Read Dai-San - 03 for Free Online

Moichi’s keen nose; the lookouts were blind.
    Sometime later, those few still on deck could just make out the aching cries of the gulls as they wheeled over invisible cliffs.
    Land!
    Ronin stood beside Moichi in the closeness of the darkness and the heat.
    ‘Is it Ama-no-mori?’ The first words he had uttered in days.
    ‘We have sailed in the right general direction, Captain. I have tried to correct as best I know how but—’ He shrugged into the night.
    ‘Then the chances are that it is not.’
    ‘What we have before us, Captain, is an uncharted island. Ama-no-mori is an uncharted island.’
    ‘That is hardly sound logic.’
    Again the massive shoulder lifted, fell.
    ‘Unfortunately, my friend, that is all that is left us.’
    He gave the order to heave to.
    At first light, with pink staining the flat sea behind them and all the topsails furled, they sailed in.
    It was a humpbacked slice of land, shimmering emerald green, seemingly all jungle, dense and entangled. Great blue rocks jutted in a naked headland just to port over which sprays of gulls wheeled and cried. Directly ahead, a wide beach swept away to starboard.
    Ronin gazed in fascination. Could this crescent of verdant land rising from the ocean’s depths be Ama-no-mori, home of the fabled Bujun? Could this be his journey’s end at last?
    The shore loomed up at them and Moichi called for the ship to lie to. Men raced through the shrouds. He ordered the first sounding.
    The sea was mottled: now gray-green, now blue-white, and perhaps this is why the lookouts failed to give the alarm. In any event, the ship would not heave to; perhaps she was caught on a tide. They heard the crashing of the breakers abruptly close and Moichi yelled to the helmsman: ‘Hard aport!’ It made no difference. The helmsman dragged at the wheel but the Kioku, following some more powerful tenant, leapt straight ahead. Ronin saw Moichi running towards the helmsman to help him but it was far too late.
    A moment later, the Kioku careered madly on to the jagged, saw-toothed spine of the coral reef lying barely a fathom beneath the creaming waves. It reared up like an animal in pain as the living mass ripped away its keel and rent its hull. The vessel shivered and splintered with such suddenness and force that men scrambling to get out of the way were impaled by flying shards of wood and metal.
    In the ensuing explosion, the restless sea engulfed them all. Men were flung headlong onto the cracked spine of the reef, their bodies ripped to shreds by the impact with the natural bulwark.
    Ronin sank into the sea but as he did so he relaxed his body, willing himself limp despite the screaming in his brain. All about him were flailing lumps, dark and jagged, haloed by churning bubbles, but he forced his eyes to remain open, alert for debris which might pin him to the sea bottom by its weight, searching for the first sign of the spiked coral which would flay him alive.
    His lungs full of air, he dived deep, kicking with the powerful muscles of his legs, and he sank down below the awful turmoil.
    An infinity of blue, dappled and darting, all perspective gone. It became calm and he devoted himself to concentrating on the feel of the tidal flow against his body. Somewhere there must be a gap in the barrier; this tide could take him there. He knew he could not fight the sea. He swam with it.
    Bubbles streamed from his sleek body. Already his lungs were beginning to ache and he yearned to cast his heavy sword from him. The blue became dense as luminosity drifted away on another tide, and shadows, magnified to titanic proportions by the lens of the water, played over his moving form. Abruptly, the dark red of the coral reef loomed at him, balking his way. And still he swam with the tide, feeling its febrile pull sucking at him. His lungs were on fire and he felt his throat constrict; he forced down an urge to open his mouth, suck in on air that was not there. Still—But now he felt the tide