Free The Land Leviathan (A Nomad of the Time Streams Novel) by Michael Moorcock Page B

mood to miss it. She had been an old cargo ship and there was very little room, as such, for passengers. Most of the men were crowded into the holds and made as comfortable as possible. As an officer and a ‘guest’ I got to share a cabin with four of the Arabians, three of whom were Palestinians and one of whom was an Egyptian. They all spoke perfect English and, while somewhat reserved, were decent enough company, going so far as to lend me a captain’s uniform and most of the necessities of life which I had learned, in recent months, to do without.
    The ship made slow progress through the Bay of Bengal and I relieved my boredom by telling my companions that I had been the prisoner of a Himalayan tribe for several years and thus getting them to fill in certain details of their world’s history which the sergeant had been unable to give me.
    There was some talk of a man whom they called the “Black Attila”, a leader who had emerged of late in Africa and whom they saw as a threat to themselves. Africa had not suffered as badly from the effects of the war as Europe and most of her nations— many only a few years old—had done their best to remain neutral. As a result they had flourishing crops, functioning harvesting machines and a reserve of military power with which to protect their wealth. The Black Attila had growing support in the Negro nations for a jehad against the whites (the Arabians were included in this category, as were Asiatics), but, at the last my informants had heard, was still consolidating local gains and had shown no sign of moving against what remained of the countries of the West. There were other rumours which said that he had already been killed, while some said he had invaded and conquered most of Europe.
    The ship had no radio apparatus (another example of my good fortune, it emerged, for the Arabians had never reached the point of signing a pact with Britain!), and thus there was no means of confirming or denying these reports. We sailed down the coast of India, through the Gulf of Mannar, managed to take on coal at Agatti in the Laccadives, got into heavy weather in the Arabian Sea, lost three hands and most of our rigging, entered the Red Sea and were a few days away from the approach to the Suez Canal when, without any warning at all, the ship was struck by several powerful torpedoes and began to sink almost immediately.
    It was the work of an undersea torpedo-boat—one of the few still functioning—and it was not, it emerged, an act of war at all, but an act of cynical piracy.
    However, the pirate had done his work too well. The ship sighed, coughed, and went to the bottom with most of her passengers and crew. I and about a dozen others were left clinging to what little wreckage there was.
    The undersea boat lifted its prow from the water for a few seconds to observe its handiwork, saw that there was nothing to be gained by remaining, and left us to our fate. I suppose we should have been grateful that it did not use the guns mounted along its sides to finish us off. Ammunition had become scarce almost everywhere, it seemed.

CHAPTER THREE
The Polish Privateer
    I shan’t describe in detail my experiences of the next twenty-four hours. Suffice to say that they were pretty grim as I watched my companions sink, one by one, beneath the waves and knew that ultimately I should be joining them. I suppose I have had a great deal of practice in the art of survival and somehow I managed to remain afloat, clinging to my pathetic bit of flotsam, until the late afternoon of the next day when the monster rose from the waves, steaming water pouring off its blue-black skin, its great crystalline eyes glaring at me, and a horrible, deep-throated roaring issuing from its belly. At first my exhausted mind did see it as a living creature but my second thoughts were that the undersea torpedo-boat had returned to finish me off.
    Slowly the disturbance in the water ceased and the growling subsided to a quiet