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CHAPTER VII - A REPELLENT SIGHT
The cruiser Vanator careened through the tempest. That she had not been
dashed to the ground, or twisted by the force of the elements into tangled
wreckage, was due entirely to the caprice of Nature. For all the duration of the
storm she rode, a helpless derelict, upon those storm-tossed waves of wind. But
for all the dangers and vicissitudes they underwent, she and her crew might have
borne charmed lives up to within an hour of the abating of the hurricane. It was
then that the catastrophe occurred--a catastrophe indeed to the crew of the
Vanator and the kingdom of Gathol.
The men had been without food or drink since leaving Helium, and they had been
hurled about and buffeted in their lashings until all were worn to exhaustion.
There was a brief lull in the storm during which one of the crew attempted to
reach his quarters, after releasing the lashings which had held him to the
precarious safety of the deck. The act in itself was a direct violation of orders and,
in the eyes of the other members of the crew, the effect, which came with startling
suddenness, took the form of a swift and terrible retribution. Scarce had the man
released the safety snaps ere a swift arm of the storm-monster encircled the ship,
rolling it over and over, with the result that the foolhardy warrior went overboard
at the first turn.
Unloosed from their lashing by the constant turning and twisting of the ship and
the force of the wind, the boarding and landing tackle had been trailing beneath
the keel, a tangled mass of cordage and leather. Upon the occasions that the
Vanator rolled completely over, these things would be wrapped around her until
another revolution in the opposite direction, or the wind itself, carried them once
again clear of the deck to trail, whipping in the storm, beneath the hurtling ship.
Into this fell the body of the warrior, and as a drowning man clutches at a straw
so the fellow clutched at the tangled cordage that caught him and arrested his
fall. With the strength of desperation he clung to the cordage, seeking frantically
to entangle his legs and body in it. With each jerk of the ship his hand holds were
all but torn loose, and though he knew that eventually they would be and that he
must be dashed to the ground beneath, yet he fought with the madness that is
born of hopelessness for the pitiful second which but prolonged his agony.
It was upon this sight then that Gahan of Gathol looked, over the edge of the
careening deck of the Vanator, as he sought to learn the fate of his warrior.
Lashed to the gunwale close at hand a single landing leather that had not fouled
the tangled mass beneath whipped free from the ship's side, the hook snapping at
its outer end. The Jed of Gathol grasped the situation in a single glance. Below
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