The Second Book of Lankhmar

to suppose, you big lug — "
           Fafhrd cut in with, "'Trust only in the moon,' she said. 'Wait for her certain sign.' So wait we, for the nonce, and watch. Look at the sea and sky, idiot boy, and be amazed."
           The Mouser was indeed. While they had been disputing, intent only on the cuts and thrusts and parries and ripostes of their word-duel, the smooth surface of the racing Sea of Stars had changed from sleek and slick to matte yet ripply. Great vibrations were speeding across it, making the leopard-boat quiver. The moon-silvered lines of foam were blowing over it less predictably — the hurricane itself, though diminished no whit, was getting flukey, the wind now hot, now cold about their necks. While in the sky were clouds at last, coming in swiftly from northwest and east at once and mounting toward the moon. All of nature seemed to cringe apprehensively, as if in anticipation of some dire event about to hap, heralding war in heaven. The two silvery shimmer-sprights appeared to share this foreboding or presentiment, for they 'gan fly about most erratically, their lace wildly aflow, uttering high cheeping cries and whistlings of alarm against the unnatural silence and at last parting so that one hovered agitatedly to the southeast above the prow, the other near the stern to the northwest.
           The rapidly thickening clouds had blotted out most of the stars and mounted almost to the moon. The wind held still, exactly equalling the current's speed. Black Racer poised, as if at crest of a gigantic wave. For an instant the sea seemed to freeze. Silence was absolute.
           The Mouser looked straight up and uttered from the back of his throat a half choked, high pitched little scream that froze his comrade's blood. After mastering that shock, Fafhrd looked up too — at just which instant it grew very dark. The hungry clouds had blotted out the moon.
           "Why did you so cry out?" he demanded angrily.
           The Mouser answered with difficulty, his teeth chattering, "Just before the clouds closed on her, the moon moved ."
           "How could you know that, you little fool, when the clouds were moving? — which always makes the moon seem to move."
           "I don't know, but as sure as I stand firm-footed here, I saw it! The moon began to move. "
           "Well, if the moon be in a waterspout, as you claim, she's subject to all whims of wind and wave. So what's so blood-curdlingly strange in her moving?" Fafhrd's frantic voice belied the reasonableness of his question.
           "I don't know," the Mouser repeated in a curiously small, strained voice, his teeth still clinking together, " but I didn't like it. "
           The shimmer-spright at the stern whistled thrice.
           Her nervously twisting, lacy, silver luminescence stood out plainly in the black night, as did her sister's at the prow.
           "It is the sign!" Fafhrd cried hoarsely. "Ready to go about!" And he threw his full weight against the tiller, driving it steerside and so the rudder loadside, to steer them north. Black Racer responded most sluggishly, but did break the grip of current and wind to the extent of swinging north a point or two, no more.
           A long flat lightning flash split the sky and showed the gray sea to the horizon's rim, where they now saw two giant waterspouts, the one due south, the other rushing in from the west. Thunder crashed like armies or armadas meeting at an iron-sonorous Armageddon.
           Then all was wildfire and chaos in the night, great crashing waves, and winds that fought like giants whose heads scraped heaven. Whilst round about the ship the shimmer-sprights fought too, now two, now seeming four of them at least as they circled and dipped at and about each other. The frozen sea was ripped, great rags of it thrown skyward, pits opening that seemed to go down to the black, mucky sea-bottom unknown to man. Lightning and deafening thunderclaps became almost continuous, revealing all. And through that all, Black Racer somehow lived, a chip in chaos, Fafhrd and Mouser performing prodigies of seamanship.
           And now from the southwest the second giant waterspout drove in like a moving mountain, sending great swells before it that mightily aided Fafhrd's tillering, driving them north, and north again, and again still north. While from the south the first giant 'spout turned back, or so it seemed, and