"Very well," I said, "suppose you work one of your miracles! You and King disappeared a while ago simply perfectly from right alongside me. Can you repeat the process here and spirit me away?"
He shook his head.
"My friend, if your eyes had not been fixed on things unworthy of consideration such as an elephant's rump and the theft of sugar-cane, you would have seen us go."
"How did you persuade King to leave me standing there without a word of warning?" I demanded.
"How were you persuaded into this place?" he retorted.
"You mean you gagged and bound him?"
He smiled again.
"Your friend was weak from having so nearly been drowned; nevertheless, you overestimate my powers!"
"When I first met you, you gripped my hand," I answered. "I am reckoned a strong man, yet I could not shift your hand a fraction of an inch. Now you suggest that you are weaker than a half-drowned man. I don't understand you."
"Of course you don't. That is because you don't understand the form of energy that I used on the first occasion. Unfortunately I can only use it when arrangements have been made in advance. It is as mechanical as your watch, only a different kind of mechanics—something, in fact, that some of your Western scientists would say has not yet been invented."