Men were attacking from the mouth of every alley, Turks in Persian armor with three-foot scimitars and little round shields, mercenary Turcomans with stout short bows and fists full of arrows, Mamelukes in yellow tunics carrying battle-axes. The Bedouins pirouetted their horses to meet them. Some of the enemy were mounted, many on foot. Battle-cries arose, and this was the strangest thing about the fight, for both sides lifted the same cry, the howling chant of Islam: "Ul-ul-ul-ul-ul-ul-allah akbar! Allah il-al-lahu! Ul-ul-ul-ul-allah akbar!"
Godwin, still carrying Ramizail, parried a vicious thrust by a Seljuk Turk and swung his broadsword. A wave of terrible and utter happiness swept through him. For this had Godwin of England been born and trained. His blade smashed down through helmet and skull to clunk dully on the neckpiece of the Turk's armor. Then he had jerked it free and turned and driven it squarely into the back of a foeman who was duelling with the dismounted El Sareuk. Again he whipped it out, whirled it above his head and smashed its broad flat against the bearded and grimacing face of a Turcoman. Blood and brains exploded like seeds and pulp from a shattered pumpkin. Godwin roared gleefully. Having cleared the space around him, he set Ramizail on her feet and said, "Stand back to back with me, sweet. My halidom! This is something like it!"
She slammed her back against his. An etched-bladed knife was in her capable hand, and she had the look of a ravening demon.
El Sareuk, wiping his dripping scimitar on thedjelabieof a fallen opponent, said, "Where's Yellow-eyes?" for he had grown very fond of Godwin's battle-scarred old peregrine.
"I don't know. Trust her to come safe through this!" And in a moment, as Godwin engaged in swordplay with two Moslems, the falcon did indeed slant down from the sky, to beat her wings fiercely in the eyes of one of the enemy who was trying to slash at Ramizail under Godwin's arm.
"Thou beauty!" said Godwin, dividing the blinded gentleman neatly at the waist. "Thou cleaver of storm-clouds! Always art thou here when Godwin has need of thee!" Only to his falcon and his horse did Godwin speak in this affectionate fashion. It sometimes made Ramizail jealous.
Many of their Bedouin allies had fallen to the arrows and swords of the attackers. Now men appeared on the nearest roofs, armed with huge slings and round stones. Mufaddal evidently desired to take prisoners, and knowing that Godwin's forces would fight to the last man, had chosen this way of stunning some of them. A flight of stones laid out three-quarters of the remaining force, including El Sareuk; Godwin took a couple on his shield—he was the prime target—and wished he had an arbalest; he'd bring 'em down from those aeries! Then a rock caught him at the base of the skull, and he groaned and buckled over and struck the ground with a crash. Yellow-eyes fluttered up and hung over him, screeching. Ramizail bent above him, crying out with horror. Then big rough hands were on her, her knife was twitched away, and she was hauled off, keening like a banshee, to the house of Mufaddal al Mamun.
CHAPTER XI
The black-faced slob who led the troops of the Saracens in Alexandria was seated cross-legged on a rug, eating a bowlful of dry rice. He squinted at Ramizail where she stood, defiant and tear-stained, across the room from him. "Bring the slut here," said he. Two slaves dragged her forward. They took their hands away when they had stationed her in front of him; she immediately hit one of them in the eye and kicked the other on the shin. Then she bent over and thrust a finger under Mufaddal's nose.
"Watch who you're calling a slut, you pig-eyed ape-visaged son of a buck-toothed jackal!" she said in a low but quite audible snarl. "Do you have any idea who I am?"
He made as if to shrug, snatched her by the wrist and flung her prone on the rug before him. "I know who you are, you viper mouthed hell hag. You're Ramizail, who once controlled the djinn."
"I still control them, you bat-eared offspring of a pock-marked toad."
"Oh no you don't, you mildewed bowlegged harridan," said Mufaddal. With the "bowlegged" epithet he went too far, as any student of women, and especially of the vain Ramizail, could have told him. She rolled over and smiled up at him and before he knew what she intended, her teeth had met in the flesh of his calf. He leaped straight up with a full-throated bawl of pain.
She sat back and crossed her legs Moslem-fashion and said, "Now that the pleasantries are done with, let me tell you that the chief of all the djinn, y-clept Mihrjan would—andcould—do anything for me. So just watch your step, you greasy-handed scheming scum, or you'll find yourself hanging by your—"
"Mihrjan would indeed have done anything for you," said Mufaddal, rolling up his cheap cotton trousers and dabbing at the blood on his leg with a piece of the equally cheap rug, which he tore off for the purpose. "But your friend Godwin sent Mihrjan away and told him to stay till he was called. And now he's lost the ring of Solomon, and you're helpless. Ouch!" he yipped as the rug rasped over his wound. "Well, almost helpless. I suppose I'll have to have all your teeth pulled before I make you my concubine."
"Before you make me a concubine, you draff of the Cairo gutters, you'll have to pull my teeth and draw my nails and hamstring me and break my arms, and even then I'llgumyou to death!" she yelled.
He regarded her out of the corner of his eye, and thought that perhaps she was right, and that he should give up this idea. Certainly there was always the chance that her djinni might come looking for her against Godwin's orders; but he took a second look and decided the djinni could go hang. She was as luscious a piece of loot as had come his way in years. She was standing now, hands on hips. He motioned one of the slaves up.
"Let's see what she looks like under all those layers of drapery," he said.
The slave grinned, whipped out a knife, and before Ramizail could turn he expertly ran its razor-honed blade up her back, within a millimeter of her spine. Her robes fell forward, slit from waist to neck, and she saved her modesty only by a quick grab at the front of them. Whirling—and Ramizail when she wished could move like a tornado in a hurry—she snatched the knife from his careless grasp, shifted it to a comfortable position in her hand, and with a lightning stroke cut the belt of his scarlet satin pantaloons. The slave clutched at them desperately ... just too late. He turned to flee this demon-wench, the trousers entangled his ankles, and he sprawled headlong across the floor. The other slave came warily forward, groping out toward the girl.
She menaced him with the knife. "Want to lose your pants too, little man?" she asked.
He was a shy and sensitive soul at heart. He glanced at his trousers, at the knife, turned pale, moaned, and dashed for the door. Ramizail faced Mufaddal, who was nursing his calf and gaping appreciatively at the slim brown back exposed by the slave's blade.
"Turn around for a minute, al Mamun," she hissed, "while I fix my robes. If you don't, the last thing you'll see will be this silver sliver!" She flashed the knife within an inch of his popping orbs. He hastily swiveled round and faced the wall.
"One would think you were deficient in the body, and ashamed of it," he growled.
"If you would care to see just how extremely undeficient I am, you big baboon," she said, slicing off the whole top of her cream-colored outer robe and knotting it around her ample bosom in the form of a halter, with the copper-hued gown caught beneath it to chastely cover her diaphragm, "then you have only to snatch one peek over your shoulder. I assure you it would give you a moment of supreme pleasure, immediately before you died." A low estimation of her own attractions was never a failing of Ramizail's. "And you would die, Mufaddal. They tell me a sliced gullet can be painful. Do you want to find out?"
"No," said Mufaddal sullenly, staring hard at the wall. What a long-clawed cat from the alleys of Hell! he thought. Had she been less beautiful, he would slay her in this instant. But he wanted her, and without blemish or scar, so he sat motionless until she said, "All right, turn around. But no more clever ideas from you, or I'll really grow angry." She tucked the knife into her girdle as he pushed himself around to face her.
"Very well," he said, "I'll buy you. I respect your spirit, woman. 'Tis a trait I like in my women. How now, if I heaped your lap with emeralds and nephrite jade?"
"Green was never one of my favorite colors," said she, sitting down comfortably across the rug from him. She cast about for a way to show her absolute contempt, bethought herself of her playing cards which she always carried with her, and drew the pack out of a purse she wore on her girdle.
"What are they?" he asked, intrigued in spite of himself, as she began to lay them out on the rug.
"Playing cards. My djinn brought them to me from a far future time. They haven't even been invented yet," said she, studying the faces of those upturned.
"What does one do with them? Not that I care," he added, remembering his carefully-built reputation for single-minded fanaticism.
"One plays many games. I might teach you one, were you not as stupid as a hog and as dull-witted as an aged camel."
"I am as intelligent as you," yowled Mufaddal. Then, since she was a mere woman, "More intelligent, blast your smirking face! Teach me a game!"
"The best one is called Poke Her," said Ramizail. "But to really play properly, we need four people."
Mufaddal threw a dish at the remaining slave, who was sitting in a corner trying to repair his belt. "Go fetch me Heraj and Pepi," he ordered. "Also bring some food. Something to munch on. And some fermented-bread beer." The slave trotted out, gripping his ravished pants.
Presently the two sorcerers came in, Heraj very glum. "What's wrong with you, lemon-lips?" asked Mufaddal.
"What'd you do with Godwin and his crew?" asked Heraj.
"You know very well."
"Yes, I know. You threw them into the jail with those captured Crusaders and the others. I don't like the risk, brother. You ought to kill the whole lot of them now. You underestimate that big Englishman. And the renegade El Sareuk is no babe, either."
"The cell is as well guarded as a prince'sharim," said Mufaddal.
"Yes, but any man who can slay a winged lion is a match for fifty seraglio guards. Kill 'em, I say. The plague ship sails with the early morning tide. Why take unnecessary chances?"
"I have several simple but pleasurable notions in mind for Godwin and his misguided cohorts. Come here, I'll whisper one of them to you." Heraj stalked over and bent down. Mufaddal sputtered wetly and intimately in his ear. Presently the sorcerer began to grin.
"Not bad. I guess it's worth the risk. I'll be extra cautious, anyway." He sat down beside Mufaddal. He extracted a goblet of saffron-yellow bubbling wine from his brother Pepi's yataghan pommel and drank it off. "What did you call us in for?" he asked, gazing at Ramizail with the expression of a starving vulture catching sight of a prime steak.
"This wench has a game to teach me, and it needs four players. Go on, girl," said Mufaddal, with as close an approach to amiability as was possible for him to assume.
Ramizail dealt out five cards apiece, having unobtrusively stacked the deck, and began to teach them the exotic game of Poke Her.
CHAPTER XII
The dungeon of al Mamun was a squat brick square, with a flat clay roof and tiny slit windows, erected at a little distance from the main building of his establishment, between the wharf and the barracks that housed his common soldiery. In its stinking, superheated confines now lay a score of Crusaders, captured a month before while on detached patrol duty from Richard's forces; twenty-seven Bedouins, the remains of Godwin's army; fourteen assorted Saracens, in jail for one offense or another against Mufaddal; El Sareuk and Godwin himself.
There was barely enough floor space for each man of the sixty-three to stand upright, or to sit, if he didn't mind jostling his neighbors. Godwin was standing by a window looking out at the dock from which the dark plague ship, a tall obscene blot against the descending moon, had a quarter of an hour before set sail. El Sareuk was beside him, making suggestions.
"How if we all formed a kind of wedge, Godwin, and began battering the door with the point? A few would be crushed, certainly, but the door might be torn down."
"Well, we'll try it, old wolf, if nothing better occurs to us." Godwin leaned in the little embrasure, tugging fretfully at his blond beard. "If I had my sword...!" He clanked his leg chains with anger; they had chained him and El Sareuk and a couple of the brawnier Crusaders. Damn all, he thought to himself. The ship is gone, what does it matter if we get out or not? Except to save Ramizail, of course. If I could remember what I did with that bloody ring! Mihrjan could sink that ship like an oaken chip.
And then, as the moon touched the far crest of the sea, the door opened and a Mameluke thrust in his head.
"Godwin! Godwin's wanted!"
The prisoners all burst into raucous speech, invitations and curses.
"Come and get him!"
"Do venture within, jailer, and let us show thee something pretty!"
"Enter, thou fuzz-bearded son of a dung heap, and fetch him!"
Godwin pushed his way to the door. The Mameluke retreated behind it. "Step out, Godwin," he said, nervously prodding the Englishman with his sword. "Mufaddal wants you."
Godwin grinned evilly, and stepped forth. The Mameluke, who Godwin now saw had a file of soldiers at his back, slammed the door on the execrations of the prisoners. "Come along," he growled.
El Sareuk, watching from a window, saw Godwin disappear with a firm step into the waning night, clinking his leg chains jauntily.
For long he did not come back. The old Arab harangued the sixty-one men who were left, urging that they forget their feuds and crusades and band together against their captor; and they agreed whole-heartedly with him, and fell to making plans for escape and vengeance. Not a man of them but hated Mufaddal, and most of all for his loathsome scheme of the plague ship.
They all sat down, crowding up to one another in the heat and stench of the prison, and made a narrow aisle through the center of the place so that El Sareuk could pace up and down while he talked and gestured and plotted, rattling the iron fetters on his legs.
"If we can get out, and I say we can, even if we leave half our number dead on the floor behind us, then we must make a dash for the house, and pulverize this devil before he can concoct any more foul designs!" he shouted.
They all roared. The building seemed to quiver on its foundations. El Sareuk smote his forehead. "Now by Allah and again by Allah! Is this our answer? Remember the walls of Jericho, O Brothers!"
They caught his meaning at once, and at the upswing of his hand every man let loose a full-throated bellow. A Crusader edged into a corner shouted, "The walls shuddered! The force of the sound shook them!"
They repeated the clamor, and dirt from the roof sifted down over them. For five minutes they raised a thunderous din, and might have gone on doing so till the sun rose, had not the door drawn open just then.
They all peered round, and a gorilla walked in. It was chained around the ankles and had a quizzical expression on its broad flat face.
They were brave men, but unarmed, and they all shrank away from it with indrawn breath and small fearful cries. El Sareuk, pale, clutched automatically for his absent scimitar.
The door slammed. The gorilla scratched its head, leaned against the jamb, and remarked in a loud disgusted voice, laden thick with English accent, "What the hell is the matter with you white-livered ruffians? You think I'm going to eat you?"
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!"
CHAPTER XIV
The gorilla was as tall as Godwin had been in his proper form, four inches over six feet. The Crusader standing on his shoulders was the tallest of their lot, six feet two. His head came within a hand's breadth of the roof. Balanced by a palm on the ceiling, he was digging away at the baked clay with Ramizail's smuggled knife.
The mob was singing. Once a guard had opened the door and bawled at them to stop that infernal racket before they all had their throats choked with dirt, but they had cursed at him so impressively that, sword or no sword, he had retreated hastily and barred the door behind him. The mob had gone on singing. The Crusaders had sung ditties of England and home and beauty, with the Saracens humming and beating time; then the Saracens had taken over with chants of Islam and Bedouin love tunes, while the Crusaders accompanied them in muted bass choruses ofhmm-hmm-hmms.
This din had effectively covered the scraping of the knife, which was chipping away the old roof at a good clip.
Now a bit of sunny sky showed through. The Crusader grinned, got a firm purchase with his bare toes on Godwin's hairy shoulders, braced his left hand above his head, hooked his right into the hole, and tugged downward. A big chunk of brick fell on his upturned face. He shook his blond head and chuckled. A trickle of blood ran into his mouth. Nothing could have tasted sweeter.
Gradually the hole widened, till at last it was the width of a man's body and more. Godwin, the gorilla, said in Arabic, "Enough! Now onto the roof, a dozen of you!"
Swiftly they swarmed up over him as though he were a scaling ladder. Slim Arab fought silently with big-bodied Englishman for the honor of being in the vanguard. Then Godwin barked again, "Enough!" They drew back, those who had not gone up through the hole, and he flexed his knees and gave a tremendous spring. Ape's muscles and man's know-how carried him straight upward; his paws caught the rim of the hole. Some clay crumbled beneath his weight, which was more than six hundred pounds. But sufficient held to give him a moment's grace. He hurled his bullet head and huge shoulders into the gap, the clay wedged his belly in for an instant, then he had burst through and was floundering on the roof, chained legs still dangling within. El Sareuk's tough old hands took him by the wrists and hauled. He was safe.
Crouching, he led his party to the edge of the flat roof, walking with legs spread so his tight fetters would not clank. It was the landward side of the prison, facing the barracks of Mufaddal's soldiery. Before the barracks paraded two sentries. Below Godwin's gang were two more, dungeon guards, one posted at each corner. The sun was brilliant on their steel helmets as they stood silent, foreshortened by the height, unconscious of any harm.
Godwin singled out two of his men, pointed to their targets, and went with his colleagues to the wall above the door. From here they could see two more sentries at the other corners, and four stationed at the door itself. He allotted Bedouins to the remaining corner guards, gave a signal, and launched himself into the air with a war-cry that began in his belly and strangled in his throat, so that for fear of alarming the barracks guards all that emerged from his mouth was a sibilant fierce hiss. Behind him his silent henchmen followed him off the roof. Within the jail, the fifty-one men still prisoner were raising echoes with a rousing drinking song imported from Germany.
Godwin, as the gorilla, smashed down upon two guards who had been sleepily cursing together the tyranny of their master Mufaddal. They never knew what crushed them.
The other guards, inundated by a wave of angry captives, died as quietly; while the men at the corners did their work with practiced, pitiless hands. Godwin skipped up to the corner of the jail and looked toward the barracks, some seventy yards away. As he had hoped, the two pacing sentries were oblivious of the slaughter. Their turns were made toward the barracks, so that only by an accidental or inquisitive turn of the head during their march would they take in the prison. He glanced behind him. El Sareuk was unbarring the door, while others were donning the distinctive chest armor and helmets and picking up the weapons of the dead guards. Three of them shortly went off toward the garrison building. They were all men who had formerly soldiered for Mufaddal, and Godwin hoped they could carry through their masquerade for the few seconds necessary to insure silence.
They did. The sentries died with never an outcry. Two of Godwin's men took up the pacing rounds. The others dragged the bodies down to the prison. They were rolled into it, together with those who had preceded them in death, and the dank stinking place now contained ten naked corpses, where a scant ten minutes before had lain sixty-two men and a gorilla.
The gorilla now said to El Sareuk, who was opening shackles with a key taken from the chief guard, "The biggest mistake Mufaddal ever made was when he turned me into this monster and then sent me back to the dungeon to frighten you fellows with his dark powers. We've broken his jail, and now we'll break his house. And then, by God, I think we may even break his plague ship!"
"How? How?" asked the old Saracen fiercely.
"No time now, old one. Let's make for the house." He stationed four of his men at the corners and two before the door; these last two he regretfully deprived of weapons, for an assault on Mufaddal's own stronghold demanded at least four scimitars and a knife or so. Then he led his grim-faced legion across the heated earth toward the palace.
CHAPTER XV
"El Sareuk, are you sure you want to do this?" Godwin said anxiously, as he stood in the shadow of the building's north side and plucked tufts of fur out in search of an elusive flea. "There's small danger, true, but your dignity!"
The Saracen turned on him the face of a natural-born but long-frustrated thespian. "I would cut down the man who presumed to keep me from it," he said loftily.
"Very well. Be careful, venerable wolf. Remember that I don't know how fast this hulking body can run."
"I shall be as circumspect and as wily as the hungry small jackal."
"Then go to it, and Godspeed!"
El Sareuk peered round the corner of Mufaddal's house. The facade was a hundred and fifty feet long, and the door was set in the very center, with four Turcomans to guard it. He cleared his throat as though he were going to give a speech, hiked up his robes, and went bounding out to the dock, which ran parallel to the front of the house and a little more than ten yards from it.
The soldiers were chatting among themselves, and did not notice his advent on the dock, nor whence he came.
At once he began to croon, as if singing himself songs, and to leap up and down, ruffling his rose samite and blue silken robes out like broken wings, spreading his black Bedouin cloak by twirling as fast as a dervish, all the time mowing and grinning like a demented thing. The four turned from their conversation and stared at him. He appeared to see them for the first time, and diving forward with his head down like a battering ram, rocketed forward almost into their midst.
Two of them drew scimitars, but one of the others said angrily, "Seest thou not he is afflicted of Allah?" They put up their weapons, shame-faced.
He began to do a jig, little by little drawing away to the south so that they wheeled to watch him. Over their shoulders he saw the blunt skull of the gorilla poke round the corner. It was his last chance to ham it up. He doubled over and gave his feet a flip and was standing on his head, all the while singing a rather tuneless song of his own composition, about the amours of a pascha, to drown out any noise that Godwin might make.
One of the men cried, "Look, brothers, look! He wears gold-washed armor beneath his robes!"
They drew their scimitars, for no idiot of the byways of Alexandria wore the armor of a prince.
Godwin covered the seventy feet in six bounds. Two of the men he clutched by an ear apiece and knocked their heads together, almost a gesture in passing, a thing to be done without thinking. Before the clang of their helmets had died away he was doing the same to the other pair. His new frame was, as El Sareuk had said, far more potent even than the human body which had stood up many a time to thirty opponents. The quartet lay stretched on the ground, gray ooze and red blood spilling from their broken skulls.
And so he had eight scimitars, nine knives, and six sets of body armor, together with six helmets. "Not so bad," said he, as his men stripped the corpses. "Now for the house!"
Those Saracens who were dressed as Mufaddal's men went first into the house. Godwin followed, with El Sareuk (whose yen for acting was now glutted) and the forty-seven others, the Crusaders and Bedouins, treading on his heels. No one opposed them in the cool hall.
Godwin considered. Then, "Fan out," he whispered loudly, so that they all heard him, "and search the house. Slay all you find save women. El Sareuk, pick two Englishmen and two Bedouins and come with me."
Straight for the room of the card-players he went, his huge gray-black body speeding like a falcon's flight, with the five behind having trouble in keeping up with him. Through one room, in which five men sat eating, he raged silently; and before their astonishment at seeing such a brute appear in a civilized household would let them yell, they were dead on the parquet floor. Scimitars dripped gore and the gorilla's paws and thick trunk-like arms were spatted with it. Then they reached the room they sought.
Yes, they were still at the cards, even as he had hoped. Ramizail's game had held them fascinated, though Mufaddal had had to send out for more cash and gems half a dozen times. Surely, thought Godwin, surveying them for one fleeting moment from the doorway, surely this girl was as clever as the wisest sage in England! She had known that he would make good use of the dagger she had smuggled and the hours she had won him.
Heraj, luckily, had his back to the door. Ramizail and Mufaddal himself faced it. Pepi had retired to a corner to snore, while the third sorcerer, Habu, had taken his place.
Mufaddal was squinting at his hand. He had four aces, but if his usual luck held, either Ramizail or Heraj would have a straight flush. Seven times that night the accursed wench had taken a pot with a royal flush. Seven times! It seemed to him a rather high number. He was becoming a Poke Her fiend, nevertheless.
He looked up to lay a bet, and froze as his eyes met the small fierce orbs of the gorilla in the doorway. A coward would have screamed, but a man of Mufaddal's boasted courage would have sprung over the heads of the players to close with the beast.
Mufaddal screamed.
CHAPTER XVI
Heraj uncoiled like a spring, his mind hastily flitting through mental file cards for an appropriate spell against gorillas. He had no doubt that itwasthe gorilla. He was turning to check, and had just decided on the brief but pithy incantation which sent victims to the plains of Afghanistan, when a large firm paw smote him on the nape of the neck, and the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.
Habu clutched for his wand. He was a very minor warlock and needed a wand to do anything more complicated than the three-shell trick. His hand never reached the ebony stick. Godwin picked him up and threw him contemptuously at the wall, which he hit so hard that his backbone was telescoped into itself and some twenty-nine of his other bones were fractured in more or less intricate ways.
Pepi woke up, saw the tip of El Sareuk's sword held steadily at the hollow of his throat, and closed his eyes as if he had been sand-bagged. "One move of those lips, witch-man," said the old Arab pleasantly, "one small spell begun, and you will be breathing through several more orifices than nature intended." Pepi lay as silent and motionless as a defunct stork, which he vaguely resembled.
Mufaddal was waving his scimitar in arcs before him, bellowing for his soldiers, calling on Allah to smite these heathen devils, and cursing the magic of Heraj that had turned a plain man into this ghastly demon-thing advancing on him. He had entirely forgotten that it had been his idea to change Godwin to an animal for vengeance's sake.
Ramizail lay on her back and drummed her heels on the floor and laughed with delight at the spectacle of her beloved—and despite his present shape, hewasher beloved—wading in amongst the enemy in such headlong fashion. "Smear the big hellhound all over the wall, darling!"
"Ramizail," said the gorilla, maneuvering for advantage, "that is not ladylike. Get up off the floor and stop swearing." He then feinted with one paw, caught the scimitar by the flats with the steel fingers of his other, twitched it out of Mufaddal's horrified grasp, stepped up to him and gave him a splendid uppercut on the point of the jaw.
Mufaddal joined his sorcerers on the floor.
"Now then," said Godwin, rubbing his paws briskly together, "fetch me that necromancer, El Sareuk!"
Pepi, milk-faced and shaking, was led into the center of the room. Had he been Heraj, he could have mumbled a spell ventriloquially and relegated them all to the top of a pyramid. Luckily he was not Heraj.
Godwin regarded him for a moment. Pepi found that the direct gaze of an angry gorilla is not a thing to put heart in a man. He gave a tiny moan, almost a squeak. The gorilla expanded his chest, which measured seventy inches, and said, "You're Pepi, if I recall correctly?"
"Y-y-yes, O Magnificent One," said Pepi.
"Pepi, I want you to transport me to the plague ship. Instanter."
"Oh, I couldn't do that," said the bony wizard, turning if possible a little paler than before. "I can only do small things, such as—"
"Then I guess you may as well die too," said Godwin regretfully, and reached out a paw.
Pepi nearly collapsed. "Wait a m-m-m-m," he said. "I mean wait a s-s-s-s. Maybe there's a way."
"Think of it fast, scrawny one," said El Sareuk.
"I'm thinking," said Pepi hurriedly. "I'm thinking."
Godwin just then gave a cry of pleasure. He had spied his broadsword in its leather sheath, hanging on the wall above Mufaddal's inert form like a trophy, together with his Saracen helmet and kite-shaped shield and his curved Persian dagger. He bounded across and tore them down.
"A chap may be given the lineaments of a gorgon," he said, buckling the sword around his waist and clapping the helmet atop his round animal's head, "but he still seems naked without his weapons. By heaven, I feel better already! Now, Pepi, the method."
"Well, look, O Superb and Generous Prince," stammered the sorcerer, "I think I might work it with a carpet."
"I fail to see your point, sirrah."
"A flying carpet, O—"
"Never mind the O's. What's a flying carpet?"
"Not a very hard trick, really. You get on a carpet and say a certain incantation, and you're flying."
"How fast?"
"As fast as you will it."
"And you can do it? You can turn a carpet into a bird, as it were?"
"I think I can," said Pepi doubtfully. "No, no," he added hastily as Godwin flexed his biceps, "I'm sure I can."
"Do it, then. El Sareuk, put your blade across his neck. At the first out-of-the-ordinary thing that happens, except for the carpet's enchanting, deprive him of his head."
El Sareuk laid his scimitar to Pepi's throat with a warm smile.
Pepi looked at a rolled-up Persian carpet in a corner of the room, the only corner that did not seem to be jammed full of bodies. He muttered something under his breath. The carpet slowly unrolled.
"By the diamonded pillars of Hell!" gasped El Sareuk. "I believe he can do it!"
Pepi brightened up as his magic drifted the carpet across the floor toward them. "If you will sit on it, O Magnificence, it will carry you to the ship, be it so far as a hundred leagues to sea."
"How do I work it?" asked the gorilla suspiciously.
"Merely sit cross-legged upon it and think. It will speed or slow as you desire. It is attuned to the wishes of the rider."
"That's right," put in Ramizail. "I have ridden many a carpet, dear. Nothing to it."
Godwin tugged at his bare chin, where in happier times there had been a yellow beard. He dropped his shield on the blue and red surface of the carpet, which was now floating leisurely an inch off the floor. It seemed solid enough. "Listen, old wolf," he said. "See you take care of the girl till I come back."
"Have I not done so for nineteen years?" asked El Sareuk reproachfully.
"And send these lads out to fortify the house as well as possible. The barracks will be sure to find out sooner or later that something's amiss over here. I hope I'll be back in time to help you, when the brawl erupts; but the ship's the important thing just now."
"By Allah, it is! If we all die, 'twas in a worthy cause."
"We won't," said Ramizail complacently. "I feel it in my bones." She smiled at Godwin. "Good fortune, my dear."
"Thanks. I'd ask you to kiss me, but I've seen this face. By the way," said he to Pepi, at whose neck the blade of El Sareuk still pressed lightly but insistently, "can you give me back my own body?"
"Only Heraj could have done that," said Pepi wanly.
"Damnation. Oh, well," said the gorilla, and without more ado climbed onto the carpet and sat down. "Good-bye, all," he said. His short brow furrowed. Great fangs bared briefly in a grin of concentration. Nothing happened.
"Give it t-t-time," yipped Pepi, as the Arab's sword just nudged his throat.
The carpet gave a preliminary lurch, like a horse testing its muscles of an early morning, and then with a whoosh shot through the door and disappeared. From the other rooms that lay between them and the front of the house rose shouts of astonishment, as Godwin's forces observed him sail past them, clawing madly at the front edge of the rocketing carpet.
At that moment Mufaddal gave a low groan, unheard by anyone there; and Heraj the senior sorcerer opened his eyes and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling.
CHAPTER XVII
Making a test flight on the blue and red carpet in the house was tantamount to bestraddling a horse for the first time and having to jump him over a series of rivers and log falls and then gallop along a precipice edge, thought Godwin. He wished he had carried or led the thing out of doors before he got aboard. He missed the first door jamb by a fraction, canted over dangerously to skirt a startled Bedouin, aimed for the second door and saw he was too far off the floor, ducked his head just in time to escape a crack from the lintel, had the almost overpowering urge to close his eyes and let himself be buttered all over the ceiling, missed another door by a nice margin, grinned proudly, and saw that the front door was shut fast.
"Open it!" he bawled, something of the timbre of the gorilla in his frantic voice. "Open it, you pygmy-brained nincompoop!"
The Crusader on guard at the door flung it wide. It was an involuntary reaction, not in any way due to Godwin's command; he merely meant to dash through it himself. But carpet and gorilla slanted sidewise and flew at him, he dropped prone with a screech that four hundred Saracen foes would never have drawn from his lips, and the apparition sailed over him at thirty miles an hour, the gorilla hanging on to the edge for dear life.
Outside, Godwin righted the carpet and sped across the docks and over the Mediterranean. Now he took thought. He had controlled the carpet, it seemed, more by the quick fears and desperate hopes of his mind, than by any conscious direction of its flight. He would have to calm down. He exercised his iron will to the utmost. The carpet gave a couple of jerks, like a fractious horse being brought under control of the reins, and settled down to a smooth straight course. He glanced over his great hairy shoulder. The land of Egypt was receding rapidly behind him. Below, the choppy waves were blue and green with white caps, and the ocean looked extremely deep.
"God and the Holy Sepulcher defend me!" gasped Godwin. He pushed down on the carpet with an experimental finger. It gave slightly, but appeared to be quite safe. He tried a banking turn and then another which brought him to his straightaway course again. Courage returned with a rush. He laughed deep in the enormous chest. "This is pleasant, by my halidom!" he shouted.
His shield had fallen off the carpet somewhere back in Mufaddal's house. His sword was safe, as was the Persian dagger in its thong about his neck, and his Saracen-style helmet. The sigil of Solomon was still hung round his bull throat.
He speeded up a trifle. The wind sang in his small flat ears. He shoved his broad ugly muzzle forward, drinking in the rushing air. Never had he known a sensation such as this. It made horses seem like snails. He increased his velocity again. There was evidently no limit to the acceleration possibilities. He nearly forgot his mission in the joy of this stimulating experience.
He made the carpet swoop toward the sea, confident in his new-found skill; it plunged like a diving eagle at the waves, which reached hungrily up for it. "Tantivy, tantivy!" roared the great ape deliriously. "Gone away! Lu wind 'em, boy!" At the last second he skidded the carpet level and shot along above the surface, just skimming the crests of the waves, laughing like a maniac. Then once more he rose into the heavens and slammed forward, small sharp eyes now searching the horizons for the dark blot of the plague ship, on its way to England with a cargo of hideous all-conquering death.
Shortly he sighted a sail. It might or might not be the vessel he sought. He headed the carpet for it. It grew swiftly, until he was circling over it at a height of perhaps two hundred feet. He slowed the carpet till its motion was scarcely perceptible, until it finally hovered motionless above the ship. Then he lay prone on his belly and peered over the edge.
In the windy upper air the carpet rocked just a trifle, as a cork rocks on a pond caressed by a summer breeze. Godwin cocked an ear. From the ship below came the horrid din of thousands of imprisoned rats, squealing and keening and skirling their ghastly song of destruction.
He had found the plague ship. He drew back and grinned. Now....
Canting off to a spot some distance to the port side, he dropped the carpet, until it nearly touched the choppy sea, then aimed it at the side of the ship. He reasoned that he would be less likely to be seen if he came in at the level of the waves, rather than from above. There might be some element of terror about his descent from the clouds, but these men would be used enough to Heraj's spells to take a flying carpet in stride. Surprise was what he needed on his side, and if he could climb over the side without being seen, he might be able to reconnoiter the deck for a moment before beginning his attack.
He was then about two hundred feet from the vessel.
Abruptly, without any warning, the carpet dropped out from under him; crumpled, became a very ordinary red and blue carpet instead of a magical winged steed, and hit the waves, where it floated for an instant until his body struck it in falling; when it collapsed and sank into the depths of the Mediterranean Sea.
Some distance below, a forty-foot white shark, called also a man-eater, peered eagerly up at the commotion.
CHAPTER XVIII
Heraj opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling.
He had the grandfather of all headaches. He attempted to recall the spell against headaches, but it eluded him. He tried several others, but none of them would come out right. Evidently the blow at the base of his skull had somewhat addled his memory. He closed his eyes and resignedly waited for the thumping ache to pass.
He heard shouts of fear in other rooms, and then after a minute or two Pepi's voice nearby said plaintively, "Don't you think you might remove that blade now?"
Pepi was Heraj's favorite brother. He seemed to be in trouble. Heraj made a valiant effort and rolled his head, ache and all, to one side, opening his eyes as he did so. He saw the soles of Mufaddal's cheap shoes, in the left one of which was a large hole with the dirty foot showing through; disgustedly he swiveled his gaze and saw Habu, than whom he had never seen anyone deader.
He lifted his gaze and saw El Sareuk standing beside Pepi, one arm about the sorcerer's shoulders holding him steady, the other presenting a scimitar to the poor fellow's throat.
Heraj worked through the spell of immobility in his mind. He felt he had this one right. He flung it at El Sareuk.
El Sareuk did not move a muscle.
Heraj, uncertain that he had accomplished his purpose, glanced about at the half dozen Crusaders and Bedouins who were in the room. He gave them each a repetition of the spell. He enchanted Ramizail, who was eating dates. Then he cautiously rose to his knees.
No one moved, not even Pepi.
"All right, boy," said Heraj, standing. "They're stuck."
"So am I," groaned Pepi.
His sound of sorrow was echoed by Mufaddal, who sat up and felt his jaw tenderly. "Allah smite everybody," said Mufaddal. "Everybody!"
"Move, Pepi," said Heraj encouragingly. "He's immobilized."
"So am I, you lunkhead. Can't you see his arm and sword encircle my neck?"
"Oh," said Heraj. "Hum. Well. Can't you force back one of his arms?"
"They're like stone. Ouch!" The edge of the scimitar had cut him a little. "I tell you I don't dare move!"
"Neither can I," said Heraj, holding his head. "My stars and thaumaturgy, what a knock I took! Which wall fell on me?"
"The gorilla fell on you," said Mufaddal spitefully, "and if you think I'll turn a finger to aid either of you two fumble-handed fat-brained cretins, you're badly mistaken. My jaw feels like a boil about to burst."
Heraj took a step and winced. "I can't do it, damn the pain, I can't move for a minute."
"I'm off balance," shrilled Pepi. "I can't stand here forever."
"Look," moaned Heraj, really wanting to help him but unable to bear the skull-cracking ache, "I'll take the spell off him for a tenth of a second. You get ready to push with all your might on that arm. It'll give you enough leeway. Ready?"
"I'm pushing," said Pepi.
"Here goes, then."
El Sareuk had heard all this as he stood motionless with his sword at the wizard's throat. He chuckled deep in his vitals, even though he could not move so much as an eyelash. A whole tenth of a second, eh?
Pepi was pushing with insane strength at the arm. Heraj took off the spell and immediately put it back on. There was a swish, a grating sound, and a dull squashing thunk.
Pepi, a bumbler to the last, had pushed on the wrong arm. Indeed, he had pressed so hard that El Sareuk in his new immobility now held it straight before him. But the scimitar had been gripped in the capable fist of the other arm. Pepi's head lay on the floor, an expression of astonishment on its homely and now blood-bedabbled features.
Heraj raised a howl of anguish. He did not know that at the instant Pepi died, the flying carpet with Godwin aboard it, no longer supported by Pepi's incantation, had fallen into the sea almost on top of the man-eating shark.
CHAPTER XIX
Godwin was a strong swimmer, and the body he now inhabited was as muscular as any in the world. After swallowing a pint of salt water and thrashing about for a moment below the surface, he struck out toward the plague ship. He was not sure what had happened, but he was afraid it boded ill for his beloved and his friends. Nonetheless, he was glad that the carpet had carried him at least this far. The destruction of the vessel was their major problem and he felt superbly confident that he could accomplish it.
The heavy iron broadsword weighed him down, dangling stiff and perpendicular from his waist; but he could not jettison it. It was just as well, though, he thought, swimming with vigorous strokes, that he had lost his shield before he left the land. Otherwise he would regretfully have had to abandon it to the deep. That old shield had been with him in many a tight spot.
The white shark kept pace with him, some twelve feet below, looking up at him and considering which portion of this strange hairy beast might prove most succulent for an appetizer. At last it decided upon a leg. It lifted and turned in the water, opening its terrible mouth with row behind row of huge razor-sharp teeth that could tear a man in two with one snap. Godwin fortunately had just thrust his head under the surface as he brought an arm over and down, and saw the quick flash of the white belly below him. Automatically he contracted his whole body, hauling his legs up and then propelling himself forward with a tremendous flailing of his long arms. The shark missed its snap.
Godwin glanced at the ship and saw it was too far off for him to gain its side before the huge fish had had several more tries at him. The wind had sprung up, too, and the vessel was making away from him at a good clip. Cursing, he turned in the water and shot down through its depths, searching for the man-eater.
A flicker of white showed off to his left; he twisted, waited, holding his breath and thanking heaven for the capacious lungs of the gorilla.
It came straight at him, revolving to bring its underslung mouth into play. He maneuvered a foot to one side, and hurled himself upon it, catching it by a pectoral fin. With every ounce of power the gorilla's body could command, he tore at the fin. It ripped from the shark's side, sluggishly, loosing a slow torrent of blood into the dark waters.
The man-eater writhed around toward him. He caught the jaws, upper and lower, with both hands, and wrenched them apart. Even the terrible potency of the shark's mouth could not withstand the strength of the gorilla and the whole-hearted will to win of Godwin of England. The hinges cracked and the lower jaw hung useless.
Godwin backed off, shoving himself through the encumbering waters, even his spacious lungs straining by now for air; but before he surfaced he meant to finish this brute. He hauled out the iron broadsword from its sheath, advanced once more toward the furiously thrashing white shark, and thrust half a dozen times. Then he swam upward, leaving behind him an ever-expanding blotch of blood and a quivering, twitching, forty-foot piece of dead meat.
The ship was far away. He sheathed the sword and set out to overhaul her where she sailed serenely, dark sail spread, with her cargo of obscene death.
"Even Godwin in his proper form could never have caught her," he thought to himself. "Heraj's baneful magic will win the day for England yet!"
Slowly he crept up on the ship. At last he reached out a paw and touched the slimy wooden hull. He gave a little quiet laugh. Now!
Dripping salt water, he hauled himself up the side. Cautiously his blunt head in its steel helmet poked over the bulwarks.
The vessel was fairly long for a lateen-rigger, with a low poop deck and a high rail, the great triangular sail, with a pair of quite small auxiliary sails, flapping merrily overhead, and the eternal quarrelsome noise of the rats pervading all the air within a quarter mile. The watch, four Mamelukes, were dicing on the poop. At the tiller lazed a tall black Nubian slave, his loins wrapped in a bright orange cloth. Godwin presumed a crew of about six more, who were probably below in a portion of the hold shut off from the rats' quarters. Mufaddal would want a good handful of men for a job like this. He envisaged them loosing the rats in the seaports of England, likely at night, and slipping away on the tide, leaving their gruesome messengers to spread the bubonic plague far and wide. The picture gave him added strength and determination; though God knew he had needed no more than already boiled in his veins!
As silently as he could make the cumbersome body move, he hoisted himself over the rail.
Then he stood erect, all six feet four of gray-black hideous-visaged brute, drew the broadsword from its scabbard, set his thews for quick action, and pounding his naked chest with his left paw, so that a hollow drummingboom-boomdrowned for a moment even the racket of the rats, he opened his saber-fanged maw and gave vent to a terrible cataclysm of sound, an utterance wholly at variance with his usual war-cry, which seemed to come not from his human spirit, but from the body of the jungle beast—an ear-shattering, soul-searing mixture of highpitched barks, raging shrieks, deep-bellied howls and half-joyous, half-oddly-sad roars, roars which spoke of peaceful days beneath great sheltering trees now left forever for the crash and thunder of grim yet gratifying war.
Godwin of England had come aboard.
CHAPTER XX
The Mamelukes were stunned. To say this is an understatement. They were shaken, terrified, horror-struck, and a thousand more emotions—all bad—filled their hearts than they could ever have catalogued.
They were very brave men indeed, but they had never seen a gorilla, and certainly never a gorilla that appeared out of the sea to stand waving a Crusader's broadsword on their deck. As one man they stiffened, and gaped, and were lost. For Godwin, with a somewhat shortened repetition of his initial greeting, was bounding into their midst before they could budge.
One man died with the dice in his hand. Another lost his head before he could recover his wits. A third put hand to hilt and was cloven with a leer of terror still on his face. The fourth managed to get his scimitar cleared. Precious little good it did him. It came from the sheath only to clatter on the deck.
The Nubian slave at the tiller was a different proposition. He was as tall as Godwin, a thick-legged old warrior, with broken teeth and scarred face to attest his many battles. Leaving his post, and catching up a naked scimitar (that was easily six feet in length) as he passed the rail where it had lain propped, he ran at Godwin full tilt, yelling a battle slogan from his homeland far to the south.
Godwin thrust out his blade to parry the first vicious swinging cut. The swords clanged like hammer on anvil. The black was skillful. Godwin had all he could do to keep the singing steel from his chest. He tried a two-handed swipe, which the slave ducked blithely, and the scimitar came licking in to draw a thin scarlet line across the gorilla's belly. Half an inch further and Godwin's guts would have been spilt on the sun-hot boards.
Godwin's new reach, a stupendous one, was an advantage. In ferocity and broadsword skill he was unbeatable, but a long scimitar was a terribly formidable weapon in the hands of such a swordsman as his opposite number. He parried, parried and cursed the fact that this tall grinning half-naked black should keep him at bay so long. From the corner of an eye he saw more Saracens emerging from a hatch up forward. It was no time to stand and fight according to gentlemen's rules. He had a job to do, and this Nubian might very well cry halt to that job. Given equal weapons, Godwin would have dueled with him thus by the hour; but now he needed quick victory.
"Sorry about this," he grunted, in apology for the dirty trick he meant to play. He did not need to play it. The Nubian fell back, eyes and mouth starting wide.
"It spoke!" he cried out, and flung down his scimitar. "Oh, Allah, it spoke!" He turned and ran for the rail and dived over it like a man fleeing the wrath of Eblis. Godwin could not help laughing. Evidently, to this fellow's way of thinking, a gorilla that climbed out of the sea and fought with a broadsword was acceptable, but one that did these things and spoke in Arabic also was an intolerable wonder and a thing to boggle the mind. There was a loud splash. Another foeman was dispensed with.
There were half a dozen coming up the deck toward him: his estimate of the crew had been right. He saw two bowmen among them. Bad! He tucked his broadsword into its sheath and bent his knees and leaped for the yard of the lateen sail, caught it by both paws, hoisted himself like a gymnast up and over and knelt on the yard, balancing by a palm on the bellying sail. Carefully he got to his feet, which were prehensile enough to grip the round yard and give him a feeling of confidence in his balance. Commending his soul to his God, he ran straight down the yard until he had reached the mast. Behind him four arrows had thunked through the sail as the bowmen shot at the places they thought he might be.
He shinnied up the mast, which was on the opposite side of the sail, luckily, from the crew, and cautiously peered round it. Something out on the ocean caught his gaze, and he saw it was a small black dot, rapidly receding from the ship. The Nubian swordsman was still in a hurry.
The bowmen would be on his side of the sail in six jumps. The only solution to his plight burst into Godwin's brain like a crossbow bolt from the sky. He slid down the mast, came to a teeth-jolting stop as his feet hit the yard, took the mast between both powerful paws and shook it. It was stout, but thin compared with the masts used in other rigs. Fangs bared with effort, hind feet curled and braced round the yard, he exerted all the lusty power of the gorilla's arms, all the brawn of the strapping torso, all the pent-up energy that roiled and pulsed beneath the tough old hide. One mighty heave he gave, and another, and a third.
The mast complained, creaked like the nine-mile-high gate of Hell opening, and splintered in two as if struck by lightning.
Of all Godwin's feats of strength—and they were many—this was surely the greatest. As the mast crashed downward, carrying the ripping sail with it to the deck, he stood on the swaying yard and ostentatiously dusted his hands together. Suppose it had been done by the body of a jungle beast? Was he, Godwin, not inside it?
The broken mast struck with a crash that shook the ship and brought a chorus of piercing squeals from the imprisoned rats below. The yard swung violently and its end thudded to the deck, so that Godwin was knocked off balance and only saved himself by a quick kneeling and grab with both paws.
A large area of the main deck was covered by the collapsed dark sail, beneath which struggled a number of formless lumps that were the crew. Godwin picked himself up again and ran like a tightrope artist down the slanted yard to the poop, where he leaped off and turned at bay, teeth and claws and broadsword all bristling and ready.
The bumps in the sail moved about futilely, hunting an exit. The invisible rats made the air hideous with their unclean, abominable rantings.
The thing to do was go down and wade into those lumps with his sword. It may not have been precisely a fair attack, but Godwin was not absorbed with fairness at that time. He had taken two steps, the short ferocious steps of the gorilla, when an archer found the edge of the sail and rolled out from under it, an arrow nocked on his bow. He sighted Godwin at once and the bowstring tightened. Lying on his back, he took swift aim at the chest of the slavering horror on the poop deck.
There was no time to reach him, no barricade to dodge behind, and the distance was too long to fling his sword accurately. Godwin jerked his head round. A brazier of burning coals stood on a brass trivet at his side. Quicker than thought he had caught up the pot of them and in the same sidearm motion flung them down at the bowman. The man saw them coming, let fly his arrow and tried to roll out of range. Several coals took him in the face and neck. Seared and scorching flesh sent up an acrid, nauseous stench as the poor wretch screamed with agony. His arrow had gone wild by the slimmest of margins.
The other archer emerged from the opposite edge of the sail, shaking his head. He was bleeding from the nose and his eyesight had gone slightly awry. He leaned on the bulwarks and rubbed a fist into his eyes. He looked up and saw the gorilla coming at him over the crumpled, heaving sail.
He plucked an arrow from his belt and fitted it hastily to the string. He did not understand in the slightest how this awful creature had appeared aboard his ship, but it had fled once from his bow and so it might be slain by a mere mortal. He was a Seljuk Turk, this archer, proud and cruel and infinitely superstitious; he felt sure that Godwin was a spirit of some kind, yet he knew that spirits may be slain and all the odds seemed to be on his arrows.
The first one twanged out from his short sturdy bow.
Godwin saw it hurtle at his breast, and in his proper shape might only have watched it strike him, for he had no shield and only the smallest fraction of a second in which to take thought. But the gorilla's body was made of faster muscles, quicker reflexes, than ever a knight possessed. One arm flicked across his chest, and the arrow was caught in flight, three inches before it would have buried itself feather-deep in his thorax.
The Turk, a second arrow already on the string, froze. Before he could force action into his petrified hands, the gorilla was upon him. Great black paws took him by throat and groin, he was lifted over the brute's head, and the air whistled around him as the waves of the Mediterranean reached up to assuage their age-old hunger for living flesh.
Godwin watched him vanish into the sea. Weighted by his armor, he never came up. Godwin grinned.
Unnoticed behind him, the coals from the brazier had started a fire in the fallen sail, a fire which was rapidly spreading in a score of directions.
CHAPTER XXI
Godwin the gorilla bethought himself of the four men remaining under the sail. He turned about and saw the fire, which was now licking up fiercely.
"God defend the right!" he gasped. "Here's a rare hazard!"
Two men had succeeded in freeing themselves from the smothering confines of the sail. They came at him warily, side-stepping the flames, their curved Damascus blades at the ready.
"Beast or Satan," shouted one, "prepare to perish!"
"Ho ho," said Godwin throatily in Arabic, "you'll have to back that threat with action, little man!"
The fellow halted, turned a sickly green hue, and buckling at all his joints pitched over in a dead faint.
The other was affected in quite another fashion, and leaped toward Godwin, scimitar flashing.
Godwin yanked out his long sword and batted down the first attack. The Saracen was a swift and elusive fencer. His point darted through Godwin's guard and slashed a long wound down the biceps of his left arm, laying bare the dark flesh for a moment before red gore covered it and trickled out through the fur.
Godwin yelled and swung his weapon in an arc, knocking off the other's helmet and inflicting a nasty gash across his scalp.
The Saracen stabbed straight. Godwin twisted his body sidewise, and the keen blade cut through all but a thread or two of the belt that held his scabbard.
Before the enemy could recover from his lunge, Godwin brought his wounded left arm over and down in a hammer blow. The doubled paw caught the man exactly on the center of his skull, and he fell like an arrow-pierced hare, kicked a time or two, and lay still.
Two foemen remained beneath the sail. One of these had been knocked unconscious and now lay smothering to death. The other, crippled by the falling mast, was slowly dragging his broken body along in search of the open air when the fire burst into crimson bloom about him. He wailed like a tormented soul on a spit, broke his nails on the deck in a mad endeavor to crawl to safety, and at last struck his forehead on the coaming of a hatchway.
Forgetting the rats below, he threw all his waning vitality into a heave that sent the hatch cover up and flat on the deck. Then he pushed himself over the edge and fell, to escape the flames among the ravenous horde of great gray rodents.
In the frightful din of crackling flames, gibbering rats, and lapping sea, Godwin never heard him scream at all.
He stared narrowly around him now, scratching absent-mindedly for an annoying flea in the small of his back, and saw that no one moved on the deck of the plague ship. By good fortune, by the grace of God, and by his own skill and brute force, he had obliterated the crew. Even the men who had fainted had inhaled flame and died. Godwin stood alone on the deck, while beneath him sounded the perpetual vociferant clamor of the rats.
The flames spreading dangerously close to his bare flat feet, he skipped along the bulwarks and up to the poop, which was as yet untouched by fire. Here he watched it eat out across the deck, devouring sail and broken mast and at last portions of the deck itself.
The heat in the hold became unbearable for the rats then, and they began to fight savagely to get at the open hatchway, the sail above which had burnt away. Their bodies piled up beneath its square of smoky light, and the pile grew and grew....
Godwin in his gorilla body stared glumly at the flames. "What a way to die," he growled aloud. "What an end for Godwin, who was once king of all broad England! Look at the damned water; probably a million hogsheads of it within spitting distance. Look at the damned fire. Look at the two of them, and here am I, who can't begin to bring the one to the other until the ship sinks under me! What a finish!"
For the first time in his life he felt total despair. He had saved his home country, aye, but it was not likely that his deed would go down in song and story, for El Sareuk and Ramizail and the others were in all probability dying at this very moment under the swords of Mufaddal's three hundred scum. If only, he thought, one small ballad might be written about this geste!