Conan Of The Isles

'Look there!' said Conan, indicating the coast of an unknown continent along the westward edge of the chart and the chain of seven large islands that lay to the southeast of this land. Although the geography was strange to Conan, the chart had been drawn with a meticulous care for detail in those parts. It showed coasts, harbors, reefs, shoals, and directions of wind and current, proving the cartographer to have been well acquainted with the lands and seas of that region. Conan thumped the table with his fist.

'Crom! I see it now. Do you grasp the secret, Red-beard?’

Sigurd shrugged. Conan tapped the parchment with a long, gnarled finger. 'The green ship came from the isles, here, all the way to our coast. Crom knows why, unless 'twas to loose the Red Shadows upon our cities, for some reason we cannot even guess as yet. But what would be so precious to this ship that it would flee our carack like the plague ? A chart showing the way home!’

Sigurd blinked, 'I think ye’ve struck the truth, Amra. But then, what are these damned isles?'

'Antillia!'

Sigurd grunted and rubbed a hairy paw over his jowls, 'Well, fry me guts, I've heard the tale ere now but never quite believed it. D'ye mean the story that, when Atlantis sank beneath the briny, a band of wizard-priests fled to unknown lands to the west and built there a successor to the Golden Empire? I've heard tell of the walls of the Seven Cities of the Antilles made of bricks of gold, and streets paved with silver, and temple pyramids of orichal-cum, with gems big enough to choke a whale lying on the beaches to be picked up ... gods and devils, d'ye suppose there's truth in it?'

Conan shrugged. 'Crom knows. I heard stories like that about Vendhya and Khitai, but when I went to those places I found that the tales had grown in the telling. The only way to find out is to sail there, and this chart shows our way!’

CHAPTER NINE

VOYAGE ON AN UNKNOWN SEA

Our sails are full and straining tight,

Our prow is riding high;

We're out in search of gold tonight

Beneath a starlit sky.

- Sea-Chanty of the Baracha Isles

And so it came to pass that the Red Lion set forth into the storm-tossed, monster-haunted wastes of the Western Ocean, on the strangest of quests. The only guideposts to show her people the way were the sun by day and the stars by night, for the compass was unknown to the mariners of the Hyborian Aage, between the foundering of Atlantis and the rise of Sumeria and Egypt. But, with the chart from the casket of orichalcum as their guide, they sailed deeper and deeper into the unknown.

Some balked at this fantastic venture, until Conan pointed out two good reasons for their consenting to this quest: first, that they sailed for adventure, glory, and loot, and would doubtless find all three in plenty in the Seven Isles of Antillia, amidst the age-old ruins of the last Atlan-tean cities; second, that he would personally pitch any grumblers over the side for the krakens to devour. Reasoning of this kind proved remarkably persuasive.

Still, the farther they got from the coasts they knew, the greater grew their superstitious terrors. They remembered old tales, wherein the world was said to end just beyond the horizon. There, the earth fell away in a mighty cliff., over which the oceans poured in an endless flood, down and down to thunder at last against the very foundations of Eternity. According to the tales, any ship that sailed beyond the visible horizon would soon find itself caught in an irresistible current, which would soon carry its helpless, screaming crew right over the world's edge.

Conan squelched this by cracking a few heads together and by pointing out, with unassailable logic, that, with every league west they sailed, the horizon visibly retreated to a corresponding distance.

They sailed on, with full sails straining in the steady blast of the northeast trades. Ahead lay an unknown world; all about was a mysterious waste of wind-torn waves, wherein might lurk fearful denizens of the deep. Conan had little fear of sea monsters. He had faced warriors, wizards, monsters, demons, and even gods. All had proved vulnerable to sharp steel in .the final test. But, just to be on the safe side, he had the ship's carpenter rig a.catapult and mold some gummy spheres of black tar into whose center he poured lamp oil, with pitchy wicks of old cloth.