Swords and Ice Magic - By Fritz Leiber Page 0,18
the following storm wind shifting perversely north a point or two, driving them deeper south) the two men gave over, thereby admitting their complete inability at present to influence their leopard boat's course.
“At this rate,” Fafhrd opined, “we'll cross the Great Equatorial Ocean in a matter of month or two. Lucky we're well provisioned.”
The Mouser replied dolefully, “If Racer holds together a day amidst those 'spouts and speeds, I'll be surprised.”
“She's a stout craft,” Fafhrd said lightly. “Just think, Small Gloomy One, the southern continents, unknown to man! We'll be the first to visit 'em!”
“If there are any such. And our planks don't split. Continents? ― I'd give my soul for one small isle.”
“The first to reach Nehwon's south pole!” Fafhrd daydreamed on. “The first to climb the southern Stardocks! The first to loot the treasures of the south! The first to find what land lies at antipodes from Shadowland, realm of Death! The first ― ”
The Mouser quietly removed himself to the other side of the shortened sail from Fafhrd and cautiously made his way to the prow, where he wearily threw himself down in a narrow angle of shadow. He was dazed by wind, spray, exertion, the needling sun, and sheer velocity. He dully watched the coppery pinkish shimmer-sprights, which were holding position with remarkable steadiness for them at mast height a ship's length ahead.
After a while he slept and dreamed that one of them detached itself from the other, and came down and hovered above him like a long rosy spectrum and then became a fond- and narrow-visaged green-eyed girl in his arms, who loosened his clothing with slim fingers cool as milk kept in a well, so that looking down closely he saw the nipples of her dainty breasts pressing like fresh-scoured copper thimbles into the curly dark hair on his chest. And she was saying softly and sweetly, head bent forward like his, lips and tongue brushing his ear, “Press on, press on. This is the only way to Life and immortality and paradise.” And he replied, “My dearest love, I will.”
He woke to Fafhrd's shout and to a fugitive but clear, though almost blinding, vision of a female face that was narrow and beautiful, but otherwise totally unlike that of the douce girl of his dream. A sharp, imperious face, wildly alive, made all of red-gold light, the irises of her wide eyes vermilion.
He lifted up sluggishly. His jerkin was unlaced to his waist and pushed back off his shoulders.
“Mouser,” Fafhrd said urgently, “when I first glimpsed you but now, you were all bathed in fire!” Gazing stupidly down, the Mouser saw twin threads of smoke rising from his matted chest where the nipples of his dream had pressed into it. And as he stared at the gray threads, they died. He smelled the stink of burning hair.
He shook his head, blinked, and pushed himself to his feet. “What a strange fancy,” he said to Fafhrd. “The sun must have got in your eye. Say, look there!”
The five waterspouts had drawn far ahead and had been replaced by two groups (of three and four respectively) swiftly overtaking Black Racer from astern, the four rather distant, the three appallingly close, so that they could see clearly the structure of each: pillars of wild gray water almost a ship's length thick and towering up to thrice mast height, where each broke off abruptly.
And in the farther distance they could now see still more groups of speeding spouts, and most distant-dim yet speediest of all a gigantic single one that looked leagues thick. A-prow the twin shimmer-sprights led on.
“'Tis passing strange,” Fafhrd averred.
“Does one speak of a covey of waterspouts?” the Mouser wanted to know. “Or a pride? A congeries? A fountain? Or ― yes! ― a tower! A tower of waterspouts!”
The day passed and half the night, and their weird situation of eastward speeding held ― and Black Racer held together. The sea was slick and moving in long low swells across which blew thin, long, pale lines of foam. The wind was hurricane force at very least, but the velocity of the Great Equatorial Current had increased to match it.
Overhead, nearly at mast-top, the full moon shone down, scantily scattered about with stars. Her White Huntress light showed the smooth surface of the racing sea to be outdinted near and far by towers of waterspouts racing by in majestical array and yet with fantastical celerity, as if they somehow profited far more from the speed