The sun was not yet over the horizon, but its imminent arrival had turned the sky a luminous gray-white. Arlettie was still asleep in the bottom of the Shrimp, snugly covered with cloaks, but Gilboy kept Mikil company, silently passing the water bag and bringing out dried fruit and smoked fish for their fastbreak.
Taking pleasure in the perfect sailing conditions, Mikil scanned the horizon. Thus far, Lautan had kept the Spirit’s side of the bargain: their four days at sea had been uneventful except for their rapid progress, and while their stored provisions tasted monotonous, they were holding up well. Mikil taught Gilboy the rudiments of star navigation (as his father had once taught the skill to him), and during dull stretches Arlettie regaled them by elaborating on her dreams of the pleasures of civilization, such as wine, hair oil, and new cotton underdrawers.
Gilboy pointed off to the starboard. Mikil saw something breaking the surface of the water, but he couldn’t discern what it was. Gilboy mouthed, “Dolphins.” Mikil smiled. Dolphins were fine; he just didn’t want another encounter with those hammerhead sharks that had threatened the Shrimp the last time they had tried to flee their deserted island.
The dolphins set a course that would intersect with their little vessel, Mikil realized, but he wasn’t concerned because he had seen dolphins escort many a sailing ship and enjoyed their antics. He watched them come closer and grow larger.
“There’s something on the middle one’s back!” Gilboy said, with surprise.
The light grew stronger, and the dolphins drew nigh, aiming straight at them; in another moment Mikil also could spy what looked like wet fabric plastered on the middle dolphin’s back.
Mikil frowned, thinking he had never seen dolphins swim this far along the surface without submerging. This was just … not normal.
He reached down and shook Arlettie’s ankle. “Best wake up,” he said. “Something is going on.”
“Not sharks again!” she cried, transitioning from full sleep to full panic.
“No, no,” answered Gilboy. “Dolphins. With a queer object on their backs. Or … maybe it’s a person. But how could that be?”
As they squinted at the odd blotch of color, details began to resolve—a scrap of sodden white, could be a shirt; a scrap of sodden brown, could be breeches. And clearly the dolphins were purposely ferrying whatever it was straight to the Shrimp.
“I see boots!” cried Gilboy. “They are carrying a person!”
“A castaway!” said Mikil. “Arlettie, shift over to leeward so that we can pull him up over the starboard gunwale. Gilboy, move to amidships while I tie off the tiller.”
The dolphins closed to within ten paces. The escort dolphins stopped and only the carrier dolphin approached, swimming alongside the Shrimp, so near Mikil could have reached over to touch it. Mikil and Gilboy saw a slight, half-drowned figure lying limp, facedown, on the sleek gray back. The dolphin matched its speed to the boat’s movement and rode the same swells.
“Kneel down, Gilboy, so we don’t overbalance. When I count three, you grab an arm, and I’ll grab a leg. We want to do this smoothly, so we don’t drop him and we don’t capsize. Arlettie, as counterweight, lean far out to port. Ready? One, two, three, heave!”
The castaway was not heavy. Although the boat tipped for a second, Gilboy and Mikil barely struggled in raising him over the side of the boat.
They laid the poor wretch on the keel faceup.
Arlettie whispered in shock, “Vertia save us! ’Tis a woman! Let me take care of her.” She crawled over, putting a cloak under the rescue’s head to pillow her and pulling the sodden hair off her face. She felt at the neck for a pulse and then put her head down on the chest to listen.
“She’s barely alive.”
Mikil spoke to the dolphins. “We’ve got her,” he said. “We will do all we can for her.” The dolphins jumped into the air making dramatic splashes as if to show they understood. Then they sped off in another direction.
The water-soaked girl’s hold on life ebbed. Her brown face had a gray-blue tinge, and her skin was crusted with sea salt. Her eyes were puffed closed. Even in the bright morning sunlight, Mikil found it difficult to get any impression of her features.
“She’s too cold,” said Arlettie. “Help me get her wet clothes off and wrap her up.”
Mikil pulled off the ruined boots and stripped away the wet stockings, rubbing her icy feet and toes vigorously for a moment. Meanwhile Arlettie and Gilboy peeled off her ragged shirt, in the process discovering that she had burn blisters down her back, across one shoulder, and licking up one side of her neck under her chin.
“Oh, for Vertia’s sake!” cursed Arlettie, shaking her head. “Poor thing.”
They laid the girl on her uninjured side and covered her up with all their spare clothing. Gilboy chafed her hands and forearms; Mikil returned to work on her feet and lower legs, trying to get the cold blood moving.
Arlettie wet a cloth from their freshwater store and washed the salt from her face and from her burns. She smoothed the aloe paste they had brought along on her sunburn and burn blisters.
“She’s still too cold to the touch,” said Mikil.
“Could be my heat will help warm her up.” Arlettie got in under the cloaks and pulled the drowned girl close.
“Her best hope is a skilled healer,” said Mikil, untying the tiller and raising their sail.
By midmorning their passenger’s eyelids fluttered now and again, and once in a while she made indistinct sounds. Her color improved enough that Arlettie could crawl out from under the blankets. She offered the girl sips of water, which she swallowed. But her breathing was shallow and she remained semiconscious.
Mikil caught every breeze, heading the Shrimp northeast as fast as it could go.
They speculated endlessly about the castaway: who was she? Her dull brown hair gave them no clue as to her nationality. How had she been injured, and how had she survived for them to find her in the middle of the ocean? How had she come to be floating on the back of a dolphin? How had the dolphins known to bring this person to their little craft?
The next day their patient grew restless and feverish; she moaned more often. The burn blisters changed from red to white, puffing up high with fluid, oozing and bloody, while her breathing sounded as bad as ever.
Late in the afternoon, Gilboy woke Mikil, who had fallen into a doze, slumped across the tiller.
“Sail in the distance. I can’t tell what country it’s from.”
Mikil rubbed his eyes and looked where Gilboy pointed. “It’s from the Green Isles. See the green flag and Vertia on the figurehead? A trader, not a fishing boat. Has she spotted our distress banner yet?”
“No, don’t look like it.”
Arlettie anxiously moved to the bow. She held her woven toppie in one hand and a jeweled cutlass they had found in the cove in the other. She waved her arms wildly crosswise—making the Shrimp jostle—and shouted, “Over here! We’re over here! Islanders, countrymen, help us!”
“Hey! Hey! Lookouts, are you sleeping?” Gilboy joined in, angrily.
“Lookouts get a kind of sun-blindness,” Mikil explained, but he took cold comfort from his expertise.
The trader kept to her course.
Soon it would be out of range.
Arlettie screamed, “Help us!” Mikil joined her and took the jeweled sword to wave in wide arcs. After several agonizing moments the trader broke course, and after a long pause it tacked to head in their direction. The voyaging family cheered.
As the ship drew nigh Mikil could see the sailors pointing at the Shrimp. He also read the ship’s name: Island Dreamer.
“Now this will be the trickiest part of being rescued,” said Mikil, licking his lips. “Get ready, Gilboy. The sailors will throw down heavy lines. We must catch them and tie them off on the cleats. One line still leaves us unstable, free to crash against her side or slide under her bow—either of which could easily crush us; two lines make us secure.”
Island Dreamer came about neatly and drifted slowly toward the Shrimp. The first rope was the light one; Gilboy caught it himself and tied it to the cleat. The second rope was thick and heavy. It fell aft from the Shrimp, but the swell brought it within reach; it took both of them to grab it and wrestle it into a knot. Now they were affixed to the bigger ship, knocking against it in a medium swell.
Several sun-darkened male faces peered over the side at them. A rope ladder was hooked to the side and then dropped down into the little craft.
“Let me go aboard and make sure of things,” Mikil said. “Hand me that sword.” Mikil tucked the jeweled cutlass into his belt and climbed the rope ladder. He was met by a group of gaping Green Isles seamen on a tidy vessel.
“Well, this don’t happen every day! Rescue at sea!” said a man with a green mustache, wearing a seamaster’s hat. “And who might you be?”
Mikil’s clothes were threadbare, his hair and beard overgrown, his skin tanned deep walnut brown, but his bearing was as regal and assured as ever, and the cutlass provided just the right touch of status, threat, and money.
He sketched a slight bow. “I am Prince Mikil of Lortherrod. My companions and I have been shipwrecked on a small island since the sea battle between Queen Cressa of Weirandale and the Pellish many years ago. Whom do I have the honor of thanking as our deliverer?”
The captain’s eyes went round with surprise, and his mouth fell open.
“Well, I’ll be a rat-fucker—ahem. I am Captain Bajets of Island Dreamer out of Pilagos, homeward bound. And these are my crew. We’re glad we can be of service to a prince.”
Mikil shook the captain’s offered hand. “Not half as glad as we are that you saw us. I have two companions waiting below: my betrothed and our adopted son. Also, there’s a mistriss whom we rescued from the sea yestermorn, who is gravely ill. Do you have a way besides the ladder of fetching her on board?”
Arlettie and Gilboy waited for the sailors to lower down a sling. They loaded the unconscious woman on it as tenderly as possible, and the sailors hauled her up, knocking her against the ship’s side only a few times and not hard enough to do her any more damage. Arlettie climbed aboard once the patient was safe. Then the sailors threw down the sling again so Gilboy could load into it a cloak that they had bundled around their swords and the few precious items they’d scavenged from Cressa’s trunk. Finally, Gilboy cut the ropes that tied the Shrimp (who had served her purpose, and now could be unceremoniously jettisoned), and climbed up the ladder himself.
Mikil watched his little boat, which he had spent years perfecting, bob away on the breast of the waves. The loss cut him to the quick; he wished he’d asked the seamaster to tow it along Island Dreamer, though he knew if he were captain he would have to refuse to be encumbered by such an extraneous burden. Now that his long-sought goal had at last been accomplished, a wave of depression and weariness washed over him.
Gilboy, by contrast, was exhilarated, eager to talk with the crew, who were the first new people he had met since he was a small boy. He introduced himself to everyone in turn, savoring the new names and faces, shaking hands, chattering like a magpie.
Arlettie worried about their castaway; she asked the captain who served as his shipboard healer. The first mate had a little skill in this area. When he saw the state the young woman was in, the mate had her moved into his own small cabin, where he coated her burns and gave her watered rum to drink. But when he listened with his ear pressed against her chest, his brows fell, and he told Arlettie he thought something had gone wrong with her left lung—something beyond his abilities to heal. They set a galley boy to watch over her and alert them should she come to consciousness.
While Gilboy followed the sailors around like an eager puppy, Mikil and Arlettie shared a quick repast with the captain, explaining their story of being marooned and relishing the extraordinary tastes of cheese, soda biscuits, and citrus jelly. Mikil wanted to know everything that had happened since he dropped out of world events, but exhaustion caught up with him. Seamaster Bajets graciously offered his stateroom, and the prince readily accepted. Arlettie climbed into linen sheets for the first time in many seasons with a sigh of deep appreciation. Mikil first knelt at the foot of the wooden bed.
“Lautan the Munificent,” he prayed. “You promised to rescue us and you have done so. We are forever your grateful servants. Please show your mercy too on that injured woman. If your dolphins were carrying her, might her life be precious to you?”