Adventure Magazine Cover — page 6: what you’re looking at

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

EE TEE Adventure ship—we look like Romans. If we put in there, they’Il—” he leaned overside, but managed to control himself— ‘remember the Northmen,” he went on. ‘Two long- — ships—~ran from us toward Pevensey. ' Thevll have burned some villages. The next foreign-looking ship that runs for - stelter will——” - He vomited again, clinging to the lee rail. Tros waited for him to recover and then gestured toward the opposite coast of Gaul, invisible beyond a howling waste of gray sea. “J would run in for the sake of the wounded; this cold wind tortures them. Better a fight with Britons than another brush with Cesar!” he said grimly. “But Cesar has had time to reach Caritia * by chariot and put a dozen ships into the water. He has had time to set a dozen traps. He'll tisk storm and everything to catch and crucify us. Twenty of us fit to fght—crew no good—torn sail—and who is to man the oars?” “But if you hug the shore our own Britons may put out and throw fire into us,” said Orwic. “That’s what we always try to do to the Northmen.”’ “Not in this gale!” Tros answered. “Of two foes, shun the stronger. Cesar is the craitiest of Romans. We have stung him, - Orwic. We have made a mock of him be- fore his own men. We have tricked a pris- oner out of his camp by forgery and bold- “ness. We have made him run; he had to swim for it. And I know Cesar!” “A pity we didn’t catch him!” “Aye, I am ashamed!” Tros ground his teeth. “And what shall I say to Caswallon, who lent me a hundred gentlemen to take Cesar alive! Half of them dead or wound- > ed—no plunder—nothing to show him but = my father’s corpse, for which I must beg obsequies!”’ “Caswallon will remember who wrecked Ceesar’s ships off Kent a while ago. You saved Britain for us, Tros. Caswallon will not forget that.” But Tros smiled sourly. “It is only grudges that endure. Kings’ memories are as short as Ceesar’s for a friendship.” Orwic, too weak to argue, lay down near the lee rail, hugging himself in his cloak. Not long ago he had ridden in triumph to Lunden to announce Cesar’s hurried mid- night retreat from Britain; he relished no more than Tros did the prospect of slinking - *Calais. up Thames with nothing to show but a foreigner’s corpse to offset more than sixty dead and wounded gentlemen. Mere seamen would hardly have mat- tered; but by the irony of fate not one of the twenty hirelings had suffered a scratch, ex- cept when Tros and Conops hit them with belaying pins or knife-hilts to stir their energy. In a sense Orwic was as much re- sponsible as Tros; it was he who had sup- ported Tros first and last; he was second- in-command of the expedition.. Worse! The Lunden girls had seen the bireme off; they would be waiting now to kiss victorious watlriors—expecting to see Cesar brought forth from the hold in chains. Instead of Cesar in his scarlet cloak they would see dead and wounded friends— relations—lovers. Orwic was as young and as imaginative as the girls who reckoned him the bravest man in Britain. Tros gave the helm to Conops, his Greek freed-man, whose one eye, keener than a gimlet, betrayed one sole emotion just then —curlosity. tion of a Roman tunic, with his red Greek seaman’s cap pulled low over his brow; an impudent nose beneath it, and a slit lip that showed one eye-tooth like a dog’s. To him nothing mattered except that his master Tros was alive and in command. He worshipped Tros, regarded him, young as he was, as the greatest seaman in the world; and seamanship, in Conops’ view, was much the greatest of all attributes; any fool could stand or run on dry land, but if called for something superhuman to control a storm-tossed ship in chartless seas, bully a mutinous crew and make a landfall after days and nights of beating against head- winds under a viewless sky. Conops was merely curious to know what was to happen next; he had perfect confi- dence in Tros’ ability to meet it. Hardship meant no more to him than other men’s feelings or opinions; his whole interest in living was to serve Tros loyally; the one re- ward he craved, a nod from Tros, maybe a smile, and a word or two of terse, ungilded praise. “Keep the wind at the back of your right ear,’ Tros commanded. “The tide “ll be slack in an hour; watch for the surf on the quicksands* on your starboard bow. Keep *The Goodwin Sands, which in those days were an island surrounded by shoal-water. Bie Sa St eek s He looked comical in an imita- — Eomichboo <S.i€O