Chapter 9

Tasslehoff, Gisella, and Woodrow stood on the bow of the ship: “the pointy end,” as Gisella insisted on calling it. Behind them, her huge wagon was secured to the single mast, since there didn’t seem to be much else to tie it to. The horses were tethered to the mast as well and hobbled to keep them from wandering about the deck. Their eyes rolled and their nostrils flared each time the ship rocked. Not even Woodrow could calm them completely.

“So, let’s go,” Gisella announced abruptly. “Let’s get this thing moving.”

Woodrow looked apologetic. “I was raised on a farm, ma’am. I don’t know anything about sailing a boat. I thought you knew how.”

“Me? she squealed. “Dwarves don’t even like water.”

“I’ve noticed that,” Tas began. “My friend Flint -you both remember him?Well, not very long ago, he had a bit of a boating accident. You see, Caramon -that’s our big fighter friend — was trying to grab a fish with his bare hands, and he stood up in the little boat, and it tipped over, and Flint couldn’t swim, and when Tanis fished him out, he was the most incredible shade of purple! Flint says it was from lack of air, but I say it was because he got so mad. It gave him lumbago.”

“That’s too bad,” Woodrow said. “What does he do for it?

“Flint says it helps to stay away from kender as much as possible,” Tas mumbled reluctantly.

Gisella ignored Tas’s story. “How hard can it be, anyway? You just put this cloth up,” she proposed, fingering the white sailcloth wrapped around a stout, rounded piece of wood that tapered at the ends, “and then the boat goes where you point it, doesn’t it?

Woodrow frowned. “I don’t think it’s quite that simple, Miss Hornslager.”

“Don’t anyone bother asking me if I know how to sail,” Tas said petulantly at the edge of their conversation.

“Well, do you?” Gisella asked skeptically.

“Of course I do!” he said, delighted to have their full attention. “I used to sail boats with my Uncle Trapspringer all the time.” Tas skipped happily over to Gisella, looped an arm around the mast, and swung himself in a halfcircle, grinning.

“You weren’t too far from right, Gisella,” he said, resting his hand on the piece of wood with the sail wrapped around it. “You raise this thing here — it’s called the yard — up this thing here — the mast — and hang the sail from it. But you steer with those sticks dangling off the back end of the boat.”

“I think those sticks at the stern are called sweeps,”

Woodrow said meekly.

“I knew that, but I was trying to simplify things for Gisella,” Tas glared at him. “I thought you didn’t know anything about sailing?”

Woodrow raised his hands defensively. “I don’t.

Sorry.”

“All right then,” Tas concluded his lesson. “All we have to do is figure out which direction the wind is coming from, catch some of it in the sail, and point our nose east. Sooner or later we’re bound to find something.”

Tas licked his finger and held it in the air tentatively.

He turned it this way and that, licked it again, and held it up as high as he could.

Gisella leaned closer to Woodrow. “What’s he doing?” she asked furtively.

“I think he’s trying to find out which direction the wind is blowing,” whispered Woodrow, afraid that noise would upset the kender.

“I think it’s blowing from the north,” Tasslehoff announced at last. He turned to Fondu who, along with a half-dozen other gully dwarves, had volunteered to come along as deck hands for the “pretty-haired lady.”

The deck hands were busy now spitting over the side and watching the bubbles drift on the waves. “Fondu, line up the crew.”

With a resounding belch, Fondu grabbed his kinsmen by twos and propelled them toward the wagon.

There, with their backs pressed against the side of the vehicle, they were able to form a line that was almost straight.

Hands clasped behind his back, Tasslehoff paced up and down in front of the ragged ensemble. One of the gully dwarves — Fondu had called him Boks — jabbed his finger into his ear and was vacantly gouging and scraping when Tasslehoff spotted him. “Stop that,” the kender snapped, doing his best imitation of a fierce sea captain. “We’ll have none of that when you’re in ranks. This is a sailing ship, and you’ll act like sailors.”

The gully dwarf hastily withdrew his finger, glancing at it wistfully before wiping it on his shirt.

Tasslehoff began his orientation, walking around the ship and pointing out each item as he came to it.

“That’s the front end up there, and the back end back there. The sides are there and there. The little house in back is the cabin. Never mind that, we’ll just call it the little house. That’s where we sleep. This big stick in the middle is the mast. We’re going to hang a big sheet of cloth on it, called a sail. Your jobs,” he said, turning back to face the gully dwarves, “— and this is really important — is helping to raise and lower the sail by pulling on these ropes.” Immediately the crew shuffled over and began yanking indiscriminately on ropes, sailcloth, and each other.

“No, no,” hollered Tas, “not yet! Wait until I say!”

The gully dwarves shuffled back to the wagon. “You can’t just go hauling on ropes willy-nilly or the whole ship will come apart. Now, one step at a time, do exactly what I tell you….”

Several hours later, at dusk, a kender, who was unaccustomed to giving precise instructions about anything, had managed to guide seven gully dwarves, who were unaccustomed to following instructions of any kind but especially unaccustomed to precise ones, through the complicated stages of hoisting a sail, raising an anchor, and launching an eighty-foot-long sailing vessel more or less across the wind.

Gisella and Tas sat on the roof of the cabin, their backs against the ship’s rail. Because the cabin’s roof doubled as the steering deck, Woodrow stood to their right, manning the starboard sweep. A gully dwarf named Pluk manned the port sweep under the human’s watchful gaze. Looking like a boy about to stick his toe in icy water, Woodrow finally opened his mouth.

“I hate to wilt anybody’s crops,” he began, “but without a map, how do we know where we’re going, and how do we tell when we get there?”

Tasslehoff popped open one eye. “I’ve been giving some thought to that very question.”

Gisella groaned.

“There you go again,” complained Tas, “criticizing my ideas before I even utter them. You ought to develop a little more tolerance.”

“Oh, let’s hear it,” Gisella moaned.

“Thank you,” said Tas. “It seems to me that we have a long way to go back to Kendermore, at least five hundred miles, I would say. The more ground — or should that be water? — whatever — that we can cover, the better off we’ll be. So I think we should just sail east, or northeast or southeast, for as long as possible.

When we finally run out of water, we’ll know that we’ve gone as far as we can.”

Gisella turned her head slowly and regarded the kender. “Those were my very thoughts! Sometimes you surprise me, Burrfoot,” she admitted. “That settles it, then. We stay with the boat for as long as possible.

Take care of the steering part, will you, Woodrow? Be a dear.” And with that decision made, she retired to the confines of her wagon.

Woodrow looked to Tas. “For the time being, Woodrow, just steer away from the cliffs behind us. As long as they’re getting smaller, we’re moving away from them. Once they’re out of sight, which won’t be for some time, we’ll have to rely on the sun.”

“How do you know so much about navigating a boat?” Woodrow asked ingenuously.

“I don’t know anything about navigating boats,” Tas said matter-of-factly. “But I’m a mapmaker, and I rely a lot on the sun when I navigate on land. If it works on land, I can’t think of any reason why it shouldn’t work on water, too.”

Woodrow nodded and watched the cliffs until they later disappeared in moonlight.

Early in the morning of their second day, Woodrow spied a land mass to the north, and by its narrow shape he knew it to be either a large island or a peninsula. He altered course to keep it in sight. “We can chart our progress by how quickly the land passes,” he reasoned.

On the third day they passed through a channel that was perhaps ten miles wide, between the island and another spit of land. After narrowing gradually, the channel suddenly opened wide to the east. After a vote, everyone arbitrarily agreed that they should alter course again and parallel the east-west shoreline.

That evening, clouds hid the stars.

The sun never really came out the third day. Dawn was a dull gray, shrouded in fog. There was virtually no breeze, so the boat, christened Loaner by Gisella, made little progress. But to everyone’s relief, the wind picked up at midmorning, clearing the fog away and raising everyone’s spirits. The gully dwarves were happy enough anyway, having engaged in a game of “Gully Overboard,” in which they kept jumping, falling, or pushing each other off the boat, leaving Woodrow and Tasslehoff to toss them a rope and drag them back to the ship. Even the long-suffering human threatened to leave them in if they continued the game. Only a word from the object of their fascination, Gisella, put a halt to their antics.

The wind continued rising steadily throughout the morning. By noon, Tas was standing in the bouncing bow of the boat, the long hair of his topknot flying over his shoulder, his tunic and leggings soaked by the spray blowing off the water.

“If this keeps up, we should be somewhere awfully soon,” hollered Gisella, trying to be heard above the flapping canvas, slapping waves, and groaning ropes and timbers. Moments later, she retreated to her wagon to escape the wind and spray.

Like ducklings, four of the gully dwarves fell into line and trooped toward the wagon behind Gisella.

“Where do you think you’re going?” hollered Tas, collaring one of the deserters.

“Me cold,” the gully dwarf bellowed. “All wet and blowy here. Warm and dry in little house.”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Tas warned. “You’re all sailors now, and sailors don’t abandon their posts because of a little wind and spray.” At that moment, a thunderclap rolled across the sea and rain started pattering on the deck. “Or rain,” Tas added doubtfully. He hesitated. “Although rain is a lot worse than a little wind and spray.”

The gully dwarves looked at each other, then back at Tas, confused as ever. At least they weren’t retreating to the cabin anymore, but neither were they returning to their positions.

Tas suddenly looked excited. “I know! I’ll teach you a sea chanty.”

Individually steering the gully dwarves back to their assigned spots, Tas started singing.

Come all you young fellows who live by the sea, Kiss a fair maiden and then follow me.

Hoist up the sail and the anchor aweigh, And run with the wind out through Balifor Bay.

Soon, all the gully dwarves were snorting and stomping along with Tas’s song, singing, “Hoy tup the bale in the ankle a day,” and tossing each other in the air.

Already straining to control the sweep, Woodrow was again concerned that the gully dwarves would start tossing each other over the rail. At the speed they were traveling, they’d never be able to stop and recover them this time. He was about to warn Tas of the danger when a flash of lightning struck the sea several hundred yards from the ship. Moments later, a tremendous gust of wind slammed into the little ship, heeling it over on its port side and sending the prancing gully dwarves scurrying for handholds. As the Loaner righted itself, a second gust hit it and with a loud tearing sound, a three-foot rip appeared in the sail.

Tas grabbed the nearest Aghar by the shoulder and hollered, “We’ve got to get it down! The sail! We’ve got to lower it!”

The gully dwarf dashed toward the cabin, too frightened by the storm’s sudden fury to be of any help. Scanning the deck, Tas saw that his entire crew was stampeding toward the cabin or crawling beneath the wagon. The horses reared and snorted and strained against their tethers, and the wagon swayed menacingly.

Woodrow crouched on one knee with the sweep tucked under his left arm and both arms wrapped around the railing. Helplessly, he watched Tas stumble across the deck.

A third gust of wind sent waves crashing across the deck, washing several gully dwarves out from beneath the wagon and up against the opposite rail. They were crawling back to the wagon when a fourth gust filled the sail, stretching it like a balloon. The rip widened in a burst, and then another rip appeared, and then the entire sail split in half, tearing lengthwise and pulling free from the yard. The loose end billowed out over the sea until it reached the end of its sheet, then snapped, twisted in air, tore free from the rope, and dropped into the churning waves.

The remaining, shredded half of the sail slapped into the side of the wagon. The wagon’s door flew open and Gisella appeared, wide-eyed. The wagon bounced and skidded across the deck, then slammed back into the mast. Gisella tried to climb down the stairs but the rocking threw her back into the wagon. Another wave crashed into the side of the wagon, and two of the three ropes securing the wagon to the deck burst under the strain.

“Miss Hornslager!” screamed Woodrow. He watched in horror as the wagon bearing Gisella slid across the tilting deck, straining at the remaining rope.

But the rope held. Then, with a sound that almost stopped Woodrow’s heart, a jagged, white crack appeared in the mast. The front end of the wagon smashed through the ship’s rail, and the wheels dropped over the side. The ship rolled beneath the shifting weight until water washed over the deck. A second later, the entire wagon disappeared over the side of the ship, slipping beneath the waves, followed by the upper half of the mast.

The ship did not right itself, but bobbed and rocked with its deck awash. The horses screamed and pawed at the slippery deck. Seeing that the ship was lost, Woodrow leaped off the steering deck and scrambled to the stump of the mast. With his knife he sliced through the horses’ tethers so they would not be dragged down by the sinking ship.

As the water rose in the cabin, Fondu and the other gully dwarves who had taken shelter there stumbled up on deck. A massive wave thundered down on the upturned hull and the deck rotated even more. Tas heard tumbling and crashing inside the ship as its ballast shifted.

“It’s hopeless!” he shouted to the gully dwarves.

“The ship is sinking! Jump off! Swim for it!”

Woodrow and the horses were already in the water when Tas dove after them. The few gully dwarves remaining on board were thrown in as well when the ship rolled belly-up. Moments later, it slipped beneath the churning surface, leaving only loose planking, knotted ropes, and a twisted, tattered sail behind.

Kender, human, and gully dwarves clung to the floating debris in the chilly water. The rain and wind continued for a short time, then suddenly died away.

Before long, a dim sun poked through the gray clouds.

They bobbed on the debris in silence for several minutes. Neither Tas nor Woodrow wanted to speak, each thinking of Gisella. Fondu finally broke the silence.

“Where pretty-hair lady?” he asked. He looked first at Tas, then at Woodrow. “Fondu no see her.”

Woodrow blinked furiously and would not meet Tas’s gaze. “She’s gone, Fondu,” Tas said hesitantly.

“She was in her wagon when it went over the side.”

“When she coming back?” Fondu asked.

“I’m afraid she isn’t,” explained the kender.

Fondu stared at Tas uncomprehendingly for a second, then opened his mouth wider than any mouth Tas had ever seen and started bawling at the top of his lungs. “Laaaadyyy!” he screamed, with his nose running almost as much as his tears.

“Fondu, quiet!” Tas ordered. Between Fondu’s wails, Tas was sure he had heard a voice. It sounded like someone yelling…

“Yoo hoo.”

Tas looked over his shoulder. There, a couple hundred yards away, apparently sitting on top of the water, was Gisella, waving a soggy kerchief in his direction, A ragged cheer rose from the bobbing mob and in short order they were paddling toward her.

As they drew closer, Tas became convinced that Gisella was sitting on top of the water. The mystery was cleared up when she announced, “Guess what? My wagon floats!”

Fondu was so happy he broke into a garbled chorus of “Come maul yo-yo fellows, Shirley by the sea,” that was soon picked up by the rest of the group. Boks spat a mouthful of sea water at Thuddo and before long the entire group was singing, laughing, spitting, and splashing.

Tasslehoff was almost disappointed when Gisella, standing shakily on the roof of her submerged wagon, hollered “Land, I see land ahead!”

“At last, a good omen,” said Woodrow.

“That’s no omen, boy, that’s land,” Gisella corrected. “That’s dry clothes and something to eat and a place to sleep.” And with those words of encouragement, they started paddling to shore.