The tug hooted impatiently, and a cloud of smutty soot from its stack
blew across the deck, inspiring Pierce to further inspired cursing; a
line was flung from its stern to our bows, and there made fast. The
little tug tooted again and turned clumsily away, paddles stirring the
dark water to a froth. The line took the strain, hummed taut, the
‘Sure is, in a sense.’ He spoke a little absently, his eyes fixed on the water ahead. ‘But it’s a big river, this, strong current carrying a mighty load of silt and flowing right out against the sea to dump it. Delta here sticks out a long way, and the current’s building the banks all the time. We’re steering down the main drag already; can’t see it, but it’s there – hallo!’ A soft, almost subliminal judder seemed to pass through the ship. ‘Baby’s grown a mite. Ah, well, it scrapes the copper clean. Man can’t be too careful round here.’
And I realized with a sudden thrill that even while we’d talked the waves around us had been growing slower, heavier, flatter, as if the water itself was turning somehow thicker; a shadow seemed to be spreading beneath. At last they began to break over the hidden solidity and their voices changed to the resigned hiss of surf – too near, all too near to come from that far-off streak of land. Slowly, almost shyly, hummocked silhouettes rose on either side in the starlight, and before long I saw them topped with scrubby grass and clumps of bushes. The ship’s motion was changing, growing steadier, the thudding pulse of the surf already behind us and dying away. It was as if, in the blackness beyond the light of our lanterns, the land had reached out to meet us.
So it went on, hours into the night. Clouds hid the moon, and the starlight showed us only the barest outlines of the bank; our lanterns couldn’t reach. Ahead of us blazed the open door of the tug’s firebox, an angry guiding star in the blackness with the insistent, relentless chuffing of its engine. I did my best to doze, lying or sitting leaning against the transom, but without the combined effects of rum and exhaustion the discomfort of the deck kept on waking me every hour or so. Once something sang uncomfortably in my ear, and I sat up sharply and stared around. The banks had changed a little, not necessarily for the better. There were trees there now, oddly stunted and growing in swampland, to judge by what drifted out to us on the warm breeze – the smells, and the incessant chorus of chirps, croaks and whistles. And the mosquitoes; I slapped and swore, but they didn’t seem to bother Jyp.
‘They go off watch a little later,’ he said, poised easily at the wheel. I was about to say something about them getting their tot of blood first, when a sound between a boom and a coughing roar echoed out across the night, followed by a heavy splash. ‘Gator,’ remarked Jyp. ‘Havin’ bad dreams, maybe.’
‘My heart bleeds.’ I sank my head in my arms to save my eyelids from the mosquitoes and drifted back in and out of my own unhappy musings. I’d meant to ask where we were going, but I was almost too weary to care. Two or three times more I remember waking in dim unease, but not what woke me. The last time was clearer. Drums thudded in my head, there was the smell of lightning on the air, and on a wall shadows glided back and forth …
Quite abruptly, as if somebody had shaken me, I was awake, sitting up, tense and breathing hard. Nothing had changed, that I could see; yet something had. The air was cooler, for one thing, and the smells were different. The moon was out now, though very low in the sky, and stretching long shadows across the deck. But Jyp stood at the helm still, unperturbed. He nodded as I hauled myself stiffly up, yawned, stretched till my muscles cracked, and wished I hadn’t eaten all those beans. I wasn’t feeling conversational, so I leaned on the rail and gazed out over the river. It looked as wide and as dark as ever, but the banks were changing. The odd trees were still there – some kind of cypress, I thought, seeing them more clearly – but mingled with other kinds as the banks rose higher. And in among them I thought I saw little sparkles now and again, far-off lights. I blamed them on my eyes at first, till the sound of singing drifted out through the darkness – voices in harmony, women’s mostly. It sounded like some kind of blues, slow and mournful as the turbid river.
