And then I felt the water against my feet, lapping about my heels.
I stood up, dragging the groggy Klygon erect and holding him up, while the cold waves washed about my ankles. I really cannot explain why I did this, but there is something within me which refuses to give up even when the future looks at its blackest, and my luck has reached its end. It would be wiser not to have fought for another minute’s breath, but to yield to that which was inevitable. Well, perhaps so; but it was my way to fight on even against the most hopeless of odds, to the last moment, the last breath, the last drop of blood.
The waves closed about my legs; soon they would wash about my knees. And then it would be only moments to live.
Oh, it is hard to die when you are blind! I, who have faced Death unflinchingly, eye to eye, would do so at the end. But I could not see the face of mine Adversary, the placid face of the waters that would be my second tomb…
The numbing coldness of the waves about his lower limbs must have roused Klygon from his stupor, for I heard him gasp suddenly.
Then he clutched my arm in a powerful grip, his fingers biting into my flesh like steel hooks. He began a senseless ullulation—a howl of agony that sounded like a cry of surprise! There were no words to that strangled, bellowing cry, and I wondered if his reason had not given away before the shock of awakening to the very face of death.
But then, just a moment later I heard another sound, at first inexplicable. Then, with a jarring shock, I recognized it.
The slap of waves against a hull!
And I wondered if my reason had given way, as well!
Then, as I swayed numbly, scarcely daring to hope, there came to my ears the creak of oarlocks, the grunt of the rowers. And in the next instant, just as the waves rose about my loins, there were hands that grasped me, lifting me from the cold embrace of the deadly waters into the dry safety of a boat; and Klygon beside me, sobbing and babbling. And then I am very much afraid that I fainted dead away.
Chapter 2.
ABOARD THE XOTHUN
I have escaped death many times during my years of perilous adventure on the World of the Green Star, but never so narrowly as when the Xothun pirates rescued Klygon and I from the rising waves of the Sea of Komar.
Unable to see my new surroundings, or the hands which had lifted me from the murderous embrace of the waters, I perforce relied upon my companion to serve as my eyes. Poor Klygon was ill-suited for such a task, I fear. Spawn of the gutters of Ardha, denizen of the back-alleys of the Yellow City, his rearing and education had prepared him poorly for such a situation.
Perhaps I should explain here, for the benefit of whatever reader may chance upon this narrative, that the natives of the Green Star are wont to dwell in treetop cities built high among the lofty boughs of their world-wide forest. Indeed, the Laonese—for so they term their race—have a superstitious terror of the floor of the continental forest and never willingly descend to solid ground at the base of the colossal trees. “The Bottom of the World” they call it; that black and lightless abyss, given over to the monstrous worms and cannibal savages, where seldom does a ray of sunlight ever penetrate to lighten its perpetual gloom.
The universal language they speak, therefore, does not even have the words to describe our situation. Since the denizens of the treetop cities have never seen or even imagined a sea, they have no words in their vocabulary to describe such a phenomenon. And the very concept of a ship built to navigate such a sea is equally alien and unfamiliar to them. But by dint of patient and repeated questioning, I drew from Klygon a word-picture of the vessel whereon we were now captive.
It was a wooden vessel of several decks and considerable length, called the Xothun, by which name the Islanders refer to a sea-dwelling reptile unknown to Klygon’s people. The Xothun had a high-tiered forecastle, where the captain’s cabin was situated and the bridge from where the vessel was steered, and a pointed prow. The midship deck was railed with gunwales of ornately-careen wood, with a high-built sterncastle and a rudder shaped like a dragon’s tail. From what I could elicit from Klygon’s halting descriptions, the ship sounded not unlike a Spanish or Venetian galleon of the High Renaissance.
The Xothun’s design was sophisticated and its craftsmanship denoted that its builders belonged to an advanced level of civilization. Oddly enough, however, the officers and crew-members seemed scarcely developed above savagery. They were a loutish and ill-kempt lot, clothed in tattered and filthy skins, fitted with scraps and bits of war-armor fashioned of the glassy, transparent metal the Laonese employ instead of iron or steel. Unshaven and dirty, surly and disobedient, quarrelsome and often drunk, it seemed to me that they had too recently emerged out of the red murk of barbarism to have possessed the skills to design or build such a galleon as the Xothun.
And their unfitness to sail the Xothun was evident, even to a blind man. The ship was maintained in the most slovenly manner imaginable, her decks and stairways littered with garbage, beslimed with offal. Discipline was almost nonexistent among them; order was maintained only because the ship’s officers were larger and stronger than the crewmen, and went heavily armed with dirk, axe and cutlass at all times.
The captain of the Xothun was afoul-mouthed brute called Hoggur. According to Klygon’s faltering descriptions, he was a towering brute, muscled like a gladiator, ugly as an ogre, bristling with weapons. As for his vicious temper, I had evidence of that from my own knowledge; I had not been aboard the Xothun half a day before Iloggur turned upon one of the crewmen for some fancied slur or insult, and flogged the poor creature half to death.
Considering the low position of the Xothun pirates on the social scale, you may be wondering why they ever bothered to save Klygon and me from drowning. It was not from motives of simple humanity or noble altruism, I assure you, but from simple need. The gallery had masts and sails, Klygon told me, but its masters seemed largely ignorant of their use and relied upon the oarbanks for propellent power. So cruelly treated were the rowers, who remained chained below-decks at all times, living, working and sleeping in their own filth, that they died like flies. This required Hoggur and his officers to find replacements for those who died and were heaved overboard to feed the fish.
Thus, when a lookout posted high in the crow’s nest of the galley spied Klygon and me in immediate peril of drowning, Hoggur dispatched a longboat to bring us aboard. Once we were on deck before him, he looked us over with a contemptuous sneer and commanded that we be taken below and chained to the oars to replace two rowers who had died the night before. Neither of us were in the best condition, having but recently escaped from the noisome underground burrows of the troglodytes, but that made little difference to Hoggur. Nor did the fact of my blindness interest him; an oarsman does not need his eyesight to drag on the oars.
And so it was that Klygon and I were saved from a watery grave only to be enslaved at the oars of the Xothun; there we toiled in reeking filth and perpetual darkness under the lash until we succumbed to some illness, whereupon we would be unchained and dropped over the side.
Out of the frying-pan, into the fire, as we Earthlings say! Still and all, even the postponement of certain death gives one certain latitude for hope. Better the death delayed than death at hand.
My companion at the oars of the Xothun was a young nobleman called Andar. Komar was his country, an island in the archipelago which lay in the midst of the Komarian Sea. Although I could not see him, I guessed from his pleasant, manly voice and the superior breeding which was evident in the many kindnesses he displayed towards me, that he came from a more cultured society than that of the repulsive savages who commanded the vessel.