Evolution

When he had gotten the palm back to camp Ejan immediately got to work. Sliver by sliver he hollowed out the stem of the trunk, taking care to leave the pith intact at stem and stern. He used stone axes and adzes — quickly blunted, yet equally quickly knapped.

Torr helped for the first couple of days. But then he drew away. As the oldest remaining sibling, responsibility now lay heavily on him, and he devoted himself to the basic chores of the family, to staying alive.

After a few days Ejan’s youngest sister, Rocha, brought him a small net bag full of dates. He set the dates down on the stern platform he was carving into the wood, and absently pushed them into his mouth while he worked.

Rocha, fifteen years old, was small, dark, slim — a quiet, intense girl. She walked around the trunk, seeing what he had done.

The hollow now extended through much of the trunk’s length. The trunk’s broad base would be the prow, and Ejan was leaving a broad platform here on which a harpooner could stand. A smaller flat seat at the stern would accommodate the helmsman. It was remarkable to see a boat emerging from the wood. But the great notch Ejan was digging into the trunk was still heartbreakingly shallow, the surfaces rough and unfinished.

Rocha sighed. "You are working so hard, brother. Osa used to put together a raft in a day, two at most."

He straightened up. He wiped sweat from his brow with his bare arm, and dropped another worn ax blade. "But Osa’s raft killed him. The ocean between us and the southern land is not like the placid waters of the river. No raft is strong enough." He ran his hand along the inside of the hollow. "In this canoe I will be tucked safely inside the craft. So will my belongings. Even if I capsize, I will not be harmed, for the boat will easily be righted. Look here." He rapped on the trunk’s exterior. "This trunk is very hard on the outside, but the pith is light inside. The wood is so buoyant it cannot even sink. This is the best way to make the crossing, believe me."

Rocha ran her small hand along the worked wood. "If you must make a canoe, Torr says, you should use bark. Bark canoes are easy to make. He showed me. You can use a single sheet of bark that you hold open with lumps of clay fore and aft, or else you sew it together from strips, and—"

"And you spend the whole journey bailing, and before you have got halfway across, you sink. Sister, I don’t have to sew my hull together, and it cannot rip; my canoe will not leak."

"But Torr thinks—"

"Too many think," he snapped. "Not enough do. I have finished the dates. Leave me now." And he bent to his work, scraping assiduously at the wood.

But she did not leave. Instead she clambered nimbly into the boat’s rough interior. "If my words are of no use to you, brother, perhaps my hands will be. Give me a scraper."

Surprised, he grinned at her, and handed her an adze.

After that the work progressed steadily. When the canoe was roughly shaped Ejan thinned out the walls from the inside, making enough room for two people and their gear. To dry and harden the wood, small fires were lit carefully inside and outside the canoe.

It was a great day when brother and sister first took the canoe out onto the river, Ejan in the prow, Rocha in the stern.

Rocha was still an inexperienced canoeist, and the cylindrical craft would capsize at the slightest opportunity. But it would right itself just as easily, and Rocha learned to extend her sense of her own body’s balance down through the canoe’s center line, so that she and Ejan were able to keep the canoe upright with small muscular counteractions. Soon — at least on the still waters of the river — they were able to keep the canoe balanced without thinking consciously about it, and with their paddles they were able to generate good speed.

After the trials on the river Ejan spent more days working on the canoe. In places the wood had cracked and split as it dried. He caulked the flaws with wax and clay, and he applied resin to the inner and outer surfaces to protect against further splits.

When that was done, he judged the craft was ready for its first ocean trial.

Rocha demanded that she be allowed to accompany him. But he was reluctant. Although she had learned fast, she was still young, unskilled, and not as strong as she would eventually become. In the end, of course, he respected her opinion. Young or not, her life was her own to spend as she wished. That was the way of hunter-gatherer folk like these, and always would be: Their culture of mutual reliance bred mutual respect.

At last, for the first time, the canoe slid out of the river’s broad mouth toward the open ocean. Ejan had loaded the canoe with boulders to simulate the cargo of food and water they would have to take with them for the real ocean crossing, which would likely be a journey of some days’ duration.