Tex heaved the motorboat’s bow up on the beach, then sat down on it. “I don’t want to tell the Doc here his business, but well…”
“Superstition!” Lyn snorted. Tex cleared his throat and spat into the water. This was obviously a difference of opinion they had had before.
“What is it? Out with it,” Barney ordered.
Tex scratched the dark stubble on his jaw and spoke, not without reluctance.
“Look, the Doc is right. We didn’t see anything or anybody except some old campsites and piles of seal bones. But, well, I think they’re out there somewhere, close by, and they been watching us all the time. It wouldn’t be hard to do. You can hear this lawnmower engine five miles away. If they’re seal hunters, like the Doc says, they could lay low when they heard us coming and we’d never see a thing. I think they’re out there.”
“Do you have any evidence to support this theory?” Barney asked.
Tex writhed unhappily and scowled. “I don’t want to hear no laughing or anything,” he said pugnaciously.
Barney remembered his record as an instructor in unarmed combat. “One thing I’m never going to do, Tex, is laugh at you,” he said sincerely.
“Well… it’s like this. We used to feel it in the jungle, like someone was looking at you. Half the time someone was. Bang, a sniper. I know the feeling. And I been getting it all the time we been out. They’re out there, somewhere close, so help me they are.”
Barney considered the information, and cracked his knuckles. “Yes, I suppose you’re right, but I don’t see how it’s going to help us. We’ll talk about it during lunch, see if we can figure something out. We need those Indians.”
Nothing went right with the scene, which was probably Barney’s fault. His mind wasn’t on it. It should have been simple enough to shoot, since it was mostly action. Orlyg, played by Val de Carlo, is Thor’s best friend and right-hand man, but he has secretly fallen in love with Gudrid, who is afraid to tell Thor because of the trouble it will cause. His passion becomes too great however, and, since Gudrid has told him she can love no other man while Thor is alive, he resolves in a moment of love-inflamed madness to slay Thor. He hides behind the ship and attacks Thor when he passes. Thor at first cannot believe it, however he does believe it when Orlyg stabs him in the arm. Then, with only one arm and barehanded, Thor goes on to win the battle and kill Orlyg.
“All right,” Barney called out, his temper worn thin. “We’re going to try it again and this time I’d be very obliged if you could manage to get it right and remember your lines and everything, because we’re running out of blood and clean shirts. Positions. Orlyg, behind the boat, Thor start down the beach toward him, camera, action.”
Ottar stamped heavily through the sand and managed to look faintly surprised when de Carlo jumped out at him.
“Ho, Orlyg,” he said woodenly. “What are you doing here, what does this mean…
“Cut!” Barney shouted. “That’s not your line, you know better than that…” He shut up abruptly as he looked out into the bay where Ottar was pointing.
One after another, small, dark boats were coming into sight from behind the island and soundlessly paddling toward the shore.
“Hold it,” Barney ordered. “No weapons and no fighting. We want to keep this friendly if we can, find something to trade with them. Those are potential extras out there and I don’t want them frightened off. Tex, keep your gun handy—but out of sight. If they start any trouble you finish it…”
“A pleasure.”
“But don’t start any yourself, and that’s an order. Gino, are you catching them?”
“In the bag. If you’ll clear the twentieth-century types off the set I’ll shoot the whole arrival, the landing, the works.”
“You heard him, move. Off camera. Lyn—get into Viking rig quick so you can get down there and translate.”
“How can I? Not a single word of their language is known.”
“You’ll pick it up. You’re translator—so translate. We need a white flag or something to show them we’re friendly.”
“We got a white shield here,” one of the propmen said.
“That’ll do, give it to Ottar.”
The little boats slowed as they neared the beach, nine of them in all, with two or three men in each boat. They were wary, most of them gripping spears and short bows, but they did not look as though they were going to attack. Some of the Norse women came down to the beach to see what was happening and their presence seemed to reassure the men in the boats, because they came closer. Jens Lyn hurried up, lacing on his leather jacket.
“Talk to them,” Barney said, “but stay behind Ottar so it looks like he’s doing all the work.”
The Cape Dorset came close, rocking up and down in the swell, and there was a good deal of loud shouting back and forth.
“Using up a lot of film on this,” Gino said.
“Keep it going, we can cut out what we don’t need. Move along the shore for a better angle when they come in.
“Guns and firewater,” de Carlo said. “That’s what they always trade to the Indians in the Westerns.”
“No weapons! These jokers probably do well enough with what they got.” He looked around for inspiration and saw a comer of the commissary trailer sticking out from behind Ottar’s house, the largest of the sod buildings. “That’s an idea,” he said, and went over to it. Clyde Rawlston was leaning on it scribbling on a piece of paper.
“I thought you were doing additional dialogue with Charley?” Barney said.
“I find working on the script interferes with my poetry, so I went back to cooking.”
“A dedicated artist. What do you have in this thing?”
“Coffee, tea, doughnuts, cheese sandwiches, the usual stuff.”
“I don’t see the redskins getting excited over that. Anything else?”
“Ice cream.”
“That should do it. Dish it out into some of those Viking crockery pots and I’ll send someone up for it. I’ll bet those guys got a sweet tooth just like anyone else.”
It did work. Slithey carried a gallon of vanilla down to the shore where some of the aborigines were standing in the surf by now, still too wary to come onto the beach, and ladled it into their hands after eating some herself. Either the ice cream, or Slithey’s hormones, turned the trick, because within a few minutes the skin boats were beached and the dark-haired strangers, were mixing with the northmen. Barney stopped just outside of camera range and studied them.
“They look more like Eskimos than Indians,” he said to himself. “But a few feathers and some war paint will fix that.”
Though they had the flat faces and typical Asiatic features of the Eskimo, they were bigger men, erect and powerful-looking, almost as tall as the Vikings. Their clothing was made of stitched sealskin, thrown open now in the heat of the spring day to show their bronze skin. They talked rapidly among themselves in high-pitched voices, and now that they had landed safely they seemed to have forgotten their earlier fear and examined all the novelties with great interest. The
“How are you coming? Will they do some work for us?”
“Are you mad? I think—I’m not sure mind you—that I have mastered two words of their language.
“Keep working. We’ll need all these guys and more for the Indian attack scenes.”
There seemed to be a general mixing along the shore now, as some of the northmen investigated the bundles in the boats and the Dorset opened them to display their sealskins. The more curious of the newcomers had
