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Ledscha had expected her lover's return with eager longing, but week after week elapsed, yet nothing was seen or heard of the ships owned by the Owl's Nest family; then a rumour spread that this time the corsairs were defeated in a battle with the Syrian war-galleys. The first person who received sure tidings was old Tabus.
Thus the master of the greatest empire of the earth had at times no income at his disposal except the alma he could solicit from his poorest subjects to maintain his warfare against foreign miscreants, the levy on the Church for war-galleys; and the proceeds of his permission to eat meat on Fridays. This sounds like an epigram, but it is a plain, incontestable fact.
Abreast the Public Gardens the great war-ships, in their coats of elephant-gray, swing lazily at their moorings. Near the Punta della Motta lie the destroyers, like greyhounds held in leash. Off the Riva Schiavoni, on the very spot, no doubt, where Dandolo's war-galleys lay, are anchored the British submarines.
We have no means of knowing whether these boats were hoisted up on deck until they were wanted, or attached to the ships by ropes and towed after them; but the latter arrangement is the more probable. The war-galleys of the Phoenicians in the early times were probably of the class which the Greeks called triaconters or penteconters, and which are represented upon the coins.
Merchant vessels were shy of sailing in the dangerous Gulf of the Greater Syrtes with its heavy tides and spreading sandbanks, and even the war-galleys of Venice and Spain were at a disadvantage when manoeuvring in its treacherous eddies against the Corsair who knew every inch of the coast.
Yet it was you, Olaf, not even I, but you, who remembered that the Northmen are seafolk born, and turned all those trading vessels into war-galleys and hid them in the little bays with a few of your people in command of each. It was you who suffered the Moslem fleet to sail unmolested into the Mitylene harbours, pretending and giving notice that the only defence would be by land.
The war-galleys, fit only for fair weather, were soon forced to take refuge under the lee of the land, but the eighteen galleons, the most powerful vessels then known to naval architecture, were bearing directly down, full before the wind, upon the Dutch fleet.
The Danes, he sent word, were in great force, and more and more of their war-galleys kept coming up the river, the occupants slaying and destroying wherever they landed. It was an anxious time for Queen Osburga, whose eyes often looked red as if she had been weeping, while her cheeks grew white and thin, and she shut herself up a great deal, so that no one should see her.
The steam-ram is armed with a strong steel beak, with which it charges an enemy in much the same way as the war-galleys of ancient times charged a foe, or as a sword-fish attacks its adversary. The turret-ship carries one or more shot-proof circular turrets, in which one or more guns are worked by the crew, the guns being capable of being turned and pointed in any direction.
Some sort of nucleus for this purpose was already furnished on the subjugation of Antium by the serviceable war-galleys which were carried off to the Roman docks; but the enactment at the same time, that the Antiates should abstain from all maritime traffic, is a very clear and distinct indication how weak the Romans then felt themselves at sea, and how completely their maritime policy was still summed up in the occupation of places on the coast.
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