However, I will not load my page with farther long account of this obscure sea-fight, whose only glory was its ferocity. One by one all the ships of either side were sunk or lay with all their people killed, till finally only Dason’s galley and our own Bear were left. For the moment we were being mastered. We had a score of men remaining out of all those that manned the navy when it sailed from Yucatan, and the enemy had boarded us and made the decks of the Bear the field of battle. But they had been over busy with the throwing fire, and presently, as we raged at one another, the smoke and the flame from the sturdy vessel herself let us very plainly know that she was past salvation.
But Tob was nothing daunted. “They may stay here and fry if they choose,” he shouted with his great boisterous laugh, “but for ourselves the galley is good enough now. Keep a guard on Deucalion, and come with me, shipmates!”
“Tob!” our fellows shouted in their ecstasy of fighting madness, and I too could not forbear sending out a “Tob!” for my battle-cry. It was a change for me not to be leader, but it was a luxury for once to fight in the wake of this Tob, despite his uncouthness of mien and plan. There was no stopping this new rush, though progress still was slow. Tob with his bloody axe cut the road in front, and we others, with the lust of battle filling us to the chin, raged like furies in his wake. Gods! but it was a fight.
Ten of us won to the galley, with the flames and the smoke from the poor Bear spurting at our heels. We turned and stabbed madly at all who tried to follow, and hacked through the grapples that held the vessels to their embrace. The sea-swells spurned the Bear away.
The slaves chained to the rowing-galley’s benches had interest neither one way nor the other, and looked on the contest with dull concern, save when some stray missile found a billet amongst them. But a handful of the fighting men had scrambled desperately on board the galley after us, preferring any fate to a fiery death on the Bear, and these had to be dealt with promptly. Three, with their fighting fury still red-hot in them, had most wastefully to be killed out of mischief’s way; five, who had pitched their weapons into the sea, were chained to oar looms, in place of slaves who were dead; and there remained only Dason to have a fate apportioned.
The fight had cooled out of him, and he had thrown his arms to the sea, and stood sullenly ready for what might befall; and to him Tob went up with an exulting face.
“Ho, pot-mate Dason,” cried he, “you made a lot of talk an hour ago about that woman of mine, who lives with her brats on the quay-side in Atlantis yonder. Now, I’ll give you a pleasant choice; either I’ll take you along home, and tell her what you said before the whole ship’s company (that are for the most part dead now, poor souls!), and I’ll leave her to perform on your carcase as she sees fit by way of payment; or, as the other choice, I’ll deal with you here now myself.”
“I thank you for the chance,” said Dason, and knelt and offered his neck to the axe. So Tob cut off his head, sticking it on the galley’s beak as an advertisement of what had been done. The body he threw over the side, and one of the great man-eating birds that hovered near, picked it up and flew away with it to its nest amongst the crags. And so we were free to get a meal of the fruits and the fresh meats which the galley offered, whilst the oar-slaves sent the galley rushing onwards towards the capital.
There was a wineskin in the after-castle, and I filled a horn and poured some out at Tob’s feet in salutation. “My man,” I said, “you have shown me a fight.”
“Thanks,” said he, “and I know you are a judge. ’Twas pretty whilst it lasted; and, seeing that my lads were, for the most, scurvy-rotten, I will say they fought with credit. I have lost my Lord Tatho’s navy, but I think Phorenice will see me righted there. If those that are against her took so much trouble to kill my Lord Deucalion before he could come to her aid, I can fancy she will not be niggard in her joy when I put Deucalion safe, if somewhat dented and blood-bespattered, on the quay.”
“The Gods know,” I said, for it is never my custom to discuss policies with my inferiors, even though etiquette be for the moment loosened, as ours was then by the thrill of battle. “The Gods will decide what is best for you, Tob, even as they have decided that it is best that I should go on to Atlantis.”
The sailor held a horn filled from the wineskin in his hand, and I think was minded to pour a libation at my feet, even as I had done at his. But he changed his mind, and emptied it down his throat instead. “It is thirsty work, this fighting,” he said, “and that drink comes very useful.”
I put my hand on his blood-smeared arm. “Tob,” I said, “whether I step into power again, or whether I go to the block tomorrow, is another matter which the Gods alone know, but hear me tell you now, that if a chance is given me of showing my gratitude,
