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

lapis of the waves.

      And the jeweled craft was manned! Why, Kenton wondered, had he not noticed the tiny figures before?

      It was as though they had just arisen from the deck... a woman had slipped out of the rosy cabin's door, an arm was still outstretched in its closing... and there were other women shapes upon the ivory deck, three of them, crouching... their heads were bent low; two clasped harps and the third held a double flute...

      Little figures, not more than two inches high...

      Toys!

      Odd that he could not distinguish their faces, nor the details of their dress. The toys were indistinct, blurred, as though a veil covered them. Kenton told himself that the blurring was the fault of his eyes; he closed them for a moment.

      Opening them he looked down upon the black cabin and stared with deepening perplexity. The black deck had been empty when first the ship had appeared —that he could have sworn.

      Now four manikins were clustered there—close to the edge of the pit!

      And the baffling haze around the toys was denser. Of course it must be his eyes—what else? He would lie down for a while and rest them. He turned, reluctantly; he walked slowly to the door; he paused there, uncertainly, to look back at the shining mystery—

      All the room beyond the ship was hidden by the haze!

      Kenton heard a shrilling as of armies of storm; a roaring as of myriads or tempests; a shrieking chaos as though down upon him swept cataracts of mighty winds.

      The room split into thousands of fragments; dissolved. Clear through the clamor came the sound of a bell—one— two— three—

      He knew that bell. It was his clock ringing out the hour of six. The third note was cut in twain.

      The solid floor on which he stood melted away. He felt himself suspended in space, a space filled with mists of silver.

      The mists melted.

      Kenton caught a glimpse of a vast blue wave-crested ocean—another of the deck of a ship flashing by a dozen feet below him.

      He felt a sudden numbing shock, a blow upon his right temple. Splintered lightnings veined a blackness that wiped out sight of sea and ship.

      II

      THE FIRST ADVENTURE

      Kenton lay listening to a soft whispering, persistent and continuous. It was like the breaking crests of sleepy waves. The sound was all about him; a rippling susurration becoming steadily more insistent. A light beat through his closed lids. He felt motion under him, a gentle, cradling lift and fall. He opened his eyes.

      He was on a ship; lying on a narrow deck, his head against the bulwarks. In front of him was a mast rising out of a pit. Inside the pit were chained men straining at great oars. The mast seemed to be of wood covered with translucent, emerald lacquer. It stirred reluctant memories.

      Where had he seen such a mast before?

      His gaze crept up the mast. There was a wide sail; a sail made of opaled silk. Low overhead hung a sky that was all a soft mist of silver.

      He heard a woman's voice, deep toned, liquidly golden. Kenton sat up, dizzily. At his right was a cabin nestling under the curved tip of a scimitared prow; it gleamed rosily. A balcony ran round its top; little trees blossomed on that balcony; doves with feet and bills crimson as though dipped in wine of rubies fluttered snowy wings among the branches.

      At the cabin's door stood a woman, tall, willow-lithe, staring beyond him. At her feet crouched three girls. Two of them clasped harps, the other held to her lips a double flute. Again the reluctant memories stirred and fled and were forgotten as Kenton's gaze fastened upon the woman.

      Her wide eyes were green as depths of forest glens, and like them they were filled with drifting shadows. Her head was small; the features fine; the red mouth delicately amorous. In the hollow of her throat a dimple lay; a chalice for kisses and empty of them and eager to be filled. Above her brows was set a silver crescent, slim as a newborn moon. Over each horn of the crescent poured a flood of red-gold hair, framing the lovely face; the flood streamed over and was parted by her tilted breasts; it fell in ringlets almost to her sandaled feet.

      As young as Spring, she seemed—yet wise as Autumn; Primavera of some archaic Botticelli—but Mona Lisa too; if virginal in body, certainly not in soul.

      He followed her gaze. It led him across the pit of the oarsmen. Four men stood there. One was taller by a head than Kenton, and built massively. His pale eyes stared unwinkingly at the woman; menacing; malignant. His face was beardless and pallid. His huge and flattened head was shaven; his nose vulture beaked; from his shoulders black robes fell, shrouding him to feet. Two shaven heads were at his left, wiry, wolfish, black-robed; each of them held a brazen, conch-shaped horn.

      On the last of the group Kenton's eyes lingered, fascinated. This man squatted, his pointed chin resting on a tall drum whose curved sides glittered scarlet and jet with the polished scales of some great snake. His legs were sturdy but dwarfed—his torso that of a giant, knotted and gnarled, prodigiously powerful. His ape-like arms were wound around the barrelled tambour; spider-like were the long fingers standing on their tips upon the drum head.

      It was his face that held Kenton. Sardonic and malicious—there was in it none of the evil concentrate in the others. The wide slit of his mouth was frog-like and humor was on the thin lips. His deep-set, twinkling black eyes dwelt upon the crescented woman with frank admiration. From the lobes of his outstanding ears hung disks of hammered gold.

      The woman paced swiftly down toward Kenton. When she halted he could have reached out a hand and touched her. Yet she did not seem to see him.

      "Ho—Klaneth!" she cried. "I hear the voice of Ishtar. She is coming to her ship. Are you ready to do her homage, Slime of Nergal?"

      A flicker of hate passed over the massive man's pallid face like a little wave from hell.

      "This is Ishtar's Ship," he answered, "yet my Dread Lord has claim upon it too, Sharane? The House of the Goddess brims with light—but tell me, does not Nergal's shadow darken behind me?"

      And Kenton saw that the deck on which were these men was black as polished jet and again memory strove to make itself heard.

      A sudden wind smote the ship, like an open hand, heeling it. From the doves within the trees of the rosy cabin broke a tumult of cries; they flew up like a white cloud flecked with crimson; they fluttered around the woman.

      The ape-like arms of the drummer unwrapped, his spidery fingers poised over the head of the snake drum. Darkness deepened about him and hid him; darkness cloaked all the ship's stern.

      Kenton felt the gathering of unknown forces. He slid down, upon his haunches, pressed himself against the bulwarks.

      From the deck of the rosy cabin blared a golden trumpeting; defiant; inhuman. He turned his head, and on it the hair lifted and prickled.

      Resting on the rosy cabin was a great orb, an orb like the moon at full; but not, like the moon, white and cold—an orb alive with pulsing roseate candescence. Over the ship it poured its rays and where the woman called Sharane had been was now—no woman!

      Bathed in the orb's rays she loomed gigantic. The lids of her eyes were closed, yet through those closed lids eyes glared! Plainly Kenton saw them —eyes hard as jade, glaring through the closed lids as though those lids had been gossamer! The slender crescent upon her brows was an arc of living fire, and all about it the masses of her red-gold hair beat and tossed.

      Round and round, in clamorous rings above the ship, wheeled the cloud of doves, snowy wings beating, red beaks open; screaming.

      Within the blackness of the ship's stern roared the thunder of the serpent drum.

      The blackness thinned. A face stared out, half veiled, bodiless, floating in the shadow.