Adventure Magazine Cover — page 7: what you’re looking at

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

+ inet Sd ee 2 ee : es = Prisoners of War clear of that, and follow the tide around the coast when it starts tomake. If there’s any trouble with the crew, wake me.” HE WENT below, into the cabin where his father’s body lay on Cesar’s bed, with Cesar’s scarlet cloak spread over it. And for a while he stood steadying himself with one hand on an overhead beam, watching the old man’s face, that was as calm as if Cesar’s tortures had never racked the seventy-year-old limbs, the firm, proud lip showing plainly through the white beard, the eyes closed as in sleep, the aristocratic hands folded on the breast. It was dark in there and easy to imagine things. The body moved a trifle in time to the ship’s swaying. ‘Sleep on!’ Tros muttered. He could not imagine his father dead, not even with the corpse before his eyes. No sentiment, not much emotion, had been lost between them. Tros actually loved his father more that minute than he had ever done. As a prince of Samothrace, deep in _the Inner Mysteries, old Perseus had had scant respect for the claims of human per- sonality, reckoning himself—as he was reckoned by the hierarchs—a failure to the extent that he had married and begotten a son, who might add to the afflictions of the world. He had spared no pains to educate that son, teaching him mastery of fear— since no man may escape fear, but a few may learn to rise triumphant over it—and above all, seamanship; but he had con- ceded nothing to the claims of mere human affection. Not once had he tempted Tros to take the vow of an initiate, although that was his heart’s desire, as Tros well understood. The first law of the Mysteries forbade the use of even the slightest influence, as between father and son for instance, to induce any one to become a candidate for initiation, and Tros had taken full advantage of that. He felt no impulse to devote himself to esoteric aims. He could not stomach non- resistance. His father had died not cursing and not blessing Cesar, who tortured him, but utterly indifferent to Cesar’s crimes provided his own acts should pass the criti- cal judgment of his own conscience. Tros on the other hand ached for revenge and _ determined to have it. He could not have explained why. He had inherited his father’s passion for free will and full responsibility, each man for his own acts. He did not question his father’s right to submit to torture rather than re- veal to Cesar the least hint of what the secrets of the Samothracian and Druidic Mysteries really were; he would have done the same himself. Nor did he question his father’s right to be unvindictive; he was rather proud of the old man’s conquest over self to the point where he could suffer torture and not shriek for vengeance or slaver with sickening meek- ness. He was immensely proud to be the old man’s son. Yet love him, in any ordinary sense, he knew he never had done; and, strangely enough, he hardly hated Cesar. He was the enemy of Cesar; he despised his vices and admired his genius, loathed his cruelty and liked his gentlemanly wit. Old Perseus had been no man’s enemy but all the world’s friend, reserving his own right to be its friend in his own way. Tros gloried in being the enemy of Cesar, of Rome, of any man or any power that dared to come between him and the freedom of earth and sea that his heart told him was a free man’s heritage. He fell asleep at once and his dreams were all of Cesar, Cesar standing on the bireme’s bow in the mist‘at Seine-mouth, laughing, charmingly sarcastic, promising to crucify him by and by, plunging beneath a flight of arrows into the waves and continuing to laugh out of a fog-bank while the bireme pitched over the shoals at river-mouth and left Cesar swimming safely out of reach. . He did not sleep long. He heard Conops shout from the poop and sprang out of the cabin sword in hand ready to deal with mutiny. But there was no mutiny. Conops and a dozen Britons were staring at a Gaul- ish fishing boat not far astern that looked as if it had been rebuilt by Roman engineers; it was plunging in masses of spray toward the British coast, making for Hythe im all likelihood: “See the way they handle her!’ Conops sneered. “Romans, or Ill eat my knife- hilt! Put about, master, and let’s ram them! Did you ever see such landlubbers! Can’t even quarter the sea! Straight from point to point like a plowshare into a field of turnips! There—they swamp!” But the boat was decked, and the deck must have been strong and watertight. She Eomichbooks.co