It was not an invitation—it was a command. There was nothing to do but obey; so I raised one sail and brought my craft under the lee rail of the pirate. They tossed me a rope which I made fast to the bow and another with knots in it up which I climbed to the deck; then several of them slid down into my boat and passed every thing in it up to their fellows above. After that, they cut my boat adrift and got under way. All this I saw from an upper deck where I had been taken to be questioned by the captain.
'Who are you?' he asked.
'I am called Sofal,' I said. Sofal was the name of my pirate ship and means 'the killer.'
'Sofal!' he repeated, a little ironically I thought. 'And from what country do you hail? and what are you doing out here in the middle of the ocean in a small boat like that?'
'I have no country,' I replied. 'My father was a faltargan, and I was born on a faltar.' I was rapidly becoming a proficient liar, I who had always prided myself on my veracity; but I think a man is sometimes justified in lying, especially if it saves a life. Now the word faltargan has an involved derivation. Faltar, pirate ship, derives from ganfal, criminal (which is derived from gan, man, and fal, kill) and notar, ship—roughly criminal ship. Add gan, man, to faltar, and you have pirate-ship-man, or pirate; fal-tar'gan.
'And so I suppose you are a pirate,' he said, 'and that that thing down there is your faltar.'
'No,' I said, 'and yes; but, rather, yes and no.'
'What are you driving at?' he demanded.
'Yes, I am a pirate; but no, that is not a faltar. It is just a fishing boat. I am surprised that an old sailor should have thought it a pirate ship.'
'You have a loose tongue, fellow,' he snapped.
'And you have a loose head,' I retorted; 'that is why you need a man like me as one of your officers. I have captained my own faltar, and I know my trade. From what I have seen, you haven't enough officers to handle a bunch of cut-throats such as I saw on deck. What do you say?'
'I say you ought to be thrown overboard,' he growled. 'Go to the deck and report to Folar. Tell him I said to put you to work. An officer! Cut out my liver! but you have got nerve! If you make a good sailor, I'll let you live. That's the best you'll get, though. Loose head!' and I could hear him grumbling as I went down the companionway to the deck.
I don't know just why I had deliberately tried to antagonize him, unless it was that I had felt that if I cringed before him he would have been more likely to have felt contempt for me and killed me. I was not unfamiliar with men of his type. If you stand up to them they respect and, perhaps, fear you, for most swashbucklers are, at heart, yellow.
When I reached the deck I had an opportunity to inspect my fellow sailors more closely. They were certainly a prize aggregation of villainous-looking scoundrels. They eyed me with suspicion and dislike and not a little contempt, as they appraised my rich apparel and handsome weapons which seemed to them to bespeak the dandy rather than the fighting man.
'Where is Folar?' I asked of the first group I approached.
'There, ortij oolfa,' he replied in an assumed falsetto, as he pointed to a huge bear of a man who was glowering at me a few yards away.
Those within earshot guffawed at this witticism—ortij oolja means my love. Evidently they thought my apparel effeminate. I had to smile a little myself, as I walked over to Folar.
'The captain told me to report to you for duty,' I said.
'What's your name?' he demanded, 'and what do you think you can do aboard a ship like the Nojo Ganja?'
'My name is Sofal,' I replied, 'and I can do anything aboard ship or ashore that you can do, and do it better.'
'Ho! Ho!' he pretended to laugh, 'The Killer! Listen, brothers, here is The Killer, and he can do anything better than I can!'
'Let's see him kill you, then,' cried a voice from behind him.
Folar wheeled about. 'Who said that?' he demanded, but nobody answered.
Again a voice from behind him said, 'You're afraid of him, you sailful of wind.' It seemed to me that Folar was not popular. He completely lost his temper then, over which he appeared to have no control whatsoever; and whipped out his sword. Without giving me an opportunity to draw, he swung a vicious cut at me that would have decapitated me had it connected. I leaped back in time to avoid it; and before he could recover, I had drawn my own weapon; then we settled down to business, as the men formed a circle around us. As we measured one another's strength and skill in the first few moments of the encounter, I heard such remarks as, 'Folar will cut the fool to pieces,' 'He hasn't a chance against Folar—I wish he had,' and 'Kill the mistal, fellow; we're for you.'
Folar was no swordsman; he should have been a butcher. He swung terrific cuts that would have killed a gantor, could he have landed; but he couldn't land, and he telegraphed his every move. I knew what he was going to do before he started to do it. Every time he cut, he left himself wide open. I could have killed him any one of half a dozen times in the first three minutes of our duel, but I didn't wish to kill him. For all I knew he might be a favorite of the captain, and I had already done enough to antagonize that worthy. For the right moment to do the thing I wanted to do, I had to bide my time. He rushed me about here and there dodging his terrific swings until, at last, I got tired of it and pricked him in the shoulder. He bellowed like a bull at that; and, seizing his sword with both hands, came at me like a charging gantor. Then I pricked him again; and after that he went more warily, for I guess he had commenced to realize that I could kill him if I wished. Now he gave me the opportunity I had been awaiting, and in an instant I had disarmed him. As his weapon clattered to the deck, I stepped in, my point at his heart.
'Shall I kill him?' I asked.
'Yes!' rose in a thunderous chorus from the excited sailors. I dropped my point. 'No, I shall not kill him this time,' I said. 'Now pick up your sword, Folar; and we'll call everything square. What do you say?'
He mumbled something as he stooped to retrieve his weapon; then he spoke to a one-eyed giant standing in the front row of spectators.
'This fellow will be in your watch, Nurn,' he said. 'See that he works.' With that, he quit the deck.
The men gathered around me. 'Why didn't you kill him?' asked one.
'And have the captain order me thrown overboard?' I demanded. 'No. I can use my brains as well as my sword.'
'Well,' said Nurn, 'there was at least a chance that he wouldn't have; but there is no chance that Folar won't stab you in the back the first chance he gets.'
My duel with Folar had established me in the good graces of the crew; and when they found that I could speak the language of the sea and of the pirate ship, they accepted me as one of them. Nurn seemed to take a special fancy to me. I think it was because he hoped to inherit Folar's rank in the event the latter were killed, for several times he suggested that I pick another quarrel with Folar and kill him.
While talking with Nurn I asked him where the Nojo Ganja was bound.
'We're trying to find Vepaja,' he said. 'We've been trying to find it for a year.'
'Why do you want to find it?' I asked.
'We're looking for a man the Thorists want,' he said. 'They've offered a million pandars to anyone who'll bring him to Kapdor alive.'
'Are you Thorists?' I asked. The Thorists are members of a revolutionary political party that conquered the former empire of Vepaja which once spread over a considerable portion of the south temperate zone of Amtor. They are the bitter enemies of Mintep as well as of all countries that have not fallen into their hands.
'No,' replied Nurn, 'we are not Thorists; but we could use a million pandars of anybody's money.'
'Who is this Vepajan they want so badly?' I asked. I assumed that it was Mintep.
'Oh, a fellow who killed one of their ongyans in Kapdor. His name is Carson .'
So! The long arm of Thora had reached out after me. I was already in the clutches of its fingers; but, happily for me, I was the only one who knew it. However, I realized that I must escape from the Nojo Ganja before it touched at any Thoran port.
'How do you know this Carson is in Vepaja?' I asked.
'We don't know,' replied Nurn. 'He escaped from Kapdor with the janjong of Vepaja. If they are alive, it is reasonable to believe they are in Vepaja; that, of course, is where he would have taken the janjong. We are going
