resting on his back just a few inches from the water.
‘No pride,’ thought Brock to himself, but of all the animals Perryfoot was the one who, with his short legs, would have been least able to cling to a seal and cross alone.
Beth tried to say something to the seal but he appeared not to hear her. Faraid called down, ‘They don’t speak your language; they only know the language of the sea. I’ll tell him when to go. Are you ready?’
She replied that she was and Faraid spoke to the seal which suddenly took off across the water. At first Beth found it hard to hang on because he was so slippery and she panicked when she got a mouthful of salt water but once she had got used to the powerful rhythm of his swimming and was able to more or less guess when they would hit a wave so that she could hold her breath, she began to enjoy it. The sea under her face sped past in a blue-green mass of ripples, and looking back she could see the white foaming wake left by the seal’s flippers. She turned her head sideways so that she could just see the sky where it met the sea on the horizon and as they got further out she was able to see other bays and beaches along the coast. It appeared to be deserted except for the occasional cottage perched up in the mountains which rose from the sea like towering fortresses. She wondered whether anybody might be looking out over the water and what they would think if they spotted her; a girl in a brown cloak riding on the back of a seal. Pinch themselves to make sure they were not dreaming, she thought; but they were now too far out to be seen clearly anyway.
‘How are you feeling?’ she called to Perryfoot, but he could not hear her above the roar of the sea. His eyes were shut tight and he was shivering with fright; his legs splayed out across the seal’s dark slippery back and the nails of his paws fully extended to try to get a grip.
She turned her head so that she could look back at the others on the rocks. They appeared to be just about to set off. Brock, having tried to sit on the back of one of the seals, had fallen off and had to be hauled out of the water by Nab, so he had now condescended to ride with Faraid and was sitting astride the seal looking extremely uncomfortable with the elf behind him holding him on. Sam was riding with Nab. Like Beth he had been to the sea once before with the Urkku who had owned him and so it was not altogether strange. In fact he used to swim in the ponds around Silver Wood and he had been thinking of trying to swim across to Elgol but he did not like the look of the waves and it was a long way from the shore. The knowledge that he could swim if he fell off, however, gave Sam a lot of confidence and this helped Nab feel better as he sat shakily on the seal’s back behind him.
‘Ask him to go slowly,’ he shouted above the waves to Faraid, and the elf called something to the seal before they moved away from the rock.
‘Sam,’ shouted Nab, ‘sit still,’ for the dog was wriggling around in front of him trying to get his mouth in the water so that he could play at catching the waves.
‘Don’t worry; I’ll hang on to you if you slip,’ Sam said, laughing.
Overhead Warrigal was flying against the wind and experiencing some difficulty with the strong air-currents until a cormorant came up and helped him by showing him how to fly low over the water where the wind was less gusty and more constant. The owl felt that the nearer the water he flew the less room would he have to correct any errors before he was in the sea, but when he tried it he found that it worked and soon he was skimming above the waves with enormous pleasure, alongside the others who looked at him enviously.
Soon even Brock and Nab relaxed a little and began to enjoy the ride. They became exhilarated with the sight of nothing in front of them except the vast ocean twinkling in the late afternoon sunlight and their hearts lifted with the feel of the wind in their hair and the spray on their faces. They anticipated the slight thud as the seal met each wave and braced themselves with excitement for the next one. Only Perryfoot, small and completely out of the element of which he was master, remained so frightened that he was unable to even open his eyes.
Soon they were close to the landward side of Elgol and began to ride around the edge of it slowly, causing other seals who were basking on little ledges in the rock to look up as they passed and call out to their companions. The travellers stared with fascination at the steep sides of the rock; thickly encrusted with layer upon layer of barnacles and the mass of seaweed that floated like a protective curtain around its base. Soon they rounded a corner so that they were completely out of sight of the shore; ahead of them lay a tiny bay surrounding a pebbly beach on which a number of elves were standing. The seals swam towards the beach and as they got nearer the visitors saw, standing a little taller than the elves and surrounded by them, a figure who began to wave to them slowly. He had long white hair falling around his shoulders and down to his waist and his white beard tumbled like a waterfall over his chest. The seals were unable to swim right up on to the beach and they stopped a little way out; Nab and Faraid got off their backs into the sea and, while Nab carried Brock and Beth took Perryfoot, who had begun to recover from his ordeal, Sam swam alongside them. Warrigal, not wishing to arrive on the beach before the others, flew next to them slowly, enjoying his new-found skill and just missing the tops of the waves.
Finally they splashed their way out of the water and stood wet and shivering in the cold March wind that blew off the sea. Faraid led them up the slight slope over the pebbles until they met the host of elves. The crowd parted and through the passage left for him came the tall white-haired figure. He walked slowly and with a slight stoop and as he came they saw that his face was brown and weatherbeaten and the skin creased and seamed like an old apple. He stopped in front of them and looked at them through two bright blue eyes which sparkled and shone with wisdom and merriment so that the youth which was in his soul seemed in some strange way to complement the age of his body.