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And, if they gained an advantage from the windbreak effect of the trees, they had to suffer an-other
torture they would not have been faced with in open land. The wind, already with a voice like a herd of
mastodons, made the brittle palm branches rattle and scrape until the resultant din was almost more than
human ears could take. She hoped that she would not have to tell Alex or Tina anything important, for
even with her mouth to their ears, they would have trouble hearing her above the chorus of chattering
fronds.
Occasionally, but less often than she would have liked to because the effort required and the time lost
made it dangerous to do very often, she turned clear about and looked to see if Peterson was anywhere
in sight, her heart in her throat each time, sure that he would be there, frighteningly close, still holding his
knife.
But he was not.
They were alone.
After one of these pauses, she turned to go for-ward again and leaped in fright when a coconut and
several palm branches crashed to the earth five feet ahead of them, torn from their moorings by the wind.
Had they taken another two steps, one of them might have been killed or received a skull fracture from
that coconut.
Now, in addition to Peterson and the wind and the rain and the slippery ground, she had another
thing to worry about.
They stepped across the fallen boughs and hur-ried on.
TWENTY-FIVE
In a short while, the land began to fall away again, into a slippery incline, as the second hill in the
island's chain rounded off and fed into another small glen. Here, as in the first depression which they had
crossed, the water swirled between the boles of the trees, up to Sonya's waist, ugly and choked with
what appeared to be seaweed.
She could hardly believe that the slimy stuff was what it seemed to be and, after she had car-ried the
kids across, one at a time, making four trips through the water, she scooped up a trailing mass of this
floating vegetation, and she saw, when she looked at it more closely, that it was indeed seaweed and that
this must not merely be rain-water that had run off from the hills on both sides.
They climbed the hundred foot slope of the third hill, keeping to their hands and knees so that they
could make better time, their faces down so that they saw little more than grass filmed by water, their
hands digging into the grass for support, inching toward the top and level land where they could get up
and walk again.
Sonya was over halfway up the slope when she realized that Tina had fallen behind, rather far
be-hind. Letting Alex to go ahead alone, she returned for the little girl and half-dragged her along.
At the top, Tina gave her a weary but big smile, and Sonya repaid that with a strong hug, hugged
Alex too, and sat down with them to rest, before going on.
She had no idea how far they'd come.
And she had even less of an idea of how much farther they had to go before they'd reach Hawk
House.
However, she would not let herself think of fail-ure. She had to make the most of her famed optimism
which Daryl Pattersen and Lynda Spaulding, at the university, had first made her aware of. Her back
ached from the base of her spine up and across both shoulders, as if she had been squeezed into a brace
meant to torture. Her neck was afire once again, and had driven spikes of pain into her head, right
through the top of her skull, so that the rainwater seemed to be seeping into her brain and scorching trails
across the top of her cerebellum. This did not worry her, because she knew that over-exertion and the
pains of ex-haustion could be cured. Her legs, however, were another matter altogether . . . They were
all quivery with the strain they'd taken, and had she been even willing to consider the slim possibility of
fail-ure which she was not she might have doubted their ability to get her up when the rest period was
over and to carry her on however long was neces-sary; she might have expected them to turn rub-bery,
to bend, wriggle and finally buckle under her. She might have expected to drop on them, soon. But since
she was permitting no thought of failure, she was only worried that, once they reached Hawk House, her
legs might give out on her for good, forever.
She worried a good deal about the kids, for if she were this exhausted, what must they feel like? Of
course, she had helped them along most of the way, and she alone had fought the resistant waters in
those two flooded gullies which they had had to cross. Still, she knew that they must be very tired indeed.
She hoped they weren't close to surrender.
She looked at Tina, who was huddled miserably against her side, the small head slick with water, and
she knew she'd soon have to begin carrying the child the whole way, not just up the sides of the slippery
hills, but on the level ground as well.
That was okay.
She could manage that.
She couldn't, however, carry both of them.
She looked at Alex, afraid that she would see him on the verge of surrender, too. For a moment, she
thought that he had already given in, and her heart sank. He was leaning against the bole of the tree, his
legs splayed out before him, leaning far forward, as if he had collapsed and were uncon-scious.
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