CHAPTER XX
The Mamelukes were stunned. To say this is an understatement. They were shaken, terrified, horror-struck, and a thousand more emotions—all bad—filled their hearts than they could ever have catalogued.
They were very brave men indeed, but they had never seen a gorilla, and certainly never a gorilla that appeared out of the sea to stand waving a Crusader's broadsword on their deck. As one man they stiffened, and gaped, and were lost. For Godwin, with a somewhat shortened repetition of his initial greeting, was bounding into their midst before they could budge.
One man died with the dice in his hand. Another lost his head before he could recover his wits. A third put hand to hilt and was cloven with a leer of terror still on his face. The fourth managed to get his scimitar cleared. Precious little good it did him. It came from the sheath only to clatter on the deck.
The Nubian slave at the tiller was a different proposition. He was as tall as Godwin, a thick-legged old warrior, with broken teeth and scarred face to attest his many battles. Leaving his post, and catching up a naked scimitar (that was easily six feet in length) as he passed the rail where it had lain propped, he ran at Godwin full tilt, yelling a battle slogan from his homeland far to the south.
Godwin thrust out his blade to parry the first vicious swinging cut. The swords clanged like hammer on anvil. The black was skillful. Godwin had all he could do to keep the singing steel from his chest. He tried a two-handed swipe, which the slave ducked blithely, and the scimitar came licking in to draw a thin scarlet line across the gorilla's belly. Half an inch further and Godwin's guts would have been spilt on the sun-hot boards.
Godwin's new reach, a stupendous one, was an advantage. In ferocity and broadsword skill he was unbeatable, but a long scimitar was a terribly formidable weapon in the hands of such a swordsman as his opposite number. He parried, parried and cursed the fact that this tall grinning half-naked black should keep him at bay so long. From the corner of an eye he saw more Saracens emerging from a hatch up forward. It was no time to stand and fight according to gentlemen's rules. He had a job to do, and this Nubian might very well cry halt to that job. Given equal weapons, Godwin would have dueled with him thus by the hour; but now he needed quick victory.
"Sorry about this," he grunted, in apology for the dirty trick he meant to play. He did not need to play it. The Nubian fell back, eyes and mouth starting wide.
"It spoke!" he cried out, and flung down his scimitar. "Oh, Allah, it spoke!" He turned and ran for the rail and dived over it like a man fleeing the wrath of Eblis. Godwin could not help laughing. Evidently, to this fellow's way of thinking, a gorilla that climbed out of the sea and fought with a broadsword was acceptable, but one that did these things and spoke in Arabic also was an intolerable wonder and a thing to boggle the mind. There was a loud splash. Another foeman was dispensed with.