Camels are dour animals, not given to demonstrations
of affection or happiness, but Clytemnestra does a little dance of joy when she
sees the messenger again – unharmed and free. She gallops up to the little
group and does a few dancing double-steps as she comes to a halt. They are busy
getting two long-horned bulls into their traces and connecting them to the
longboat that is now filled with water. Senjur is not quite sure whether her
happiness is due to seeing him or if it is the smell of water that is causing
her such elation, because after a brief reunion with her master she turns
quickly to the boat and dips her nose in to the water to drink. That is when,
by the light of the burning torches, she sees the mermaid just below the
surface and nearly squirts out of her skin. She had thought the water was for
her but obviously someone got there before her. With a baleful eye she glares
at the strange creature preventing her from slaking her thirst. She doesn’t
like this one little bit but there is no drinking that water now because mermaids
are notorious for peeing in their water. She turns away with a snort,
disappointed to the core and joins her old family.
Clytemnestra is right. The water in the boat
is stale and brackish, not fit for a beast to drink, and it has a telling
effect on the mermaid. Stale, saltless and slimy, it is hardly enough to keep
her alive. They must work fast. Clytemnestra, to her chagrin, is roped in to
help pull. Even the boy takes up a rope and heaves away. It is becoming a
matter of some urgency now to get her to the sea as soon as possible. That and
the fact that the pirates will be waking up soon.
The boy now has a huge sword which he wears
in a belt around his waist. The sword is nearly as tall as he is and probably
as heavy, but he bears his burden valiantly, an exhibition of his budding
manhood. He feels a bit bad for stealing it, but he thinks the greater crime
belongs to the pirate Captain for not using it except as a status symbol. The
sword belongs to a real knight, even if he can hardly pick it up. The old lady
looks at him with affection and admiration…her little boy is definitely
becoming a man. He struts around in front of her, trying not to get his legs
tangled up in the scabbard and directs operations with the air of a
swashbuckler.
“Pull!” he shouts, slapping a giant Auroch
on the rump. These primitive oxen are massive creatures – all of six to seven
foot high at the shoulders…the boy barely reaching three quarters of their
height. They pull with a will, easily dragging the boat with its ton of water
through the soft, shifting sands.
In the six hours before dawn they make
considerable progress and according to the mermaid they should reach the sea by
midday…well before the pirates catch up with them.
It is the noise that first catches their
attention. The roar of thunder on a clear calm desert day sounds very much out
of place.
Crashing breakers and heaving sea swells up
to fifty feet high greet their unbelieving eyes as they cross the final dune
and look upon the skeleton coast so feared by mariners and pirates alike. Black
rocks glisten in the foaming waves – ragged reefs ride out in the ocean swells
like devils teeth hungry for their next meal. This is the mermaid’s home ground
– where she is wont to lure unsuspecting wayfarers onto the deadly rocks.
Nowhere is there a stretch of calm unbroken water. All is a turmoil of
seething, sucking, crushing water smashing against the blackest rocks in all
creation. A sobering sight that makes their hearts sink. No one would set out
in such a sea. Three seconds upon this briny and they would be no more. Even
the Aurochs are daunted by the sight and they are fearless creatures. But
none-the-less, the boat is soon sliding down the sand dune and stands poised
above the surf line. The Aurochs are hitched to the side and with little effort
they pull the boat over, tipping out all the water and the mermaid who slithers
off into her native element. For a while she gambols and plays in the fresh sea
water and it revives her no end having been for so many days in brackish, stale
water. She lunges under an oncoming wave then shoots up into the air like a
dolphin, her tail flapping happily behind her. Then she beckons them to join
her, but no one moves. It would be certain death for them to enter there.
“I will lead you through,” she says in his
head. “Just follow me. You haven’t much time. The pirates are close by now. You
must hurry.”
The boy looks at her, fingering his sword.
He has no choice. They have no choice.
“But we don’t know how to sail,” he says.
“That matters not. The tide will take you –
all you have to do is steer and follow me very closely.”
“Let’s go,” says the boy to the messenger
who is busy setting the bulls free and tying Clytemnestra to the boat’s tiller
with a length of rope. The camel is starting to get a bad feeling about all
this. Not being naturally suited to the sea she has severe qualms about her
abilities to remain afloat. But she needn’t have worried, for her empty humps
now act as buoyancy bags and all she would have to do is paddle. But still she
complains and bleats her distress to the open skies.
It takes them but a few seconds work to get
the old lady aboard and launch the boat….the mermaid in front, guiding the way
through the deadly reefs of ragged rocks – white surf crashing over their
barnacle encrusted sides, the foaming water breaking one moment here and the
next there as the rocks move around, hunting for prey. The rocks, nor their movements,
have ever been charted; some rocks still bearing the signs of the wrecks that
have come to grief upon them.
Wild waves crash one over the other at cross
purposes, reefs and rocks rising and falling under their own whim. Nowhere is
there any order or constancy. Where one moment there is an open passage, the
next a wall of white foamed rocks bars their way like the very jaws of death.
The boy stands in the prow, pointing this way and that with his sword as the
mermaid directs him – the messenger at the rear tugging the tiller to and fro
in an effort to follow his directions. Amidships sits the old lady, braced between
the wooden seats. This sea is not kind to an old lady's bones and she holds on
as best she can, as does the camel, braying and barking her discomfort in the
wash of the boat.
For hours they toss and turn in that briny
hell – at every moment expecting to be smashed upon some rock or other that
would crop up in front of them. And to make matters worse, the sky begins to
darken over and the sea take on a deep leaden colour, signifying a slow swell
that bodes no good for any ship upon the surface. But they are in the grip of a
fierce current and can do no more than be patient and pray.
And then, like magic, they are free of the
foam and the clashing rocks. The mermaid, with her part of the promise
fulfilled, waves a final goodbye and sinks beneath the ocean surface. Without
wasting a moment the messenger sets the sails and the growing wind catches them
and begins driving them straight into the heart of the coming storm.
