‘Too much stomach, and that too high,’ snapped the Legate. ‘Meat-fed rowers are a menace; I have had trouble with such before now. Let there be no more meat fed to these while I am aboard.’
‘There will, of course, be no more until the eve of the return voyage, sir,’ said the Master a little stiffly; then to the Hortator, ‘All’s over. You can get below again, Rufus.’ Lastly he spoke to the rowers. ‘Lie down, you fools. If there is another sound out of you to-night, I’ll have the hide flayed off every tenth man in the morning.’
Then he was gone, and the Legate also. The Hortator and the Overseer had betaken themselves to their own places: only the Officer of the Watch stood alone on the foredeck, his cloaked figure dark against the sky.
Muttering and growling, the galley slaves stretched out under the benches, and quiet settled down. Beric and Jason lay huddled close together for warmth. Voices came up from the quarters of the crew and the marines below, and a laugh spilled out with the yellow lantern-light from the Legate’s cabin. The sound of singing stole across the water from one of the transports and was taken up by the rest; the drafts on board were clearly overwhelmed by the knowledge that this was their last night in their own river. They were singing in their native tongue, but the tune told its own story; exile ached in every note of it. Presently they would be happy again, but to-night they were homesick, and the voice of their homesickness found a despairing echo in Beric.
A faint mist shimmered low over the water and the marsh; the orange door-squares in the low, dark ranges of the shore buildings went out one by one, and only the stern braziers of the convoy still shone above the mist. The water lapped and whispered along the dark sides of the galley, and the rowers moaned and muttered in their sleep. And still Beric lay wakeful. A few days ago the singing across the water would have had no power to hurt him, but that had been before he knew that they were bound for Britain. And it hurt now.
Jason stirred beside him with a long, heavy sigh. Jason had eaten some of the meat before the fight started. That was good. One thing that was good, anyway. And oddly comforted by the thought, Beric turned over, his chain jinking as he did so, and laid his arm across Jason, and almost at once was asleep.
XII
STORM AT SEA
THE tide was on the turn, and aboard the Alcestis and her sister galley the rowers had been fed again, and were already at their oars. But on the poop the Legate stood with the Master and the pilot in hasty conference.
Beric, watching the little intent group before the high stern, knew well enough what it was that held them there in low-voiced conclave. He knew the weather signs: the signs of clouds and flying birds, of sounding surge and the indefinable smell of coming tempest in the wind. Were they to sail on this tide? That was the question being decided up there on the poop. The Master shook his head once doubtfully, but it seemed the Legate was in a hurry; he would always be in a hurry, that one, Beric thought, watching the handsome, impatient face under the crested helmet. There could never be any patience in him. He would make a bad hunter.
Now the Council had reached its decision, and clearly it was the one the Legate wanted. The ship’s officers saluted and went quickly to their own stations. The Alcestis’s trumpet sounded and was echoed back across the water from the Janiculum, then from the transports. Instantly the whole convoy sprang from its waiting stillness into activity; seamen ran to their stations, orders were hailed from ship to ship. On board the Alcestis, Porcus was already on the prowl as the oars were run out and secured by their leather thongs to the thole-pins. The anchor was weighed dripping over the bow, and the square flame-red sail with its black eagle fell from the standing yard, curving out to the light wind as it was sheeted home. And again Beric felt that instant response of the galley, as the steersman put over the double rudder, and she slipped forward, heeling a little as wind and tide took her.
One behind another, the transports slipped from their anchorage, their striped sails set; lastly the Janiculum swung into line. On the rough landing-stage and along the shore of the repair yard, small figures, growing smaller every moment, turned from their work to watch the convoy slip out on the morning tide, nosing through the last shoal-waters to the open sea.
Five hours before noon, with the coast growing cloud-faint behind the tail of the convoy, half the rowers were stood off. That was always the way during long passage rowing which must go on day and night. There was no space to carry two teams of rowers, let alone the difficulty of chaining and unchaining such unruly cattle, and the danger that they would be to the galley when free of their benches. So until they dropped anchor in Dubris Harbour under the green British downs it would be like this, one man to each oar rowing, while the other slipped beneath the bench and got what sleep he could, turn and turn about in four-hour watches.
Beric had that first watch, while Jason lay huddled at his feet. It passed uneventfully: a long monotony of effort; the dip and the long heave back with one’s feet braced, the rise and fall again of the white-fir oar-blades that caught the sunlight in an instant’s dazzle with every stroke; the long swing of the grey North Sea swell.
An hour before noon the inner watch was relieved, and it was Jason’s turn to row, while Beric lay down on the deck, exchanging the grey seas for the windy sky and the flaming curve of the sail, and Jason’s dark figure swinging to and fro above him. At mid-afternoon the rowers were changed again, and again at first dark, when they were fed in their separate watches, first those who were just going on to the oars, and then those who had just come off. An hour before midnight Beric stumbled, still half asleep, back to his oar. Towards the end of that watch the wind began to freshen, and the Officer of the Watch spoke a few hurried words to the Master, who stood beside him, sniffing the weather. But Beric, swinging to and fro in his place, drugged by the unchanging rhythm of effort into a state in which he was barely conscious that he was rowing at all, took no heed of the strengthening easterly breeze; and when, three hours after midnight by the Hortator’s hour-glass, the watch was relieved again, he curled up like a dog under the bench and was instantly asleep.
It seemed only a moment later that he woke to the whiplash searing across his neck, and as he flung up an arm to shield his face, it came again, circling like a white-hot serpent round his wrist. ‘Out! Tumble out, you loafing rats!’ Naso, the Second Overseer, was shouting. ‘Out, and take your share at the oars!’ The lash cracked again and again, as Beric, still dazed with sleep and the tumult all about him, stumbled up to his knees; and close beside him someone gave a howl of pain. Naso lurched on down the flying-deck, shouting and laying about him as he went, whipping up the sleepers to join their mates at the bucking oars. As the dazed shock of his awakening cleared from Beric’s head and he slipped into his place beside Jason, he realized the uneasy motion of the galley, and the strengthening wind, that had gone round to the north-east. The singing of it was in the rigging, above the creaking and fretting of the galley’s timbers, and a burst of salt spray flew in his face; and the oar-loom was alive and kicking under his hands.
Dawn was already breaking, lemon coloured beyond the rents in a hurrying, bat-winged sky, and the grey sea had a tumbling, ruffled look quite unlike yesterday’s long swell. Beric was dimly aware of the ordered coming and going of seamen and the Master’s voice carrying clear above the wind: ‘Man halyards and clewlines,’ then, ‘Lower away. Clew up!’ And men springing to shorten sail, and the flapping of the loosened canvas.
The light strengthened slowly, showing the convoy still well together on a sea that was flecked with white, a sea that ran empty of land to the dipping skyline on every side. As the hours went by the wind strengthened steadily; it hummed in the rigging with a vibrant note like that of a plucked lyre-string; the reefed sail flapped like huge, ungainly wings, and showers of spindrift began to dash over the rowers as they struggled at the oars. Presently the sail was furled as the Alcestis’s steersman fought to keep her on the course against the wind that was already driv
ing her too far south. For a while, now that the sail was furled, he seemed to succeed, but the wind was still rising, and with more of north in it as the time went by.
But Beric knew only that, with the sea roughening every moment, the oars were becoming unmanageable. ‘We must lay the oars in,’ he thought over and over again, with growing urgency. ‘We must lay the oars in!’ Porcus, on duty again, came swaying and lurching down the deck, and he shouted to the Overseer, ‘We must lay the oars in; some of us will be killed!’
‘What matter, so that you row in the meantime?’ Porcus shouted back; and whitt came the lash across Beric’s shoulders so that he plunged at the oar like a horse stung by a hornet. ‘Row, you Tiber scum!—Dogs! Offal! Row your hearts out if need be!’
Almost in the same instant, one of the rowers a few benches farther off gave a sharp cry, and slumped groaning over the kicking oar-loom which his mate was struggling to control single-handed.
‘There is the first lot of broken ribs for you!’ Beric yelled after the Overseer as he lurched off towards the accident.
Porcus and a seaman bent over the groaning wretch. Quite obviously it was true. They would get no more rowing out of this one for a time. While Porcus lurched off to report to the Hortator, who had been at his post since the storm first grew ugly, the seaman half helped, half thrust the injured man from the bench on to the deck, where he stretched out, groaning still among the feet of the rowers. ‘Bring up one of the reserves,’ ordered the Hortator. There was no time to unshackle the man now—that must wait until things grew easier. He was simply left to lie there, while one of the reserve rowers, of which every galley carried a few, was brought up from the hold and thrust into his place.
And the galley drove on, with her complement of rowers intact once more.
Meanwhile, beside the steersman, on the poop, the Master and the pilot of the Alcestis were confronting the Legate. ‘I dare not hold on like this any longer, sir,’ the Master was saying, respectfully but flatly. The Legate was the Legate, and he was only a shipmaster, but on board the Alcestis he was king, and the knowledge stiffened the angle of his grizzled beard. ‘We shall not make Dubris. We are being driven farther off our course with every moment that goes by. The transports might make it by themselves—they are sailing-ships, and can tack; we galleys cannot.’
‘Galleys are supposed to have rowers,’ the Legate pointed out coldly.
‘The rowers are flesh and blood, sir; and flesh and blood reaches breaking point at last. Ours have been rowing for many hours, and the sea is getting up all the time. Soon we shall have to begin constant flogging to keep them pulling their full weight, and presently not even flogging will do it. And when we reach that point—’ He shrugged expressively. ‘If we try to keep her to her course any longer, we shall have the whole convoy on the Barrier Sands in two hours.’
‘That is so, sir,’ the pilot put in. ‘If we alter course now, to south-westward, we’ll just about shave by, unless the wind starts to veer.’
For an instant the Legate was silent, his hard face turned to where, in so few hours now, the shores of Britain should be lifting over the skyline beyond the galley’s prow. ‘Very well,’ he said at last, to the two anxious men beside him. ‘You are the seamen, and it seems that I have no choice but to bow to your superior judgement … . I shall go below and try to get some sleep.’ He turned to the poop ladder, and gathering the beating folds of his cloak about him, scrambled down it and disappeared with an undignified lurch through the little dark entrance of the cabin.
The two officers glanced at each other in swift relief, and wasted no more time. The Master swung round to a seaman who stood ready for orders. ‘Run up the signal for “altering course to larboard” and send someone up to the masthead to make sure that every ship of the convoy receives and answers it.’ Then, as the man went to obey, he turned back to the pilot. ‘I think we will not make sail.’
The other agreed. ‘No, sir: better to use the rowers to get well clear, even if it kills a few of them. Then we can lay the oars in and show a bit of sail and let her run down through the Gaulish Fret. The wind will have gone round to the nor’-west and blown itself out by to-morrow’s dawn.’
A long yellow pennant ran up to the masthead, whipping out like a pale bright flame in the wind; and already a man was swinging himself aloft into the tiny fighting-top above the yard. For a short while he remained there, shielding his eyes with his palm. Then he cupped his hands to his mouth, and his hail came down through the tumult of wind and sea and flapping canvas, to the men on the after-deck. ‘Signal received by all, sir.’
The Master flung up a hand in reply, then spoke to the steersmen. ‘Bring her round.’
‘Aye, sir.’ The men set their weight to the rudder bar; the great double rudder swung over slowly, and the galley turned in a wide sea-swallow curve through almost the quarter of a circle.
‘Steady as you go.’
Beric was instantly aware of the galley’s altered course. Her uneasy rolling ceased, she was no longer ploughing diagonally across the seas, but running with them, with a purposeful forward lift up the watery slopes of the waves, and a dip and a slip forward into the troughs like a gull. But that did little to ease the task of the rowers. ‘How much longer?’ Beric wondered desperately. ‘Do they want to kill us? We must lay the oars in!’ And he was not alone in his wondering. All along the rowing-benches there was beginning to be a muttering, that rose soon to a breathless, sobbing outcry. ‘We must lay oars in!’ someone shouted. ‘Fiends out of Tartarus couldn’t—row in this—sea!’ Someone else took up the cry, and it was echoed and re-echoed back and forth all down the length of the galley. ‘Do you want to kill the lot of us? We must lay the oars in—lay the oars—in!’
Porcus was lurching up and down the heaving deck, his whiplash busy to quell the outcry; but always it broke out again behind him. Then the Master came down from the poop. They saw him speak with the Hortator for a few moments. Porcus rolled up to join them, and stood swaying to the motion of the galley, lithe as a cat, on the balls of his feet. He said something, grinning, with a flash of white teeth in his copper face, and gave a suggestive flick to the lash in his hand. But the Master shook his head impatiently, and turned to look along the banks of rowers.
He flung up his hand to draw their attention, and his voice with the wind behind it carried clear above the tumult, the full length of the galley, so that even the men on the bow benches heard him plainly. ‘Listen to me, all of you. It is no use your yelling that the oars must be laid in, that you cannot row. There are fifteen miles of quicksands over yonder.’ He pointed over the steerboard bow. ‘If we lay the oars in now, the odds are that we shall be on to the southern end of them in something under two hours. Show me that if fiends out of Tartarus couldn’t row in this sea, there are eighty galley slaves in the Alcestis who can; and when we make Dubris there shall be wine—real wine—and red meat for all of you, as much as you can gorge. If you do not, then the odds are that we shall not make Dubris. That is all.’
Standing there for a moment, after he had finished, his gaze swept challengingly along the rowing-deck. And then a queer thing happened, for sullenly, as though against their wills, the rebellious and exhausted ranks sent up a hoarse and broken shout that might, in free men, have been a cheer. The Master acknowledged it with a flourish of his up-flung arm, and then turned back to the poop ladder.
There was no more outcry on the rowing-benches. The rowers were fighting for their lives; for whatever slim chance there might be for the crew if the galley was wrecked, the slaves, chained to their benches, had none; the life of the galley was quite literally their life too. Yet they were fighting for the galley herself also. They hated the Alcestis, and with good cause. She had been a floating hell to them; but they fought for her now as men fight for a thing they love. Half blind with the flying spray, sick and gasping with exhaustion, their hearts bursting in their breasts, they fought the wildly bucking oars, struggling to keep some s
ort of time to the resonant clack, clack, clack, pulsing through the turmoil of the storm, that was the Hortator’s hammer on the sounding-table.
One man was killed at his oar, and three more had ribs broken before at last the order came, ‘Stand by to lay in oars.’
A great sob of relief burst from the straining lungs of the rowers as the Hortator’s hammer ceased to beat, and they set themselves to the last effort of lifting the oars clear of the thole-pins and laying them in. A few moments later the oars had been housed along the flying-deck, the bulls’-hide storm-shields shipped over the oar-ports, and the Alcestis was running before the wind under half sail.
The spent rowers slid numbly from their benches to huddle under the shelter of the bulwarks, their heads down between their heaving shoulders, their backs turned to the wind and the stinging spray of the green following seas. It was not until then that Jason began to cough. It was the same dry, strangled cough that Beric knew of old, but this time it went on and on; and, still coughing, Jason sagged forward on to his face.
Beric caught him in his arms and held him, feeling the small terrible cough rasping through his own body as harshly as through the wasted body of his oar-mate. When it was over, Jason lay quiet against his knees. His eyes were shut, and he was grey-white to the lips as Beric bent over him. ‘What is it?’ Beric demanded. ‘Are you hurt?’ His shackled hand was moving hurriedly over the other’s chest and sides, feeling for broken ribs. ‘Where is the pain? Did the oar catch you?’
Jason opened his eyes. ‘No,’ he said, quite steadily. ‘I am well enough. I felt sick for the moment, and the world—seemed to go far away, that is all. It is coming back now.’ He made a weak attempt to sit up, but Beric pressed him back.
‘Bide still. Is my knee not a fine enough pillow for you?’ Jason relaxed again, with a ghost of a smile, a twisted, faun’s smile that, like his voice, still held the shadow of bygone reckless laughter.
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