“They are evil,” Olaf shouted. “I warn you, Captain, they are evil.”
“Be silent,” Erik ordered, and Olaf clamped his jaws shut, a dull anger smoldering in his eyes. Erik turned to Neil. “Can you lead us to land? We need food and water before we can attempt to reach home.”
Neil turned to Dave. “They want to know if we can lead them to land. What shall I tell them?”
“What tongue do they speak now?” Olaf demanded. “They are evil and they speak the tongue of the Devil.”
“I speak in the tongue of my friend,” Neil answered in Swedish. Then, in English, “What shall I tell them, Dave?”
“Tell them we’ll lead them to land if they take us abord and tow our machine. It’s our only chance, Neil. This baby isn’t going to float much longer.”
“We’ll find land,” Neil said to Erik, “if you tow our ship and take us aboard.”
“Take the Devil aboard,” Olaf said, “and we are doomed.”
Erik walked amidships and began talking softly with his crew. Occasionally, a sailor, his eyes lighting with a strange mixture of fear and wonder, would look over at the machine and Neil. Still, the Norsemen talked among themselves.
Neil and Dave waited patiently.
Finally, Erik strode back to the side of the ship.
“We will take you aboard,” he said simply.
“This is wrong,” Olaf protested. “They will bring us nothing but ill luck. I say throw them to the sharks.”
“And I say take them aboard,” Erik said softly, “and I am captain of this vessel.”
Olaf spat on the deck and swore. “Then take them aboard,” he said, “and suffer the consequences.”
“Shorty doesn’t like us,” Dave said. “I can tell. Don’t ask me how; I can just tell.”
“But they’re taking us aboard,” Neil said happily.
Dave nodded, a smile on his lips. Together, they climbed onto the railing of the Norse ship and dropped to the deck. The crew opened a respectful path for them.
“Your clothes are strange,” Erik remarked.
“The clothes of our land.”
“The clothes of the Devil,” Olaf muttered.
“We’ll need lumber lashed to our ship,” Neil explained, “to keep it afloat so that we too may get home.”
“We’ll give you lumber. Are you sure you can take us to land?”
“Yes,” Neil said, not at all certain that he could.
Quickly, Erik ordered the crew to prepare lumber and lashings. When these were ready, Neil and Dave set to work on the time machine, lashing lumber to the rotors, to the control-room area, and to the upper and lower bubbles. When they were through, they were fairly certain the machine wouldn’t sink in anything less than a storm.
Erik stood watching them all the while they worked, his eyes glued to the rifles slung over their shoulders. When they climbed aboard again, he asked, “What are these long sticks you carry?”
Neil hesitated.
“What does he want to know?” Dave asked.
“The rifles.”
Dave sighed. “I guess you’d better tell him. We’ve trusted him so far.”
“They are weapons,” Neil explained to Erik. “Like your axes.”
“I will have to ask you for them,” Erik said. “To protect my ship.”
“He wants them,” Neil said.
Dave snapped on the safety catch and handed his rifle to Erik. He grinned broadly as Neil handed his rifle over too.
“Which way do we sail?” Erik asked.
“Well, Dave?” Neil asked.
“What does he want?”
“He wants a course.”
“Oh! Just a second.”
Dave climbed over the rail and back into the machine. When he appeared again, he was carrying the compass he’d torn from the instrument panel.
“If we’re near Yucatan,” he said to Neil, “in the Gulf of Mexico, we should sail south.” He pointed in the general direction. “That way.”
Erik’s face clouded momentarily. “Are you sure?” he asked Neil.
“Yes.”
Olaf had padded up to where the men stood talking. He sneered at Neil and said, “And if they are wrong, Captain?”
Erik seemed to think this over. “If they are wrong,” he said slowly, “we shall do as you suggested. We shall throw them to the sharks.”
He rammed his battle-ax into the heavy belt around his waist and walked amidships.
“Man your oars,” he bellowed. “Man your oars.”
The sailors scurried to bow and stern, grasping their oars in sturdy arms. Several men handled the sail, and one man stood in the stern of the ship, handling the tiller.
Erik pointed out their course, and the men pulled on the oars, swinging the great ship around. The sail billowed out with wind, and the ship began to move forward.
Olaf passed close to Neil and whispered, “You had better be right, evil one.”
He swaggered off to the stern of the ship, and Neil stared after him.
“What’s Shorty beefing about now?” Dave asked.
“Nothing,” Neil said. “Nothing.”
The big ship sliced into the waves, its prow pointed south, the wind strong in its sails, and hungry sailors pulling heavily on their oars.
Chapter 5
The Search for Land
The wind was fair and the skies were clear, and the sail billowed out like the stomach of a fat man in red-striped pajamas. Men cursed and sang, and hard-muscled, browned arms pulled on stout oars. The timbers creaked and groaned, and the great prow of the ship sliced the water cleanly, white froth bubbling out to starboard and to port.
South they headed, and the wind favored them.
And for three days they saw no land.
Erik grew restless, and under Olafs constant needling, his temper snapped at the slightest provocation. Neil was amazed by the paradox that was Erik. He was an excellent seaman with an uncanny sense for keeping his ship on course. He knew the stars like an astronomer, and he would send the ship in the right direction by a slight correction of the tiller-a few degrees to the right or left. He knew, too, which of his men were working and which were merely leaning on their oars. On the second day of their search for land, Erik had found one sailor drunk at the tiller. He had clamped a gigantic hand in the man’s tunic and smashed a blow home to his jaw. The hapless seaman had collapsed to the deck, and Erik handled the tiller himself for that watch.
And yet, at night, when the men rested from their rowing, and wind leaped into the sail, Erik was the first to start a song, the first to break out the wineskins and fill the cups.
Then, for hours on end, he would stand in the bow of the ship, his hand resting on the head of his ax, his deep blue eyes staring out over the horizon.
Neil would watch him at these times, would watch the captain pace the ship like a worried cat, lean on the starboard rail for a moment, then pace back to port and stand there restlessly, his eyes searching, always searching. The sun would gleam like molten fire in his beard, and the wind would lift it playfully from his chin.
But there was nothing playful about the grim set of his mouth.
For three days they sailed, the water surrounding them in a monotonous circle, a dazzling sheet of green that hurt the eyes in the glare of the midday sun.
And still no land.
Neil and Dave sat on coils of rope in the bow and watched the big Norseman.
“He’s worried,” Dave said. “He’s afraid we won’t find land.”
“I’m worried, too,” Neil admitted.
“Not much we can do, Neil. Even if we had our rifles, there’s an awful lot of crew to…”
“Neil!” It was Erik’s voice. He was standing in the stern sheets, near the tiller.
Neil looked up. “Yes?”
“Come here.”