"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!"