The Hot Swamp by Robert Michael Ballantyne (audio ebook reader txt) 📖

a sentient creature. Each man seized sword and shield and sprang up, and Bladud, forgetting both helmet and shield in the hurry of the moment, poised the mighty javelin which had so astonished its owner's enemies in days gone by, and in another moment hurled it shrieking through the air. It flew straight as a thunderbolt at the pirate chief; pierced through shield and breastplate, and came out at his back, sending him headlong into the arms of his horrified crew.

The whole incident was so sudden that the pirates had scarcely time to recover from their surprise when the bow of the _Penelope_ crashed into the side of their vessel and stove it in, for the trader, like some of the war-vessels of the period, was provided with a ram for this very purpose.

As the _Penelope_ recoiled from the shock, a yell of rage burst from the pirates, and a volley of javelins and stones followed, but, owing to the confusion resulting from the shock, these were ill-directed, and such of them as found their mark were caught on the shields. Before another discharge could be made, the pirate vessel heeled over and sank, leaving her crew of miscreants struggling in the sea. Some of them--being, strange to say, unable to swim--were drowned. Others were killed in the water, while a few, taking their swords in their teeth, swam to the trader and made desperate attempts to climb on board. Of course they failed, and in a few minutes nothing remained of the pirate vessel to tell of the tragedy that had been enacted, except an oar or two and a few spars left floating on the sea.

"Would that all the sea-robbers in these parts could be as easily and thoroughly disposed of," remarked the captain, as he gave orders to re-hoist the sail. "Ho! Bladud, my worthy prince, come aft here. What detains you?"

But Bladud did not answer to the call. A stone from the enemy had fallen on his defenceless head and knocked him down insensible.

Four of the men now raised him up. As they did so, one of the men--the small seaman, Maikar--was found underneath him in a state of semi-consciousness. While they carried Bladud aft, the little sailor began to gasp and sneeze.

"Not killed, I see," remarked the mate, looking into his face with some anxiety.

"No, not quite," sighed Maikar, drawing a long breath, and raising himself on one elbow, with a slightly dazed look, "but I never was so nearly burst in all my life. If an ox had fallen on me he could not have squeezed me flatter. Do, two of you, squeeze me the other way, to open me out a little; there's no room in me left to breathe--scarcely room to think."

"Oh! your battles are not yet over, I see," said the mate, going off to the stern of the vessel, where he found Bladud just recovering consciousness and smiling at the remarks of the captain, who busied himself in stanching the wound, just over his frontal bone, from which blood was flowing freely.

"H'm! this comes of sheer recklessness. I told you to take off your helmet, but I did not tell you to keep it off. Man, you launched that javelin well!--better than I could have done it myself. Indeed, I doubt if my old grandfather could have done it with such telling effect-- straight through and through. I saw full a hand-breadth come out at the villain's back. What say you, mate? Little Maikar wounded?"

"No, not wounded, but nearly burst, as he says himself; and no wonder, for Bladud fell upon him."

"Didn't I tell you, mate," said the captain, looking up with a grin, "that nothing will kill little Maikar? Go to, man, you pretend to be a judge of men; yet you grumbled at me for engaging him as one of our crew. Do you feel better now, prince?"

"Ay, greatly better, thank you," replied Bladud, putting his hand gently on the bandages with which the captain had skilfully bound his head.

"That is well. I think, now, that food will do you service. What say you?"

"Nay, with your leave, I prefer sleep," said the prince, stretching himself out on the deck. "A little rest will suffice, for my head is noted for its thickness, and my brain for its solidity--at least so my good father was wont to say; and I've always had great respect for his opinion."

"Ah, save when it ran counter to your own," suggested Arkal; "and especially that time when you ran away from home and came out here in the long ship of my trading friend."

"I have regretted that many a time since then, and I am now returning home to offer submission."

"D'you think that he'll forgive you?"

"I am sure he will, for he is a kind man; and I know he loves me, though he has never said so."

"I should like to know that father of yours. I like your description of him--so stern of face, yet so kind of heart, and with such an unchangeable will when he sees what is right. But what _is_ right, and what is wrong?"

"Ay--what is--who can tell? Some people believe that the gods make their will known to man through the Delphic Oracle."

"Boh!" exclaimed the captain with a look of supreme contempt.

The turn of thought silenced both speakers for a time; and when Captain Arkal turned to resume the conversation, he found that his friend was sound asleep.


CHAPTER THREE.


ON THE VOYAGE.

Weather has always been, and, we suppose, always will be, capricious. Its uncertainty of character--in the Levant, as in the Atlantic, in days of old as now, was always the same--smiling to-day; frowning to-morrow; playful as a lamb one day; raging like a lion the next.

After the rough handling experienced by the _Penelope_ at the beginning of her voyage, rude Boreas kindly retired, and spicy breezes from Africa rippled the sea with just sufficient force to intensify its heavenly blue, and fill out the great square-sail so that there was no occasion to ply the oars. One dark, starlight but moonless night, a time of quiet talk prevailed from stem to stern of the vessel as the grizzled mariners spun long yarns of their prowess and experiences on the deep, for the benefit of awe-stricken and youthful shipmates whose careers were only commencing.

"You've heard, no doubt, of the great sea-serpent?" observed little Maikar, who had speedily recovered from the flattening to which Bladud had subjected him, and was busy enlivening a knot of young fellows in the bow of the ship.

"Of course we have!" cried one; "father used to tell me about it when I was but a small boy. He never saw it himself, though he had been to the Tin Isles and Albion more than once; but he said he had met with men who had spoken with shipmates who had heard of it from men who had seen it only a few days before, and who described it exactly."

"Ah!" remarked another, "but I have met a man who had seen it himself on his first voyage, when he was quite a youth; and he said it had a bull's head and horns, with a dreadful long body all over scales, and something like an ass's tail at the end."

"Pooh!--nonsense!" exclaimed little Maikar, twirling his thumbs, for smoking had not been introduced into the world at that period--and thumb-twirling would seem to have served the ancient world for leisurely pastime quite as well, if not better--at least we are led to infer so from the fact that Herodotus makes no mention of anything like a vague, mysterious sensation of unsatisfied desire to fill the mouth with smoke in those early ages, which he would certainly have done had the taste for smoke been a natural craving, and thumb-twirling an unsatisfactory occupation. This absolute silence of the "Father of History," we think, almost proves our point. "Nonsense!" repeated little Maikar. "The youth of the man who told you about the serpent accounts for his wild description, for youth is prone to strange imaginings and--"

"It seems to me," interrupted a grave man, who twirled his thumbs in that slow, deliberate way in which a contemplative man smokes--"it seems to me that there's no more truth about the great sea-serpent than there is about the golden fleece. I don't believe in either of them."

"Don't you? Well, all I can say is," returned the little man, gazing fixedly in the grave comrade's face, "that I saw the great sea-serpent with my own eyes!"

"No! did you?" exclaimed the group, drawing their heads closer together with looks of expectancy.

"Ay, that did I, mates; but you mustn't expect wild descriptions about monsters with bulls' horns and asses' tails from me. I like truth, and the truth is, that the brute was so far away at the time we saw it, that not a man of us could tell exactly what it was like, and when we tried the description, we were all so different, that we gave it up; but we were all agreed on this point, that it certainly _was_ the serpent."

The listeners seemed rather disappointed at this meagre account and sudden conclusion of what had bidden fair to become a stirring tale of the sea; but Maikar re-aroused their expectations by stating his firm belief that it was all nonsense about there being only one sea-serpent.

"Why, how could there be only one?" he demanded, ceasing to twirl, in order that he might clench his fist and smite his knee with emphasis. "Haven't you got a grandfather?" he asked, turning suddenly to the grave man.

"Certainly, I've got two of them if you come to that," he answered, taken rather aback by the brusque and apparently irrelevant nature of the question.

"Just so--two of them," repeated the little man, "and don't you think it likely that the sea serpent must have had two grandfathers also?"

"Undoubtedly--and two grandmothers as well. Perhaps he's got them yet," replied the grave man with a contemplative look over the side, where the rippling sea gleamed with phosphoric brilliancy.

"Exactly so," continued Maikar in an eager tone, "and of course these also must have had two grandfathers besides a mother each, and it is more than likely that the great sea-serpent himself is the father of a large family."

"Which implies a wife," suggested one of the seamen.

"Not necessarily," objected an elderly seaman, who had once been to the lands lying far to the north of Albion, and had acquired something of that tendency to object to everything at all times which is said to characterise the people of the far North. "Not necessarily," he repeated, "for the serpent may be a bachelor with no family at all."

There was a short laugh at this, and an illogical man of the group made some irrelevant observation which led the conversation into a totally different channel, and relegated the great sea-serpent, for the time being, to oblivion!

While the men were thus engaged philosophising in the bow, Bladud and the captain were chatting in subdued voices in the stern.

"It is impossible," said the latter, in reply to a remark made by the former, "it is impossible for me to visit your father's court this