Kepi’s thoughts jumbled around. It had been a terrible mistake to beg the gods to interfere. Now the crew blamed her for that lost man. They were even more set against her. Not a single one looked at her. She felt chilled all over. She hugged herself. If she had to sleep in the basket one more night, she thought she might die.
Babu barked. Nanny sneezed. Kepi clutched the edge of the basket.
“What’s that?” One of the men stood up. “Hippos. Look.”
Ahead on the right were many hippopotamuses. Most of them stood in the shallows near the bank, just lolling in the waters, but several swam with only the tops of their heads and their nostrils showing. At home Kepi loved the sight of hippopotamuses, especially their funny round ears and wide, shiny backs. She liked how the mothers were so affectionate to their babies. There were lots of babies in this pod. Cute, with their rolls of fat around their necks. Big happy families. Kepi had to squeeze her eyes shut for a moment, she missed her family so much.
“Hippos are worse than crocodiles,” said one of the men.
“No, they’re not. They don’t eat people.”
“They turn over boats and drown them. That’s just as bad.”
“We’ll be all right so long as we don’t rile them. We’ve passed hippos before. Lots of times. You’re just upset because of that monster croc. But he was crazy. That never should have happened. He was just plain crazy.”
“Right,” said the man at the steering oar. “Hippos are nothing. We’ll give them wide berth. It won’t be a problem.”
The men rowed hard, and the man at the rear steered the boat straight down the center of the river, where the current was strongest. But oh, one hippo came swimming at them determinedly, foam rising around him like a cloud.
No! This couldn’t be happening again. No! Kepi stared; that hippo was definitely coming fast and furious. He was so big, he set up waves in his wake. Go back, Kepi prayed. Please, please go back.
“He’s a giant.”
“The biggest bull I’ve ever seen.”
“Another monster!”
“He’s coming right for us.”
The hippopotamus rammed the boat on the right side near the front. The blow was so strong, the bow of the boat lifted out of the water and came slapping back down with a huge splash that soaked everyone. Boxes went crashing against one another. Baskets tumbled onto their sides. Babu clung to Kepi’s head and neck so tight, she had trouble seeing and breathing, but she managed to hold fast to Nanny’s neck anyway. The three of them went skidding out of their toppled basket and slammed into the mast.
Kepi heard a hiss: sssssssset. The god Set!
Then came a snort and a second enormous blow, stronger than the first. The splash that followed was denser than the heaviest rainfall Kepi had ever been in. Men screamed. Babu and Nanny and Kepi went careening across the boat the other way now, slammed up against a rower’s bench. Everything tumbled and tossed.
Gradually, though, the boat stopped rocking. No more blows came. The hippopotamus had gone away.
Without a word, the men took their places at the benches and rowed. But now there were only three at each side and one man at the rear. Four more men had disappeared under the water.
Kepi stared at the surface behind them, willing those men to pop up. But they didn’t. Maybe they couldn’t swim. Maybe they got conked on the head in all that tossing and sank straight down. Maybe things hidden under the water had gotten them.
Tears blurred Kepi’s eyes. She hadn’t intended her prayers to the gods to have such hateful effects. These men had done a very wrong thing. They had stolen her, when it was illegal to steal an Egyptian girl. They had stolen Babu, too. They intended to trade away both of them. That was wrong, but not so wrong that any of them should have died. The god Set had been cruel. Kepi brushed at her tears, but they kept coming for a long time.
The men rowed, and Kepi studied their faces. They looked straight ahead. But she could see they were shaken. Probably nothing this bad had ever happened to any of them before. She had to try to find a way to make things better.
Lots of baskets had been lost. Kepi’s basket was still there, though. It had gotten hooked on a harpoon. She unhooked it and righted it. But she didn’t climb in.
Broken pottery pieces littered the deck. Kepi walked around, tossing them into the water. At least this way no one would get cut. A box had gotten bashed open against one of the benches. The copper chest inside it was exposed. Its top had been twisted askew. Kepi opened the top, to try to straighten it. Inside the chest was a mound of gold and, even more precious, silver. Most of the pieces were just lumps of the raw metals. But there were several flat ingots and cups of coiled silver.
No one Kepi knew had gold or silver. But she’d seen these valuable foreign metals in the jewelry worn by rich people in the city of Wetjeset-Hor, near her village. That gold came from Nubia, in the south. And Father had seen a lot of silver and gold when he was up north, because he had visited Ineb Hedj. He said these metals were imported to that city from places far away, Minos and Mun-digak and the land of the Hattians. So no matter what, these were foreign metals. What were they doing here, in this chest?
Kepi looked around. No one seemed to be watching her. She quickly slipped a single piece of silver into her mouth. It sat heavy on her tongue. She knew it was wrong. But silver might be able to pay her and Babu’s passage back home from Ineb Hedj. And she wouldn’t need to do that in the first place if these men hadn’t stolen her. So really, even though she had her own reasons for being on this journey now, really it was only right that they should pay for her to get back home.
She carefully worked at the hinges on the chest until she finally bent them enough that the lid closed again. She carried the chest to the center of the deck, where it would be safe. And she went on with her job of cleaning up the aftermath of the hippopotamus attack.