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."