Sails and rigging dragging over the side, the other boat heaved sluggish.
“Ennish.”
I came up into the wind, dropping my sails, running alongside.
“Ennish.”
I tugged his shoulder, the swell lifted, and he lurched over, nose and cheek creased by lying face down on the bottom boards, one eye pecked out by seagulls. The stump of an arrow broken, ugly in his chest. Alone on the great shifting waters, he had looked for me; Ennish, my handsome one.
I felt for his heartbeat, cradled him, rocked with the boat, shook and tried to warm him to life.
“Ennish. Oh, Ennish.”
Nothing made sense, my mind not right: if I had waited; if the storm had not blown me north; if I had risked running out of water and food; if I had not looked for Rabbit Island; if I had returned earlier. In long misery I held him hard, trying to ignore his smell, his bloat, that I must bury him.
At last, I worked the anchor rock across from my smaller boat, sat it on the forward thwart, and tied it to his feet. I heaved him up, got his legs over the side, and pushed the rock. His tunic ripped; there came a grunt from his belly, a waft of decay. His white face slid and disappeared down the water to where the gods would find and carry him to their deep home.
I wept, wondered if I should have tied myself to the rock as well, and slept until my boat knocking alongside wakened me. I cried “Ennish” again, looked into a light-filled wave that lifted and passed beside the boat, and ordinariness took over. I held on to a stay, hung over the side to empty my body and, as I washed myself, felt a sudden hunger.
I chewed dried rabbit and mussel meat, rinsed my mouth from the breaker, swished the water inside my cheeks before swallowing.
“Tobik, Peck, and Patch.”
I took down my mast, threw the sails into the bigger boat with the oars, the spears and arrows, and the last of the dried rabbit and mussels, climbed back into Ennish’s boat and took mine in tow.
“Tobik, Peck, and Patch.”
I checked the halyards, tightened the stays, washed and scrubbed the blood from the floor-boards, and bailed Ennish’s boat dry. There were barrels, tools, and stores, an anchor, and what might be a net in a sack, but I would look later: the sun was high, the tide setting us in towards the coast. Years before, they had sent out a boat and killed an outcast who had made the mistake of heaving to off the Horns.
Even as I thought of that, there came a wild cry. A gull? Like a nightmare, a boat was coming fast from Hornish, sails goose-winged before the wind.
Fumbling, I yanked at the halyards, having to undo and refasten the main. “Get it right. That is it. Now, hoist the jib. Gather the wind. Cast off the tow.”
Ennish’s bigger boat wasn’t as responsive, but picked up speed as I pulled mainsail and jib in and out, balanced them, got them drawing well. Once sailing, it was much faster. When the Hornish boat came to beside my abandoned one, I risked leaping forward.
“Tighten the jib halyard. Dive back to the tiller. Careful. There.”
The boat came back on course and sailed faster still. I was getting the feel of it. Shouts after me again. Out here they no longer feared my power.
West we ruled a line straight out to sea till the mountains behind Hornish sank out of sight, and we flew on. The sun ruddied, dipped to the western horizon, and still we drew our long wake towards it. The sea darkened and hid the other boat as I sailed into the night, course as straight as possible. Without something ahead, I could only judge by keeping the wind on the back of my neck, the feel of it in the sails, until a group of stars came clear, and I fixed them ahead of the mast.
In the darkness, we seemed to speed uncannily. Again and again the slap of waves scared me. One day’s sail to the south was the village’s fishing camp, but even if I shook off my hunters they would search for me there. I put the tiller across, set the group of stars square on my left and headed north, hoping the other boat would keep on west.
It was not usual for Hornishers to sail by night, but they had killed Ennish, and they would kill me. Still holding the tiller, I reached for my water breaker.
A whoosh, a stink of fish, and I shrieked. Another, and another — dolphins, messengers of the gods, swimming at my bows, guiding me north. I called my name to them, sang one of their songs, thanked them. Main sail and jib tightened, the boat tilted and sped on its best point of sailing. So we ran on through the night, my world shrunk to what little I could see: the inside of the boat, the foot of the mainsail, the lower mast disappearing up into the dark, the group of stars in the west.
Dawn and the light strengthening, I searched behind, west, and east, came up into the wind, stood on the thwart, one arm around the mast, scoured the line of the horizon for the nick of a sail, and found it empty. We held on north through the day.
When I saw seabirds whirling, climbing, and diving, I felt under the stern seat and found several carefully coiled fishing lines with iron hooks lashed to bright strips of shell, green, blue, and silver. I let one out over the stern, felt the coarse throb through the line, then we were among the shoal: the sea jobbled grey and white, herrings leaping clear and pattering back in a running shower. Deep below, dim shapes drove the herrings up. Red-billed gulls and terns squawked, hovered, snapped; gannets plunged like a shower of yellow-tipped spearheads.
One surfaced beside me, nodded to flip its herring head-downward. It swallowed — the neck thickened — swallowed again, and the herring disappeared. When I looked back, the gannet was taking off, feet spanking the water; there was a jolt through the line, and I pulled in a karfish, a dazzle of silver and green.
I looked around the horizon again, knocked the karfish on the head, took a knife stuck inside the boat’s ribs, cut its throat and drank the blood. Sliced off a strip of flesh, sweet and juicy. I filleted and cut the rest into strips, chewing them for the moisture as well as the flesh. Twice again that morning, I pulled in another karfish, and covered it from the sun. And still I sailed north, parallel to my original course to Rabbit Island, or that is what I hoped.
Mid-afternoon, I bundled both sails at the foot of the mast, searched sea and horizon, searched it again, quarter by quarter, and slept.
I woke after dark, hung over the side to pee, ate some karfish, and set the boat to rights, lashing the sails out of my boat over the barrels and baskets of gear Ennish had put aboard. There was a net. I slid spears, oars, and arrows out of the way, and set off again, keeping direction by the same stars. Towards morning, I turned east to complete the long leg towards where Rabbit Island should be but did not find it, so heaved to and slept through the afternoon, waking before dark. The wind had gone around into the west, and I ran before it.
I kept telling myself the island must be ahead because there were blackbacks flying that way, because the waves felt different through the hull, as if they sent some message from land. But what if I had made a great circle, and was heading back towards Hornish? I kept looking ahead for peaks, and for the other boat that might still be searching.
“They must have given up by now,” I said aloud. The sky overcast, I could not see the stars, but kept on all night with the wind out of the west at my back.
When Rabbit Island swam into the morning light, I cried but sailed right around before landing. No sign of anyone else.
Tide halfway out, I carried the anchor well up the beach, set it firm, and climbed to the top of the island. A quick look all around, then a slow search of the sea south, east, west and north. Although I wanted to examine the stores and tools Ennish had put aboard, my head was too heavy. I collapsed on sand in the boat’s shadow. That way I could be sure of waking, when the tide came back in.