Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/260

 spare crews and extra marines and all that sort. I signaled him to fall behind, to seize and man all the feluccas worth capturing and to ram or burn the rest at his discretion. Then I signaled the others for battle-front full speed. We gathered way abreast, two of them on each side of me. Through the feluccas we drove, veering aside so as not to be delayed by ramming any. Between the flotilla and the harbor all the water was yellowed by the outrush of the freshets. Across it we could see the swimmers, ten thousand black heads bobbing in the current, not scattered much but swimming in a fairly compact crescent. It looked like an annihilation for the enemy, for they were all of a mile from any beach still, and the current was against them. There was no noise, our crews were quiet and I could hear the time-beaters' gongs on the other triremes ringing sharp and quick in perfect unison with ours. The oars dipped and flashed, we were at top speed, all of twenty miles an hour, and the bobbing heads seemed just where we had first sighted them.

"'The current is too much for them,' Euphranor chuckled to me as we stood on the upper platform, 'they are practically stationary.' "I gave the order, the lookout signaled, and all together the five ships swept round in a wide curve so as to take the strung-out swarm of