Whatever it was, had slowed down to almost match the speed of the raft, which was about the same as the river flow. Glyn had now joined Arki at the rear of the craft, and together they armed themselves with poles just in case they could use them to some advantage.
With slow deliberation, the gargantuan grey shape changed course slightly to drift by underneath them, with barely a millimetre to spare.
The raft was quickly lifted up a few centimetres by the surge of water beneath it, although the creature was only travelling a little faster than the raft itself. One of the onlookers standing at the very edge of the craft and paralysed with fear at what he had seen, fell overboard as the huge shape glided beneath them.
Unable to swim, he lay thrashing about in the water and yelling his head off every time he came up for a gasp of air.
‘Calm down,’ Glyn called out, ‘stop waving your arms about and you’ll float, just lie back in the water and we’ll get you out.’ He didn’t know how though, as the man had drifted some distance away by now, and was well out of reach of their longest pole.
The man did as he was bid, only to start yelling again when he realized that help wasn’t forthcoming from the raft as the distance between them slowly increased.
Still the giant shape silently glided by beneath them, with hardly a ripple showing on either side of the raft, and it was only when the tail section passed by that they had some idea of the creature’s overall size.
Arki and Glyn stood looking at each other, dumbfounded.
‘I don’t believe this, nothing can grow that big.’ Arki said, shaking his head in disbelief.
‘Well it moves, it lined itself up with the raft and was careful not to overturn us, so we must assume it has life and some form of intelligence.’ Glyn said, but without much conviction in his voice.
After they had recovered their composure a little, Arki said, ‘What shall we do for our friend in the water, he’s drifting further away by the minute.’
‘Damned if I know,’ Glyn replied, frustrated at not being able to offer help. Just then Arki looked ahead of the raft, and saw the huge underwater creature turn in a great circle, heading for the man in the water, who was now some hundred metres away.
‘Do you think it’s going to eat him?’ asked Glyn, who had now seen the creature as well.
‘Why else would it turn back from its course?’ replied Arki, horrified at what he had just said.
The marine creature manoeuvred itself around until it was in a direct line with the man in the water and the raft, and then it slowly cruised forward towards the living bait which was now in paralytic shock at its impending demise, and lay still in the water.
The metre high ripple on the surface of the river denoting the presence of the submarine creature slowly crept up on its target, and then passed him, the ripple dying away as the colossal shape beneath came to a sudden halt.
The watchers on the raft fully expected to see a cavernous mouth open and swallow the unfortunate man in one piece, but it didn’t. A huge ripple sped away from the pair as the creature changed position, and then a massive smooth dark grey head eased itself out of the water with the luckless man perched on top. Two small but brilliant dark blue eyes looked down on the raft and its occupants, slowly scanning the vessel from end to end.
A slight turbulence in the water behind the creature indicated that it was on the move, and slowly the distance between it and the raft decreased until it was towering above them, completely dwarfing the tiny craft.
The vast creature somehow changed the shape of its head, or maybe it was the creature’s version of a frown, and the man who was perched up on top slid down the slight depression on the front of its head with arms and legs flailing, and landed in the water at the edge of the raft.
Eager hands grabbed the spluttering man and pulled him onboard, they turned to see what would happen next.
Again the turbulence at the rear of the creature, and it slowly slid backwards from them, as if it knew that was the only thing it could do without tipping them all into the water.
Having achieved what it considered to be a safe distance from the raft, the huge creature turned and headed down river at high speed, a two metre high bow wave being the only sign of its existence.
‘I can’t get over the size of it,’ Arki exclaimed, ‘how can such a creature exist? And those eyes! They had the look of intelligence in them, and I found that quite unnerving.’
‘Just as well the creature was friendly, it could surely have made a real mess of our raft, and had us as a snack into the bargain.’ Glyn added, breathing a sigh of relief.
‘What worries me,’ said Arki, ‘is that for a creature that big, there must be an awful lot of others which it eats, and they could well be big enough to eat us, not that I want to spread alarm and despondency.’
‘So far, we haven’t seen anything else, so perhaps it eats plants.’ Glyn said hopefully, and the matter was dropped for the time being.
The raft gently glided on down the river which was getting very wide again, and a concerted effort with the poles was made to try and guide it back towards the bank with little effect, as the poles didn’t have enough purchase on the water to make much difference to the direction of drift.
Brendon finally came to the rescue with an idea which astounded them all, Glyn and Arki in retrospect feeling a bit miffed and surprised that they hadn’t thought of it first.
‘Why don’t we take off our jackets and hold them up for the wind to blow into them, its going in the general direction of the bank and that should pull us along.’ he said with a smile at Glyn.
‘You know, you really astound me sometimes,’ said Glyn, ‘I think we ought to consider making you the leader.’
‘Oh no, I’m not clever enough for that, besides, if I got it wrong, I’d never hear the end of it.’ He was probably right on that point.
Glyn got all the men together and explained the basic idea.
‘If we all take our jackets off and stand in a row holding the jackets stretched out between us, they will catch the wind and hopefully drive us towards the river bank, in fact, if we tie two jackets together one above the other, using the arms, it would be even more effective,’ turning towards Brendon and reluctantly adding, ‘it was his idea.’ patting him on the shoulder. Brendon generously beamed at all and sundry.
With pairs of jackets joined by the arms, and the men strung out along the length of the raft, the gentle wind filled the home-made sails. It was difficult to tell at first if they were making any progress until one bright spark stuck two poles up some distance apart, and by lining them up with his eye was able to tell that the raft was indeed being driven towards the river bank, albeit very slowly.
Once it was apparent that the system was working, volunteers came forward to relieve the aching arms of the jacket holders, the women joining in until everyone had had a spell at being a ship’s mast.
‘The pole is reaching the bottom.’ someone called out, and the sails were returned to their rightful owners, while the 'polers' got to work to bring the raft closer inshore.
The river bank had changed in character after passing the promontory where the tributary had swept them into midstream, and was now composed of rocks in the few places where the forest didn’t come down to the water’s edge.
They landed late in the evening, having at last found a stretch of sand to beach the raft on, and then had to eat some of the emergency rations as it was too dark to risk going into the forest to gather fruit.
Next day the food gatherers were doubly keen to replenish their fruit stocks, as they were now more used to a natural diet and much preferred it to the food concentrates brought from the ship so long ago.
Four guards armed with pointed poles accompanied them just to be on the safe side, although they had seen no animals in the forests so far, and later stocks of two new fruits and a different nut were added to their larder.
Later, one of the women came up to Glyn and quietly said,
‘I think Mia is nearly ready to give birth to your child.’
‘I don’t see how that can be,’ replied Glyn, looking surprised, ‘there hasn’t been enough time for the child to fully form yet. Are you sure she isn’t just making a fuss about it to get my attention? I haven’t been very attentive of late I must admit, what with all the problems we’ve had.’
‘No, I don’t think so. I’ve had a child, and I know all the symptoms. I think you should make arrangements for the birth fairly soon, you don’t want it to happen on the raft in the middle of the river when we’re being chased by something.’ The woman turned away, she had said her piece and it was now up to him.
Glyn conferred with Arki about the matter, but he didn’t know any more about it than Glyn did.
They spent the rest of the day at the landing place, building up their food stocks and tightening the bindings on the raft ready for the next stage of their journey.
The big hacking blade made by Arki proved very useful when one of the food parties went a little deeper into the forest to find new food. The undergrowth in some areas seemed to have exploded in growth, and the hacking blade made it possible for them to penetrate far deeper into the forest than ever before.
That evening, Mia was visibly in distress with the huge bulge that was once a flat taut stomach, and Glyn felt sorry for his lack of attention and help in her uncomfortable state, not that there was a lot he could have done about it.
The contractions began a short while after their meal, and before Glyn could work himself up into a total state of panic, he was pushed to one side by two of the women, and told to go and do something useful in no uncertain terms.
They led Mia away to join the rest of the women, who knew what was about to happen.
He had never been spoken to like that before, and the firmness with which they had ordered him away made him realize that leadership was a thing of ephemeral consent, and could easily be blown away by the lightest of winds when the occasion arose.
Glyn and Arki went down to the water’s edge to join a couple of the other men as there was nothing useful they could do, or would be allowed to do. Glyn was satisfied that Mia was in good hands with the other women.
They had been sitting there for a while, just chatting in the half light of evening, when Arki noticed one of the men furthest from him was quietly fiddling away with something. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, having moved along the beach a little to get a better view of what the man was making. ‘I’m going to try and find out if there is any life in these waters. I’ve attached a fine strand of creeper to this stick, and if I can find something alive to put on the end, I’ll dangle it out over the river. If there’s anything hungry out there, it might be tempted to take a bite.’
‘Where did you get that idea from?’ asked Arki, surprised by the man’s ingenuity. ‘I worked it out for myself, it seems quite reasonable to me.’ Arki was impressed at the man’s reasoning ability, and resolved to include him in solving any future problems they might have as they as they made their way south.
‘And just what do you propose to attach to your line Greg?’
‘A wriggling grub like creature. I found one in a rotten log I trod on in the forest, so there should be more.’ Greg replied.
Greg left his stick and the attached creeper line at the water’s edge, and without saying a word to anyone, went up the sand bank towards the glow of the camp fire, and disappeared from view.
‘You know,’ Arki said quietly to Glyn, ‘that’s one bright fellow. I wouldn’t have thought of making a trapping line like that, perhaps we should include him in any future decision making.’
‘Seems a good idea, lets see if he catches anything first.’ They both lay back on the soft sand, looking up at the first of the evening stars which had begun to dust the velvet deep blue of the sky.
A rustle of hurried footsteps awoke them from their reverie.
‘Did you manage to find anything suitable?’ asked Arki, interested in the outcome of the fishing experiment.
‘Yes, I found this.’ Greg held out a white wriggling maggot, which by its gyrations had somehow sensed its forthcoming fate. He wound several turns of the fine creeper strand around the middle of the unfortunate creature, picked up the stick and walked over to a large rock which jutted out into the river.
Glyn and Arki followed, climbing up after the fisherman and positioning themselves either side of him as he sat down to dangle his line in the now black waters of the river.
All three sat there for about half an hour, enjoying the serenity of the scene and the cool breeze which swept in from the river, when Greg’s home-made line gave a twitch.
‘Something’s interested in the bait.’ he said, and gently pulled the line in towards the rock they were sitting on.
The line suddenly went taut, and then twanged as something on the other end sensed it had been trapped. Greg nearly fell into the water as he was about to lean over to get a better view of what he had caught. Arki grabbed his jacket and held him steady as he reached down to get hold of the creeper, and giving it a wrench, swung his catch over his shoulder and onto the back end of the rock.
All three scrambled to their feet and hurried over to where the creature had landed, slowing down as they approached it. A soggy thumping sound came from a long dark body, almost a metre and a half long and as thick as a mans arm, it lay thrashing about in fury on the dark rock, so they were unable to see the finer details of what they had caught.
‘Let’s get it into the light,’ said Arki, ‘it may be equipped with teeth.’ The creature seemed to be firmly attached to the line, so they dragged it up the sand bank and into the light of the camp fire, which was now burning brightly.
When the others around the fire saw what the hunters had brought in they all backed away in a hurry, but curiosity got the better of them, and slowly they drew a little closer as the creature, unused to so much heat and light, lay still.
The creeper line had got tangled around several of the vicious ten centimetre long curved teeth which protruded from both jaws, and a slow trickle of water dribbled out between them to stain the sand with a dark patch around its now still head. Glyn edged a little closer, and gave it a poke.