The Purple Pirate — Talbot Mundy

THE HIGH PRIEST SIGNALLED WILDLY.

He ordered the olive branch hauled down from the galley's masthead. Then the signal symbols clanged, and the last of the high priest's followers jumped for it. Six of them fell into the sea, as the gangplank came in and the starboard oars went out, thrusting the forty-oared galley away. Six strokes and the tireme lay head on to the biremes. They ceased rowing. Then a bireme fired a rock from her forward ballista. It fell fifty paces short. But Tros, the man they called THE PURPLE PIRATE, ACCEPTED BATTLE