that that would happen again if he tried to resist. Perhaps too his body and mind had become used to the pain and he was more able to cope with it. At any rate they took him out to where he could lie in a calm inlet and food could be brought for him, and then as the sun went down and the tide reached its full they lifted him out on to a smooth flat rock to spend the night. Hooa stayed with him for warmth and company while the others climbed up to their regular roosting-ledge to sleep.
* * *
By morning the sea had changed. Last night’s near-calm had become a slow heave of waves from the main ocean, which as the tide rose slopped on to the rock where Presh lay, the larger ones covering him and tugging at his body as they retreated. The tribe understood these signs and knew that by evening full-scale rollers would be dashing themselves in spume and thunder against the headland.
Li, exhausted, slept late. When she climbed down she found several of the adults bobbing in the water clear of the rock where Presh lay, watching him anxiously but not doing anything. He rose on one elbow to watch as she slid up beside him and tested the wrappings round his leg. The wrack had swollen with wetting and some of the vine-strands had worked loose. Crouching to shield the leg from the waves with her body, Li refastened the lashings and signalled to the others to come and help Presh into the water, but at once he snorted disapproval and before anyone could stop him used the backwash of the next wave to ease himself to the lip of the ledge, and on the next slid deftly into the sea, letting Li lift the wrapped leg clear of the rock as he went.
The effort must have hurt but Presh refused to make pain-noises as he let the others tow him clear of the rocks to rest in the lulling swell. Ma-ma and Hooa brought him food and the tribe spread out to forage as much as they could before the waves became dangerous. They felt that their world had returned almost to normal. They had their leader, and though his leg was broken Li had worked her magic and it would soon mend.
Only Li was worried. She was thinking about fresh water, for Presh to drink. (Spending so much time in the sea the tribe didn’t yet have the human need to sweat, which demands pints of drinking water every day. Their main need was to wash the salts from their diet out of their bodies from time to time, and they could go several days together without a drink, but then it became essential. Their whole economy depended on moving up and down the coast, balancing out their needs for food and drink and shelter.)
During the rains fresh water streamed for a few days out of the sky, runnelled down cliffs and filled every hollow, but for the rest of the year there were only three places. There was the river at the northern edge of their territory, the bay with the water-caves where they’d trapped the shark, which they had left only the day before Presh had fought with Greb, and a place three days further south where a steady flow of fresh water welled up from the sea-bed, enough in calm weather to make a wide pool where you felt your buoyancy lessen as you swam into it.
In none of these places was there enough food, and only at the bay was there shelter. The river held muddy fish and clams, but also crocodiles. From trees on the bank fell a fruit whose fermenting juices made you dance and shout and rollick for a while, and then fall, sad, but there were leopards and other night-hunters so the tribe would arrive at the river on a morning around new moon, post look-outs landward and seaward, and leave before dark on their tide-like drift down the coast.
At the bay there was food for two days, at most, for the whole tribe, while along the glaring coral beaches behind the sea-pool there was none at all. Still it was a place of great happiness. They took care to feed well before they reached it and would arrive with shouts of joy, and splash for a while across and around the pool and then,
* * *
By morning the sea had changed. Last night’s near-calm had become a slow heave of waves from the main ocean, which as the tide rose slopped on to the rock where Presh lay, the larger ones covering him and tugging at his body as they retreated. The tribe understood these signs and knew that by evening full-scale rollers would be dashing themselves in spume and thunder against the headland.
Li, exhausted, slept late. When she climbed down she found several of the adults bobbing in the water clear of the rock where Presh lay, watching him anxiously but not doing anything. He rose on one elbow to watch as she slid up beside him and tested the wrappings round his leg. The wrack had swollen with wetting and some of the vine-strands had worked loose. Crouching to shield the leg from the waves with her body, Li refastened the lashings and signalled to the others to come and help Presh into the water, but at once he snorted disapproval and before anyone could stop him used the backwash of the next wave to ease himself to the lip of the ledge, and on the next slid deftly into the sea, letting Li lift the wrapped leg clear of the rock as he went.
The effort must have hurt but Presh refused to make pain-noises as he let the others tow him clear of the rocks to rest in the lulling swell. Ma-ma and Hooa brought him food and the tribe spread out to forage as much as they could before the waves became dangerous. They felt that their world had returned almost to normal. They had their leader, and though his leg was broken Li had worked her magic and it would soon mend.
Only Li was worried. She was thinking about fresh water, for Presh to drink. (Spending so much time in the sea the tribe didn’t yet have the human need to sweat, which demands pints of drinking water every day. Their main need was to wash the salts from their diet out of their bodies from time to time, and they could go several days together without a drink, but then it became essential. Their whole economy depended on moving up and down the coast, balancing out their needs for food and drink and shelter.)
During the rains fresh water streamed for a few days out of the sky, runnelled down cliffs and filled every hollow, but for the rest of the year there were only three places. There was the river at the northern edge of their territory, the bay with the water-caves where they’d trapped the shark, which they had left only the day before Presh had fought with Greb, and a place three days further south where a steady flow of fresh water welled up from the sea-bed, enough in calm weather to make a wide pool where you felt your buoyancy lessen as you swam into it.
In none of these places was there enough food, and only at the bay was there shelter. The river held muddy fish and clams, but also crocodiles. From trees on the bank fell a fruit whose fermenting juices made you dance and shout and rollick for a while, and then fall, sad, but there were leopards and other night-hunters so the tribe would arrive at the river on a morning around new moon, post look-outs landward and seaward, and leave before dark on their tide-like drift down the coast.
At the bay there was food for two days, at most, for the whole tribe, while along the glaring coral beaches behind the sea-pool there was none at all. Still it was a place of great happiness. They took care to feed well before they reached it and would arrive with shouts of joy, and splash for a while across and around the pool and then,
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