“How?”
“The shore stops the wind.”
Gusts of it came in a baffling way; then these, too, ceased. They drifted rather than sailed into a place of shelter, where the trees looked down into a water like glass. The blackness of the rock near the shore made the water seem deep as the pit. Chigo and the boy helped the boat forward by paddling with her bottom boards. Hi also took a bottom board and paddled, with thoughts of that machine of which he had talked to Carlotta only the day before. All four of them stared ahead for some sign of soldiers: they could see none.
“No commandant here,” Hi said.
“Siesta,” the padron said.
The boat edged slowly into the Carpinche river towards a village among the trees, which towered up there to a vast height. The forest made the place dark, though glaring light fell beyond. Giordano’s boat lay tied to the pier in front of them. She had lain there for perhaps a couple of hours. “Oh, if I had only stayed in her,” Hi thought, “I might have been in Anselmo by this time.”
They edged alongside the pier and made fast.
“No commandant here to report to,” Hi said.
“Ah, the commandant,” the padron answered. “That man a bad man. He know there no commandant.”
“Is there an inn here where I could get a horse?”