“Well, Tob, I hope you’ll drown easy. As for that wife of yours, I’ve always had a fancy for her myself, and I shall know how to find a use for the woman.”
“I’ll draw your neck for that, you son of a European,” said Tob; “and if you do not clear off this deck I’ll draw it here. Go,” he cried, “you father of monkey children! Get away, and let me fight you fairly, or by my honour I’ll stamp the inwards out of you, and make your silly crew wear them as necklaces.”
Promptly Tob set going the machine on our own “Bear,” and bawled his orders right and left to the other ships. The crew might be weak with scurvy, but they were quick to obey. Instantly the five vessels were all started, and because our Lord the Sun was shining brightly, got soon to the full of their pace. The whole of our small navy converged, singling out one ship of their opponents, and she, not being ready for so swift an attack, got flurried, and endeavoured to turn and run for room, instead of trying to meet us bows on. As a consequence, the whole of our five ships hit her together on the broadside, tearing her planking with their underwater beaks, and sinking her before we had backed clear from the engage.
But if we thus brought the enemy’s number down to five, and so equal to our own, the advantage did not remain with us for long. The three nimble galleys formed into line: their boatswains’ whips cracked as the slaves bent to their oars, and presently one of our own ships was gored and sunk, the men on her being killed in the water without hope of rescue.
And then commenced a tight-locked melee that would have warmed the heart of the greatest warrior alive. The ships and the galleys were forced together and lay savagely grinding one another upon the swells, as though they had been sentient animals. The men on board them shot their arrows, slashed with axes, thrust and hacked with swords, and hurled the throwing fire. But in every way the fight converged upon the “Bear.” It was on her that the enemy spent the fiercest of their spite; it was to the “Bear,” that the other crews of Tatho’s navy rallied as their own vessels caught fire, or were sunk or taken.
Battle is an old acquaintance with us of the Priestly Clan, and for those of us who have had to carve out territories for the new colonies, it comes with enough frequency to cloy even the most chivalrous appetite. So I can speak here as a man of experience. Up till that time, for half a life-span, I had heard men shout “Deucalion” as a battlecry, and in my day had seen some lusty encounters. But this sea-fight surprised even me in its savage fierceness. The bleak, unstable element which surrounded us; the swaying decks on which we fought; the throwing fire, which burnt flesh and wood alike with its horrid flame; the great gluttonous man-eating birds that hovered in the sky overhead; the man-eating fish that swarmed up from the seas around, gnawing and quarrelling over those that fell into the waters, all went to make up a circumstance fit to daunt the bravest men-at-arms ever gathered for an army.