"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 029 - The Quest of Qui" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

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.

The yachtsmen now heard sounds which were later the source of much newspaper conjecture - they
heard some kind of a cargo being moved from one craft to the other. They never were able to decide
what the cargo was, but some of them voiced the impression that it was something alive.

When the yachtsmen were finally released, it was because the bearded freebooters could not get the
yacht Sea Scream going. The whiskered ones made faces and bawled, and finally collared the engineer
of the yacht - he wore greasy coveralls which indicated his profession - and hauled him onto the yacht.
The frightened engineer put the engines in full speed ahead, and the yacht pulled away, leaving the former
occupants on the dragon ship.