"Doc Savage Adventure 1935-07 Quest of Qui" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

"I have," said the lady. "A picture, I mean. In my history books, when I was a girl."

More to be polite than anything else, for his job depended on that to an extent, the skipper asked, "What would you call the craft, miss?"

"A Viking dragon ship," replied the woman.


THE MEN laughed, for the idea was, of course, a little preposterous, Viking dragon ships having gone out of style shortly after the days of Eric the Red and other noted Norsemen.

But the woman was correct. The Sea Scream swept up to the strange craft.

Double-ended, perhaps sixty feet long, the vessel had some of the aspects of a giant, fat canoe. Bow and stern reared up to support platforms, and amidships was deck planking, while along the rail, on the outside were fastened round things of rusty steel, objects which certainly resembled shields such as were carried by ancient warriors. There was a mast, and a sail draped around it, unfilled because there was no wind. The sail seemed to be made of animal skins from which the hair had been removed.

There was not a soul in sight on the decks of the weird craft. One of the yacht guests had an idea.

"Bet it broke away from some water carnival," he laughed.

"Let's go aboard," suggested the lady.

"Of course," agreed the owner. "It should be interesting."

Interesting! So it was to be.

The Sea Scream captain shouted orders, and the yacht slowed her engines and nosed up alongside the Viking dragon ship, the sea being so calm that there was no necessity for going aboard in the tender.

Surprising aspects of the Viking craft became evident on closer inspection. For one thing, the vessel appeared very old, and it could be seen that the hull had been put together with thongs of hide Some of the hide seemed new, as did the sail, but the shields along the rail were amazingly rusted.

The Viking ship had a smell, too, a very strong one. It was not a smell of death, hut rather that distinctive aroma that arises where men live for a long time with no bathing facilities available.

"Take a line aboard," the Sea Scream captain ordered a sailor.

The sailor sprang aboard the dragon ship with the line, which he made fast around the mast. Then things happened.

The sailor thrust both arms high over his head and screamed most horribly, after which his head slued forward, hanging with a hideous slackness, and he fell to the deck.

Sticking in the man's back was a spear which had a thongwrapped haft no more than three feet long.


FANTASTIC FIGURES swarmed out of the dragon ship hold. They were men, but what men. They wore helmets of burnished steel, each helmet adorned with a fearsome pair of horns. The faces under the helmets might have been bearded visages of the very Norse freebooters of a day ten centuries past.

"Vikings!" the lady on the yacht gasped.

The whiskered horde on the dragon ship now boarded the Sea Scream. There was not a firearm among them, but they gripped spears and swords which were sharp, and which they showed no scruples about using.

The yacht captain tried to run to his cabin, where he had a gun, but a spear, ponderously cast, impaled one of his legs and he upset on the deck and lay there making faces.

The bearded raiders from the Viking ship began to bawl hoarsely. Not a word they said was understood by those on the yacht. But there were accompanying gestures which conveyed full meaning. The yachtsmen were being ordered to change ships.

There was some more fighting first, after which the yachtsmen, whipped, obeyed. They were ordered into a stuffy forward hold and the hatch slammed down on them.