Adventure Magazine Cover — page 86: what you’re looking at

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

78 the poop, and rolled themselves up in their cloaks to sleep. An hour before the dawn they were awakened by the shouts of the shipmen, the clatter of oars and the tumult of the sails and cordage, as the Sancta Spiritu pulled out of the harbor, and made sail, keeping as close inshore as the conformation of the land permitted. Matteo and Ali for want of definite occupation, amused themselves by inspect- ing their floating home and their fellow- passengers. THE Sancta Spiritu was about one 2 @ hundred and thirty feet long and “SesS twenty-five feet in the beam at the Paoiaeet point amidships. She had one stur- dy mast forward of amidships to which was rigged an immense square sail adorned with a fanciful picture designed to represent the Holy Spirit standing on a cloud. At bow and stern her squat hull was built up into massive cabins or block-houses capable of being cut off from the adjacent decks. Bulwarks, shoulder high, guarded the waist- deck, which was lined on either side with the benches of the galeotti, heavy-thewed Ttalans and Slavonians from the Dal- matic shore. Beneath this deck stretched the wide interior of the hull, floored with the sand and gravel of the ballast, piled with cargo, water-casks, bales aud chests. To one side half a dozen horses were huddled in a nar- row pen. Beyond them several sheep and a bull tottered with the uneasy motion of the ship. Chickens squawked in coops. Men and women huddled about tiny braziers, cooking food or sleeping. Children wailed. A dense, fetid smell overlaid everything. “Phaugh!” gasped Matteo, when they had made the tour from end to end between decks. ‘‘This place is enough to give one the plague. Let us try the fresh air above.” On the upper deck they encountered passengers of their own degree, pilgrims and merchants, several of whom had the honor of sharing the patrono’s cabin in the poop. There were priests, monks and bur- gesses and three bearded Greeks with haughty, weak faces. “Not a man-at-arms in the lot,’ com- mented Ali, as he climbed after his master up the ladder to the poop, where two ship- men handled the cranky rudder which Adventure kicked in the heaving swell. “No wonder the Pisan was so anxious to have two used to mail aboard her!” “But the galeotti have the look of being men of their hands,” said Matteo, pointing to the hairy- chested fellows who hauled at ihe ropes of the sail so that full advantage might be taken of the shifting wind. “Aye, belike,’ agreed Ali doubtfully. “T know nothing of warfare on the sea, lord, but it seems to me this craft is ill-fitted for fighting. She is slow and clumsy, and there is much space to be defended.” “Why worry?” adjured Matteo cheerful- ly. “Belike we shall come to our journey’s end with never a chance to draw blade from sheath.” Indeed, the Sancta Spiritu made slow time, save when another vessel loomed on the horizon, and the galeotti flocked to the oars, no matter how potently favorable might be the wind. Yet they sailed with- out undue adventure throughout that day, and the following morning put into Tyre, where they tarried twenty-four hours, loading and unloading cargo. Leaving Tyre, they pointed up the coast for Beyrout, but head winds baffled them, and though the galeotti fought with the bucking oars they might scarcely keep head- way against the gale. Great was the agony of the passengers, and Matteo found cause for thanksgiving that he was miraculously immune from the nausea of the sea which made an inferno of between decks and the cabins. As for Ali, he hung with his head over the rail for a day, and then mastered the affliction. The moderating of the tempest inspired hope in even the most forlorn of the com- pany, but on the third day, as they were beating northward slowly under _half- manned oars, a stranger galley sped out from a cove of the coast on their right hand. Instantly, all was bustle and confusion. The galeotti off watch were aroused and tumbled up to the oars. Messengers were sent to summon the patrono and the comito. The four mariners, who were called bales- trieri, the armorers of the crew, broke out the stores of bows, cross-bows, swords, bills and axes from the hold beneath the patro- no’s cabin. A sorry wailing rose from the frightened passengers. Matteo and Ali made their way at once to the poop, and accosted the patrono as he took his stand beside the helmsmen. (© DOOKS C@