FROM THAT TIME ON, Gull was worse and worse.
When we woke next morning, we found the floods had risen to cover the place where our fire had been. The tree we had tied the boat to was twenty yards from dry land; after that we always slept in the boat. Gull was awake too, lying with the print of the Lady on his cheek, but he did not move until Hern started poling us to the higher ground. Then he sat up and called out, “Where are you going? We must get on.”
“Why must we get on?” Hern said. He was angry with lack of sleep.
“We must get down to the sea. Quickly,” said Gull, and tears ran down his cheeks across the mark of the Lady.
“Of course we will,” said Robin. “Be quiet, Hern.”
“Why should I? This is the first I’ve heard about having to get to the sea,” Hern said. “What’s got into him now?”
“I don’t know,” Robin said helplessly.
This new idea of Gull’s gave him no peace, nor us either. Whenever we stopped to eat, he wept and urged us to hurry on to the sea. When we stopped for the night, he was worse still. He kept us all awake talking of Heathens and people rushing and, above all, calling out that we must get on, down to the sea. I grew almost too tired to look at the Riverbanks, which was a pity because the land grew new and interesting after that day. On the day following, the sides of the River were steep hills, covered with a forest, budding all colours from powdery green to bright red, so full of circling birds that they strewed the sky like chaff. Among the trees and birds we saw once a great stone house with a tower like a windmill and a few small windows.
Hern was very interested. He said it looked easy to defend, and if it was empty, it would make a good place for us to live.
“We can’t stop here!” Gull cried out.
“It was only an idea, you fool!” Hern said.
Altogether Hern became more and more impatient with Gull. It was hard to blame him, for Gull was very tedious. As the hills held the River in, we floated at a furious pace on a narrow, rushing stream, but we still did not go fast enough for Gull.
“I’d get to the sea tomorrow, if I could, just to shut you up!” Hern said to him.
Duck became as bad as Hern that day. He sighed sarcastically whenever Gull said we must hurry. He and Hern laughed and fooled about instead of helping us look after Gull. I smacked Duck several times, and I would have smacked Hern too, if I could. I smacked Duck again that night, in spite of Robin shouting at me, when Duck would not let Gull have the Lady.
Duck jumped out on land, hugging the Lady. He was lucky not to fall in the water. We were tied among little brown bushes, with a slope of slimy earth above, where the bank was no bank at all and the River kept slopping our boat into the bushes and away. “She’s mine!” Duck shouted, sliding and scrambling above me. “I need her! Give Gull the One. He’s strongest.”
I was so angry that I tried to climb out after him. But the boat slopped away from the bushes, and Robin caught the back of my rugcoat and hauled me back. “Leave him be, Tanaqui,” she said. “Don’t you be as bad as he is. Let’s try Gull with the One.”
We put the dark glistering One in Gull’s hand, but he cried out and shuddered. “He’s cold. He pulls. Can’t we get on now?”
“Some of us have to sleep, Gull,” I said. I was nearly as cross as Hern. I gave him the Young One instead, but Gull would not have him either. We had a dreadful night.
In the morning, Duck gave Gull the Lady, looking a little ashamed. But by that time Gull was not having the Lady either. Robin could hardly get him to eat. All he wanted was for us to untie the boat and go on.
“Fun and games all the way to the sea,” said Hern. “Then what will he want?”
“I don’t think he should go to the sea,” said Duck.
“Oh, not you now!” said Hern. “Why not?”
“The Lady doesn’t want him to go,” said Duck.
“When did she tell you that?” Hern asked jeeringly.
“She didn’t,” said Duck. “I just had a feeling and knew.”
Most of that morning Hern was jeering at Duck for his feeling. Robin snapped at Hern, and I yelled at Duck. We were very tired.
That was the day we came to the lake. The hills on either side of the River seemed to retire away backwards, and before we were aware, we were out at one end of a long, winding lake. They tell me it is usually a smaller lake than we saw, but because of the floods, it filled a whole valley. We could see it ahead, white with distance, stretching from mountain to mountain. I think they were real mountains. Their tops went so high that grey clouds sat on them, and they were blue and grey and purple as Uncle Kestrel described mountains. We had never seen such a great stretch of water in our lives as that lake. In the ordinary way we would have been interested. Water in such quantity is restless. It is grey and goes in waves, chop, chop, chop, and lines of foam stretch like ribbons back from the way the waves are going. There was a keen wind blowing.
“What a horrible wind!” Duck said. He crouched down in the boat, hugging his precious Lady.
Hern said disgustedly, “There’s miles of it! I hate seeing how far I have to go.”
Maybe I said that, when I think. Hern and I both found the place too large. As for Gull, he struggled up and stared about. “Why have we stopped?” he said.
We had not stopped, but the current ran weaker in such a mass of water, and I think our boat had turned sideways from it as we came out into the lake. I could see beyond us a wrinkling and a lumping in the lake, more yellow than grey, where the River flood rushed through the larger waters.
“Get the sail up,” I said.
“Don’t order me about,” said Hern. “Get up, Duck, and help.”
“Shan’t,” said Duck. You see how angry we all were.
Hern was stepping the mast when Gull said, “What are you doing? Why can’t we get on?”
“I am getting on, you mindless idiot!” said Hern. “I’m putting the sail up. Now shut up!”
I do not think Gull listened, but Robin said, “Hern, can’t you show poor Gull a bit more sympathy?”
“I am sympathetic!” snarled Hern. “But I wouldn’t be honest if I pretended I liked him this way. Tell him to keep his mouth shut, if I worry you.”
Robin did not answer. We got the mast and the sail up, and Duck condescended to let the keel down. The keel is a thought of my father’s, to make a flat riverboat sail well, and it is the best thought he ever had. We raced through the grey waters, leaning. Gull lay quiet in the bottom. Duck sang. When he sings, you know why we call him Duck. Hern told him so. And through their new argument, I noticed Robin still said never a word. She was white and wringing her hands.
“Are you all right?” I said. She annoys me.
“I think we’re
