Geo rushed to the edge and saw Snake’s head emerge in the churning water. Behind him, Urson yelled, “Look out!” Jordde’s marlin made an inch of splinters in the length of wood against which he had been leaning.
“Not him!” cried Argo. “No, no! Not him!”
But Jordde had seized Geo’s shoulder and whirled him back against the rail. Geo saw Urson grab a loose rope behind them and suddenly swing forward, intending to knock Jordde away with his feet. But suddenly Argo moved in the way of his flying body, turned, saw him, and raised her hands to push him aside so that he swung wide of them and landed on the railing a yard from where they struggled.
Geo’s feet slipped on the wet boards, and he felt his body suddenly hurled backwards onto the air. Then his back slapped water. As he broke surface, Urson, still on the rail called to him, “Hang on, friend Geo, I’m coming!” Urson’s arms swung back, and then forward as he dove into the sea.
Now Geo could see only Argo and Jordde at the rail. But they were struggling. Urson and Snake were near him in the water. The last thing he saw was Jordde suddenly wrest something from Argo’s neck and then fling it out into the sea. The Priestess’ hands reached for the flying jewel, followed its arc as she screamed toward the water.
Then hands were at his body. Geo turned in the water as Snake disappeared from beside him and Urson suddenly cried out. Hands were pulling him down.
Roughness of sand beneath one of his sides and the flare of sun on the other. His eyes were hot and his lids were orange over them. Then there was a breeze. He opened his eyes, and shut them quick, because of the light. Then he turned over, thought about pillows and stiff new sheets. Reaching out, he grabbed sand.
He opened his eyes and pushed himself up from the beach with both hands spread in warm, soft crumblings. Over there were rocks, and thick vegetation behind them. He swayed to his knees, the sand grating under his kneecaps. He looked at his arm in the sun, flecked with grains. Then he touched his chest.
His hand came to one bead, moved on, and came to another! He looked down. Both the chain with the platinum claw and the thong with the wire cage hung around his neck. Bewildered, he heaved to his feet, and immediately sat down again as the beach went red with the wash of blood behind his eyeballs. He got up again, slowly.
Carefully Geo started down the beach, looking toward the land. When he turned to look at the water, he stopped.
At the horizon, beyond the rocks, was a boat with lowered sails. So they hadn’t left yet. He swung his eyes back to the beach: fifty feet away was another figure lying in the sun.
He ran forward, now, the sand splashing around his feet, sinking under his toes, so that it was like the slow motion running of dreams. Ten feet from the figure he stopped.
It was a young black, very dark, skin the color of richly humused soil. The long skull was shaved. Like Geo, he was almost naked. There was a clot of seaweed at his wrist, and the soles of his feet and one upturned palm were grayish and shriveled.
Geo frowned and stood for a full minute. He looked up and down the beach once more. There was no one else. Just then the man’s arm shifted across the sand.
Immediately Geo fell to his knees beside the figure, rolled him over and lifted his head. The eyes opened, squinted in the light, and the man said, “Who are you?”
“My name is Geo.”
The man sat up, and caught himself from falling forward by jamming his hands into the sand. He shook his head, and then looked up at Geo again. “Yes,” he said. “I remember you. What happened? Did we founder? Did the ship go down?”
“Remember me from where?” Geo asked.
“From the ship. You were on the ship, weren’t you?”
“I was on the ship,” Geo said. “And I got thrown overboard by that damned first mate in a fight. But nothing happened to the ship. It’s still out there, you can see it.” Suddenly Geo stopped. Then he said, “You’re the guy who discovered Whitey’s body that morning!”
“That’s right.” He shook his head again. “My name is Iimmi.” Now he looked out to the horizon. “I see them,” he said. “There’s the ship. But where are we?”
“On the beach of Aptor,” Geo told him.
Iimmi screwed his face up into a mask of dark horror. “No,” he said softly. “We couldn’t be. We were days away from her. …”
“How did you fall in?”
“It was blowing up a little,” Iimmi explained. “I was in the rig when suddenly something struck me from behind and I went toppling. In all the mist, they didn’t see me, and the current was too strong for me, and …” He looked around.
“You’ve been on this beach once before, haven’t you?” Geo asked.
“Once,” said Iimmi. “Yes, once.”
“Do you realize how long you’ve been in the water?” Geo asked.
Iimmi looked up.
“Over two weeks,” Geo said. “Come on, see if you can walk. I’ve got a lot of things to explain, if I can, and we’ve got some hunting to do.”
Iimmi steadied himself once more, and together they started up the beach.
“What are you looking for?” Iimmi asked.
“Friends,” Geo said.
Two hundred feet up, the rocks and torpid vegetation came down to the water, cutting off the beach. Scrambling over boulders and through vines, they emerged on a rock embankment that dropped fifteen feet into the wide estuary of a ribbon of water
