"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."