paused speculatively before the wailing, empty-socketed horror stumbling and falling about the deck. Then. grinning cheerfully, he lifted it by the knees and tossed it overboard.
“Three less to worry about hereafter,” muttered Gigi,
A tremor shook Kenton; his teeth chattered; he sobbed. The drummer looked down on him with amused wonder.
“You fought well, wolf cub,” he said. “Then why do you quiver like a whipped hound whose half-chewed bone has been cast away?”
He laid both hands on Kenton’s bleeding shoulders. Under their touch he steadied. It was as though through Gigi’s hands flowed some current of strength of which his soul drank. As though he had tapped some ancient spring, some still pool of archaic indifference both to life and death, the current ran through him.
“Good!” said Gigi, and stood up. “Now Zachel comes for you.”
The overseer was beside Kenton; he touched his shoulder; pointed down a short flight of steps that led from the black deck to the galley-pit. Zachel behind him, Kenton groped down those steps into the half darkness of the pit. He stumbled along a narrow passage-way; was brought to halt at a great oar over whose shank a head, golden-haired, long-haired as any woman’s, bent from muscle-gnarled shoulders. This golden-haired oarsman slept. Around his waist was a thick bronze ring. From this ring a strong chain swung, its end fastened to a staple sunk deep in the back of the bench on which he sat. His wrists were manacled. The oar on which his head rested was manacled, too. Between manacled wrists and manacled oar two other strong chains stretched.
There was an empty chained circlet at the sleeper’s left side; on the oar at his left two empty manacles hung from chains.
Zachel pushed Kenton down on the bench beside the sleeping oarsman; girdled his waist with the empty bronze circlet; snapped it close; locked it.
He thrust Kenton’s unresisting hands through the manacles dangling from the oar; closed them on him; locked them.
And suddenly Kenton felt warmth of eyes upon him: looked behind him; saw leaning over the rail the face of Sharane. There was pity in her face; and dawning of something that set his heart to beating wildly.
“I’ll discipline you — never fear!” said Zachel.
Kenton looked behind him again.
Sharane was gone.
He bent over his oar beside the sleeping giant.
Bent over his oar —
Chained to it.
Slave of the ship!
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