Adventure Magazine Cover — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Adventure Northmen loosed one wild volley of arrows, the iron-shod ram crashed in under the bilge and rolled her over, ripping out fifty feet of planking from her side. The shock of the collision threw the rowers from the benches and the bireme swung on the tide with her Stern-post not a dozen feet away from the edge of the midstream shoal, then drifted up-stream with wreckage trailing from her bow and the wounded crying that she leaked im every seam. TROS sent Conops below to dis- - cover what the damage really aesee amounted to, and watched the = Northmen. Their longship had gone under sidewise, so that not even her mast was visible. Most of her men were drowning; some had struggled to the mud bank, where the yielding mud sucked them -under. Others, trying to make the creek- mouth, were being carried upstream by the tide; not many were swimming strongly enough to have any prospect of reaching shore. And as if they had been hiding in fox-holes, Britons began appearing from between the trees gathering in excited eroups to cut down the survivors. “The collision opened up her seams. I doubt she'll float as far as Lunden!”’ Conops announced. “How much water has she made oe “Half a cubit, master.” “Orwic, take some of the wounded and man the water-hoist!” So they rigged the trough amidships, and the beam with a bucket at either end that was the Roman ship designers’ concept of a pump.* Tros swung the bireme’s head up- Stream and began to consider that other smudge of brown smoke, half-a-dozen or “more miles away. “Now, if Lud of Lunden really is a good god,’ he remarked to Orwic, “‘we will catch another longship on our ugly snout without Wasting a single arrow!”’ “We might pray to Lud,” Orwic sug- gested. “No,” said Tros. ‘““The gods depise a man who prays. They help men who make use of opportunity. Get below there!” The oarsmen were all leaning overside to watch the Northmen being cut down by Britons as they struggled through the muddy shallows close by the riverbank. * It looked something like a modern ‘‘Walking-beam.” A man stood at each end, who tipped the water out of the buckets into the trough that carried it overside. ‘“Man the benches! Out oars! I'll show you a fight to suit you between here and }?? Lunden Town! CHAPTER III BATTLE! [¢ WAS a desperate, dinning fight that raged to the south of the river and a few miles south of Lunden. The tide slackened and began to change; the bireme made slow progress; it was a long time before Tros made out the mast of another longship be- tween the trees ahead of him. But long be- fore that he could hear and see trees fall- ing, as the Britons felled them in the North- men’s path. Orwic kept up a running com- ment: “That’s a good joke! They have burned Borsten’s village; his father was a North- man! They’ll have thought to scare Cas- wallon and force terms from him. Threats only make him fight! Did you see that tree fall? That’s by Borsten’s Brook. Caswal- lon has whipped a force together in the nick of time. He has them cut off from the river. There! another tree. They’re ringing them around! Land us yonder, Tros; I know a short cut to where Caswallon stands pray- ing to the gods for thirty extra men!” “No!” Tros answered, with a jaw-snap that conveyed conviction. Tros’ eyes were on that longship. He lusted to possess it. It lay bow-out of water on the mud, with a kedge in mid-stream with which to haul off in a hurry in case of need. In all his wanderings he had never seen a ship with such sweet lines; she was almost the ship of his dreams—not big enough, but there were only three men guarding her and she would do for a begin- ning! One of the three men blew a horn- blast as he sighted the dismasted bireme. Tros’ laugh was like an answering trumpet call; he knew that ship was his if only he could manage his excited Britons! It was easy enough to read what had hap- pened: A raiding party of Northmen caught ashore by the Britons and cut off from their . ship; the men left to guard the ship sum- moned by horn to the rescue, only to find themselves in the same trap. “The Britons will burn that ship, Lud rot them, unless I prevent!” Tros muttered. But he was hard put to it to keep his own Britons rowing; they wanted to ram the Gomicbooks.com