Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 5. Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон

you slay Klaneth?"

      He feigned to consider.

      "Why should I kill Klaneth?" he asked at last.

      "Why? Why?" Scorn tinged her voice. "Has he not set his chains upon you? Had you whipped? Made you slave?"

      "Did not Sharane drive me forth with javelins?" he asked. "Did not Sharane pour salt in my wounds with her mockery—her laughter?"

      "But—you lied to me!" she cried.

      Again he feigned consideration.

      "What will this liar, weakling, and slave gain if he kills the black priest for you?" he asked bluntly.

      "Gain?" she repeated blankly.

      "What will you pay me for it?" he said.

      "Pay you? Pay you! Oh!" The scorn in her eyes scorched him. "You shall be paid. You shall have freedom—the pick of my jewels—all of them——"

      "Freedom I shall have when I have slain Klaneth," he answered. "And of what use to me are your jewels on this cursed ship?"

      "You do not understand," she said. "The black priest slain, I can set you on any land you wish in this world. In all of them jewels have value."

      She paused, then: "And have they no worth in that land from whence you come, and to which, unchained, it seems you can return whenever danger threatens?"

      Her voice was honeyed poison. But Kenton only laughed.

      "What more do you want?" she asked. "If they be not enough—what more?"

      "You!" he said.

      "Me!" she gasped incredulously. "I give myself to any man—for a price! I—give myself to you! You whipped dog!" She stormed. "Never!"

      Up to this Kenton's play with her had been calculated; but now he spoke with wrath as real and hot as hers.

      "No!" cried Kenton. "No! You'll not give yourself to me! For, by God, Sharane, I'll take you!"

      He thrust a clenched, chained hand out to her.

      "Master of this ship I'll be, and with no help from you—you who have called me a liar and slave and now would throw me butcher's pay. No! When I master the ship it will be by my own hand. And that same hand shall master—you!"

      "You threaten me!" Her face flamed wrath. "You!"

      She thrust a hand into her breast, drew out a slender knife—hurled it at him. As though it had struck some adamantine wall, invisible, it clanged, fell to her feet, blade snapped from hilt.

      She paled, shrank.

      "Hate me!" jeered Kenton. "Hate me, Sharane; For what is hate but the flame that cleans the cup for wine of love!"

      With no soft closing of her cabin door did she go within it. And Kenton, laughing grimly, bent his head over his oar; was soon as sound asleep as the Norseman snoring beside him.

      X

      ON THE SHIP A-SAILING

      He awakened to a stirring and humming through all the ship. On ivory deck and black the ship's folk stood, pointing, talking, gesticulating. A flock of birds, the first he had seen in this strange world, hovered above him. Their wings were shaped like those of great butterflies. Their plumage shone as though lacquered in glowing vermilions and pale golds. From their opened beaks came a chiming tumult as of little tinkling bells.

      "Land!" the Viking exclaimed. "We run into harbor. Food and water must be low."

      There was a brisk wind blowing and the oars at rest. Careless of Zachel's lash, Kenton leaped upon the bench, looking over the bow. The overseer gave no heed, his own eyes intent upon what lay before.

      It was a sun-yellow isle, high and rounded, and splashed with craters of color like nests of rainbows. Save for these pansied dapplings, the island curved all glowing topaz, from its base in the opalescent shallows of the azure sea to its crest, where feathered trees drooped branches like immense panaches of ostrich plumes dyed golden amber. Over and about that golden isle shot flashes of iridescences from what seemed luminous flying flowers.

      Closer drew the ship. At the bow the damsels of Sharane clustered, laughing and chattering. And upon her balcony was Sharane, watching the isle with wistful eyes.

      Now it was close indeed. Down ran the peacock sail. The ship rowed slowly and more slowly to the shore; not until the curved prow had almost touched that shore did the steersman shift the rudder and bring the ship sharply about. As they drifted, the plumes of the strange trees swept the deck with long leaves, delicately feathered as those the frost etches on the winter pane. Topaz yellow and sun amber were those leaves; the branches from which they hung glistened as though cut from yellow chrysolite. Immense clusters of flowers dropped from them, lily-shaped, flame-scarlet.

      Slowly, ever more slowly, drifted the ship. It crept by a wide cleft that cut into the heart of the isle. The sides of this vale were harlequined with the cratered colors, and Kenton saw that these were fields of flowers, clustered as though they filled deep circled amphitheaters. The flashing iridescences were birds—birds of every size from smallest dragon flies to those whose wing-spread was that of condors in the high Andes. Large and small, on each glittered the lacquered butterfly wings.

      The isle breathed fragrance. Of green upon it there was none, save for the emerald glintings of the birds.

      The valley slid behind them. Ever more slowly the feathered trees brushed the deck. The ship slipped into the mouth of a glen at whose end a cataract dropped rain of pearl into a golden-ferned pool. There was the rattling of a chain; an anchor splashed. The bow of the ship swung in; nosed through the foliage; touched the bank.

      Over the rail climbed the women of Sharane, upon their heads great baskets. From her balcony Sharane looked after them with deeper wistfulness. The women melted within the flower-spangled boskage; fainter and fainter came their voices; died away. Sharane, chin cupped in white hands, drank in the land and with wide and longing eyes. Above her red gold hair streaming through the silver crescent a bird hovered—a bird all gleaming emeralds and flashing blues, chiming peals of fairy bells. Kenton saw tears upon her cheeks. She caught his gaze, dashed them away angrily. She half turned as though to go; then slipped down woefully behind one of her balcony's tiny blossoming trees where he could no longer see her weeping.

      Now her women filed back along the bank, their baskets filled with plunder; fruits, gourds purple and white, and great clusters of those pods he had eaten when first he had broken fast upon the ship. Into the cabin they trooped, and out again with baskets empty. Time upon time they came and went. At last they bore away skins instead of the woven hampers; water bags which they filled from the pool of the cataract. Time upon time they brought them back, swollen full, upon their shoulders.

      They trooped out once more, burdenless; darted joyously over the rail; doffed their scanty enough robes and plunged into the pool. Like water nymphs they swam and played, the pearly flow caressing, streaming from delicately delicious curves—pale ivory, warm rose, soft olive. They sprang from the pool, wove flower crowns and with sprays of the fragrant lily blooms in arms clambered, reluctant, over the side and into the rosy cabin.

      Now crawled over the rail the men of Klaneth. They slipped on and off the ship with their burdens, poured their last water skins into the casks.

      Again there was stir upon the ship. The chains rattled, the anchor lifted. Up and down flashed the oars, drawing the ship from the bank. Up rose the peacock sail. The ship veered, caught the wind, swam slowly through the amethystine shallows. Faster swung the sweeps. The golden isle diminished, was saffron shadow in the mists; vanished.

      On sailed the ship. And on and on—by what signs or reckonings or to what port Kenton could not know. Sleep after sleep it sailed. The huge bowl of silver mists whose edge was the horizon, contracted or expanded as those mists thickened or thinned. Storms they met and weathered; roaring storms that changed the silver of the mists to lurid