The paddle-wheel boat was bedecked with bright ribbons and flowers; it dazzled under the early morning sun. Even the wood pile was decorated. The steam engine gleamed. The troops of young people filed aboard with much laughter and gaiety. Ten of these, eight of those, sixty-five in all. The boat crew stood apart from the young explorer-foragers, watching them warily, as if afraid the carnival spirit of the morning might damage the boat somehow.
And indeed the infectious exuberance of the young people was dangerous in its spontaneity, drawing into itself the onlookers ashore. The gloom of the past expeditions was forgotten as the boat made ready to churn its way downriver. This was different, the mood cried, these young people had been specially bred and trained for this mission. It was their life fulfillment they sought. Who had a better right to rejoice at seeing life’s goal within reach?
Tied securely to the side of the paddle boat was a fourteen-foot canoe made of birch bark, and standing protectively by it was Mark. He had boarded before the others, or had slept there, perhaps; no one had seen him arrive, but he was there with his canoe that could outrun anything else on the river, even the big paddle wheel. Mark watched the scene impassively. He was slender, not tall, but his slim body was well muscled and his chest was deep. If he was impatient to be under way, he showed no sign of it. He might have stood there for an hour, a day, a week . . .
The elder members of the expedition now came aboard, and the cheering and singing ashore grew in volume. Nominally the leaders of the expedition, the Gary brothers nodded to Mark and took their places in the stern.
Standing on the dock, Barry watched smoke puff up from the stack as the boat started to foam the water, and he thought about Ben and Molly, and those who had not come back, or had come back only to go into the hospital and never emerge. The children were almost hysterically happy, he thought. They might be going to a circus, or a tournament, or to enlist in the king’s service, or to slay dragons . . . His gaze sought Mark’s. The bright blue eyes didn’t waver, and Barry knew that he at least understood what they were doing, what the dangers were, the prizes. He understood this mission meant the end of the experiment, or a new beginning for them all. He knew, and he, like Barry, was not smiling.
“The terrible heroics of children,” Barry muttered.
At his side Lawrence said, “What?” and Barry shrugged and said it was nothing. Nothing.
The boat pulled away steadily now, leaving a wide wake that spread from shore to shore and made waves that broke against the dock. They watched until the boat was out of sight.
The river was swift and muddy, high with runoff from the mountains. Crews had been out for over a month clearing the rapids, marking safe channels among the boulders, repairing the winter damage to the dock at the head of the falls, working on the overland detour. The paddle wheel made good time, and they arrived at the falls shortly after lunch. All afternoon they worked at unloading the boat to transport the supplies to the shelter.
The building at the foot of the falls was a duplicate of the dormitories in the valley, and inside it the large group of travelers found it easy to forget this building was isolated, that it was separate from the others. Each evening the road crew assembled in the building, and the boatmen gathered there, and no one was left outside in the black woods. Here at the shelter the woods had been pushed back to the edge of the hills that rose precipitously behind the clearing. Soybeans and corn would be planted later, when the weather warmed enough. Fertile land was not to be wasted, and those people stationed in the shelter were not to be idle during the weeks between the arrivals and departures of the paddle wheels.
The following day the new expeditionary force loaded the big boat at the foot of the falls, and that night they slept in the shelter. At dawn they would embark on the second phase of the trip to Washington.
Mark allowed no one to handle his pack, or his canoe, which he secured to the second boat. This was the fourth canoe he had made, the largest, and he felt no one else understood the mixture of fragility and strength that combined to make this canoe the only safe way to travel the rivers. He had tried to interest some of the others in canoes, but failed; they didn’t want to think about traveling the wild rivers alone.
The Potomac was rougher than the Shenandoah, and there were ice floes in it. No one had mentioned ice floes, Mark thought, and wondered about the source this late in the year. It was mid-April. The forests screened the hills here, and he could only guess there was still snow and ice in the high country. The paddle wheel moved slowly down the river, its crew busy and alert to the dangers of the wide, swift stream. By dark they were well into the Washington area, and tied up that night to a bridge foundation that jutted from the water, a sentinel left behind when the rest of the bridge yielded to the intolerable pressures of water, wind, and age.
Early the next morning they began to unload, and it was here that Mark was to leave the others. It was hoped he would return within two weeks, with good news about the accessibility of a route to Philadelphia and/or New York.
Mark unloaded his own belongings, unslung the canoe and carefully lifted it off the paddle wheel, and then shrugged his backpack into place. He was ready. A long knife was sheathed at his thigh, a rope hung from his braided steerhide belt; he was dressed in hide trousers, moccasins, and a soft leather shirt. The ruined city was oppressive to him; he was eager to be back on the river. Already the transfer was being made; supplies were unloaded, and stacks of materials that had been found and put in storage near the river were being taken aboard. For a few moments Mark watched, then silently he lifted his canoe, swung it over his head, and began to walk.
Throughout the day he walked amid the ruins, always keeping to a northeast direction that eventually would see him clear of the city, into the forest again. He found a small stream and floated his canoe, following the meandering waterway for several hours before it turned south, where he shouldered the canoe and took to the forest. Now the forest was thick and silent, familiar for all its strangeness. Before dark he found a place to camp, and made a fire and cooked his dinner. His supply of dried food was sufficient for two to three weeks, if he didn’t find other food to supplement it, but he knew he would find wild food. No forest failed to yield fern tips, or asparagus shoots, or a variety of other edible greens. Here nearer the coast, there was less frost damage than inland.
As the light faded he dug a shallow trench and filled it with soft pine needles, spread his poncho over them, pulled the canoe into position to make a cover, and stretched out on the bed he had made. His worse enemy would be the spring rains, he knew. They could be heavy, and unexpected. He made a few sketches and notes, then rolled on his side and watched the dying fire until it was a glow in the blackness, and soon he was asleep.
The next day he entered Baltimore. It had burned, and there was evidence of a great flood. He didn’t explore the ruins. He launched his canoe in Chesapeake Bay and started north. The forest came to the water’s edge here, and from the water there were no traces of any of man’s works. There was a strong current, the effects of an outgoing tide combined with the flow from the Susquehanna River. Mark fought it for several minutes, then headed for shore to wait for low tide. He should cross the bay, he thought, and hug the shoreline there. As he drew nearer the delta of the Susquehanna the water would be rougher and it might be impossible to get the small boat through at all. There were ice floes here, not large, and mostly flat, as if they had broken away from a river that had frozen over and was only now thawing.
He stretched out on the ground and waited for the tide to turn. Occasionally he checked the water level, and when it stopped falling he sat on the shore and watched until sticks he threw into the water started to float northward, and then he set out once again. This time he started to paddle northeast, heading for open water and the other shore.
The turbulence was minor near the shore, but as he drew nearer the center of the bay he could feel the force of the tide meeting the rush of the river and, although little of the fierce battle showed on the surface of the water, it was transmitted through the boat; he could feel it in the oar, in the way the small boat pulled to one side, then the other. His arms strained at the paddle, he could feel the tautness of his back and legs as he fought the current and the tide, and he felt only exhilaration at being in the battle.
Abruptly he was through it, and now the tide carried him strongly northward, and he had only to steer and search the shoreline for the best place to make a landing. It was sandy, with sparse growth; the danger there would be hidden rocks that could pierce the bottom of the canoe. The sun was very low when he felt the first gentle scraping of boat on sandy beach, and he sprang out into the cold water and pulled the canoe ashore.
With his canoe safe on high ground, he stood on the beach and looked back the way he had come. Forests, black, solid-looking, the green-blue water streaked with the muddy water of the river, deep blue sky, the sun low in the west, and nowhere another person, nowhere a sign of human life, no buildings, no roads, nothing. Suddenly he threw his head back and laughed, a joyous, almost childish laugh of triumph. It was his. All of it. No one else wanted it. No one was there to contest his ownership, and he claimed it all.
He whistled as he made a fire of driftwood. It burned with incredible colors: greens, blues, copper flames, scarlet. He cooked his dried corn and beef in sea water and marveled at the taste, and when he fell asleep before the last light had faded, he was smiling.
By dawn the next morning he was ready to follow the shoreline north, searching for the old intercoastal waterway that joined Chesapeake Bay with Delaware Bay. When he found it, little remained of the canal; now there was a wide marsh with cattails and marsh grasses hiding the land and water alike. Immediately on entering the marsh the grasses closed in about him and he was cut off from the world. At times the water deepened and no grasses grew in those places, and he was able to move ahead faster, but most of the day he pushed his canoe through the tough stems, using them, clumps of roots, whatever he could find, to propel himself eastward. The sun rose higher and he took off his shirt. No wind moved among the grasses. The sun lowered and the air became cold and he put his shirt back on. He paddled when he could, pushed against the grasses when he could not use the paddle any other way, and slowly he made his way through the marsh. He didn’t stop to eat or rest all day; he knew he didn’t want to be among the high grasses when the sun went down, when darkness came.
The shadows were very long when he finally felt the difference in the water beneath the boat. He began to move faster now; each dip of his paddle made the boat glide forward in a more natural response, not impeded by the rough, grasping stems that had held him back all day. The grasses parted, thinned out, then disappeared, and there was turbulent, freely moving water before him. He knew he was too tired to fight yet another current, and he let it take him downstream, to land on the shore of Delaware Bay.
The next morning he saw fish. Moving carefully, he opened his pack and found the net he had made the previous winter, to the amusement of the other children. The net was five feet square, and although he had practi............