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Updated: May 19, 2025
"Nobody will bother about you. Just sneak in and see what happens. If anybody sees you, keep going." He was all excitement, and in spite of Anina's protests wriggled about continually, trying to see where they were. The house that the girl had pointed out lay only a few hundred yards ahead.
They swept onward, Mercer keeping the boat offshore as best he could. "Haven't you any idea where we are, Anina? How far along do these cliffs extend?" A huge, jagged pinnacle of rock, like a great cathedral spire set in the cliff, loomed into view ahead. Anina's face brightened, when she saw it. "The way to the Water City," she cried. "A river there is ahead. Not so very far now."
There was a place still farther up in a very wild, broken country, where the river ran through a deep, narrow gorge, and the trail followed a narrow ledge part way up one of its precipitous sides. Anina's eyes sparkled with eagerness as she told of it. "There, my friend Ollie, we stop them. Many loose stones there are, and the path is very narrow." Mercer saw her plan at once.
"It is Anina's thought that they will all go, for they fear this earth-man much and all would go to make sure of him." I could not feel it was right for us to let Anina do so daring a thing, and Mercer agreed with me heartily. But Anina insisted, with a fire in her eyes and flushed cheeks that contrasted strangely with her usually gentle demeanor.
As he fumbled at the knots he heard Anina's soft, anxious voice calling: "Hurry, Ollie, hurry!" The shouts from the woods continued. The knots loosened finally. The boat slid back away from the bank; with the pole Mercer shoved the bow around. An instant later Anina had started the mechanism, and in a broad curve they swung silently out into the river.
The girl alighted on the stern of the boat for a moment; Mercer slid the cloth over his face and held himself motionless. Then he heard Anina's voice calling to him softly. He slid the cloth back; the girl had gone. "She says Tao's men live, there large house, of wood," said Anina, pointing off to one side. Mercer nearly rapped his head against the seat above him in his excitement.
He was sick and faint from what he had seen with the realization of what he had done. Flames were rising all about him. The room was full of smoke. He held his breath, finding his way back somehow to the stairway, with the agonized screams of the men ringing in his ears. He caught a glimpse of Anina's white face as she stood there where he had left her. "Good God. Anina! Go back! Go back!
But we've got to do something." Then he asked her about the lay of the country between the shore of the sea and the Lone City. Anina's English was put to severe test by her explanation; but she knew far many more words than she had ever used, and now, with the interest of what she had to say, she lost much of the diffidence which before had restrained her.
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