Chapter 5

The following morning, they ate breakfast and then left. The weather was cold and rainy when they went out of the cottage. Nika seemed very surprised when she experienced the cold humid air of the morning. Vincent figured that it was probably because of the fact that she was not used to such a low temperature where she lived.

Both of their knapsacks were fully loaded and their sleeping bags rolled and tied on top. Vincent was carrying his rifle by the strap over his shoulder while his handgun and knife were around his waist. Nika also had her handgun and knife around her waist while her bow hung around her shoulder with the arrows in a holster behind her back.

Vincent had insisted that she should wear a shirt with the beige shorts he had bought her. However, when he tried to convince her to wear the boots he had bought her, she refused to put them on. She had walked barefoot all of her life and Vincent figured that there was no use forcing her to wear boots now. To an observer watching them leave the cottage, they would have made an odd sight indeed as they slowly walked toward the rock wall. He, with his rifle in hand and she with her bow and barefoot.

As soon as they were inside the cave, he managed to roll the large stone back into place so that it would almost completely block the entrance. Since he didn't know for how long they would be gone, he didn't want anyone coming to his cottage looking for him and maybe discovering the entrance to the cave in the process of searching for him. Once this was done, he made her close her eyes and guided her onto the flat plate of the arch. They both stepped on it at the same time while he held her in his arms as they waited for the arch to take them to Nika's world.

The minute that they stepped out of the cave on Naka's world they felt the difference in the warmth of the air. The sun was just rising and the temperature was quite warm already.

Nika became very agitated when she opened her eyes once she was outside the cave. She began to talk very fast and Vincent realised that it was her wish to get away as fast as possible from that place. The first thing he did was to take his bearing with the compass. Previously he wasn't sure if the compass would work on Nika's world since he had no way to know if the planet had a magnetic field or not. He was greatly relieved when he saw the needle oscillate back and forth to finally stop and point in a fixed direction. Much to his surprise also, he then realized that the direction they had been walking the last time they had been on Nika's world, had indeed been approximately southward. Whereas the mountain had been his only point of reference the last time, he now had his compass to guide him.

Since he didn't want to be travelling once again in the territory of the Arons, he figured that if they were to travel southeast this time instead of straight south they might not meet them. After all, he was on an exploratory expedition and any direction was as good as another. Of course, he had no way to know what he would find if he went southeast. There was always the possibility that they could encounter much worse than the Arons, but he was willing to take that chance.

The walk downward toward the foot of the mountain went fairly fast. Nika was in a hurry to get as far as possible from the sacred mountain and it did contribute a lot to the progress they made. By noon, the terrain became a gentle grass-covered slope. When he turned back to have a look at the mountain, Nika once again repeated the word "vopa". It was her way of telling Vincent that the mountain was a sacred place and bad things could happen to them if they did not get far away from it.

Gradually the short grass was replaced with much taller grass. Then bushes started to appear here and there and most of them had berries. Vincent couldn't identify any of them and he didn't dare to taste any of the abundant fruit.

They moved on for another hour then they stopped near the bank of the river. The last time he had come near the river he had taken a southwest course and now they were walking in a more easterly direction and the region was all unknown to Vincent. They made use of the pause to eat some dry meat and a few biscuits. He figured that they were about ten miles downstream from the position that they had been the last time he had gone near the river. The river had been flowing in the general direction toward the south then, but now it was blocking their progress to the southeast as it was flowing in an easterly direction.

They followed the bank of the river for a while in the hope of finding a place where they could cross it since it was too wide to swim across with all of their equipment. On the other bank of the river, using his field glasses he could see that the tall grass was growing everywhere and it was even much taller. He was thus grateful that they were on this side of the river.

Gradually, after a couple of hours walking the topography changed again and they came to the edge of an area with trees growing here and there. In between the trees, tall grass took all of the space. It was a perfect place for an ambush and Vincent was reluctant to make his way into such a terrain. The grass was as high as his head now in places and it did remind him of cornfields in his world. But here the grass grew much thicker than corn would. The river cut straight into the tall grassland and he could see that both banks of the river were covered with it also, thus making it impossible now to follow the river along its bank.

He now had to make a decision. Either they could try to go on and make their way into the tall grass while walking parallel to the river - which was once again flowing directly south - or they could try to cross the river and walk perpendicular to it in the hope that they could find some sort of trail. Either choice meant that they would have to move through the tall grass.

The river looked relatively still and it was indeed a highway toward the south. As Vincent looked at it he thought how much easier it would be if they had a canoe or a boat of some sort.

The sun was getting low in the sky and they made camp for the night in a clear area just on the shore of the river. He still recalled Nika's reluctance to lighting a fire the last time they were here and he therefore chose to do without one.

While they were quietly eating, he looked around everywhere. There was just enough light to see clearly about fifty feet or so, but still he did notice the abundance of dead trees and branches everywhere around them. He suddenly got an idea that could make their progress easier. Why not build a raft and let the current of the river carry them southward? The river was flowing in that general direction and it was certainly not the lack of logs that was preventing him from doing this since he could see many of them nearby. They could tie three or four logs together with the ropes that they already had and if the logs were dry enough, the raft would have enough buoyancy to float them down the river. The water was calm and the current was slow thus the project was quite feasible he told himself.

The next morning he did build a fire. For one thing, during the daytime the flames were much less visible than they were in the evening and besides, since they were not going to stay very long in this place it was not as important as it was the previous night. He therefore used very dry wood - of which there was lot - and thus reduced to a minimum the amount of smoke given off. Another reason that Vincent wanted a fire going was his strong habit of drinking coffee in the morning. Ever since he was sixteen, he had always begun his day with a cup of hot coffee. He had a good supply of coffee in his knapsack and since there was plenty of clear water in the river; he saw no reason for changing his habit.

While Nika cooked the salted bacon and boiled the water, he went to work on building the raft.

It didn't take him long to slide and roll five thick logs parallel to one another until they were all at least a third in the water and floating. He knew that once the logs were tied together, if they were not at least partly floating it might be too heavy to move the raft. Since he wouldn't be able to roll them then, he had to reduce the overall weight by having part of the load floating so that he and Nika could push the raft farther into the river. He next managed to tie the five logs together so that they would remain in place and not roll once they were in the water.

Before leaving on their new raft, they ate breakfast and talked a little. He took the opportunity to teach Nika a few more words while she made him understand that she was still very interested in going toward the south where her village was.