Sackett's Land

            He chuckled grimly. 'I avoid leadership. I do not wish to decide such things, nor to be responsible.'

            With my knife I cut off a sliver of my meat, burning my fingers in the process. 'When you and Sakim chose to come with me I accepted responsibility for your lives. I became no longer a free agent. Unless one is at heart a rascal, I think he becomes a little better in many ways by assuming leadership.'

            'You may have it.' He reached for a chunk of the meat, impaled in on a stick and held it to the flames. 'And now what, Oh Mighty Leader?'

            'We go to sea. If she survived the crossing, the Tiger may now be alongshore. I saw her charts, and it was toward this place she intended to come.'

            'And then?'

            'Exchange our furs and return to trading.'

            'For you ... not for me.'

            'No?'

            'I have a foreboding upon me. This land is not for me. I shall return to Naples, or even to Florence or to Ravenna. I shall bask in the sun on a terrace somewhere and watch the pretty girls go by. I shall drink wine and smell the smells ... No, my friend, I want to live.'

            He gestured widely. 'I have no taste for wilderness like this. I do not like swamps, lonely beaches and forests. Nor your mountains yonder. I am a man of the streets. I like to push through crowds, feel bodies about me. I am a man of the world, not of the wilderness.'

            Sakim was awake and he was smiling. 'I, too, miss the world and the women,' he said, 'but this ... this is new! It is splendid! It is unknown! What feet have trod this soil? What lungs have breathed this air? What mysteries lie beyond the mountains?'

            Rufisco shrugged. 'I know what lies beyond your mountains, and it is only more mountains. Beyond each bend in the road there is another bend in the road. You may go, but I shall sit in a tavern and drink the wine of the land, of whatever land, and pinch the girls of the country and perhaps be slapped for my pinching, but smiled at, too.

            'You are a merchant, Barnabas, and you, Sakim, a poet. I am a lover. This voyage has convinced me finally. I shall sit somewhere with a glass and throw bread to the pigeons.'

            I arose. 'Very well, but for the present we had best be getting out upon the sound, and wary of the Jolly Jack.'

            'A neat trick,' Rufisco commented, 'to be seen by the one ... if it is there ... and not by the other, which is certainly there.'

            From the river bank I studied the river. It flowed, brown and muddy, toward the sound. There was nothing upon the water but a great dead tree upon whose bare branches a brown bird perched, in ruffled contentment, accepting the free ride.

            We shoved off, and lifting our sail, scudded along before the breeze, our eyes alert for the Jack, for floating snags, and for the sound that lay before us where the river's wide mouth ended. Clearing the river mouth finally we turned into the main sound.

            Midday was past, but no sail lifted against the sky. There were only clouds and gulls, their white wings catching the modest flash of a sullen sun. Far away to the east we thought we could see the coastal banks, yet we saw no mast, no dark hull, only the gray water and behind us the darker green of the shore.

            Huddled in the stern I unrolled my charts and gave them study. Two great sounds were here protected from the sea by narrow coastal islands, and into these sounds flowed several rivers, large and small. I believed it was the southermost from which we had come. Several openings through the coastal banks permitted access to the sounds from the sea, and these as well as some of the rivers were mapped in astonishing detail. Obviously someone had explored this coast most carefully, or portions of it, at least.

            Through the night we sailed, taking turns at the tiller, the wind holding well. At daybreak it fell off and we dipped and bobbed in a choppy sea, with the dim gray line of dawn off to the northwest.

            Visibility was poor, yet we saw no ship. The sun arose and after a while we caught an offshore breeze and worked in closer to the shore, watching for a cove or bay into which we might go for shelter.

            It was a low shore when we found it, a swampy place, yet offering shelter. Sakim threw a weighted line ashore and let it wind around a tree, then we hauled in closer. Wading ashore, we made fast with a simple slipknot, knowing well how swiftly we might leave.

            We had a little food. We built a fire, ate, and I worked at making arrows for my longbow.

            We saw no savages. A few ducks and geese flew up from time to time, and one of the geese I killed with an arrow. Two of us slept onshore, the other on the boat. We rested, ate, and rested again, and in the evening when I went down to the sea to look for whatever might be seen, I saw a deer and killed it.

            So we skinned it out, stretched the hide, and hung the meat for drying, aiding the process with smoke.

            We had carried our goods aboard the boat, all but the meat, and Sakim was taking in our line, waiting for Rufisco and me, ready to shove off.

            I heard a cry ... a choked, hoarse cry.

            Turning swiftly I saw Rufisco. There were four arrows in him and a dozen savages rushing toward us. Sakim fired.

            A man spun and dropped, but the others were not dismayed by the sound, and came on. I caught up my sword and wheeled about, taking a wide slash as I turned, and severing an uplifted arm holding a tomahawk. Sakim had dropped the one pistol and lifted the fowling piece, which was charged with shot, and fired it into them.

            They scattered, two dropped, one of them very bloody, and I rushed in and had Rufisco by the collar. Back I went, sword on guard, dragging him through the water and into the boat, which Sakim shoved off. A flight of arrows, pursued us.

            One scratched me, another lodged in my clothing, but Rufisco was aboard, and when they rushed again we were well out of their reach, the wind filling our sail.

            Rufisco stared up at me, breathing in hoarse gasps, a bloody froth upon his lips. 'Too late!' he mumbled. 'There will be no wine with the passing girls, no sitting in the sun.'

            He was not a man to lie to, and he knew as well as I that with two arrows in his lungs there was little that could be done. He held on to my hand and I could not take it from him to do what might be done to make him easier. Maybe the handclasp was all he wanted at the moment.

            'Bury me where I can smell the sea,' he said, after spitting blood.

            'We can push the arrows through,' I said. 'They're showing out your back.'

            One was through his thigh, and bleeding bad.

            'Let me be. The knowledge of death was in me.' He spat again. 'At least, I die with men.'

            He lay on his side on the gig's bottom, and there was no way I could make him easy without causing more pain. He lay there, eyes closed, breathing hoarsely, always that bloody froth at his lips. I wiped it away.

            He opened his eyes again, strangely quiet. 'A gray day, that an Italiano should die upon a gray day!'

            'We can reach the coastal islands,' Sakim said. 'There we can find a safe place.'

            I held his hand with my left, and with my right the tiller. It was a long way across, and somewhere upon the crossing Rufisco died ... I do not know when, nor even where. Except at the last his fingers held no longer to mine, and I placed the hand down and Sakim looked over at me, but said nothing.

            We had lost a comrade, one not easy to lose.

            The moon was high when we came up to shore again. It was a long sandy shore on which the surf of the sound rolled up softly.

            We beached the gig and carried a line inland to make fast to a low-growing tree. Then we carried the body of Rufisco ashore and above the level of the tide we dug a grave, and there we buried him where he could hear the winds blow, and feel the pulse of the sea. It would not be too different, I thought, than his own Mediterranean, for this too was an inland water, and this too, was warm.

            Taking a sight upon a tree, I marked the place for memory, but in the morning, when there was light enough, I carved a name on a slab and placed it there. I knew not the day of his birth, but gave that of his death.