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Davies paused to stare around at the pools and channels that were identical to all the others they had passed through, partitioned by crowded trees and roots and vines that differed in no perceptible way from any other part of the swamp. "Sure," he said, and spat into the oily water. "I'll steer by the stars."
Shandy looked up. The high roof of moss and branches and tangled vines was as solid as a cathedral ceiling.
For the next hour, during which Shandy called to the other boats but got no reply, and Beth didn't move a muscle, and the fog got steadily thicker, Davies rowed through the twisting channels, watching the slow current and trying to move in the same direction; he was impeded, though, by dead-end channels, still pools, and areas where the current turned back inland. Finally they found a broad channel that seemed to be flowing strongly. Shandy was glad they did, for the torch was burning more dimly all the time.
"This has got to work," Davies gasped as he rowed out into the middle of the current.
Shandy noticed that he winced as he hauled on the oars, and he suddenly remembered that Davies had burned his hand throwing the mud ball at the swamp-loa. He was about to insist on a turn at the oars when one of the fungus balls on the shore spoke. "Dead end," it croaked. "Bear left. Narrower, but you get there."
To his surprise, Shandy thought he recognized the voice. "What?" he called quickly to the white, blurry-featured sphere.
It didn't reply, and Davies kept rowing down the broad channel.
"It said this is a dead end," Shandy ventured after a moment.
"In the first place," said Davies, his voice hoarse with exhaustion, "it's stuck in the mud, so I don't see how it can know. And in the second place, why should we assume it wants to give us straight advice? We almost took root back there - this lad obviously did. Why should such a one want to give us straight advice? ... Misery loves company."
Shandy frowned doubtfully at the low-flickering torch. "But these ... I don't think these are what we were turning into. We were all turning into normal plants - flowers and bushes and whatnot. And we all seemed to be different from one another. These boys are all alike ... "
"Back, Jack," piped up another of the puffy white things. Again Shandy thought he caught a familiar intonation.
"If anything," said Davies stubbornly, "this channel is getting wider."
One of the fungus balls was dangling from a tree over the water, and as they passed it it opened a flap and said, "Bogs and quicksand ahead. Trust me, Jack."
Shandy looked at Davies. "That's ... my father's voice," he said unsteadily.
"It ... can't be," snarled Davies, hauling even more strongly on the oars.
Shandy looked away and said, into the darkness ahead, "Left, you say, Dad?"
"Yes," whispered another of the fungi. "But behind you - then with the current, to the sea."
Davies pulled two more strokes, then angrily jammed the oars down into the water. "Very well!" he said, and began working to turn the boat around. "Though I expect we'll wind up as mushroom-heads ourselves, giving wrong directions to the next lot of fools to venture in here."
By the guttering torchlight they found a gap in the mudbank, and Davies reluctantly rowed into it, leaving the wide, steady course behind. The cool white light of a spirit ball or two glowed for a moment in the fog behind them.
The fog was moving downriver thickly now, filtering through the tangled branches and vines like milk dripping into clear water; soon it was solid, and their torch was a diffused, luminous orange stain on the gray-black fabric of the night - but the channel they were in was so narrow that by stretching out his arm Shandy could feel the wet shrubbery on either side.
"It is beginning to quick up a bit," Davies admitted grudgingly.
Shandy nodded. The fog had made the night chilly, and when he began to shiver it occurred to him that Elizabeth was clad only in a light cotton shift. He took off his coat and draped it around her.
Then the boat passed through an arch so narrow that Davies had to draw in the oars, and a moment later the craft had surged out onto the face of a broad expanse of water, and they had left enough of the fog behind in the rain forest so that, after a few dozen more downstream oar-strokes, Shandy was able to see the glow of the three shore fires ahead.
"Hah!" he exclaimed joyfully, slapping Davies on his good shoulder. "Look at that!"
Davies peered around, then turned back with a grin. "And look back there," he said, nodding astern.
Shandy shifted around to look back, and saw, back in the fog, the weak glows of two torches. "The others made it as well," he observed, not very pleased.
Beth was looking back too. "Is ... my father in one of those boats?"
"Yes," Shandy told her, "but I won't let him hurt you."
For several minutes none of them spoke, and the boat began gradually slanting in toward shore as Davies let his burned hand do less work. The pirates on the shore finally noticed the approaching boats and began shouting and blowing horns.
"Did he try to hurt me?" Beth asked.
