Chask said: "Is it your pleasure that we make for Palindos Strait with all possible dispatch, Captain?"
"Absolutely!"
"Aye-aye, sir. Back oars!" When they were out of the weed: "Forward on the starboard bank… Now all together… Haul the sheet. Up the tiller… Now row for your worthless lives, ere the Sunqaro galleys find you. Ave, set course northeast, sailing full and by." He turned back to Barnevelt. "What befell you, sir, and where's the young fan-tastico who accompanied you?"
"Step into the cabin with us," said Barnevelt.
While Barnevelt salved and bandaged Zei's feet with supplies from the first-aid cabinet, Chask rustled them a snack and told his tale.
"We lay at the pier, ye see, until the other shallop ties up beside us, and a battalia of pirates disembarks to mount the gangplank to the big galley. Next we know, one of our seamen leaps from the galley's deck into the briny and clambers over our gunwhale, crying that all is lost and we must needs flee. Whilst we hesitate, unwilling to push off whilst hope remains, down come the men of the Sunqar with weapons bared, crying to take us.
"At that we went, pausing but to cut the rigging of the other shallop, pursuit to incommode. Then forth we row, leaving tumult in our wake, to give the chasers slip under cloak of night. In sooth we hid behind a hulk that lay upon the terpahla's edge and heard the galleys go by close, searching for us. With dawn we issued from our hidey-hole and, seeing no Sunqaro ships, sought this rendezvous in recollection of our skipper's parting orders."
"Good," said Barnevelt. "But why did you keep your sail up after the sky had become light? That's asking for the Sunqaruma to come out and pick you up."
"The lads would have it, sir, misliking to do all the work of moving the ship themselves. 'Twas all I could do to bully and persuade them to turn aside from their flight to pick you up." Chask gave Barnevelt an accusing stare, which said as plainly as words: You're the one who ruined the discipline on this ship, so don't blame me. "And now, Captain, will ye not tell me what befell you?"
Barnevelt told as much of his story as he thought wise. "… so we had to run for it. Zakkomir led the pursuers one way to give Zei and me time to escape in another direction, and we got away by walking across the vine with boards tied to our feet."
"The young popinjay has more mettle than I should have thought. What betid him at the end?"
"I don't know. Now tell me, why are the men so glum? You'd think they'd be glad to see us."
"As to that, two reasons: One, if ye'll pardon my outspeaking, they like this voyage not, for that it has already cost the lives of four—five, if ye count young Zakkomir. Ye know, sir, there's many a man who's brave as a yeki in his home port, in planning voyages of hazard, but who develops second thoughts when peril stares him in the face.
"And two: We have that young Zanzir, who mortally hates you because ye shamed him before his comrades after he's boasted of his intimacy with you. Moreover, he's lived in Katai-Jhogorai, where they have no kings or nobles, and there imbibed pernicious thoughts of the equality of all men. So he'll have it that the life of my lady Zei—no disrespect to you intended, mistress—that her life weighs no more in the scales of the gods of the afterworld than that of a common seaman, and that to trade it for four or five of theirs were no exchange but murder and oppression. And thus the crew he's disaffected…"
"Why haven't you done something about this guy?" said Barnevelt, interrupting what promised to develop into a seminar on government. "Anybody knows you can't have democracy on a ship at sea."
Chask said: "I take the liberty, sir, of bringing to your mind your own express orders at the start of this expedition: No 'brutality,' ye said. So now the time for a swift thrust in the dark, that might this sore have cauterized, is past, specially as Zanzir's careful to keep within arm's reach of his more fanatic partisans…"
"Sirs!" cried a sailor, sticking his head in the cabin door. "A galley's on our trail!"
CHAPTER THREE
They hurried out. The morning sun showed a sail on the horizon, between them and the diminishing Sunqar. Barnevelt scurried up the mast. From the height of the parral, he could see the hull below the sail, end-on, and the bank of oars rising and falling on each side. From his point of vantage he also made out a second and more distant sail.
He climbed down and looked around the deck. Young Zanzir, at the moment bow oarsman on the port bank, returned his stare as if defying him to start something.
Barnevelt called the boatswain and Zei into the cabin, unlocked the arms locker, and got out swords for Chask and himself and a long dagger for Zei.
"Now you see what I meant about the sail. It occurs to me that our young idealist might jump us when the Sun-qaro ships got close and turn us over to them in exchange for his own freedom."
"That could be," said Chask, "though honest mariners mortally fear the Sunqaruma, holding them not men but automata animated by the fiendish magic of the monster who rules the swamp."
"Well, if anybody makes a false move, kill him and throw him over the side," said Barnevelt. "After this, use your judgment in matters of discipline."
Chask gave Barnevelt a ghost of a smile, though he refrained from crowing openly.
"Now," said Barnevelt, "I'll make a'plot, if you'll help." He turned to Zei. "You'd better put on some more seagoing clothes. That gauze thing is falling apart."
He unlocked the slop chest and got out the Krishnan equivalent of dungarees. Then he spread his charts on the table and went to work. A swell from the North tossed the Shambor about enough to make position-reckoning a bothersome chore. When Barnevelt had finished, Chask said, "If we go not soon upon the other reach, Captain, the Sunqaruma'U be in position to cut us off from the Strait."
"Let's make our tack, then," said Barnevelt. Not wishing to sunburn his nude scalp, he put on his battered silver helmet and went out again on deck.
The north wind, having freshened, blew spray from the bow slantwise across the deck. Water squirted in through the oar holes from time to time. With the seas so high, the oarsmen could no longer keep a regular rhythm but had to pause between strokes, oars in the air, until the coxswain called "Stroke!" at a favorable instant.
Barnevelt took another turn up the mast, holding the rungs tightly so as not to be jerked off by a sudden pitch. The wind sang in the rigging, the ropes creaked, and the sail was stretched tautly on its yard. Astern, the pursuing galley, though nearer, labored under similar difficulties. From time to time, Barnevelt could see a burst of spray as she dug her bow into a wave. Being a bigger ship, she dug in farther than the Shambor, which rode like a cork. The galley, he now saw, was a two-sticker with a big mainsail forward and a smaller mizzen aft.
When Barnevelt got down again, Chask called, "Ready about!" the boatswain had to ship several oars to get enough men to handle the sail in this wind. "Tiller hard down to leeward! Pay out the vang! Let go the sheet! Cast off the weather stays!"
Watching this complicated maneuver, Barnevelt feared that a sudden gust might tear the sail, now streaming out ahead of the ship, flapping and booming like a huge triangular flag; or that the mast, now unstayed, might be carried away. In either case they'd be done for. They were drifting before the wind at no small speed, notwithstanding that the remaining oarsmen were backing water.