animal to bits.
The raftmen kept the rafts close enough to the banks so that they could reach the bottom or even the banks and shove with their poles. They worked together at the low commands of the chiefs, shoving with a grunt as the chiefs counted. Others stood with bows and arrows ready.
The water level was almost up to the top of the banks, and the plants grew thickly along the banks.
Sometimes, they reached out and into the waters. And there were trees which had grown at a slant over the stream. These were alive with birds and monkeys and other creatures. The monkeys had thicker fur than their fellows at a lower altitude.
If it were not for the threat of the leopardpeople, Ulysses would have enjoyed this trip. It would have been nice to have sat down and just drifted, like Huck Finn in a stream that Mark Twain would not have imagined.
But this was not to be. Everyone had to be alert, ready to go into action on a moment's notice. And all, he supposed, expected a spear to fly out from behind the dense green and scarlet plants at any moment.
Two tense hours went by and then the rafts came out onto a widening of the stream almost large enough to be called a lake. Ulysses had seen other branches which sometimes spread out, but he had never been on one before. The water also became deeper, and the lakelet was four hundred feet wide. To get across, the rafts could either be pushed by the current, which had become very sluggish, or they could stay close to the banks, where the bottom was shallow enough for the poles to be used. Ulysses elected to stay in the middle where, at least, they could relax for a moment, since they would be beyond the reach of Khrauszmiddum javelins.
A moment later, he regretted his choice. A herd of beasts that looked from a distance like hippos waddled from the vegetation on shore and plunged into the water. Snorting and blowing, they cavorted around, coming closer to the rafts but seemingly not on purpose.
Ten yards away, they could be seen to be giant rodents which had apparently adapted to aquatic life. Their nostrils and eyes were on top of their heads, and their ears were provided with flaps of skin. They had lost all their hair except for a brush like a horse's mane on the back of their massive necks.
At this moment, on cue as if they were in a jungle movie, three large canoes appeared in the lake. Two came from behind them and one from the exit to the lake. Both canoes were of painted wood with snake heads projecting from the bow, and each held nineteen leopard-men, eighteen paddlers and a chief in the bow.
A few seconds later, Ulysses saw several huge creatures slither out of the plants on the banks and into the water. They looked like short-snouted, legless crocodiles.
Ulysses opened a waterproofed leather bag on the floor of his raft and took out a bomb. Piaumiiwu, a warrior whose duty it was to keep a lighted cigar in his mouth at all times, except when a fire was handy, handed him the cigar. Ulysses puffed on it until its end was aglow and then touched it to the fuse. It sputtered and then began to emit a thick black smoke which the wind took toward the two pursuing canoes. He held it until the fuse was about ready to disappear, and then tossed it in the middle of the hipporats.
The bomb exploded just before it struck the water. The beasts dived, and most of them did not come up at once, but one emerged just on the other side of Ulysses' raft. Its body, boiling out of the lake, sent water washing around the ankles of those on the raft. It snorted and dived again, and this time came up under the last raft, which tipped over. Yelling, a number of Wagarondit slid into the water, and some bags of supplies and bombs went into the lake, too. Then the behemoth dived once more, and Ulysses' second bomb blew up in the air just as it came up once again.
The leopard-men had been yelling at their quarry, but with the first bomb they fell silent. They also quit paddling and did not resume immediately, even though their chiefs screamed orders at them. By then, Awina had passed out several more bombs, and the best throwers had lit up their bombs. Four went out at the same time, one landing near three great hipporats. Three fell short of the two war canoes, but the explosions scared the Khrauszmiddum. They began to veer away, probably intending to stay out of range of the bombs but hoping to be close enough to cast spears.
The archers got into action then, and a number of paddlers and one chief fell with arrows in them. At the same time three archers fell, run through by spears thrown from the bank.
And a hipporat came up out of the water as if ejected by a catapult, seized the side of a war canoe with its two huge front paws, and pulled the canoe over on its side. The entire complement, screaming, went into the water.
There was a furious boiling here and there. Ulysses saw one of the limbless crocodiles rolling over and over with the leg of a leopard-man in its short jaws. The reptiles were also among his own men, those who had fallen into the water when the hipporat had tilted the raft up.
There was so much going on, Ulysses could not keep track of it all. He concentrated on the bank, where the greatest danger was. The ambushers were only evident now and then, seen through breaks in the vegetation as they threw spears. Ulysses directed the archers to fire into the thick green walls along the bank. Then he got the attention of the chiefs on the other rafts and told them to fire into the vegetation also. These transmitted the orders as soon as the men in the water had been pulled out.
The third war canoe, the one which had come in from the exit, was commanded by a chief brave to the point of foolishness. He stood in the prow of the canoe, shaking his spear and urging his paddlers to greater efforts. Evidently he meant to ram the first raft or to ride the canoe right up on over it and then board it.
The Wufea archers put an arrow through his thigh and six arrows through as many paddlers. But he knelt behind the snakeheads and shouted at his men to go on. The canoe came on, a little slower but still too swiftly to suit Ulysses. He lit another bomb and threw it just as a number of paddlers cast their paddles away and stood up to throw their spears. The canoe cut the water on a collision course with the raft. Nothing, apparently, could stop it.
Ulysses's bomb blew the front part of the canoe off and the chief with it. Water rushed in and flooded the rest of the hull, and it dived at an angle and disappeared momentarily just short of the raft.
The bomb had gone off so close that it deafened and blinded everybody on the raft. But Ulysses, his eyes streaming, saw what was happening a moment later. Most of the shattered vessel's crew were floating stunned or dead on the water, and then they began to go under as many-toothed jaws grabbed them.
The leopard-men on shore were still taking a heavy toll with their spears. Ulysses lit another bomb and threw it. It fell into the water, exploding just after landing. A great gout of water was thrown up on the bank, but it could not have done any injury. However, it must have panicked the spearmen, because their fire ceased. Ulysses ordered the rafts poled ashore. To stay in the lake was too dangerous. The legless crocodiles were making the lake seethe; he did not know where they had all come from. And the hipporats were attacking the men in the water.
The other two canoes, filled with dead or dying leopard-men, were drifting away. The arrow fire had been deadly. It was a tribute to the courage of his people, and also to his discipline, that they had kept up a very effective barrage.
Now they turned their undivided attention to the foliage, and the resulting screams told of unseen hits. When the rafts hit the bank, Ulysses and his men piled out, grabbing the bags and quivers, and then plunged a few yards into the jungle. Here they stopped to reorganise.
Ulysses sent some men back to the rafts with orders to pole them down, close to the bank, until they reached the far end of the lake. He counted his men. Twenty had died. There were a hundred left, of whom ten were wounded. And their journey was, in effect, just begun.
They marched back along the bank without suffering any more casualties. At the end of the lake, they caught the drifting rafts, got back onto them, and resumed their downstream trip. From there the channel narrowed, and the current picked up speed. After a while, there must have been a definitely steeper incline to the branch, because they started to move at an estimated fifteen miles an hour.
Ulysses asked Ghlikh if it was safe to continue on the raft. Ghlikh assured him it was safe for another ten miles. Then they should put ashore, because the riverlet became falls in another three miles.
Ulysses thanked him, though he disliked even talking to the two bat-people. During the battle, they had cowered behind the archers and held each other in their arms. Ulysses acknowledged that he had no right to expect them to take part in the battle. This was not their fight. But he could not avoid a suspicion that Ghlikh must have seen the ambushers. He had flown close above the river level and so should have seen the one war canoe, anyway. Still, it was possible that he had not. Also, if he was leading them into a trap, why had he stayed with them? He had been in almost as much danger as the rest.
On reflection, Ulysses decided that he was not being fair. He was letting his distaste influence his judgement.
