Today everything went right. It was as though the dog was a good luck sign. Crawling to him, sitting there at the other end of the canoe. If only the dog could help him paddle!
He grinned. He had enough strangeness to cope with: he didn’t want a paddle suddenly appearing in the dog’s mouth, to add to the general weirdness of it all.
The wind pushed exactly where he wanted to go. The currents carried them too. He was making at least twice the speed he had yesterday, maybe more.
I am a sea eagle, he thought. I am a gull, spearing across the sea.
Something scraped at the side of the canoe. A branch. He pulled it up, and stared. The leaves were unfamiliar: curved like the water moon, a dull sea-washed green. He let the branch slide back into the water.
But the branch was also a good sign. The tide which had brought the branch out here would help him back where it had come from.
He kept on paddling.
The sun climbed higher. At every extra handspan of the sky he stopped to drink and give the rubbish dog water too. The wind dropped about noon, but he was close enough to see the shape of the land now — cliffs and, far off, the silver shimmer of a beach.
No rough seas or coral reefs. He would have grinned if he hadn’t been so tired and thirsty. He changed course slightly, away from the cliffs, aiming for the beach. He had paddled for another part span when he realised he wasn’t going to get there.
A current had caught him again.
This one was as strong as yesterday’s. It swept him away from the bright beach with its comfortable rolling waves, back towards the cliffs.
But it wasn’t just a solid line of rock, he saw with relief as the canoe drew closer. What had looked like one giant cliff face further out at sea was really a series of bluffs, separated by coves of mangroves — long stretches of grey mud dappled with small trees.
It would be better to land on a beach, with firm sand, than in the smelly sucking squelch of mangroves. It would be harder to see a crocodile in mangroves too — and harder to get away. But on the other hand the waves inside the mangrove coves were only ripples. It would be a smooth landing, with no risk of being dumped, canoe and all, by the waves. And where there were mangroves there was usually a stream. Fresh water …
He let the current take him now, paddling only enough to keep the canoe steady. He put his hand to his eyes to cut out the glare of the sea. No sign of people; no smoke from campfires. He hadn’t seen any smoke all day.
Maybe this was an island, with no people on it? If so, it must be a massive one. Or it might be the land of ghosts? He shivered, then told himself not to be stupid. A land of ghosts wouldn’t have seagull droppings splattered down the cliffs. They’d be ghost gulls. Ghost gulls wouldn’t leave white droppings.
He glanced at the rubbish dog. Her eyes were half shut, but her ears were cocked, alert. The aunties said that the rubbish dogs howled when they heard the ghosts of the ancestors.
The dog wasn’t howling now. And any crocodile would grab the rubbish dog, not him.
He hoped.
Nearer, and nearer still … He could no longer see the beach, just the cliffs, bulging brown and streaked white with droppings, and the long stretch of mangroves. The current still pulled him, but he was still able to steer the canoe enough to avoid the cliffs.
This was going to be easy.