"And how long will I have to wear your hideous form and let you occupy my stately proportions?" I asked.
"Until we both desire to exchange again. I will give you one of my magic rings and I'll keep the other. If you turn the ring on your finger at the same moment I turn mine, then the exchange will be effected, no matter how far apart our bodies may be. Now, take this ring, and summon your orderly. Bid him escort me to the gate, and give me a glass of brandy before he lets me depart."
I obeyed these directions and, after a few minutes, the burning in my throat convinced me that I was in Behoric's squat body; that he occupied my taller shell I found very shortly.
Hardly had the exchange taken place, when a bombardier came to announce that the second cannon in the third battery had burst, whereupon Behoric in my body answered:
"Boil some glue, and stick the pieces together; then wind some stout twine around the cannon to prevent it from bursting again."
At these directions the bombardier and the orderly exchanged glances and snickered.
"This won't do at all," I said to myself, so I whispered to my figure: "Behoric, just change back again for a second, will you?"
Each turned the ring on his finger, and I was again I.
"Take the broken cannon to the arsenal," I said to the grinning bombardier, "and put in its place one of the bronze pieces from chamber number IV. Why do you laugh, idiot?"
Then Behoric and I exchanged again, and I found myself trudging in his body down the hill from the fortress, with the medicine chest on my back. I was obliged to pass through the beleaguerer's camp, and, naturally, was commanded to halt. When they spoke to me I could not understand them—I, who am perfectly familiar with French, Latin, English, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Indian, Dutch—I, with Behoric's untutored ears, and with his inability to converse in any language but the German, could not understand a word the Frenchmen said to me. The colonel was obliged to send for an interpreter.