'Hold!' called the captain. 'Hold!' called the oar master. The men looked at him, puzzled.
'See!' said the second officer. 'Look!'
'You are to be at your station!' shouted the captain.
'I submit, Sir,' said the officer, 'you should turn about.'
The captain studied the ship in his glass. The second officer, too, observed it.
Round ships, I knew, commonly had two masts, fixed, and permanently rigged.
The ship we now watched had no mast we could see.
'Note the oars, Captain,' pressed the second officer. 'There are now twenty to a side.'
Additional oars had been slid through thole ports.
'That is no round ship, Captain,' said the young officer. Its lack of height in the water had not indicated a weight of freighting, buts its design, swift and terrible, like a mighty racing shell. Its oarage had been only half revealed. Now its masts were down. Ramships enter battle under oar power.
'I urge you, Sir,' cried the young officer, 'turn about or build speed to shear!'
The ship was bearing down upon us, rapidly.
'Turn about or build speed to shear!' cried the young officer.
'See the flag!' cried the first officer, who had been eager to pursue.
Now not only the flag of Port Kar but another flag, too, snapped on its line at the stem castle of the approaching vessel, hurling toward us, like a swift knife, its oars flashing.
It was a broad flag, white, with vertical bars of green. Superimposed upon the bars of green, gigantic, black and horned, it bore the head of a bosk.
'It is the flag of Bosh of Port Kar!' cried the first officer.
'Turn about! Turn about!' screamed the captain.
'We are lost men!' cried a sailor, rising in terror from the bench.
I screamed and saw the new ship, suddenly large, seem to lift itself in the water, and then heard the shattering splintering wreckage of wood and the loud swift swirl of water the ship struck and men screaming and saw the lines loose wild the yard and sail leaning awry the deck shifting and becoming steep and I couldn't stand and I lost my footing stumbling and seized a line, rolling on the deck, it fastened to the mast. The ship seemed then, for a moment, to right itself. The new ship had backed away from us, and seemed turning its prow away. Then the deck of the Jewel of Jad began to tilt toward the water, where we had been struck, the water pouring into the hold.
Men leaped from the ship into the water.
The ship then seemed again to right itself, but began to settle. I crouched, terrified, gripping the line by the mast. Suddenly I felt on my feet the cold water of Thassa. The deck was awash. The other ship moved away from us, like a silken sleen.
On the high deck the captain, alone, stood, his hand on the rail.
I looked about. The helmdeck was deserted, the benches empty. I heard a man scream from the water.
Too, from afar, I heard signal horns.
The captain looked down, toward me. 'There is no safety here,' he said. 'Release the line and flee to the water.'
I shook my head. 'No!' I said. 'No!' I was terrified.
Suddenly he looked upon me, as a Gorean master. He began to descend from the high deck, toward me.
'Yes, Master!' I cried. I released the line and fled to the railing, and leaped into the water. I was a slave girl. I feared a Gorean master more than the water.
The water was greenish, and cold. I felt miserable. I went beneath the surface and then emerged.
'Come away from the ship,' called a man.
I swam toward him. I was some yards from the sinking vessel when it slipped beneath the water. I was dragged back and submerged, but, in moments, I managed to regain the surface.
I could not see for the salt water in my eyes. It burned in my nostrils for a moment. I spit water out.
A hand seized me and pulled me to a piece of wreckage, some plankings from the ship's side.
'We will be picked up momentarily,' said a man. There were some four men on the planking.
I could see other ships from the convoy. There were several about, converging upon us.
'Wait!' said one of the men. 'They are turning about!'
'There are other ships!' cried another.
I stood up, unsteadily, on the boards. I could see, to be sure, that several of the convoy ships were turning about. Too, in the distance, between some of them, I could see other ships, approaching.
'The convoy,' said one, 'is under attack.'
I saw the young officer in the water. He was assisting the captain of the Jewel of Jad. They found wreckage.
I saw a fin, long and white, suddenly cut the water. A ship passed near us, but it was one which flew the flag of Port Kar, a light galley. It did not pause for us. I saw a trail of smoke looping through the sky as a fire missile was launched from a ship's catapult. Far to our left we saw a galley aflame. It was one of Cos.
Signal horns could be heard.
Two longboats approached, lowered from one of the ships of the convoy. One of them picked up men from the water, and the captain and young officer. The other nosed toward us. The four men boarded the longboat.
I, too, made ready to board the longboat. I was stopped, and thrust back.
'We have no room for a slave,' said one of the men.
'Please, Masters!' I begged.
I knelt on the planking. The yellow rep-cloth I wore was wet and thin, and clung close upon me. Gorean slave girls are commonly not permitted brassieres or undergarments.
'Please, Masters!' I begged.
They drew me into the boat.
I knelt between their feet, my head down, making myself small.
In a few moments we drew alongside the mothership and I, and the others, boarded her.
I was taken and put immediately in the hold. 'A slave girl!' said a woman's voice. There was a tiny lamp. 'Forgive me, Mistress,' I said, and knelt. She mounted the stairs. 'I will not share the hold with a slave girl!' she cried. 'Be silent, Woman!' said an angry man, who was on the deck. She tried to move back the heavy hatch but it had been battened down. She came angrily back down the stairs. I did not dare to look at her. 'Forgive me, Mistress,' I begged. She paced back and forth. We had both been placed in the hold. We were both women.
I and the free woman, who did not deign to speak to me, remained many hours in the hold, as the fighting and maneuvering continued for several hours, through the afternoon and night. The lamp burned out and we remained in the darkness. Outside and above decks we could hear shouting, and the sound of sprung ropes, as the canisters of flaming pitch were lofted from the deck catapults. Once, late, we were partly sheared, losing several oars on the port side. A few moments later we had been boarded, but the boarders had been repelled.
After the repulsion of the boarders the hatch had been opened, briefly.
'The ship is secure, Lady,' had said the captain. 'I shall have food brought.'
She had ascended the stairs, going to the deck. Behind her, unnoticed, I crept to the height of the stairs.
It was still dark. On deck there were dark lanterns. Sometimes, in the distance, I saw flares lofted from one ship or another, burning upward and then, their silken globelike chutes opening, burning steadily, descending, to settle into the water and be extinguished. Too, there was light on the water, to our left, from flaming ships.
'I will remain no longer in the hold,' said the lady to the captain.
'I must insist,' said he.
'No,' she said.
'You will go below of your own free will,' said he, 'or I will have you put there, chained to the bottom of the steps.'
'You would not dare!' she cried.
