with sound sense, said that if the Shelling men found us, we need only untie the boat to escape. Duck said we could just as easily run away into the forest. In the end Robin said, “Gull’s head of the family. Let’s ask him. Gull, shall we sleep on the land or in the boat?”
“In the boat,” Gull said.
In the middle of the night Gull woke us up shouting and talking. Robin says he talked of disaster and Heathens at first, but when I woke up, he was saying, “All those people! So many people, all rushing. I don’t want to go with them. Help!” Then he shouted for my father, and I could hear he was crying.
We all sat up, and Hern got the little lamp lit. Gull seemed to be lying asleep in the boat, but he was talking, and tears were running down his face. Robin bent over him and said, “It’s all right, Gull. You’re with us. You’re safe.”
“Where’s Uncle Kestrel?” Gull said.
“He brought you to us because that was safest,” Robin said.
“I’m not safe from the rushing people,” said Gull. “Don’t tell me to pull myself together and be a man. They want to take me with them.”
We wondered who had told Gull to pull himself together. Probably my father. He was not called the Clam for nothing. He did not like people to talk about their troubles.
“Of course we won’t tell you that,” said Robin. “We’ll keep you safe from everything.”
“I want Uncle Kestrel,” said Gull. “The people are rushing.”
It went on like this for a long time. Each time it seemed that Gull was listening to Robin and she was getting him calmer, he would ask for Uncle Kestrel and talk about these rushing people of his. Robin began to look desperate. Hern and I suggested all sorts of things for her to say to Gull, and she said them, but after another hour it did not seem as if Gull was listening at all.
“What shall we do?” said Robin.
Duck had sat all this while cross-legged and half asleep, hugging the Lady. “Try giving him this,” he said, and held out the Lady – by her head, of course.
It worked. Gull put both hands to the Lady and held her to his face. “Thank you,” he said. Then he rolled over and went to sleep, with his cheek pressed against the hard wood. I could see Duck looking woeful at losing the Lady, but he did not say anything.
FROM THAT TIME ON, Gull was worse and worse.
When we woke next morning, we found the floods had risen to cover the place where our fire had been. The tree we had tied the boat to was twenty yards from dry land; after that we always slept in the boat. Gull was awake too, lying with the print of the Lady on his cheek, but he did not move until Hern started poling us to the higher ground. Then he sat up and called out, “Where are you going? We must get on.”
“Why must we get on?” Hern said. He was angry with lack of sleep.
“We must get down to the sea. Quickly,” said Gull, and tears ran down his cheeks across the mark of the Lady.
“Of course we will,” said Robin. “Be quiet, Hern.”
“Why should I? This is the first I’ve heard about having to get to the sea,” Hern said. “What’s got into him now?”
“I don’t know,” Robin said helplessly.
This new idea of Gull’s gave him no peace, nor us either. Whenever we stopped to eat, he wept and urged us to hurry on to the sea. When we stopped for the night, he was worse still. He kept us all awake talking of Heathens and people rushing and, above all, calling out that we must get on, down to the sea. I grew almost too tired to look at the Riverbanks, which was a pity because the land grew new and interesting after that day. On the day following, the sides of the River were steep hills, covered with a forest, budding all colours from powdery green to bright red, so full of circling birds that they strewed the sky like chaff. Among the trees and birds we saw once a great stone house with a tower like a windmill and a few small windows.
Hern was very interested. He said it looked easy to defend, and if it was empty, it would make a good place for us to live.
“We can’t stop here!” Gull cried out.
“It was only an idea, you fool!” Hern said.
Altogether Hern became more and more impatient with Gull. It was hard to blame him, for Gull was very tedious. As the hills held the River in, we floated at a furious pace on a narrow, rushing stream, but we still did not go fast enough for Gull.
“I’d get to the sea tomorrow, if I could, just to shut you up!” Hern said to him.
Duck became as bad as Hern that day. He sighed sarcastically whenever Gull said we must hurry. He and Hern laughed and fooled about instead of helping us look after Gull. I smacked Duck several times, and I would have smacked Hern too, if I could. I smacked Duck again that night, in spite of Robin shouting at me, when Duck would not let Gull have the Lady.
Duck jumped out on land, hugging the Lady. He was lucky not to fall in the water. We were tied among little brown bushes, with a slope of slimy earth above, where the bank was no bank at all and the River kept slopping our boat into the bushes and away. “She’s mine!” Duck shouted, sliding and scrambling above me. “I need her! Give Gull the One. He’s strongest.”
I was so angry that I tried to climb out after him. But the boat slopped away from the bushes, and Robin caught the back of my rugcoat and hauled me back. “Leave him be, Tanaqui,” she said. “Don’t you be as bad as he is. Let’s try Gull with the One.”
We put the dark glistering One in Gull’s hand, but he cried out and shuddered. “He’s cold. He pulls. Can’t we get on now?”
“Some of us have to sleep, Gull,” I said. I was nearly as cross as Hern. I gave him the Young One instead, but Gull would not have him either. We had a dreadful night.
In the morning, Duck gave Gull the Lady, looking a little ashamed. But by that time Gull was not having the Lady either. Robin could hardly get him to eat. All he wanted was for us to untie the boat and go on.
“Fun and games all the way to the sea,” said Hern. “Then what will he want?”
“I don’t think he should go to the sea,” said Duck.
“Oh, not you now!” said Hern. “Why not?”
“The Lady doesn’t want him to go,” said Duck.
“When did she tell you that?” Hern asked jeeringly.
“She didn’t,” said Duck. “I just had a feeling and knew.”
Most of that morning Hern was jeering at Duck for his feeling. Robin snapped at Hern, and I yelled at Duck. We were very tired.
That was the day we came to the lake. The hills on either side of the River seemed to retire away backwards, and before we were aware, we were out at one end of a long, winding lake. They tell me it is usually a smaller lake than we saw, but because of the floods, it filled a whole valley. We could see it ahead, white with distance, stretching from mountain to mountain. I think they were real mountains. Their tops went so high that grey clouds sat on them, and they were blue and grey and purple as Uncle Kestrel described mountains. We had never seen such a great stretch of water in our lives as that lake. In the ordinary way we would have been interested. Water in such quantity is restless. It is grey and goes in waves, chop, chop, chop, and lines of foam stretch like ribbons back from the way the waves are going. There was a keen wind blowing.
“What a horrible wind!” Duck said. He crouched down in the boat, hugging his precious Lady.