Ann left, with no more protest than a backward look. But at the last moment she ran back to kiss Wright on the mouth....
And when Ed was returning from the second flight, which had carried Dunin and four other giant children to the island—when it was night and the red eye of the lifeboat was slipping down from above the hills, then the drums began.
4
Paul heard the drums from within the room that was his and Dorothy's—merely a section of the thatched lean-to inside the fortress wall, but Dorothy had given it the reality of a living place. There were no chairs: one sat on a rug which was a cured uskaran pelt, a gift from Abro Brodaa, whose people had hunted down the tigerish beast after it raided her village. The bed was only a clumsy framework with an asonis hide stretched across it. But the shelter had become dear with use, and Dorothy had hung a few of Paul's paintings on the walls—a portrait of Mijok, one of Christopher Wright which had caught something of the old man's brooding alertness. The red jungle flowers were too cloyingly rich to be kept here, but Dorothy had found a blue meadow shrub, and a white bloom that hid in shady ground and recalled the scent of jonquils....
It was too dark to see her plainly; Paul knew her eyes were open on him. Barely audible against his shoulder, she said, "I thought I'd be insatiable. I only want to be near and not think." Nevertheless thought goaded her. "Ten thousand—ten thousand—What can you do?"
All he could say was rehearsed, mechanical, and she had heard it before. "Frontal attack first, because the pygmies couldn't be led into anything else. But I shall turn it into an ordered retreat—to the island. Drive south, skirt the southern end of the hills, then straight for the coast. We'll be at the island in—oh, soon—"
"But the range—the coastal mountains opposite the island—you can't cross them—they rise so sheer—"
"Remember the river that flows almost due west from these little hills? It comes to the sea north of the range. We'll make rafts to get down that, I think. There aren't any falls. At the coast we'll contrive something—dugouts with outriggers. I've already shown old Rak how to make one; he may be working on it now."