Chapter Eight — In Which Phipps is Hot and Tom is Bothered

***

Rocked gently by the motion of the river and sedated by the effective somnolent of exhaustion, Tom rolled over a short time before first light, some part of him expecting Ivanovitch’s early morning clattering or the calls of birds and the native flying and climbing life of the forest, but when none of those came (the running water masking the animal noises) he continued to sleep soundly until the sun rose high over the surrounding hills and its rays struck and shattered on the water and glinted in dancing red spots through his eyelids.  He woke surprised that he had slept so late.  He lay for a few moments wondering if he were ill and the rocking were something inside his head, then he recollected himself and realized where he was and also that he was very hungry.  There were some drawbacks to not having anyone around to wake him and make him work, as that meant there was also no cook preparing the usual camp breakfast which he had become used to.  He raised his head and looked around.

Phipps lay sprawled, half uncovered, hair rumpled and spiky, skin flushed.

“Sir?”

A restless movement and whimpering moan were the only response, and this encouraged Tom to venture to twitch the blanket to more completely cover the boy, who was dressed only in his underthings and might catch a chill.  His hand hovered a moment, and then Tom lightly touched the damp brow.  Phipps was burning up with fever.  Tom rolled somewhat stiffly from his bedding and wobbled to his feet.  The wound needed to be cleaned and re-dressed.  The boy’s fever must be exceptionally high if he had kicked off the blanket in the cool morning air, and his temperature needed to be brought down as quickly as possible without shocking the boy’s system.  Tom wondered if perhaps he shouldn’t have covered him up again, but left the blanket be for the moment.

He climbed up to the seat of the wagon, untied the tarpaulin and leaned in to rummage through the closely packed samples of Brackenstall’s wares.  Something white caught his eye, and touching it he was certain immediately that it would be the right sort of cloth for bandages.  He shook it out:  a christening dress.  He flipped the hemline and touched the delicately scrolled embroidered ‘L’ with his thumb, his chest tight as he thought of his mother and sisters in the sitting room at home, working half the night by candle light.  Yet he paused only for the barest moment, and ripped the long garment decisively before he could change his mind.  The boy needed the bandages.

And what for holding water and sponging from?  One of the dinner bowls would do.  They were identical, the standard bowl which the cook issued each man at the beginning of the trip and which each man was responsible for cleaning; metal bowls enamelled in various colours so that a man would not confuse his with his wagon-mate’s.  Tom reached for Pickering’s, the blue one.  He balled up a piece of the christening dress in the bowl and set it down beside Phipps, who had already kicked the blanket off again (Tom pulled it back over his waist again to offer the unconscious boy a bit of modesty), then rinsed and filled the drinking jug, poured water from it into the bowl, and set about uncovering the boy’s wound.

It smelled bad and was oozing slightly, but bleeding very little, and he daubed at it carefully but quickly until it seemed clean enough.  Phipps was in almost constant motion; small, fretful movements, so Tom decided to leave the wound uncovered for the moment and let it air, and for now he tossed out the water he had used, rinsed the bowl, and began to sponge the boy’s brow in an attempt to lower his temperature.  Phipps made a slight noise in his throat, a catch of the breath.  Tom could see the pulse of blood in the veins of his neck and he recalled that anywhere the blood was near the surface was a good place to cool it, so he carefully touched the cloth to the boy’s neck.  That elicited a small whimper; perhaps it was too much of a variance in temperature.  He changed his tactic immediately, and instead smoothed along down across the boy’s chest in what he hoped was a soothing way and then moved on to the insides of Phipps’s elbows and wrists.  When the boy shivered he stopped and covered him up again.  He seemed to be sleeping quietly, now.  Tom re-bandaged the wound loosely so that air could circulate but dirt and flies would be kept out.

A handful of travel food was all he dared give himself, just enough to stave off hunger.  He drank a good deal of water to make up for the lack of food, and meanwhile turned his mind to what else could be found to eat.  He knew that there were a few sweets and delicacies in the wagon; small boxes of dried and sugared roots and fruits which grew only in Eugenia and of confections produced in Victoria City.  These could possibly keep them going for a few days, but they would hardly be nourishing for the young lord.

No, they needed real food, and soon, if the boy was to heal.  He could fish with a thread and bent needle (his mother had made sure he had a small sewing kit which was buttoned in to one of the inner pockets of his large coat), but even if he could catch something edible he needed fire to cook the fish, and how could he make a fire on the raft?

He could see the possibility of making a small fire on one corner if he could build up a hearth of stones and clay, or sand, to insulate the wood from the heat, but that could only be done if he could reach the shore to gather those materials.

He considered the trees, which continued slipping inexorably by.  How far had the river washed them, now?  There was no way for him to tell.  They had continued rolling on all the night, and the river had turned and twisted while he was asleep.  From where the sun now sat in the sky, not high in the east, he thought they might be travelling in the right direction for Abernetty if they were willing to leave the river at some point and hike through the trackless mountains to the South, but he did not know where he should leave the river nor could the Lord Phipps be expected to begin such a trek any time soon.  Aside from the usual dangers of falling down ravines or starving (assuming the boy survived his present fever, Tom amended to himself) there were several species of large predator which had been identified in the wild lands.  Going ashore for any length of time would be dangerous, therefore, and he resolved that all forays should be brief until Phipps was stronger.

But make some foray he must, otherwise fire, and food, were beyond him.  He set to knocking the top board off one side of the wagon with the back of a small hand axe, but as his hammering commenced Phipps awoke with a shriek.  Tom knelt and hushed the boy until he calmed a bit, though he was still wild-eyed.

“Have they followed us?”

“Who’s that?”  Tom asked.

“The men.  Who killed everyone.  My father won’t give any ransom for me.  They’ll be angry when they find out.”

“I haven’t seen any sign of them following.  Here, have a drink of water.”

Phipps raised his upper body with his good arm, and gulped from the jug appreciatively, Tom holding it for him.  He looked around again, as though expecting the raft to be surrounded by bandits, but said no more at the moment about them following.  “Thank you.  A little more?”

“As much as you like.  It’s good for you.  Need to pee, yet?”

“No.  I don’t think so.”

“Well, perhaps you’re sweating it all out.”

The boy lay back, still breathing hard, and closed his eyes, and it was only a moment before his breathing slowed and he was soundly asleep again.

He worked the board the rest of the way off by dint of twisting and pulling by hand, and then set to whittling it a little shape with his sheath knife, just a narrower and more smoothed area so that he could hang onto one end and not get splinters.  Then he set it in the oarlock from where the steering oar had been lost.  With some experimentation he learned how to angle the raft toward the bank, though it was hardly an exact science, and he despaired of being able to choose his landing spot carefully.  When he came close enough, he pulled his makeshift oar in and began to reach after passing branches, hoping to loop them in to a place where the bank wasn’t too steep.  The first he missed, but the second he tried for he seized.  It dragged him bodily back into the wagon, and with a crack the small branch came off in his hand — and he was glad it had.  “It might have pulled you right off, you fool!” he thought to himself.  “And then what sort of a pickle would you have been in?  Hanging from a tree branch with the raft floating away from you!”

He paused for a few minutes to give Phipps another sponge bath, as he was growing restless again, and as he did this the raft went back to midstream again.

The next chance he got to grab at the trees he made sure his other hand had a firm grip on the wagon, and this time he nearly managed to hold it, but, though the branch bent and the raft nearly came to a stop the tugging never ceased.  The current, he realized, had a good pull when it came to something the size of a raft.  He let go and went to look in the wagon for a rope.  This he weighted with an ornamentally wrought clothes iron for his next attempt.

Again he paused to cool Phipps’s fever, and then he tied the end of the rope to a leading corner of the raft.

Once he had brought the raft back near the shore again he tossed the iron over a tree branch, and paid it out hand over hand so that it came taut gently so that neither the rope nor the branch would be likely to snap.  Once the rope was at it’s length and he thought the iron looked as though he would hold he began to loop the rope around the end of the railing along the side of the raft.  The raft rotated, slowly, and came around closer to the bank, bumping it a little hard, but he continued pulling them slowly back against the current until he could reach the branch, grasp it, and tie another line to it.  He untangled the end with the iron, untied the iron from the rope and then chose another limb to tie that rope to.

“Not all eggs in one basket that way, if the one limb breaks,” he thought.

He took a break for another drink of water and, noting that Phipps was growing restless again, sat down to give him another sponging.  After a moment he decided to wake the boy and try to convince him to drink more water.  It took a little work, and the boy seemed perplexed as he came to consciousness, or possibly slightly annoyed by the intrusion on his sleep, but he drank the proffered water.

“Can you pee yet, sir?”

“What is your infatuation with the bodily processes?”

“It only that you should, you know.  If you don’t take enough water in and let it out again your bladder might turn off.  Or maybe it’s your liver, I don’t remember.  Anyway, it’s bad if you have a fever and don’t drink and pee, I know that much.”

“Kidneys, perhaps?  Well, probably you’re right, in essence.  I’ll drink a little more and think about it.”

Tom felt a bit foolish.  Of course it had been kidneys.  “Could you eat?”

“Is there anything besides the nuts and berries?”

“There’s a little dried meat, too.”

“I’ll try the nuts and berries.  That seems easier.  I suppose I need something.”  He sat up, legs folded under the blanket, and chewed a small hand-full, slowly, and then another, washing them down with copious amounts of water, and gazed out at the river, glancing at Tom occasionally from the corner of his eye.  Tom put this odd, coy look down to embarrassment at being ill and needing tending.

Then for a moment Phipps stopped chewing and sat frozen, staring out across the river.  He passed a hand over his forehead and eyes, swallowed, and took the water jug.  “I thought for a moment I saw a little man over there on the other side of the river,” he said, a little shakily.  “It must have been some animal, but he looked for all the world as though he were walking on his hind feet and carrying something in his hands.  Paws.  Perhaps I’m hallucinating.”

Tom squeezed some water from the rag in the bowl and offered it to him, and Phipps took it, mopping his brow and the back of his neck.

“Thank you.  I think if you could help me up I might need to relieve myself, now.”

Tom averted his eyes and took Phipps’s thin hand and bony elbow to lift him up, and the boy moved weakly but under his own power to the other side of the wagon.  Tom tucked a piece of dried meat into his mouth, and pulled out his sewing kit, chose a large and particularly rusty needle to bend, threaded it, and hooked a little of the dried meat upon it.  When Phipps returned he was just pulling down a likely-looking branch to use as a rod.

“Fishing?  I say, a good fish might do.”  It might have sounded something like enthusiasm if Phipps hadn’t been so weak.  He nearly collapsed to a sitting position, and pulled the blanket over his lap again.  “But we have no way to cook it.”

“I think I can build a fireplace.  I need rocks.  Do you think you would be all-right to take care of yourself while I found some?  I could leave you the gun.”

“Surely.  I can sit and fish.  But you take the gun in case you see game.”

“I won’t be able to carry the gun and the rocks.  In fact...” he looked up at the bank, which was steep and tangled, “I won’t be able to carry much with nothing to carry it in.”  He puzzled over this for barely a moment, however — there were several bolts of cloth in the wagon.  He pulled one out and had a pieced cut off and fashioned into a sling in two minutes.

Meanwhile, Phipps had laid down and closed his eyes again.  Tom decided that, rather than wake the boy, who looked so exhausted and frail curled up on his good shoulder, he would make a small frame to hold his makeshift fishing pole and when he came back with his building materials he would drop the line in the water and keep half an eye on it while he made his fireplace.  It was only a few minutes before he had puzzled out a contraption which would allow the ‘pole’ (rather short for a regular pole, but well suited to such an idea) to swivel and flip the other, weighted, end up when the line was pulled by a fish, but remain firmly lashed to it’s frame all the while and attached to the edge of the raft.

As he took up his sling the boy began to twitch and moan again in his sleep.  His fever had risen again, and Tom was reminded that he didn’t dare leave the boy alone and asleep.  He took up the bowl of water and mopped at the boy’s arms, speaking to him softly until he woke, blinking.

“You need to stay awake, sir, to keep your fever down and to protect yourself.  Here is the gun.  It’s loaded and ready.  Don’t shoot me.  Do you understand me?”

“Yes, yes, of course.”  The boy looked bewildered, again, but took up the jug of water and managed to sip at it with one hand.  “I’ll stick my toes in the water, that will keep me cool.”

Tom shuddered at the thought of water beasts, even if the one he thought he had seen had probably been a log — no-one yet knew what kinds of animals were hiding in all the corners of the world, especially in deep water.  But perhaps it was shallow enough near the shore that there might not be any very large native life ready to eat Phipps’s toes.  “If you see anything, take your feet out immediately.”

Phipps gave him an odd look, but all his looks were odd.  “Of course.”

Tom nodded, and found himself a few hand and foot holds in the brush and roots of the bank, and had shortly, though not without a few scratches, pulled himself up to the top and stood looking about into the forest.  Every step would be a struggle through brush and fallen leaves.  He looked back down at the raft.  Phipps was looking after him, and waved, flashing white teeth in a quick smile.

It was only after he was seeking stones in earnest, a few minutes later, that he began to wonder if the particular odd look Phipps had given him was because his tone had perhaps not sounded deferential enough to match their divergent stations.  He was doing his best, but he was not used to interacting with people not near him in class, and the boy’s current incapacitation combined with his slight build was making it even more difficult because he was thinking of him as being much younger than himself.  Just how old might Phipps be?  He could possibly be older than Tom!  What an odd thought!  He resolved that he would try harder to be respectful; he didn’t want to sound as though he thought himself above his station.  And the boy needed some clothing.  Certainly at the moment he wasn’t feeling cold, but in the name of modesty if nothing else.  Pickering’s spare set of clothing would have to do, and there might be another shirt in the inventory, he thought he had seen one.

Soon he had a few stones — not enough by any means, but as many as he could carry — and he needed to return to the raft, where Phipps sat with toes in the water his blanket wrapped around his shoulders and across his lap.  The younger boy had pulled in some small water animal that looked like a slimy wet sock filled with sand, and he looked a little discouraged, but Tom assured him that even if it wasn’t an eating fish it might be used as bait.  He cut it up with his sheath knife, found Pickering’s clothes and set them down next to Phipps, saying nothing about the clothing or Phipps lack thereof, and climbed the banking again on another foray.

When he returned with more rocks the boy was dressed, with sleeves and trouser cuffs rolled up.  Though far too small for Tom, the clothing was large on Phipps, and with his hair going frizzy he looked as though he were dressed up to play a tramp in a pantomime.

There was as yet no more result from the fishing pole, but soon after Tom began working on his fireplace (laying down a bed of large rocks and mortaring them with mud from the riverbank) Phipps, with a weak cry of delight, pulled in something which, though small, looked like the sort of fish that had been stocked in many rivers for sport, something which could be eaten and not poison a human or give them gas.  Tom congratulated him, and strung it on the side of the wagon, and Phipps sat back to more fishing, seeming quite smug.  Tom smiled to himself as he climbed the bank again for more rocks.  It seemed the boy liked feeling a little useful.

As he had cleaned the forest in the immediate area of any rocks that suited his needs, this foray took him further from the raft than any previously had, but still the gunshot was quite loud enough to make him jump.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Contents of Swept Away.
To index of Derien's Writings. To top of Derien's Trivial Little Place
Contact: derien at rulesthe dot net