With less weight on the raft and more men pushing, the raft picked up speed. In a few minutes the surge of tide picked up the raft and moved it closer toward the mainland. Tal shouted, “Swim for shore!”
Tal had been a powerful swimmer as a boy, but he had never swum with just one arm. He struggled to keep some sort of rhythm and kicked as hard as he could.
Suddenly his right foot touched something, and he reached down with his left and miraculously felt sand. The waves were breaking shallowly along the coast, no more than two or three feet high. He started to wade in and looked around. Men were still swimming behind him or wading through the surf towards the shore.
Behind the others he saw Captain Quint and shouted, “Grab the raft!”
The Captain turned to see the raft riding in on the low breakers, and he shouted for the others to help him pull it ashore. The two nearest men ignored him, they were so frantic to be out of the water, but another turned and did as told, and soon others joined in and they were pulling the raft into the dry beach.
Men fell weeping to the sand. Exhausted, weak, and frightened, they were nevertheless free.
Tal looked around and started counting.
When he had done so, he knew the horrible fact: there were only eleven of them on the beach. One man had drowned himself and he had seen the sharks take four, so one more had been taken or drowned trying to reach the shore.
Baron Visniya, Masterson the murderer, Captain Quint, Tal, and seven other men sat drenched on the sand. Then it hit Tal: Will wasn’t there.
He looked out at the rolling water, listened to the sounds of breakers and the panting of the exhausted men. For a brief moment he expected to see Will pop out of the water and start walking toward them, but after a minute he acknowledged the truth: Will was gone.
Tal looked at the sky. It was an hour after noon. The journey from the island had taken seven hours and cost six lives, and they still had several hundred miles of trekking ahead of them before they reached civilization. The only solace at the moment for Tal was knowing that he was free, and that pursuit wouldn’t commence for weeks, perhaps months. He could concentrate on moving at a steady pace, keeping the men alive, and getting to somewhere where he could begin to put his plan into effect.
After taking one more look out to sea, he turned and said, “Let’s get the weapons and provisions off the raft. Then we need to find a campsite and start a fire.”
Slowly the men got to their feet and moved to carry out their leader’s orders.
Jenkins lay still, his face a mask of agony as Tal cut at his leg with a knife. The snake he had just killed lay a few feet away, still writhing after Tal had cut off its head.
“Is he going to die, Tal?” asked Quint.
“No, but he’s going to wish he had before the poison runs its course.”
Tal had cut above the fang marks and he now sucked out as much of the blood and poison as he could. Quint looked around. They were in a rocky lowland, ten miles inland from the sea, following a series of ravines that ran along a line of foothills that paralleled the coast. Filthy, tired men stood and watched as Tal worked on Jenkins’s leg.
Quint studied the sky, then the fallen man. “All right,” he said, “That’s it for today. Get some wood, and let’s get a fire started.”
Tal said nothing. Quint had let his natural habit of leadership come to the fore and had assumed the position of second-in-command and Tal didn’t voice any objection. Order was welcome in this company.
Tal glanced from face to face as the men started to make camp, something in which they were well practiced. Eleven men had walked out of the surf and now, three weeks later, there were eight left in the company. Rafelson had fallen to his death as they climbed over a rather innocuous hill, stumbling and striking his head on a rock. Vilnewski had simply been found dead one morning under his cloak. Jacobo had died after being gored by a boar they had hunted. No one could stop the bleeding.
The men were weak and tired, and Tal had no idea how much longer they could endure the journey. He had a rough idea of where they were and realized at their present rate it would probably take them another month to reach the river that was the boundary between Olasko and Bardac’s Holdfast. He thought Quint and Masterson had a good chance of making it to the end, and Baron Visniya had proven unexpectedly tough. Jenkins might make it if he survived the night with the snake’s venom, but Tal was being optimistic. A healthy man would survive the snake bite, but Jenkins was far from healthy. They had lived on forage for three weeks, and were the worse for it. Sleeping outside didn’t help, because even though it was spring, the nights this far north were not gentle.