Adventure Magazine Cover — page 39: what you’re looking at

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

ORS a RE Sp De gt Re a OR gg LO Ls yt Mey ag | Pte eT Te ae Maes te ae ne WS, Ro tees ras 2 : = og Z Prisoners him, Helma paying out the coils as the long- ship drifted away, beam to the tide, Tros © straightening her with slow dips of the port oars. “Make fast!” Helma, sea-king’s daughter to the mar- row of her young bones, took three turns around an oaken bollard in the stern and held that until the warp began to feel the strain, paying out a foot or two until vibra- tion ceased, before she made fast to the other bollard. “Both banks—way!” Tros thundered and began his “Yo-ho’’ song, while Helma beat time and the mud boiled blue around them. But the bireme stuck fast, though the longship swung and swayed, heeling to one side or the other as the humming warp took the strain to port or starboard. Conops yelled suddenly. A torch came curving out of darkness to the bireme’s deck, followed by yells from the longshore Britons as Conops caught that one and tossed it over- board. Then another torch, and another. “Row! Yo-ho! Yo-ho!” The ash oars bent and the rowers sweated in the dark. Helma ran between the benches, whirling a rope’s end, beating the Britons’ backs. No need to urge the North- men; they were working for dear life, where- as the Britons were in favor of the longshore pirates. Tros labored at the helm to keep the long ship straight and haul the bireme off the mud at the same angle that she struck. But the warp hummed and nothing hap- pened, except that torch followed torch so fast that Conops could hardly toss them overboard. Then Conops yelled again and vanished like a bat toward the bireme’s bow. There was shouting, splashing and a red glare in the darkness at her bow-end—a thump of wood and iron as Conops levered the great anchor clear and dropped it over-side —yells as it fell on heads below. Then the glare increased; they were bringing more torches and burning brush- wood. A dozen arrows flitted through the darkness near the longship’s poop. Tros roared, bull-throated, to the rowers for a final effort; but they ceased, drooped, gasping on their oars, and the longship slowly swung inshore as the warp held her stern against the tide. Tros did not dare to let his crew of Britons get too near the riverbank; they would of War mutiny and join their friends. Nor could he let the warp go; he would have died rather than leave Conops at the mercy of drunken savages. “Now if Lud of Lunden would give mea south wind——” But Lud did better. He made some one mad. Tros would have needed time to set the sail. A shadowy boat flitted through the darkness and shot close up to the bireme’s bow. A flat blast on a cow- horn split the night. Followed yelling. The red glare faded, giving place to moving shadows and din or argument. Conops re- turned in leaps to the bireme’s stern and _ shouted, waving both hands. “Way! Way! Yo-ho!” Tros thundered. Helma plied the rope’s-end; the exhausted oarsmen strained, half-mutinous; the long- ship heeled and turned her head to mid- stream, until suddenly Tros laid his whole weight and strength on the steering-oar and the bireme slid gently backward off the mud. The tide had lifted her at last. They towed her stern-first for a mile, until the longshore shouting died in the dis- tance. Then Tros backed oars in a wide reach of the river and lay alongside until Conops could make the warp fast in the bow, so as to bring the bireme’s head up-stream. - ‘Who was it saved us?” he asked Conops. “Tide and a madman, master! Skell came over-river, blew a horn-blast, startled them, told them then he knew Cesar’s gold ~ < was in the bireme, offered them half of it if they would cut the-warp and scare you off before they set fire to anything, kept them talking until the tide crept under her. ~ This Lud of Lunden is a pretty decent sort of god!” “Aye, Lud of Lunden! Aye,” Tros mut- tered. ‘“‘Aye. I knew there was a reason for preserving Skell! Lud of Lunden! Tf will make a little giftlet to that godlet. I believe he smiles on effort. He shall laugh!” CHAPTER VII IN LUNDEN POOL GRAY, wet dawn was paling im the sky when Tros dropped anchor in the pool below the ford by Lunden Town. Caswallon’s mouse-hued wooden roof, green= splashed with lichen, loomed through drift- ing mist between the autumn-tinted oaks. Tros sighed for his sun-lit Mediterranean, ecomicbooks.com —