"Sails ho!" called the lookout. "Two points off the port bow!"

Men went to the port rail, and Ulafi climbed to the stern castle. I climbed some feet up the knotted rope, dangling by the mainmast, which led to the lookout's platform.

I could not yet see the sails. Ulafi did not put about or change his course.

I braced myself, holding my feet together on one of the knots on the rope. I steadied myself, puffing one arni about the mast.

His men did not rush to the benches, slide back the thole ports or slip the great oars outboard. Sea water was not brought to the deck from over the side. Sand, in buckets, was not brought topside from the ballast in the hold. The first officer, Gudi, did not preside over the issuance of blades and lances.

I felt distinctly uneasy that the masts could not be lowered. How vulnerable seemed the ship, the masts high, with their sloping yards and billowing canvas. There was a light catapult forward, but it had not yet been erected. If Ulafi had torch arrows they were not in evidence. Too, the fire pans had not been kindled for dipping the arrows, nor had a fire been kindled beneath the oil kettle, for filling the clay globes with flaming oil, to be cast in looping trajectories from the catapult forward. If onagri or springals lay unassembled in the hold they were not yet being brought to the deck.

I looked out, past the bow, almost dead ahead. I could now see the sails. I counted eleven of them. The ships were single-masted. They were ramships. Yet I now breathed more easily. Since I, from my lower elevation, a few feet above the deck, by the mainmast, could see their canvas, I knew that their lookouts, from their superior elevations, could see the Palms of Schendi. Yet the ships were not taking in canvas. They were not bringing down their yards and lowering their masts. It might have been, for all its stately progression, a convoy of merchantmen. Yet the ships were single-masted, tarnships, ramships. Too, Ulafi did not seem concerrned about them, or his men. They knew, apparently, what these would be. Perhaps the lookout, already, had made his routine identifications. I, too, now had little doubt what these would be, as it was the northern spring, and we in the waters of Schendi.

"Convey our greetings to the fleet!" called Ulafi from the stern castle, putting down his glass of the builders. Flags, in colorful series, were set at the port stem castle lines.

I lowered myself now to the deck, hand by hand.

I stood near the bow, now on the starboard side. On each side of us, five on one side, six on the other, the low, lean ships, straight-keeled and shallow-drafted, single-mailed, began to slide past us. I could see the oars lifting and dipping in unison, as they moved by.

"You do not seem concerned," I said to Shoka, Ulafi's second officer, who stood near me.

"We are of Schendi," he said.

I stood with Shoka near the rail. "Suddenly," I said, "I have this strange feeling, as though I were swimming and then, as though from nowhere, I found myself swimming with sharks, who silently passed me, not regarding me."

"It could be frightening," admitted Shoka.

"Do they never prey on ships of Schendi?" I asked.

"I do not think so," said Shoka. "If they do, I suppose the ship and its crew are destroyed at sea. One never hears of it."

"I do not find that particularly comforting," I said.

"We are in the waters of Schendi," said Shoka. "If they were to attack Schendi ships, it does not seem likely they would do so in these waters."

"That is slightly more comforting," I granted him.

The low, sleek ships continued to pass us. I could see the black faces of crew members here and there. I could not see the nearest oarsmen, for these were concealed by the structure of the rowing frame. Occasionally I glimpsed the far oarsmen, as the ship rolled in the swells. The oarsmen would be free men. One does not put slaves at the oars of warships. The wall on the rowing frame, of course, tends to protect the oarsmen against high seas and the fire of missile weapons.

I watched the ships. They were very beautiful.

Shoka indicated that the two girls should rue and come to stand by the rail, to look out and see the fleet.

"Is that wise?" I asked. "Perhaps they should be put on their bellies, under the tarpaulins, that they not attract attention." Why should one advertise that one carried two lovely slaves?

"It does not matter," said Shoka. "Let the slaves see."

"But they will be seen as well," I pointed out.

"It not matter," said Shoka. "In two months time those ships will have hundreds of such women chained in their holds."

The two girls then stood by the rail, lovely, naked, neck-chained together, watching the passing ships, their bare feet on the smooth boards of the deck of the Palms of Schendi.

"I suppose you are right," I said.

"Yes," said he.

The ships, then, had slid past us. I saw Ulafi, on his stern castle, raise his hand to a black captain, some seventy yards away, on the stern castle of his own vessel. The captain had returned this salute.

"You did not even take defensive precautions," I said to Shoka.

"What good would it have done?" he asked.

I shrugged. To be sure, one merchant ship, like the Palms of Schendi, could have made little effective resistance to the ships which had just passed us, nor could she, though swift for a round ship, have outrun them.

"What if they had taken such action as an indication that we were hostile?" asked Shoka.

"That is true, too," I said.

"Our defense," said Shoka, "is that we are of Schendi."

"I see," I said.

"They need our port facilities," said Shoka. "Even the larl grows sometimes weary, and the tarn, upon occasion, must find a place in which to fold its wings."

I turned about, watching the ships vanish in the distance.

"Return to your work," said Shoka to the girls.

"Yes, Master," they said and, with a rustle of chain, fell again to their knees and, seizing up the deck stones, once more, Shoka near them, vigorously addressed themselves to their labors.

I turned again to watch the ships. They were now but specks on the horizon. They plied their way northward. In the northern autumn they would return, to be refitted and supplied again in Schendi, and would then, a few weeks later, in the southern spring, ply their way southward. Schendi, located in the vicinity of the Gorean equator, somewhat south of it, provides the ships with a convenient base, from which they may conduct their affairs seasonally in both hemispheres. I was pleased that I had seen the ships. I could not have conceived of a more pleasant way in which to have made their acquaintance. I had seen the passing of the fleet of the black slavers of Schendi.

The girls had been cleaned and combed. Shoka had soused perfume on them.

"Extend your wrists, crossed, for binding," said he to the blond-haired barbarian.

She, kneeling, complied. "Yes, Master," she said. The line which Shoka now tied around her crossed wrists was already strung through a large, metal, gold-painted ring, one of two, which were mounted in the huge wooden ears of the kailiauk head which, high above the water, surmounted the prow.

We had lain to after more closely approaching the port of Schendi in the evening of the preceding day, the day in which we had seen the fleet of the black slavers of Schendi. We could see the shore now, with its sands and, behind the sand, the dense, green vegetation, junglelike, broken by occasional clearings for fields and villages. Schendi itself lay farther to the south, about the outjutting of a small peninsula, Point Schendi. The waters here were richly brown, primarily from the outflowing of the Nyoka. emptying from Lake Ushindi. some two hundred pasangs upriver.

"Extend your wrists, crossed, for binding," said Shoka to Sasi.