Adventure Magazine Cover — page 12: what you’re looking at

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

Adventure Atlast the sun shone on a strip of dark- green where the forest touched the tide-mud and Conops cried “Land-ho!” from the p. | Safty then, that being Britain and the autumn, magic went to work on land-and ‘sea-scape that changed until both wide- flung riverbanks gleamed in sunlight and the heaving estuary-bosom frilled itself with ripples in place of whitecaps on the surface of the waves. Gray water brightened to. steel-blue, stained with brown mud where the tide poured over shoals, and the sea-gulls came off-shore in thousands to pounce on mussel- beds before the tide should cover them. Then another hail from Conops, and Tros returned to the poop, his mood changing with the weather. He was already whistling to himself. “Yonder!” said Conops, nodding, his one eye staring upriver. “Too much smoke!’’ “Mist? remarked Orwic, but the wish was father to the contradiction. He had seen that kind of smoke before; had more than one scar to show for it. One did not admit, until sure, that Northmen might be raiding British homesteads. “Smoke!” Tros announced after a minute. He could almost smellit. “Orwic! Caswal- lon shall welcome us after all!’ Orwic shouted. A dozen Britons came out of the hold, to cluster-on the poop and Stare at the smudge on the skyline. They were handsome, bluntly spoken youngsters, dressed in plundered Roman armor that made the long hair over their shoulders look incongruous — easy-mannered_ gentlemen, who had twice had the best of Cesar and were therefore more than usually ready to assert their views. Besides, they were no longer seasick, and were annoyed with Tros, who had compelled them to obey him but had failed to capture Cesar. “Northmen!”’ announced one of them, with an air of being able to read smoke on the skyline as if, it were Celtic script. *“Those two longships Tros refused to fight the other day have found their way up- Thames! It’s Tros’ fault! They have stolen a march while we plucked his oat-cake out of Cesar’s fire! By Lud of Lunden, we were fools to trust a foreigner!” “Aye, and Lunden burning!” said an- other. But that was nonsense; the smoke was much nearer than Lunden. “Two longships and only thirty of us fit to fight!” “Tros will want to run away again!” a third suggested. Conops bared his teeth and Orwic, who had led an earlier mutiny to his own, (distress, made signals; but they deferred no more to Orwic than to_Tros. Orwic was only Caswallon’s nephew; they were as good as he, and equally entitled to opinions. Be- sides, as second-in-command, Orwic was re- sponsible along with Tros for failure to cap- ture Cesar, and that, added to jealousy, was excuse enough for ignoring his signals. ‘“‘Any man can sail.a ship upriver!” one of them suggested brazenly. Tros almost brayed astonishment. He had thought he had tamed those cockerels! Cold, seasickness and battle on the deck had reduced the hired crew to the condition of whipped dogs, but these young aristocrats appeared to recover their nerve the mo- ment they smelt a Northman! It had not yet filtered into Tros’ under- standing how warfare with the men from over the North Sea was a heritage, almost a — privilege, a sport, in which serfs were the prizes and women the side-bets. To men- tion Northmen near the coast of Britain was like talking wolf to well-trained hounds. “Caswallon gave the command of this ship to Tros,” said Orwic, standing loyally by his appointed chief. Whereat they laughed.- They were in their own home waters; not Caswallon him- self might overrule their free wills! Each man thrilled to one and the same impulse. Some of the wounded crawled on deck and, learning what the commotion was about, cried out to Tros to get after the Northmen instantly, hoof, hair and teeth! “TI, too, am minded to make the acquain- tance of these Northmen!” Tros remarked; and they grinned, although they did not quite believe him; from what they already knew of him, he was too cautious and con- servative to lead them into the kind of fight they craved. ‘We will introduce you!” a youngster an- swered, twisting his long mustache. “We will show you what fighting is!” “You!” Tros answered; and they all backed forward along the poop because his sword was drawn, although none saw it whip out of the sheath. With his left hand he picked up a Roman shield. “Orwic! Stand by!” Gomichbooks.com