CHAPTER XIII

The gorilla stood by an embrasure, resting its elbows on the sill and staring moodily off toward the wharf. The sky was growing light with the approach of dawn. There is a small tide in the Mediterranean, much smaller than those of the greater oceans. It had been running now for nearly an hour. The pest ship, all sails spread, was hull down on the horizon.

The gorilla said gruffly, "El Sareuk, there is a sick void in my vitals that makes the shifting sands appear a mild holiday by comparison! The ship is gone--we've lost our fight to save England!"

The Saracen scratched his beard. "You have fleas, friend, and you're giving them to me.... Godwin, how did this terrible witchery come to pass? I mean this new form of yours?"

Godwin, the gorilla, grunted. "They hauled me into a room where the big dish-faced swine, what's his name--"

"Mufaddal."

"Yes, Muffin-face or whatever. He was sitting on a blanket with two of his sorcerers and Ramizail. She'd taught them one of her games with those 'playing cards.' The senior sorcerer, Heraj, had won about a bushel of assorted jewelry and gew-gaws, and Ramizail had stacks of gold coins like a rampart in front of her. They were all bleary-eyed with lack of sleep, but the game has such a hold that none of them, not even Ramizail, stopped playing for full five minutes after I had been brought in."

"It must have been Poke Her. No game has such a fascination."

"Yes. Then Muffin-face tipped Heraj a wink, and the camel's bastard went into a trance or something, and the first thing I knew I was scratching myself on the rump where a flea had bitten me. I imagined he'd presented me with a plague of fleas, till I realized that I wasn't scratching good armor, but bare hide with fur on it!"

"What a horror!" said El Sareuk, shuddering. "The man must have Satan's powers."

Godwin's shaggy head nodded. "'Twas he made it possible for the pest ship to be cargoed. Well, I looked myself over, and then knocked down a guard and took his polished shield away from him. They all had their swords out in a trice, but I only wanted to see my face in it. To have attacked them then would only have meant throwing my life away uselessly. I looked into the shield and--this is what I saw." He turned the gorilla's sad-somber visage toward his friend. "Heraj exchanged my body with this animal's, which it seems inhabits a savage jungle country far down in Africa. So somewhere in a forest my own body walks beneath the trees, clad in my robes and armor, thinking a wild beast's thought!"

"This Heraj must be powerful beyond thought!"

"He said deprecatingly to his filthy master that he had his limitations, but I cannot imagine them. What a bit of sorcery! Anyhow, Mufaddal then bragged that he would make Ramizail his concubine, and chain me to the bedchamber wall in the guise of a household pet. I had all I could do to keep my fingers from his throat. But I bethought me of Ramizail at the mercy of this pack of devils with me dead, and held my rage. Then she came to me, unhindered by them, because they wanted to see the spectacle of a maiden embracing a brute; and under cover of her embrace, she slipped this into my hand, and I hid it under my fur." He withdrew from his armpit the knife which Ramizail had taken from the slave.

* * * * *

El Sareuk's lean face lit with a fanatic fire. "Why, we are weaponed, then! And we have this body, which they've given you, like a crew of imbeciles and village idiots, when its strength must equal that of ten Godwins!"

"Well, not that damn strong," said the gorilla reproachfully. "After all, I was no weakling."

"Yes, yes, but look here, friend; between the weapon and the new body, can we not force an escape from this hole? Subdue the caitiffs, take a ship and pursue the plague vessel! The thing is surely within our power now!"

The gorilla shook his head dully. "You are staring, old comrade, at the work of this Heraj. Do you think he couldn't stop an attack by us with a wave of one finger?"

El Sareuk hissed fiercely, "Where's the Godwin I knew aforetime? Has the magician exchanged your guts with some sheep's?" He clapped the beast on the shoulder. "And see, I have bethought myself of something. Ramizail never does anything without plan, and witty, clever plan at that. She is playing cards with these magicians, true?"

"They were back at their game before I'd been hauled out of the room."

"I see her strategy as plain as though I had laid it myself! She has found the chink in the sorcerer's armor. He is engrossed with the game, to the exclusion of all else. We can make our break, and with any luck, burst into that room before he knows something's amiss! Then one swift twitch of your paw--forgive me, I mean your hand--and he's carrion!"

The gorilla considered long. At last he said, "It's a slim chance, but by the rood, we'll take it! Better a slim chance now than no chance after they chain me to the harem wall. And 'tis a thought, that of pursuing the plague ship. I had given up all hope when it left its moorings. I never thought of another ship."

"Your brains are addled by the change in form, or you'd have riddled it all out before I did," said the Arab generously. "Now then, how shall we go about it?"

They talked in low voices for a few minutes. The day brightened beyond the window. At last El Sareuk said, "That's it. The best possibility, I think."

"One other thing," said Godwin. "Around the knife when Ramizail gave it to me was wrapped this." He showed the Saracen the sigil of Solomon, the chain of which he had placed about his neck, with the seal hanging down behind among his black fur. "What d'you make of that?"

"Why, she hopes you'll find the ring, and if you have both, you can call the djinn. Obviously the sigil is no good to her alone."

"Fat chance I've got to find the ring," moaned the gorilla. "It's jiggling around a jungle somewhere, a thousand miles south."

"Yes. Ah well, we asked Allah for adventures when we left Jaffa for a nomad life," said El Sareuk philosophically. "Though little did we dream they'd come in battalions like this!"