Lawrence reappeared, trotting carefully around the kudzu with something almost as large as he was slung on his back. As he drew near, Sister Audry wrinkled her nose and Rebecca scolded, “What is that vile, revolting stench?”
Lawrence flung his burden down unapologetically, and Silva stooped to examine it.
“Yuk,” Dennis said. “What the hell’s that?”
“The scent glands o’ that shiksak us killed,” he said. There was a little blood around his mouth-he’d apparently paused long enough for a quick meal while he hacked the reeking things off with his cutlass.
“Aggh, they stink!” Silva exclaimed as the full force of the stench hit him. The glands were little more than pebbly, scaly slits in two large, dark patches of skin. “How’s that work?” he wondered aloud. “I seen deer tarsals an’ such, but you’d think a sea monster wouldn’t do that.”
“They aren’t sea ’onsters on land,” Lawrence pointed out.
“Well… what are you gonna do with ’em? Roll around on ’em an’ pretend to be one?”
Lawrence actually seemed to consider it before shaking his head. “He’ig ’ull,” he said.
“Bull?”
“Yess. His scent keeph others a’ay. I tie these to trees, other ’ulls, at least, stay a’ay.”
That made sense. Dennis had been a little worried about that. Big as these trees were, their roots weren’t all that deep. He figured a really big shiksak might knock one over if he decided to whack on it.
“Good thinkin’, twerp. Course, now you got that stink all over you, where are you gonna stay?”
“He can stay with us,” Lelaa snapped, starting her climb. “If I can stand your stink, I can learn to put up with his.”
For the first time since they’d been marooned on Yap Island, Dennis Silva heard Rebecca’s sweet, unfettered laugh. He grinned. “I guess I am gettin’ a little ripe,” he confessed, “but with mucho respecto, Cap’n, you smell kinda’ like a hard-used hairball.”
Lelaa snorted and scampered up the tree. About forty feet up, still short of the lower canopy, she stopped and began expertly rigging a seizing around the trunk. Something quick and leathery, with what looked like gliding wings stretched between its front and back legs, lunged down at her. Rajendra’s musket flared, and light, fleshy bark sprayed at the creature’s face. Never stopping, it leaped over their heads with a shrill cry, arrested its gliding fall on their other tree about fifty feet away, then raced into its darkening bower of leaves.
“Missed!” Silva said grandly, laying his musket against the boat and retrieving the Doom Whomper in case anything large chose to investigate the noise of the shot.
“So?” Rajendra said hotly. “I did my job!”
“Yeah,” Dennis replied, looking back at the clearing, “about as well as usual. Half-assed. Spoiled my shot.”
“Boys!” Sandra insisted, steel in her voice. “You will stop baiting each other and cooperate!” She knew she wasn’t being quite fair to Rajendra. Silva had started it-as usual-but erratic as Silva sometimes was, he was a lot steadier than Rajendra. For Rebecca’s sake, she wouldn’t single him out. She was “playing favorites” and knew it, but Rajendra had proven time and again, once that very day, that her control over him was tenuous. He might be loyal to the princess, but not to the group, and his judgment had always been questionable. Silva couldn’t be controlled at all, except through his loyalty to her and Rebecca, but the group as a whole was “under his protection,” as he saw it. Also, his survival judgment might sometimes be extreme and disproportionate, but it had a good record of success. The last thing they needed right then was for him to go into one of his infamous sulks.
Dennis Silva actually thrived on adversity and Sandra suddenly realized that in that sense he was a lot like Matt. Silva was over the top, where Matt was thoughtful-unless he lost his temper-but like it or not, their survival depended on the big gunner’s mate, and for all their sakes, even Rajendra’s, “over the top” was okay with Sandra.
Lelaa finished her knot and hooked on, then slid down the trunk, straightening the tackle as she went. On the ground, she hooked the bottom block onto the eyebolt at the boat’s bow, leaving the fall rope dangling. She scooped up the second tackle and went up the next tree.
“Oh, please do hurry,” Rebecca pleaded. “The sun is almost set!” It was true. The sun was falling rapidly now, as usual, and the trees and the clearing behind them were filling with gloom. Menacing shapes crashed about, and other creatures, much like bats-maybe they were bats-had joined the swirling birds.
“I shall, Your Highness,” Lelaa assured her patiently. As before, she quickly finished her chore, with no distractions from above this time, and scrabbled her way to the ground.
“How we gonna do this, Cap’n?” Silva asked. “One end at a time, or climb in and try to lift her from inside?”
Lelaa glanced at Abel, alert and listening, but virtually helpless in the boat. “It will be dangerous either way, and from within, it will be more so. That is how it must be done, however. We will add weight that we must also lift, but some cannot climb. Besides, if we remove the provisions from the boat-which we must to lift it one end at a time-we will then have to hoist them aboard as well.” She looked around at the twilight. “We must risk a quick ascent or we will be at this for hours. I do not think we have the time.”
“That’s it, then,” Silva said. “Ever’body aboard!”
“This is madness!” Rajendra stated. “We would all be safer to lift from the ground!”
“Captain Rajendra,” Lelaa said ominously, “we have worked together despite our differences, but do not imagine those differences do not still exist. You really must cease your constant objections and observe the obvious. Add to my earlier argument that we cannot secure the down-hauls within the boat if we raise it from the ground. Where would you have us secure them? To the trees here at this level, where any passing creature might gnaw them in two? All aboard.”
Rajendra couldn’t fault Lelaa’s logic, and whereas Silva had promised not to “hurt” him, Lelaa had made no such pledge. She had simply swallowed her anger and done as she had to. Her reminder of a possible reckoning was probably more intimidating than Silva’s harangues because it was the first she’d made in a long time, and she also had a more untainted claim on his honor as far as he was concerned. Besides, he harbored a real, secret… racial… fear of the physically diminutive but powerful-alien-Lemurian captain. He made no more objections.
Working together creditably enough-despite their differences, most of the “muscle” were seamen after all-they slowly, carefully hoisted the battered longboat into the sky between the two trees. There was a bizarre unreality about the whole situation that escaped none of them, but it was indeed their only chance. As the final rays of the sun surrendered to the sea, they saw the water beyond the trees, within the breakers, almost working with humping, splashing shapes, eerily void of color until they gained the shore, and then only briefly until they absorbed the darkening shades of their new surroundings. About thirty feet above the ground-high enough, they hoped-they secured the down-hauls to cleats on the boat’s gunwales. Then they sat quietly, staring at the starlit transformation of the island they’d learned to hate but of necessity called home.
“God a’mighty,” Silva whispered. “It’s like you threw the manhole cover off a sewer an’ looked down on a million man-eatin’ pollywogs swarmin’ in there.”
As usual, he was exaggerating, but not by much. Lawrence had been right. Evidently, they’d made it just in time. They never would have survived another night on the ground. The shiksaks had come to Yap.
“It’s a kind of hell,” Rebecca said, and Sister Audry drew her close.
“How long will it last, Lawrence?” Sandra asked, also whispering. It seemed appropriate. All the creatures on the island, in the trees, had gone silent except for the bellowing, grunting, roaring shiksaks themselves.