"I doubt it," said Tob, "but we shall see. As for letting you

have my Lord Deucalion, that is out of the question. For see here,
pot-mate Dason; in the first place, if I went to Atlantis without

Deucalion, my other lord, Tatho, would come back one of these days,
and in his hands I should die by the slowest of slow inches; in the

second, I have seen my Lord Deucalion kill a great sea lizard, and
he showed himself such a proper man that day that I would not give

him up against his will, even to Tatho himself; and in the third
place, you owe me for your share in our last wine-bout ashore, and

I'll see you with the nether Gods before I give you aught till
you've settled that score."

"Well, Tob, I hope you'll drown easy. As for that wife of yours,
I've always had a fancy for her myself, and I shall know how to

find a use for the woman."
"I'll draw your neck for that, you son of a European," said

Tob; "and if you do not clear off this deck I'll draw it here.
Go," he cried, "you father of monkey children! Get away, and let

me fight you fairly, or by my honour I'll stamp the inwards out of
you, and make your silly crew wear them as necklaces."

Upon which Dason went to his galley.
Promptly Tob set going the machine on our own "Bear," and

bawled his orders right and left to the other ships. The crew
might be weak with scurvy, but they were quick to obey. Instantly

the five vessels were all started, and because our Lord the Sun was
shining brightly, got soon to the full of their pace. The whole of

our small navy converged, singling out one ship of their opponents,
and she, not being ready for so swift an attack, got flurried, and

endeavoured to turn and run for room, instead of trying to meet us
bows on. As a consequence, the whole of our five ships hit her

together on the broadside, tearing her planking with their
underwater beaks, and sinking her before we had backed clear from

the engage.
But if we thus brought the enemy's number down to five, and so

equal to our own, the advantage did not remain with us for long.
The three nimblegalleys formed into line: their boatswains' whips

cracked as the slaves bent to their oars, and presently one of our
own ships was gored and sunk, the men on her being killed in the

water without hope of rescue.
And then commenced a tight-locked melee that would have warmed

the heart of the greatest warrior alive. The ships and the galleys
were forced together and lay savagely grinding one another upon the

swells, as though they had been sentient animals. The men on board
them shot their arrows, slashed with axes, thrust and hacked with

swords, and hurled the throwing fire. But in every way the fight
converged upon the "Bear." It was on her that the enemy spent the

fiercest of their spite; it was to the "Bear," that the other crews
of Tatho's navy rallied as their own vessels caught fire, or were

sunk or taken.
Battle is an old acquaintance with us of the Priestly Clan,

and for those of us who have had to carve out territories for the
new colonies, it comes with enough frequency to cloy even the most

chivalrous appetite. So I can speak here as a man of experience.
Up till that time, for half a life-span, I had heard men shout

"Deucalion" as a battlecry, and in my day had seen some lusty
encounters. But this sea-fight surprised even me in its savage

fierceness. The bleak, unstable element which surrounded us; the
swaying decks on which we fought; the throwing fire, which burnt

flesh and wood alike with its horrid flame; the great gluttonous
man-eating birds that hovered in the sky overhead; the man-eating

fish that swarmed up from the seas around, gnawing and quarrelling
over those that fell into the waters, all went to make up a

circumstance fit to daunt the bravest men-at-arms ever gathered for
an army.

But these tarry shipmen faced it all with an indomitable
courage, and never a cry of quailing. Life on the seas is so hard,

and (from the beasts that haunt the great waters) so full of savage
dangers, that Death has lost half his terrors to them through sheer

familiarity. They were fellows who from pure lust for a fray would
fight to a finish amongst themselves in the taverns ashore; and so

here, in this desperate sea-battle, the passion for killing burned
in them, as a fire stone from Heaven rages in a forest; and they

took even their death-wounds laughing.
On our side the battle-cry was "Tob!" and the name of this

obscure ship-captain seemed to carry a confidence with it for our
own crews that many a well-knowncommander might have envied. The

enemy had a dozen rallying cries, and these confused them. But as
their other ship-commanders one by one were killed, and Dason

remained, active with mischief, "Dason!" became the shout which was
thrown back at us in response to our "Tob!"

However, I will not load my page with farther long account of
this obscure sea-fight, whose only glory was its ferocity. One by

one all the ships of either side were sunk or lay with all their
people killed, till finally only Dason's galley and our own "Bear"

were left. For the moment we were being mastered. We had a score
of men remaining out of all those that manned the navy when it

sailed from Yucatan, and the enemy had boarded us and made the
decks of the "Bear" the field of battle. But they had been over

busy with the throwing fire, and presently, as we raged at one
another, the smoke and the flame from the sturdyvessel herself let

us very plainly know that she was past salvation.
But Tob was nothing daunted. "They may stay here and fry if they

choose," he shouted with his great boisterous laugh, "but for
ourselves the galley is good enough now. Keep a guard on

Deucalion, and come with me, shipmates!"
"Tob!" our fellows shouted in their ecstasy of fighting

madness, and I too could not forbear sending out a "Tob!" for my
battle-cry. It was a change for me not to be leader, but it was a

luxury for once to fight in the wake of this Tob, despite his
uncouthness of mien and plan. There was no stopping this new rush,

though progress still was slow. Tob with his bloody axe cut the
road in front, and we others, with the lust of battle filling us to

the chin, raged like furies in his wake. Gods! but it was a fight.
Ten of us won to the galley, with the flames and the smoke from

the poor "Bear" spurting at our heels. We turned and stabbed
madly at all who tried to follow, and hacked through the grapples

that held the vessels to their embrace. The sea-swells spurned the
"Bear" away.

The slaves chained to the rowing-galley's benches had interest
neither one way nor the other, and looked on the contest with dull

concern, save when some stray missile found a billet amongst them.
But a handful of the fighting men had scrambled desperately on

board the galley after us, preferring any fate to a fiery death on
the "Bear," and these had to be dealt with promptly. Three, with

their fighting fury still red-hot in them, had most wastefully to
be killed out of mischief's way; five, who had pitched their

weapons into the sea, were chained to oar looms, in place of slaves
who were dead; and there remained only Dason to have a fate

apportioned.
The fight had cooled out of him, and he had thrown his arms to

the sea, and stood sullenly ready for what might befall; and to him
Tob went up with an exulting face.

"Ho, pot-mate Dason," cried he, "you made a lot of talk an
hour ago about that woman of mine, who lives with her brats on the

quay-side in Atlantis yonder. Now, I'll give you a pleasant