Godwin was a strong swimmer, and the body he now inhabited was as
muscular as any in the world. After swallowing a pint of salt water and
thrashing about for a moment below the surface, he struck out toward
the plague ship. He was not sure what had happened, but he was afraid
it boded ill for his beloved and his friends. Nonetheless, he was glad
that the carpet had carried him at least this far. The destruction of
the vessel was their major problem and he felt superbly confident that
he could accomplish it.
The heavy iron broadsword weighed him down, dangling stiff and
perpendicular from his waist; but he could not jettison it. It was
just as well, though, he thought, swimming with vigorous strokes, that
he had lost his shield before he left the land. Otherwise he would
regretfully have had to abandon it to the deep. That old shield had
been with him in many a tight spot.
The white shark kept pace with him, some twelve feet below, looking
up at him and considering which portion of this strange hairy beast
might prove most succulent for an appetizer. At last it decided upon
a leg. It lifted and turned in the water, opening its terrible mouth
with row behind row of huge razor-sharp teeth that could tear a man in
two with one snap. Godwin fortunately had just thrust his head under
the surface as he brought an arm over and down, and saw the quick flash
of the white belly below him. Automatically he contracted his whole
body, hauling his legs up and then propelling himself forward with a
tremendous flailing of his long arms. The shark missed its snap.
Godwin glanced at the ship and saw it was too far off for him to gain
its side before the huge fish had had several more tries at him. The
wind had sprung up, too, and the vessel was making away from him at a
good clip. Cursing, he turned in the water and shot down through its
depths, searching for the man-eater.
A flicker of white showed off to his left; he twisted, waited, holding
his breath and thanking heaven for the capacious lungs of the gorilla.
It came straight at him, revolving to bring its underslung mouth into
play. He maneuvered a foot to one side, and hurled himself upon it,
catching it by a pectoral fin. With every ounce of power the gorilla's
body could command, he tore at the fin. It ripped from the shark's
side, sluggishly, loosing a slow torrent of blood into the dark waters.
* * * * *
The man-eater writhed around toward him. He caught the jaws, upper and
lower, with both hands, and wrenched them apart. Even the terrible
potency of the shark's mouth could not withstand the strength of the
gorilla and the whole-hearted will to win of Godwin of England. The
hinges cracked and the lower jaw hung useless.
Godwin backed off, shoving himself through the encumbering waters, even
his spacious lungs straining by now for air; but before he surfaced he
meant to finish this brute. He hauled out the iron broadsword from its
sheath, advanced once more toward the furiously thrashing white shark,
and thrust half a dozen times. Then he swam upward, leaving behind
him an ever-expanding blotch of blood and a quivering, twitching,
forty-foot piece of dead meat.
The ship was far away. He sheathed the sword and set out to overhaul
her where she sailed serenely, dark sail spread, with her cargo of
obscene death.
"Even Godwin in his proper form could never have caught her," he
thought to himself. "Heraj's baneful magic will win the day for England
yet!"
Slowly he crept up on the ship. At last he reached out a paw and
touched the slimy wooden hull. He gave a little quiet laugh. Now!
Dripping salt water, he hauled himself up the side. Cautiously his
blunt head in its steel helmet poked over the bulwarks.
The vessel was fairly long for a lateen-rigger, with a low poop deck
and a high rail, the great triangular sail, with a pair of quite small
auxiliary sails, flapping merrily overhead, and the eternal quarrelsome
noise of the rats pervading all the air within a quarter mile. The
watch, four Mamelukes, were dicing on the poop. At the tiller lazed a
tall black Nubian slave, his loins wrapped in a bright orange cloth.
Godwin presumed a crew of about six more, who were probably below
in a portion of the hold shut off from the rats' quarters. Mufaddal
would want a good handful of men for a job like this. He envisaged
them loosing the rats in the seaports of England, likely at night, and
slipping away on the tide, leaving their gruesome messengers to spread
the bubonic plague far and wide. The picture gave him added strength
and determination; though God knew he had needed no more than already
boiled in his veins!
As silently as he could make the cumbersome body move, he hoisted
himself over the rail.
Then he stood erect, all six feet four of gray-black hideous-visaged
brute, drew the broadsword from its scabbard, set his thews for quick
action, and pounding his naked chest with his left paw, so that a
hollow drumming _boom-boom_ drowned for a moment even the racket of
the rats, he opened his saber-fanged maw and gave vent to a terrible
cataclysm of sound, an utterance wholly at variance with his usual
war-cry, which seemed to come not from his human spirit, but from the
body of the jungle beast--an ear-shattering, soul-searing mixture of
highpitched barks, raging shrieks, deep-bellied howls and half-joyous,
half-oddly-sad roars, roars which spoke of peaceful days beneath great
sheltering trees now left forever for the crash and thunder of grim yet
gratifying war.
Godwin of England had come aboard.