"Harry Harrison - Hammer Cross 1 - The Hammer and the Cross" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

see his red beard wagging as he bellowed orders, could hear the echo of his
urgency rolling
across the water. There were men at the ropes, waiting, heaving together. A
scrap of sail
leapt free from the yard, caught instantly by the wind and tugged out. As the
ship shot
urgently towards shore another volley of orders swung the yard round and the
boat heeled
downwind. Within seconds she was steady on a new course, picking up speed,
throwing
water wide from her bow-wave as she raced away from the Head down toward the
Spurn.
"They're getting away!" yelled Godwin. "Get the horses!" He cuffed his groom
out of
the way, scrambled astride, and set off at a gallop in pursuit, Wulfgar, the
stranger thane,
only a pace or two behind, and the rest of their retinues following in strung-
out, disorderly
lines. Only the dark boy who had come with Wulfgar hesitated.
"You're not hurrying," he said to the motionless reeve. "Why not? Don't you
want to
catch up with them?" The reeve grinned, stooped, picked a pinch of sand from
the beach and threw it in the
air. "They've got to try it," he remarked. "Nothing else to do. But they're
not going to get
far."
Turning on his heel he indicated a score of men to stay where they were and
watch the
beach for wreckage or survivors. Another score of mounted men set off along
the path
behind the thanes. The rest, bunched together, began to trot purposefully but
deliberately
along the beach after the racing ship.
As the minutes passed even the landsmen realized what the reeve had seen
straight
away. The Viking skipper was not going to win his gamble. Twice already he had
tried to
force his ship's head out to sea, two men joining the red-bearded one as he
strained at the
steering oar, the rest of the crew bracing the yard round till the ropes sang
iron- hand in the
wind. Both times the waves had heaved, heaved remorselessly at the prow till
it wavered,
swung back, the ship's hull shuddering with the forces contending on it. And
again the
skipper had tried, turning back parallel with the coastline and building up
speed for another
dash to the safety of the open sea.
But was he parallel with the coastline this time? Even to the inexperienced
eyes of