They were an odd lot, ranging from a bluegum Nubian to several blond Scandinavian giants. Joe tried to guess the language. Here a Latin word cropped up, there a phrase in Greek koine. It was beyond Joe. An artificial language, he guessed, like Legion French—the sort of bastard dialect which develops whenever strangers are thrown together.
He had finally succeeded in thoroughly and irremediably botching things up. And, he reflected, it was all his own fault. Why couldn’t he have gotten out of here last night? Under jib and jigger the Alice would have been twenty miles away by now and with daylight he could have set the main.
Too tired! This was what happened to captains who could afford to get tired. He took a deep breath and tried to drive the mind sapping despair out of his body. What was he going to do? Mutiny?
That, he suspected, he would not do. He climbed on the narrow bench, standing as straight as the chain would permit. The imam was five oars ahead of him. Gorson was chained to an oar on the portside. The rest of the Alice’s men were scattered throughout the lower bank.
What had happened to Ma Trimble and her girls? They would switch allegiance at a moment’s notice anyway—why worry? He wondered how he would stand up under the strain of rowing. How would he take the oarmaster’s lash?
He looked aft again. Gorson was sunk in apathy, his head resting on his oar. Raquel forced her way to the top of his unwilling mind. Ma Trimble’s blondes were of this era and capable of looking after themselves. But Raquel—From where he sat amidships no female was visible. He squinted through the thole hole down at the Alice.
Roman nautae were fumbling helplessly with her running rigging. They had the jigger raised after a fashion, though its luff puckered and bagged like Maggie’s Drawers. Great snarls and Irish pennants festooned the mainmast. They had not fathomed the mysteries of the winch ratchet, nor had they managed to raise jib or mains’l.
Someone shouted and they cast off the Alice’s stem line. A moment later they bunched in the bow and, ignoring the electric windlass, began hauling the Alice hand over hand toward the pinnacle which moored her bow. Not understanding the why of the chain locker’s deck eye, they piled line in a great tangled heap atop the winch.
An expectant rustle ran through the oar benches. Better pay close attention, Joe decided. There was a double blat-snort from an offkey trombone. The anchor man on each oar began unlashing the oar behind him. Joe hurried with the lashings but he was too late.
CRACK! The noise numbed his eardrums like a pistol in a small room. He felt his shirt rip between his shoulder blades. That mad comer of his mind admired the skill of an oarmaster who could create such a devastating effect without harming his animals. He was still fumbling with the strange knots when the CRACK came again. It ploughed an inch-long furrow across the point of his shoulder blade.
He finally slipped the lashing. There was another flat blat and he stumbled hastily backward to avoid being crushed between his own oar and the bench. Someone began pounding a drum. After a couple of strokes Joe began to get the feel of the rise, one step forward, fall back on the bench.
The oar was clumsy as a telegraph pole. Most of its power came from inboard where the unchained oarsman guided the stroke, walking three steps fore and aft. He barked a single unintelligible word at Joe. On the next stroke Joe pushed harder.
Another discordant blat. They stopped, backing water with one reverse stroke. Joe pushed the wrong way, working against the other four men.
CRACKI This time the lash bit deeper.
They rested, awaiting the next signal, and Joe glanced covertly at the man who held the whip, studying the graying, shaggy haircut, the jutting chin with its week-old growth of black beard, engraving this face in his memory. What had become of his detached historian’s viewpoint? That ignorant clod was merely doing his job. Joe shrugged. The welts began to throb. His scholarly detachment departed, along with several of his boyish illusions.
The trumpet blatted and the drum began thumping again. Rise, push forward, fall back again—this time very slowly. There was a slight jerk and he guessed the hawser between the quinquereme and the Alice had gone taut The drum thrumped more rapidly.
They towed the Alice out of the horseshoe harbor and around the island. Joe burst into torrents of sweating. Once around the island, the full force of the wind hit them. They headed northwest, dead into it.
Even amid his distractions Joe found an instant to marvel over the change. It was at least fifteen degrees cooler outside the harbor. He was still sweating but the wind kept his clothes dry. What, he wondered, would happen if they suddenly stopped rowing? Probably pneumonia. But the galley showed no signs of stopping so he continued his rise, push forward, fall back on rubbery legs, wondering if the other oarsmen—Slaves was the word; he was a slave. Were the others as tired as he or would he harden to this life and become an unthinking rising, pushing, falling animal—another piston in the galley’s enormous inefficient engine?
Though he had not noticed it, the drum had been slowing down. The galley alone was a rough go into the wind, and the Alice’s external ballast and deep draught did not make for easy towing. They were still in sight of the island when, after four hours of suggesting and hinting, the quartermaster finally got this bit of information into the landlocked skull of his captain. Came a final despairing blat and oarsmen abruptly collapsed, leaving unshipped oars to dangle. Before Joe had time to worry about pneumonia he was unconscious.
Some one had him by the hair. He opened bleary eyes and recognized the man with the whip. Must remember that face. Someone was standing on the catwalk above them. It was the man who’d questioned him from behind a deskful of papers.
“Can you make that ship go?” the Roman asked.
Joe stared, still half asleep.
“Don’t waste my time,” the Roman snapped. “You had that ship moving without sails in the harbor. Can you do it again?”
Joe stared, trying to focus on the Roman. Why did the showoff have to wear polished armor at sea, aboard his own ship?”
“Useless!” the Roman snapped to his quartermaster. “Back to the island and beach it. Bum it and we can at least get something for the iron.”
Joe snapped out of his lethargy. They were going to destroy his only link with the past. Or was it the future? “No!” he shouted. “No, I can sail it. It’s too valuable to bum. I can make you richl”
The Roman gave him a contemptuous glance and strode off down the catwalk. Joe collapsed across the oar again.
Without the Alice’s vacuum pump and still there was no hope of seeing the Twentieth Century again. Nor would his historian fraction ever see more of the ancient world than the inside of some prison where slaves were quartered during the winter months when navigation was dangerous. He was slipping off into dreamless, hopeless sleep when someone shook him again.
To hell with it! They’ll wear me out and throw me overboard. Let them beat me to death right now. But the shaking wouldn’t stop. There were clanks and hammerings. He opened his eyes in time to see a chiselled rivet head pop off the single manacle.
“Come on,” the armorer was saying in atrocious Greek, “don’t keep the kybemetes waiting.”
Walking down the catwalk, Joe suddenly realized what Christians meant when they spoke of being born again. He tried to attract Gorson’s attention but the chief lay crumpled over his oar.
The Roman captain still sat in his folding chair.
“We are not magicians,” Joe began, “but our arts require years of training. I’ll need some of my men.”
“How many kinds of fool do you take me for?” the Roman snapped. “You’ll teach Roman sailors or go back to your oar.”
Joe’s confidence evaporated. He glanced astern at the Alice and the island. They had drifted back toward it and were less than four miles away now. “I don’t know how much damage you’ve done,” he said. “It may take time to get things working right. Can you set sail and tow us away before we ground?”
The captain
shot a questioning glance at his oarm aster, who sputtered a rapid sentence in Greek. The captain nodded. “We’ll go back into the harbor again. Will that suit you?”
“Well enough,” Joe agreed.
“And while you’re being towed back you can give my men their first lesson in your devious barbarian arts. I’m going aboard too and see what your bucket looks like.”
Another beautiful plan shot to hell. Oh well, it was better than being chained to an oar. He thought guiltily about the others, the imam and the old Dr. Krom . . . and Raquel?
Nautae hauled on the hawser and jumped aboard. Joe sprang after them and a moment later the captain, still in polished armor, came down a rope ladder. A striped sail bellied aboard the galley and nautae paid out the hawser slowly.
Joe went below, followed by the captain and six nautae. One look at the Alice’s interior made him want to cast his manly inhibitions aside and weep. The Romans had gone through her like army ants, taking everything not nailed down and several thing that were.
There was not a single bunk with a mattress in it. Every book, chart, binocular, dividers, pencil, was gone from Joe’s cubicle. Tools and spare parts were missing from Rose’s engine lockers.
Cups, plates, pots, spoons, knives, and forks had disappeared from the galley, along with the stove lids. Not a can of food remained in stores. The lazarette had been emptied of the last grain of rye. Gorson and Cookie’s empty foot lockers were gone. Even the porthole curtains had departed.
“I can’t run the ship this way,” Joe said.
“You’ll run it this way or go back to your oar!”
“Then let’s go,” Joe said, and turned to leave the ship.
The Roman captain lost his air of certainty. “You want to be chained to that oar again?” he asked.
“Why promise what I cannot do? You’ve stolen too many pieces.”
The Roman bit his lip and pondered. “Can you run it alone if I bring things back?”
“I don’t know. Get every last scrap back aboard and I’ll try.
The Roman thought a moment. He suspected that if he could just understand some of this gadgetry it could be very useful. Burning her for iron, on the other hand, would scarcely pay his docking fees in Piraeus. “Which things do you need?” he asked.
Joe shrugged. “Each man in my crew has his own skill. I cast a horoscope and tell them which star to follow. They work the ship.”
The Roman’s face was settling back into the planes and angles of Roman intolerance. “And you alone cannot make the ship go?”
“I didn’t say that,” Joe said hastily. “But it will take longer. What do I need? How the hell should I know? I need everything. Do I get it or not?”
The other surveyed him a moment in frosty indecision. “All right,” he finally grunted. “But none of your own men and no tricks.” He rattled orders in a Greek too fast for Joe and nautae began overhanding the hawser. Joe glanced at the electric winch and shrugged. Why run down batteries? After much heaving and grunting the Alice nuzzled up under the galley’s stem. The Roman captain climbed up the ladder.
Joe glanced at the sun. Another couple of hours daylight, he guessed. Since losing the sextant he’d had no way to set his watch. He glanced at it.
Why, the dirty thieving sons of hitches!
It wasn’t much of a watch but to Joe’s father it had represented considerable sacrifice on the day his son graduated. In memory of this Joe had kept it long past the day when he could have afforded something better. He thought fleetingly of his father—how hard the old man had worked, how easily the world had swindled him out of his meager earnings. And now the world had gotten away with his graduation present to his only son!
Joe squinted at the galley and decided it was time to stop seeing both sides of every question. He turned his attention to the six nautae who chattered to each other in some kind of Greek.
Jerking a peremptory thumb, he strode to the Alice’s bow. “Down this hole,” he growled. “Don’t pile the anchor line on deck, you miserable philosophers.” He poked a couple of feet through the deck eye and stood back. Nautae stared. “Get on the ball!” Joe roared, and drove his fist into the nearest nose.
Blood spouted and the sailor dropped into a crouch. Joe stood erect, arms folded across his chest. The nauta knew a captain when he saw one. He shrugged and went to work.
The galley turned and lowered sail. Oars flashed raggedly as exhausted men took up the beat. The Alice’s people were still chained to them. What was he going to do?
They would have to wait until the stores were back aboard. Trying not to worry about Raquel, he went below.
The Romans had lifted the floorboard over the engine. Joe began studying the maze of pipes and valves, trying to figure out the short cuts Rose had taken when he shut off the galley stove. Why, he wondered, weren’t history teachers required to know more of practical mechanics?
They were nearly in the harbor now so he guessed he could safely open the valves which allowed sea water into the heat exchanger and out the exhaust. How much fuel was left? The day tank glass showed half full, enough for two or three hours running. He opened the valve at its bottom and waited to see if anything around the engine started dripping. So far so good. The lifter bar was up. Better leave it that way until the engine was spinning. What shape were the batteries in? Would it start?
He looked about the tiny compartment and breathed a silent prayer of thanks. The can of starting ether was still there, one of the few things the Romans hadn’t pilfered. Nothing was dripping so he decided to leave all valves open. Was everything right now? Water valve open, exhaust gate valve open, lifter bar up . . . The engine should roar into life as soon as he switched in the starting batteries and dropped the lifter. Forgetting anything?
Holy hell! Abruptly, he realized what was wrong. They would have made good their escape this morning if line hadn’t fouled the screw. No wonder the galley hadn’t been able to tow the Alice! How many hundred feet of line draped in tangled festoons from the yawl’s screw?
A tuba blatted and he felt the Alice lose way, Moments later they tied to the pinnacle and the Alice was warped up alongside. The horax was lowered to her deck again and a working party started transferring the loot back. Joe spent the next couple of hours frantically sorting and directing packers to deposit things somewhere near their proper place. It would take weeks to get things where they belonged. He suspected the Romans were holding out everything small enough to hide.
Eventually the double column ceased flowing back and forth across the borax. Joe snatched a mattress and a couple of blankets and stuffed them into his cubicle. He was thinking guiltily about the Alice’s men still chained to oars.
Morning came and his problems were still there. Nautae munched round loaves of bread. “Where’s mine?” Joe asked. They started to give him the stupid treatment again but something about the young man’s stance made the mangle-nosed one reconsider. He produced Joe’s loaf from the folds of his himation. Joe wolfed down his bun—much harder than he’d expected—and wondered if one was all the others had eaten. Probably. Roman efficiency would make a galley slave’s breakfast indivisible and as small as the difference between life and death.
He had to do something soon or he would be back pulling an oar without another chance. No use teaching Romans the fine points of sailing into the wind. The Roman captain expected a miracle that could be accomplished only with the diesel. He turned abruptly to the nautae and stopped. He wanted to ask if there was a diver among them but couldn’t remember the Greek. Come to think of it, he didn’t remember the word in Latin either. “Scitisne natare?” he finally asked. They looked Greek and Greeks used to skindive for sponges. The man whose nose he’d flattened seemed to be some kind of a leader. “You,” Joe said. “Down to the bottom and bring me us a rock.”
He was given the stupid act again. It worried Joe. Maybe they really didn’t understand Latin. But sweet reasonableness was not characteristic to commanders of this
period. Joe pushed the man overboard.
The nauta hit the water with arms and legs going like windmills. A second later he came up gasping. “Swim, damn it!” Joe growled. The nauta was putting on a good act. He choked and swallowed water before going down again. Several seconds passed this time before his head broke water and the Greek’s pasty complextion finally convinced Joe. Disgustedly, Joe tossed a line. The Greek was too far gone to grab it.
Everything happens to me,” he growled, and jumped in. A moment later he had the line secured around the unconscious nauta and those aboard dropped their stupid act long enough to pull them in.
It took several minutes of Holger-Nielsen pumping before the Greek finally coughed and vomited a half gallon of water along with his breakfast. “Go back aboard the galley,” Joe said when the Greek sat up. “Stay there and tell the skipper to send me a—” Damn it, what was the word for diver? “—someone who hunted sponge.” The nauta nodded sickly and vomited once more before crossing the korax.
Joe waited but there was no sign of a replacement for the waterlogged nauta. “Damn them all,” he grunted and went to sorting the Alice’s stores. Somewhere there had been a diving outfit. The air tanks were long since empty but with a face plate Joe might be able to hack away a few strands of nylon between breaths. But where was the faceplate?
He found the tanks and regulator buried in a pile of gear dumped in the Alice’s cockpit, but the face mask was still gone.
The more Joe thought about it the madder he got. He swung himself onto the korax and marched across, down the catwalk and aft to the quinquereme’s poopdeck. “Where’s the magister of this bucket?” he roared.
The oarmaster appeared and rasped something in Greek. Joe stiffened his arms to keep from killing the man who’d whipped him. “I defecate on your metaphysical tongue,” he said. “Can’t you speak Latin?”
“Somewhat better than you,” the oarmaster said sharply. “And what’s the idea, of using up my men? You think they’re cheap?”
The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream Page 12