Adventure Magazine Cover — page 29: what you’re looking at

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

~~ 7° > “2? ty — « ee HL ". - —- ee, 2 i, ll etl Eales i~« = a Pe 2 a = # aS a > — Prisoners of War Tros’ amber eyes met hers more stead- ily than any man’s had done and there was that behind them that Fflur, Cas- wallon’s wife had called the ‘ancient wis- dom,” although Tros was only conscious of it as determination; he knew he must master this woman or lose control of all his prisoners. Far more than Sigurdsen, her brother, she was the pivot of opinion, although her brother doubtless thought he ruled the clan. Suddenly she made him a mock curtsey and went down on deck to bring the ban- dages, carrying the box back on her head as if she were a bond-woman, avoiding the eyes of her own folk, artfully obliging them to see that Tros was making her a menial. But Tros sat down on the up-turned arrow-basket and submitted his face to be bandaged as if he had noticed nothing, pull- ing off the heavy gold band that encircled his forehead and tossing it from hand to hand while she opened his wound with her fingers and sponged it. She understood him That gold band, though it might hang too loosely on her neck if he should place it there, would be a mark of servitude forever. There were letters and symbols graven on it, and although she could not read them she had no doubt they were his name and title. She could not make a bandage stay in place without wrapping folds of lmen under his jaw and around his forehead, so he could not replace the band when she had finished. He gave it to her to hold for him and three of the Northmen made comments ‘that brought blushes to her cheek. She answered savagely, tongue-lashing them to silence. Tros turned his back to her and roared to the hired seamen to man the water-hoist. Mutiny—instant and unequivocal! Maybe the bandage and the absence of the gold band made him look less like a king. The coolness toward him of Caswallon’s. men had had effect, too; and none knew better than those hire- lings that longshore pirates would arrive ere long. Why labor at the hoist when they would need their strength for looting presently, and for carrying away the loot to villages up-river? The tousle-headed, ragged, skin- clad gang defied him noisily, and Conops hurled a wooden belaying pin at the head of the nearest. —_> —_— ee’ oe and od yn ee Oe SE ane, ~~ "Se &> > _ = - Fat Ot 22 Se - ae CO -~" 2 : nee ee - 2 E> ——_ we . - s 27 g= BUT the pin was hardly more abrupt than Tros. He left the poop, cloak flying in the wind, : | like a great birds wooping down on them, seizing the heads of two and beat- ing them against a third, discarding those— they lay unconscious on the deck—hurling a fourth man broadside into half a dozen of his friends, and pouncing on the ring- leader, who had been captain of a vessel of his own until Tros hired him. Tros twisted an arm behind his back until he yelled, then rubbed his nose along the beam of the waterhoist, leaving a smear of blood the length of it. “Man that beam or eat it!” he com- manded. “TI will chop and stuff it down your throats if there’s a drop of water in the bilge at sunset, or one backword from one of you meanwhile!” So they went to work and Tros rolled the three unconscious men toward the trough until the outpour drenched their heads and they recovered, when he cuffed and shoved them toward the beam and they began to labor at it, too dazed to know what they were doing. ‘Then, returning to the poop, he grinned at Sigurdsen, not glancing at Helma but signing to her to come near and interpret. “Did you build your longship, Sigurd- sen?” The Northman nodded. He was sunk deep in a northern gloom and too dispirited to use his voice. ‘Who did the labor? These?” Sigurdsen nodded again, but a trace of pride betrayed itself as he glanced at his fellow-prisoners. . “T—TI taught them all!” he grunted. “Good! Then bid them calk this bireme from the inside as the water leaves the hold; use linen, clothing, frayed rope, anything, so be she floats to Lunden, where we'll beach her on the mud.” “Vour ship is no good,” Sigurdsen said gloomily. “Hah! But her beak sunk Volstrum?’ Tros retorted. “She has some virtues. We will pick her as the crows pick a horse’s ribs, and you and I will build a ship together that shall out-sail all of them!” Sigurdsen stared—hardly believed his ears—grinned at last, coming out of his gloom to order his men to work, with the three women to help them unravel rope to stuff into the leaking seams. But Tros EComicboo <S,.com