they were moving through the fantastic sea before a slight, lethargic breeze.

Their blaster protected them many times from the countless varieties of sea and air creatures that constantly attacked them. Moljar devised a sea-anchor by cutting off one of the air sacks from beneath the raft, and tying it to one end of a long leather rope. When the wind blew in the wrong direction, he threw out the sea-anchor.

There was little difference between night and day, except that the phosphorescence dimmed and was replaced by a grayer, more sickly light. And the high, gracefully-curved membrane of the bat's ribbed wing arched above them like the bizarre rigging of the junks that ply the Martian canals between the ruins of Phreer and Sumph-Logan. Black, with veins of dried blood, it caught the wind and tautened like the black sails of ancient pirate craft.

But though they could fight the monsters that flew and swam about them they could not fight the sea itself. The sea is cunning. It can bide its time, and spring with more violence than the greatest beast. The wind was its ally.

It was late the following afternoon that Mahra's hypersensitive nerves detected the distant pounding of the surf against high crags. They both visualized the dark mountains of Maghrone where the dull spires and minarets of Anghore towered up from its granite sea wall thousands of feet into the mist.

The thunderous surf grew in volume to a steady roaring as their makeshift craft bore them shoreward.

Then, abruptly, Moljar's nostrils quivered. He leaped to his feet and his black mane matted and curled as his eyes strained upward. "The cloud layers," he said. "Look!"

Each cloud layer was moving rapidly in different directions. "A storm!" cursed Moljar. "The wind and sea will pulp us on the rocks!"

Mahra cowered down, clutching at the floor of the raft. One hand gripped the bone mast of the bat's wing. She reached up the other, and Moljar's broad yellow hand closed over it, and held it in a silent bond.

The sound of the descending storm came from afar. It rose higher and higher, reaching the pitch of a thousand shrieking giants. A colossal comber bore toward them, lifting up, and up. Their eyes followed its curling summit, helpless, bold pygmies. A wall of blue, foaming with white like a mad beast, translucent as they saw it towering up through the swirling vapor. 

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