none other than
the fleet of the First Born, that should have been safely bottled up in
Omean. What a series of misfortunes and disasters! What awful fate
hovered over me, that I should have been so terribly thwarted at every
angle of my search for my lost love! Could it be possible that the
curse of Issus was upon me! That there was, indeed, some malign
divinity in that hideous carcass! I would not believe it, and,
throwing back my shoulders, I ran to the deck below to join my men in
repelling boarders from one of the thern craft that had grappled us
broadside. In the wild lust of hand-to-hand combat my old dauntless
hopefulness returned. And as thern after thern went down beneath my
blade, I could almost feel that we should win success in the end, even
from apparent failure.

My presence among the men so greatly inspirited them that they fell
upon the luckless whites with such terrible ferocity that within a few
moments we had turned the tables upon them and a second later as we
swarmed their own decks I had the satisfaction of seeing their
commander take the long leap from the bows of his vessel in token of
surrender and defeat.

Then I joined Kantos Kan. He had been watching what had taken place on
the deck below, and it seemed to have given him a new thought.
Immediately he passed an order to one of his officers, and presently
the colours of the Prince of Helium broke from every point of the
flagship. A great cheer arose from the men of our own ship, a cheer
that was taken up by every other vessel of our expedition as they in
turn broke my colours from their upper works.

Then Kantos Kan sprang his coup. A signal legible to every sailor of
all the fleets engaged in that fierce struggle was strung aloft upon
the flagship.

"Men of Helium for the Prince of Helium against all his enemies," it
read. Presently my colours broke from one of Zat Arrras' ships. Then
from another and another. On some we could see fierce battles waging
between the Zodangan soldiery and the Heliumetic crews, but eventually
the colours of the Prince of Helium floated above every ship that had
followed Zat Arrras upon our trail--only his flagship flew them not.

Zat Arrras had brought five thousand ships. The sky was black with the
three enormous fleets. It was Helium against the field now, and the
fight had settled to countless individual duels. There could be little
or no manoeuvering of fleets in that crowded, fire-split