Ripples ran down the edge of the carpet. Abdullah could see it was trying to obey. It gave a strong wriggle, but Kabul Aqba’s weight was evidently just too much to allow it to slide out from under him. So it tried another way. It rose an inch into the air, and before Abdullah realized what it intended to do, it had darted out from under the sleeping bandit.

“No!” said Abdullah, but he said it too late. Kabul Aqba thumped down on to the ground and woke. He sat up, waving his pistol and howling in a strange language.

In an alert, leisurely sort of way, the soldier picked up the hovering carpet and wrapped it around Kabul Aqba’s head. “Get his pistol,” he said, holding the struggling bandit in both brawny arms.

Abdullah plunged to one knee and grasped the strong hand waving the pistol. It was a very strong hand. Abdullah could do nothing about taking the pistol away. He could only hang on and go crashing to and fro as the hand tried to shake him off. Beside him the soldier was also crashing to and fro. Kabul Aqba seemed quite amazingly strong. Abdullah, as he was battered about, tried to take hold of one of the bandit’s fingers and uncurl it from around the pistol. But at this Kabul Aqba roared and rose upward, and Abdullah was flung off backward with the carpet somehow wrapped around him instead of around Kabul Aqba. The soldier hung on. He hung on even though Kabul Aqba went on rising upward, roaring now like the sky falling, and the soldier from gripping him around the arms went to gripping him around the waist and then around the top of the legs. Kabul Aqba shouted as if his voice were the thunder itself and rose up bigger yet, until both his legs were too big to hold at once, and the soldier slid down until he was grimly clutching one of them, just below its vast knee. That leg tried to kick the soldier loose and failed. Whereupon Kabul Aqba spread enormous leathery wings and tried to fly away. But the soldier, though he slid downward again, hung on still.

Abdullah saw all this while he was struggling out from under the carpet. He also caught a glimpse of Midnight standing protectively over Whippersnapper, larger even than she had been when she faced the constables. But not large enough. What stood there now was one of the mightiest of mighty djinns. Half of him was lost upward in the mist, which he was beating into swirling smoke with his wings, unable to fly because the soldier was anchoring one of his enormous taloned feet to the ground.

“Explain yourself, mightiest of mighty ones!” Abdullah shouted up into the mist. “By the Seven Great Seals, I conjure you to cease your struggling and explain!”