Sarabande: River of Falcons Book 4

27. Passing the Gate

The tide had been dead low when Magus and Nautilus raised the shipwreck. They had timed it that way on purpose. That had been midmorning, but by the time they had secured the trunk in the middle of the deck and rowed back to the river's entrance, it was past noon and the tide had begun to flood, helping the sailors make good speed. They had raced past the first of the sandbars that marked the entrance to the river. The captain called out the directions: "Port! Hard to port, men!" he shouted as soon as he had heard the rumble of sea waves meeting the sandbar on the starboard side of the boat.

They began their turn just in time, and were swept by the current around a sharp bend in the channel. Another sandbar appeared ahead, but they had already turned enough to miss it. Once they were abreast of it, the captain called out to "ease her to starboard." The boat came around and headed toward the center of the river. A school of young fish jumped ahead of them, frightened no doubt by some larger fish hunting them from below, but what it was, none of the people on the boat could be sure, because the water was dark there and the center of the channel was deep.

"The wind's rising out of the west," the captain pointed out as he leaned into another stroke of his long oar. "Would you like me to raise sail, Sir?"

Magus frowned down at him from where he stood on the deck aft of the low area in which the sailors worked their oars. "Will it make us go faster?" he demanded.

"Yes."

"Then of course! Snap to it." Magus was no sailor. He normally flew when he had to cross open water, and his lack of knowledge made him irritable.

The sailors shipped their oars with a dull thudding sound and strapped them securely into wooden brackets so they would not roll about under foot. Then they leapt to the mast and uncleated several lines. "Heave, boys. All at once," the captain said, and two canvas sails began to climb up the mast. The forward sail, a jib, was triangular, and being the smaller of the two, was soon up and secure. They pulled the sheet tight, and the sail filled with wind. The boat began to heel over and Nautilus said, "Watch out! The chest is sliding!"

The sailor who had sheeted in the jib went over to the chest and lashed it to the deck with a length of strong rope. "Don't worry, we carry big loads of fish up from the ocean and we never lose a single one," he said.

'If you lose this load you lose your life," Nautilus snapped. "Painfully."

The captain gestured for the man to come and help at the mast. When he got there, the captain leaned over and whispered in his ear, "Don't talk to her. She's the meanest of the lot." The sailor nodded and gave Nautilus a nervous look over his shoulder.

Soon the big mainsail was up and flapping in the rising breeze. It was roughly rectangular, with a long spar on its top to hold it steady and another spar along its bottom. The bottom spar, the boom, was sheeted with stout rope to a system of pulleys on the stern of the boat. The captain ran back and pulled the rope, and soon the mainsail was taught, too. The boat heeled even further and began to pick up speed. The captain grabbed the tiller. Correcting the course so the boat was aiming toward the inside of the next big bend in the river, he said, "With this wind, we'll make it to the landing at the bottom of Ferndale Road before sunset."

"Don't aim toward that shore!" Nautilus snapped.

"Sorry, Ma'am, but the channel runs deepest on the inside of the turning," the captain explained. "We might run aground if we go wide."

"I don't care. That's First Garden over there. We don't want to go too close to it."

Magus came over. "Yes," he said, "you need to stay away from that bank."