Chapter 21
Both women were now
beginning to appreciate the tremendous advantages of this new means of
travel. Verla even admitted the next day that she was no longer afraid
of the great height in which the Rumar make them climb. They were now
covering over two hundred miles each day and the warming of the
temperature was beginning to be quite noticeable also.
By
the end of the second day following the terrible storm, they had been
drifting almost straight south, always at the whim of the different air
currents and on that day they left behind them the last of the snow.
Vincent was aware that the next time they would see snow again, it would
either be at the top of a high mountain on their way south or when they
would reach the southern hemisphere of the planet.
As long as they were
moving over plains and while the weather – especially the wind –
remained relatively calm, he knew that they were quite safe. Both of
these conditions did prevail until the fifth day after the big storm.
It was just about noon
and they were still moving over the grassy plain and observing the
different herds of grass eater under them when the wind began to pick
up.
Previously, Vincent had checked on his map and it had indicated that
less than twenty miles ahead of them they would drift over a forest
while far to their right was a huge body of water. Since the southern
winds were taking them in a general southerly direction, Vincent did not
pay too much attention to that great sea which stood directly to the
west of their present path.
Then in a matter of a few
minutes, the Rumar entered a new air mass and its direction changed from
almost directly south to directly west.
Vincent did try to change the
altitude so as to find another air current moving in a more favourable
direction, but it now seemed that the whole air system was now moving in
the same direction which was directly toward the west.
By the time that Vincent
became aware of the danger they were in, it was already too late. They
were already over the forest and with the windy condition it would have
been very risky for them to try landing the craft in these conditions.
There was now nothing else to do but to let the winds take them in the
direction it was blowing.
It felt very strange to
be in the Rumar under these conditions. For one thing, even if they
could see and feel the balloon itself over their head being shoved this
way and that way, it created just a mild swinging in the gondola.
Stranger still, even though they could tell that the wind was blowing
hard, judging by the bending and swaying of the branches under them,
they did not feel the wind that much in the gondola since they were
moving at the same speed as the air mass itself.
Vincent sent his two
women inside the small cabin to rest for a while but he remained on the
lookout for the next three hours. Later, Nika replaced him on
observation for a couple of hours.
Then, before darkness felt
completely, the rain began to fall and they were able to see for the
last time the top of the trees below them. After that they were moving
over the sea and judging by the last of the forest they had seen
previously, they were at a height of about a thousand feet.
Once last time, he tried
to change the altitude so as to find another air current that would take
them south again but he had no luck on the matter. By then it was
completely dark and he no longer could see the water bellow them.
As a
last resort, he took the Rumar to a much higher altitude so as to
minimize the risk of crashing into the water below if they should happen
to loose height slowly without their realizing it.
During
the night, Nika came out so as to replace him on the lookout, but he
didn’t want to go into the cabin. Instead he told her to take charge
of the “on” and “off” control of the blower while he would bent
over the side of the gondola and try to detect signs of the water below
them so as to predict their altitude.
This went on until early
dawn. By then the winds had not diminished by much but the rain had
stopped. But even then, the Rumar was still being shaken by gusts of
wind blowing in different directions.
Then as the first sign of dawn
appeared on the low cloud, while Vincent had his head bent over the side
trying to judge their height, he was hit by the splashing of cold water.
In those few seconds he
got the answer concerning their height, they were no more than ten or
twelve feet above the surface of water and the gushes of winds were
blowing cold and salty water over his face.
Of course he shouted at Nika
to turn on the blower as he prepared himself for another impact with the
waves below them.
On the first impact the Rumar had bounced up a dozen
feet but now it was coming down again. How hard would they hit the water
this time, he could not tell but he knew that this would be the end of
them all if the gondola was to be sucked in by the waves.
It took another five or
six seconds before they hit the crest of a wave again. This time there
was a lot of water that poured inside the gondola.
With the increase in
weight, the buoyancy of the hot air in the balloon was not enough to
lift the gondola plus its new load of water, so the gondola suddenly
became a boat floating on the surface of the waves.
For ten to fifteen
seconds the gondola seemed to remain on the rough waters as it rose on
one crests to fall next into the deep depressions between two crests.
Then after reaching another crest, the gondola did not fall all the way
down to the bottom of a through. But when the next crest came, it hit it
sideways as it shook and splashed everything inside.
But by then the
flow of hot air in the balloon was increasing their buoyancy. They
slowly began to gain altitude as the water leaked out through the many
holes in the floor, in so doing it created dozens of rivulets and thus
it was decreasing their weight still further.
At last they were gaining
altitude at a faster rate and now they were high enough to see the
spread of the sea under them.
The water was very rough and the huge
waves seemed to be trying to reach for them while the wind kept on
blowing droplets of salted water at them.
They had narrowly escaped the
fate of being pulled into the sea by the huge waves and only then did
they all realized how close they had come to being swallowed by the sea
and thus face certain death.
By now Verla was out of the cabin and as
the three of them were looking down at the rough sea no one dared to say
a word.
All through that day they
drifted at a good speed over the water and by mid-afternoon the wind did
decrease a little thus making the sea much calmer.
At dusk, the wind was
almost non-existent, judging by the calm condition of the water under
them.
Before it got completely dark, Vincent took the Rumar to a height
of well over six thousand feet even though it was much colder at that
height, he didn’t want a repetition of what had happened the previous
night. All through the night he did his best to keep the Rumar at that
altitude.
As soon as it was light
enough the following day, he got out his map and he checked their
position by mean of the blinking light.
As expected, it did confirm that
they were now well off over the huge sea. On the map, there were symbols
and words here and there and it was written in a strange language that
Vincent had no clue about.
He knew that some of these words were most
probably the name given to the sea below them, but he couldn’t read
any of it since the symbols used in the writing were all new to him.
One
thing was evident to him when he examined the map. While the storm had
lasted, the Rumar had drifted almost directly west and they were now
still moving in that general direction.
Previously, before
encountering the strong winds, he had predicted their path to be in a
southwesterly direction and thus had they gone in that general
direction, they would have missed completely the sea, which was under
them now.
But the storm had changed all that. They were now over a
section of the largest body of water on the planet and judging by the
map, it seemed to rival the Atlantic Ocean on his world in its size.
Furthermore, the flashing spot of light on the map indicated that they
were well over three hundred miles at sea now. Vincent knew that it was
quite impossible to turn back. Furthermore,
there were no means to predict which way the winds were going to take
them once the air mass began to move once again.
He was in deep thought
outside the small cabin when Nika came to join him that morning.
“Do you know where we
are exactly?”
“According to the map,
we are far over a huge sea and I don’t think that the winds will take
us back toward the coast from where we came .”
“Well at least we did
not drown when we hit the water, we can always move south again when the
winds are favourable to us.”
“Yes I suppose we
should be grateful that we are still alive but we are still not out of
danger. How much food and water do we have?”
“Water will not be a
problem since the two large containers from the underground complex are
almost full from the last rain. But
we will run out of meat in three days. After this we must reach land so
as to gather fruits and hunt.”
“Well this is the
problem. On the map here, the nearest land is behind us and there is no
way we can get there again. Then, depending on the direction of the
winds, if we are lucky we could reach the continent on the other side in
five or six days.”
“Then we better ration
what little food we have left.”
“Yes. Go in the cabin
and make an inventory of the food we have left, you must then figure how
much we should be eating each day if we suppose it will take us another
six days to find land again.
The next four days were
not so bad. The Rumar was being carried in a southwesterly direction and
the temperature was getting noticeably warmer every day now. The winds
were ideal for them, not too strong but still they were moving high over
the waves.
But things went bad when on the fourth day the winds did
change again and the Rumar began to drift directly south again.
When Vincent checked his
map, he was shocked to discover that there was no land ahead of them.
Had they continued to move west they would have reached the other side
of the sea in a day or so.
But now the closest land he could see ahead
of them was al least another week away and there was no way that they
could survive that long with the little food they had left.
Even if the winds were to
change and blow west again, it was now too late since this far south the
huge sea was much wider at this latitude.
He did check the map carefully
so as to see if there was an island on their predicted path, but it
seemed that either there were no islands on this sea or the maker of the
map had neglected to mark them.
The days that followed
were sad days for them all. By the end of the sixth day, their food was
all gone and they were all very weak since they had been eating very
little for the last week now.
For two more days they drifted south and
by now even their water supply was getting low since it had not rained
since the last storm.
Both women spent much of
their time sleeping in the cabin, coming out once in a while when they
felt strong enough. Even Vincent would fall asleep in the shade of a
small tarp outside the cabin and even though he did try to remain awake
he sometimes would pass out for a couple of hours at a time.
He knew
that the end was near now, at one time he even contemplate asking his
women if they would not prefer to end their suffering quickly and let
the Rumar fall into the sea below them.
On the morning of the
eight day, having just about given up hope of getting to solid ground
before they were all dead, he slowly got up to relieve himself over the
side of the gondola when he noticed in the distance a small craft on the
relatively calm sea ahead of them.
As the Rumar got closer, he decreased
his altitude so as to get a better view of the small boat.
It was a boat carved from
the huge trunk of a tree. In it were four men (he assumed they were
men), they were all seated one behind the other and were paddling toward
an unknown destination.
They had not seen the Rumar yet since their
small craft was moving in the same direction as the Rumar was at that
moment and the air ship was still somewhat behind them but overtaking
them quickly.
Vincent
decreased the altitude of the air ship even more until the Rumar was at
a height of about one hundred feet above the men in the boat.
He now could tell that
they were all men and their naked bodies, although not black were darker
than most of the natives that he had seen on this planet so far.
As soon
as one of them saw the Rumar quietly floating over his head, he ceased
paddling and he began to shout with much agitation while extending one
of his arms toward the gondola above him. Soon the others also got up
and they all became extremely exited at the sight of the strange
apparition in the sky over their head.
Before the Rumar got too
far ahead of the small boat, Vincent called both women out of the cabin
so that they could have a look at the small craft underneath them. By
now the men had resumed paddling, but it seemed that they were doing so
with much less enthusiasm than before.
Nika was the first to
speak.
“There has to be land
ahead. These people in that boat under us cannot have been paddling for
too long, they must have a tribe not too far.”
“Yes it has to be.”
Said Verla with much hope in her voice. “Unless we have just passed
over land and did not noticed it.”
“No. When I first saw
them, I did look behind us and no land was in sight in the direction we
came from. But I do think that there must be land in the direction they
are going. We must keep a sharp eyes for it.”
“But how is it that you
cannot see it on the map you have?” Went on Verla.
“You are right, the map
does not show anything in this region. It indicates that we are a long
way from land yet, but still there is no way that those paddlers below
us could be in the middle of this huge sea in that small boat. There has
to be small islands that are not shown on the map. So from now on let us
keep a sharp eye for land.”
Less than ten minutes
later, they saw, far in the distance straight ahead of them, a mountain
peek. The closer they got to the tall mass ahead of them, the more
apparent it became that it was an extinct volcano cone of great height.
They immediately became
extremely exited. A couple of minutes later they could see a beach about
ten miles ahead of them. Of course it met a possible landing place for
the Rumar.
But Vincent wanted more
information about this land mass and he took the Rumar to a much higher
altitude so as to get a general idea of the topography of the land.
With
the hot air blaster at maximum they climbed to a height of well over ten
thousands feet until they could make out the contour of the island. Its
average width was about thirty miles and it had the rough shape of a
half moon with the volcano peak being at one end of the sixty mile span
of the island.
How strange, though
Vincent, that it did not show on the map while much smaller islands
elsewhere on other seas were clearly indicated and all even had name for
them. This fact more than anything else bothered him.
He had a strange
feeling deep inside as if the maker of the map, for some unknown reason,
had purposely omitted to indicate the position and existence of the
island. But they did not have the luxury to be choosy now they did need
food since they were all very weak from the lack of it.
As they continued to
loose altitude and approaching the island at the same time, they noticed
that apart from having on its tip the high cone shape of what must have
once been a volcano; the rest of the crescent-shaped island was very
green and flat.
By the time they were drifting over the island itself,
they were just a few hundred feet high and while he noticed that the
island was covered with trees of many varieties, Vincent saw ahead of
them a wide span covered with tall grass and having just a few trees
here and there.
It was a perfect spot to land the Rumar so he aimed his
decent for this opening.
Soon the gondola was
slowly drifting barely fifty feet above the long grass-covered plain
under them. In the distance to their left, they could see herds of grass
eaters of all kinds. Some seemed vaguely familiar but most were
completely new to him.
Yes under different circumstances, this place
could be called a hunter’s paradise he told himself.
It the distance to his
right, just at the edge of a forest he saw predators also. Could they be
tigers or bigger relative to that family of great cats? He couldn’t
tell, but there were a pack of them lying in the grass and he was glad
that the Rumar was drifting slowly in the direction of the grass eaters
instead of that of the predators.
Then he noticed sunlight being
reflected from the surface of a small stream and he aimed his decent so
that they would be as close as possible to the source of water.
Their landing was smooth
and the operation went just like he had hoped. First the gondola touched
the tall grass then it hit the ground with a small jerk, it was then
dragged about ten feet or so to finally come to rest.
They had two
options now. One was to anchor the gondola with ropes tied to sticks
inserted into the ground and thus letting the balloon float with a
certain volume of hot air in it or to simply let all the air out of the
balloon and fold it so that they could cover it with grass and thus
camouflage their position.
For some reason that he
could not explained, he decided on the second option and as soon as the
air in the balloon was cold enough, they all proceeded to stretched it
on the grass and they folded the material of the balloon until they had
a big pile.
Next they proceeded to hide it with piles of the three feet
length grass that they cut with their knives.
Judging by the height of
the sun over their head, it was now just about noon and they proceeded
to carefully walk toward the first heard of grass eaters that they had
seen from above.
They were walking in a single file so as to disturb the
grass as little as possible and thus hide their presence on the island.
Vincent was in the lead with one of the paralysing guns in hand when
they came to the small stream that they had seen from above.
They all
had a drink of cool water and soon they were back on their way once more
toward the closest heard.
But just a few hundred
feet from the stream they heard squawking and movements in the tall
grass.
Then a few seconds later half a dozen birds that must have weight
al least ten to twelve pounds each began to slowly take off. Before
Vincent could turn and aim his paralysing gun at one of them, Nika had
sent an arrow in the neck of closest one.
Upon closer inspection,
it looked very much like a
white goose, a variety of geese, which Vincent was familiar in his home
world. It was a big one at that.
“I think we should
return to our camp and cook this fat bird. We do have enough food for a
good meal here and it will give us a chance to rest also. We are not in
great condition to hut the bigger game from the heard at this moment.”
“Yes I agree,” said
Verla. “Let us go and cook this bird now, we can come back and hunt
tomorrow. I am so hungry now that I could eat it raw.”
So it was agreed that
they would walk back to the place where the Rumar was hidden and they
would cook the fat bird. Even before it was completely cooked they were
eating.
Never in Vincent’s life had food tasted so good. While the
bird was cooking, the girls had dug roots that they were familiar with
and they cooked them over a hot rock that had been placed in the fire
for this purpose.
Of course as soon as
their catch was cooked enough they did put out the fire. When they were
through eating, there was nothing left from the bird except for the
bones of course.
But they all had a full stomach now and after
slowly drinking herbal tea that the women made from nearby roots, they all
stretched on the ground in front of the gondola that was partly
hidden by grass.
They slept and rested
until evening and then they moved inside the gondola for the night.
Vincent figured that being in the gondola would be safer since it gave
them a little protection against the predators.
In the morning, Vincent
was roughly pulled out of his sleep by Verla.
“Come look, we are
surrounded.” She said to him as she pulled on his arm.
In half a second he was
up. When he did look around he was stunned by the spectacle he saw.
Forming three concentric circles around the gondola and around them,
were many hundreds of naked warriors.
All were about equally spaced from
each other in an orderly manner and all were armed with spears and what
looked to be stones axes.
For long seconds the trio
stood there stunned by what they were seeing. At last one of the warrior
approached them and he began to talk to Vincent in the universal
language of the planet but his voice had a strange accent.
“You must follow us.
The high priest wants to talk with you all.”
Of course Vincent knew
that there was no use in arguing. There
were simply too many of them and beside, neither he or his women were
armed at that moment.
They were not permitted
to take anything with them and even though they were not tied, they were
closely watched as they began to walk in the general direction of the
volcano that must have been twenty miles away.
They walked all of that
day and were given food and water to drink. They slept in the centre of
a temporary camp with guards all around them and thus with no way of
escaping. In the morning they all resumed their trek toward the volcano.
In the afternoon they
began to climb the low slope at the foot of the volcano itself. Then
much to Vincents’ surprise, after having climbed a few hundred feet,
they soon entered a wide opening that looked like a natural cave.
But as
soon as he got inside, he found himself in a very large room with
artificial lightning that came from the ceiling. The floor looked as if
it was made of marble while the walls were covered with painting
depicting exotic scenes.
Vincent was certain that any single one of
those paintings in his world world have made him very rich. All of a
sudden, his
eyes came to rest on something at the far end of the large room,
something that seem to turn the blood cold in his veins.
The closer they walked toward the front of the room, the
more his fears as well as his excitement increased.
There was no mistake
about it now. On the far wall ahead of him, he could clearly see it now.
To the unfamiliar eye it would appear to be a decoration that was part
of the wall, but to Vincent there was no mistake about it, they were all
approaching the characteristic half circle of an arch.
(end of chapter 21)
