Echoes of the Fourth Magic by R. A. Salvatore Page B

the devastation, it seemed.
    Again Mitchell turned to the physicist, and again Reinheiser merely shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.
    “Now we’ve got to pray for some rain or a place to land,” Ray Corbin reminded them. “Blue skies won’t fill our water bottles.”
    But the men paid little attention to Corbin’s words. Their salvation was at hand and they would hear no more of death. Not now.
    The raft continued to drift in an easterly direction for the rest of the afternoon and through a beautiful, crimson sunset. And that night, clear and cool, the stars came out, a billion it seemed, and Del was overjoyed to witness their twinkling for the first time in weeks. Truly it was a night to lie back and appreciate the gentle sway of the ocean below and the vastness of the heavens above, far beyond mortal comprehension yet intimately pleasing to the soul. So the men lay serenely about the perimeter and unanimously agreed upon a pact that if anyone awakened before dawn, he would rouse the others, so they, too, might enjoy the first wonderfully normal sunrise. One by one they drifted into the comfort of untroubled dreams.
    Del opened his eyes just before dawn, the sky a deep blue as the still-hidden sun worked the inevitable transition from the black of night. He stirred the others and the raft became noisy with shuffling and yawning as they all positioned and prepared themselves for the coming event.
    They talked and joked and stretched the night away with complacent groans, but when the watery rim of the eastern horizon glistened suddenly in sparkling reflection and the sky above it steadily pinkened, the men hushed in unison.
    It came as the visual music of the cosmos, timeless perfection; the first ray of the sun peeked at them across the mirror-calm water. She mounted higher, the giver of light, on the unseen, untiring wheels of spherical order. Seven men stood as one and applauded, and in every mind came the fleeting realization that before them was a moment of spiritual awareness, too often taken for granted. For most, the thought would pass as quickly as the dawn, rekindled far too infrequently to make any difference in their character. But for Jeffrey DelGiudice, the experience proved lasting. Never again would he look at the beautiful world about him in quite the same way.
    When dawn turned to day, though, the men discovered a new problem. The raft sat still on the water, nothing but unmoving blue ocean as far as the eye could see. Corbin’s warnings about the water supply loomed suddenly before them. They had dared to believe that the currents that had pulled them from the devastation would be their path to salvation.
    This newest dilemma was more than Thompson could take. He leaped to his feet and punched at the sky. “Will you get it over with?” he screamed to God above. “Bastard! If you want us dead, then do it now and no more games!” He looked around suddenly, as if a revelation had stricken him, meeting his seated companions’ unbelieving expressions with a sincere look of understanding. “That’s it! Don’t you know?” he howled with apparent glee. “It’s all a game!”
    Mitchell turned a menacing glance at Brady and Corbin and warned in all seriousness, “Control that idiot or he’s going overboard.”
    But even as the captain spoke, Thompson dropped to theraft, alternating wild laughter and sobbing. Tears streamed freely down his face and he kept whispering, “Just a frigging game,” desperately begging anyone to agree with him.
    Later that morning they drank the last of the water, and then sat helpless, quiet, betrayed. How long would it take? each of them now wondered.
    Those contemplations were stolen by a loud splash, and then another.
    “Dolphins!” Doc Brady shouted as a large bottle-nosed dolphin broke the surface and arrowed into the air. In seconds the water around the raft churned as dozens of dolphins danced and soared all about them, silver-flitting needles weaving