wains' whips cracked as the slaves
bent to their oars, and presently one of our own ships was gored and
sunk, the men on her being killed in the water without hope of rescue.

And then commenced a tight-locked melee that would have warmed the heart
of the greatest warrior alive. The ships and the galleys were forced
together and lay savagely grinding one another upon the swells, as
though they had been sentient animals. The men on board them shot their
arrows, slashed with axes, thrust and hacked with swords, and hurled the
throwing fire. But in every way the fight converged upon the "Bear." It
was on her that the enemy spent the fiercest of their spite; it was to
the "Bear," that the other crews of Tatho's navy rallied as their own
vessels caught fire, or were sunk or taken.

Battle is an old acquaintance with us of the Priestly Clan, and for
those of us who have had to carve out territories for the new colonies,
it comes with enough frequency to cloy even the most chivalrous
appetite. So I can speak here as a man of experience. Up till that time,
for half a life-span, I had heard men shout "Deucalion" as a battlecry,
and in my day had seen some lusty encounters. But this sea-fight
surprised even me in its savage fierceness. The bleak, unstable element
which surrounded us; the swaying decks on which we fought; the throwing
fire, which burnt flesh and wood alike with its horrid flame; the
great gluttonous man-eating birds that hovered in the sky overhead;
the man-eating fish that swarmed up from the seas around, gnawing and
quarrelling over those that fell into the waters, all went to make up a
circumstance fit to daunt the bravest men-at-arms ever gathered for an
army.

But these tarry shipmen faced it all with an indomitable courage, and
never a cry of quailing. Life on the seas is so hard, and (from the
beasts that haunt the great waters) so full of savage dangers, that
Death has lost half his terrors to them through sheer familiarity.
They were fellows who from pure lust for a fray would fight to a finish
amongst themselves in the taverns ashore; and so here, in this desperate
sea-battle, the passion for killing burned in them, as a fire stone
from Heaven rages in a forest; and they took even their death-wounds
laughing.

On our side the battle-cry was "Tob!" and the name of this obscure
ship-captain seemed to carry a confidence with it for our own crews that
many a well-known commander might have envied. The en