"Lord knows. We're marooned up here, it seems." He lay down at full length and peered over the edge again. The oasis had indeed been torn from its base, and the roots of the palms dangled below the round disc of it, waving their filaments in the air. "By the rood," said Godwin, "if this doesn't strain the imagination! Does it happen often, old one?" "Never to my knowledge before this night," said El Sareuk, running a hand through his grizzled beard. "Now by Allah! The sorcerers of Mufaddal have done this thing!" "The ring, Godwin," snapped Ramizail. She was all business, and no man would have denied her anything in this sudden gust of her serious intent, for when she put by her humor and her playfulness, she was a force to be reckoned with. "We'll have to call up Mihrjan. None of your vaunted swashbuckling will cope with this ensorcelment." "Yes, I suppose one must fight witchery with witchery, though it goes against my knightly grain." He made as if to take the ring from his finger. "Oh, I forgot. I hid it from you." "Stupid ox! Give it here." He groped in his silk and samite robes, then among the crevices of his gold-washed steel mesh Cairo armor. At last he stared sheepishly at her. "I forget what I did with it." "Oh, you bumbling Englishman!" She leaped to him and ran swift questing fingers over his body. "It's big enough, it ought to make quite a lump. Ninety-nine names of the true One! It isn't here. Did you hide it in the sand?" "No," said Godwin, blushing with shame. "I put it where I'd always have it near by. But I can't seem to recollect just where." She put her hands to her head. "You--you--" "Never mind," said Godwin. "I have an idea. If it doesn't work, you'll have to pick me up with a spoon, but I think it will." He squared his broad shoulders and walked straight over the edge of the high-floating oasis. CHAPTER VII Godwin turned and looked back at them. In the moon's light he was an uncanny figure, standing on lofty immaterial nothingness. "Well," he said testily, "come on. Can't you see it's all right?" They gaped at him, eyes round as the declining moon. "How are you accomplishing that, comrade?" asked the Saracen. "Accomplishing what? I'm only standing here." "Yes, but on air, for the love of Allah! How can you stand on air?" "I happen," said Godwin, distinctly and loudly, as though he were speaking to an imbecile. "I happen to be standing on the sands of the desert." "He's mad, my child," groaned El Sareuk. "If he is, he's doing as neat a job of being crazy as I ever saw," retorted Ramizail. "Does his insanity affect the pull of the earth?"