HAPTER VII

A REPELLENT SIGHT

The cruiser Vanator careened through the tempest. That she had not been
dashed to the ground, or twisted by the force of the elements into
tangled wreckage, was due entirely to the caprice of Nature. For all
the duration of the storm she rode, a helpless derelict, upon those
storm-tossed waves of wind. But for all the dangers and vicissitudes
they underwent, she and her crew might have borne charmed lives up to
within an hour of the abating of the hurricane. It was then that the
catastrophe occurred--a catastrophe indeed to the crew of the Vanator
and the kingdom of Gathol.

The men had been without food or drink since leaving Helium, and they
had been hurled about and buffeted in their lashings until all were
worn to exhaustion. There was a brief lull in the storm during which
one of the crew attempted to reach his quarters, after releasing the
lashings which had held him to the precarious safety of the deck. The
act in itself was a direct violation of orders and, in the eyes of the
other members of the crew, the effect, which came with startling
suddenness, took the form of a swift and terrible retribution. Scarce
had the man released the safety snaps ere a swift arm of the
storm-monster encircled the ship, rolling it over and over, with the
result that the foolhardy warrior went overboard at the first turn.

Unloosed from their lashing by the constant turning and twisting of the
ship and the force of the wind, the boarding and landing tackle had
been trailing beneath the keel, a tangled mass of cordage and leather.
Upon the occasions that the Vanator rolled completely over, these
things would be wrapped around her until another revolution in the
opposite direction, or the wind itself, carried them once again clear
of the deck to trail, whipping in the storm, beneath the hurtling ship.

Into this fell the body of the warrior, and as a drowning man clutches
at a straw so the fellow clutched at the tangled cordage that caught
him and arrested his fall. With the strength of desperation he clung to
the cordage, seeking frantically to entangle his legs and body in it.
With each jerk of the ship his hand holds were all but torn loose, and
though he knew that eventually they would be and that he must be dashed
to the ground beneath, yet he fought with the madness that is born of
hopelessness for the pitiful second which but prolonged his agony.

It was upon this sight then that Gahan of G