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"If King Anko could have seized Zog in his coils, he would have made an end of the wicked monster quickly. Zog knows this, and that is why he does not venture forth from his retreat. Anko is the enemy he constantly dreads. But with you, my queen, the case is different. You may easily reach Zog, and the only question is whether your power is sufficient to destroy him."
"Are all your doctors sharks?" asked the child. "Yes, aren't your doctors sharks?" he replied. "Not all of them," said Trot. "That is true," remarked Cap'n Bill. "But when you talk of lawyers " "I'm not talking of lawyers," said Anko reprovingly. "I'm talking about my pain. I don't imagine anyone could suffer more than I did with that stomach ache." "Did you suffer long?" inquired Trot.
As they swam out of Anko's palace and the doll-faced fishes left them, Aquareine asked: "Would you rather go back to our mermaid home for a time and rest yourselves or would you prefer to start for Giant's Cave at once?" "I guess we'd better go back home," decided Trot. "To our own home, I mean. We've been away quite a while, and King Anko seemed to think it was best."
The four, so suddenly rescued, swam away to a safer distance from the struggle, and then they turned to watch the encounter between the two great opposing powers of the ocean's depths. Yet there was no desperate fight to observe, for the combatants were unequal. The end came before they were aware of it. Zog had been taken by surprise, and his great fear of Anko destroyed all of his magic power.
"To destroy you," was the quick answer, and the magician turned for an instant to flash his eyes upon the beautiful mermaid. "For two hundred years I have been awaiting a chance to get within my power some friend of Anko the Sea Serpent of Anko, whom I hate!" he added, smiling sweetly. "When you left your palace today, my swift spies warned me, and so I sent the sea devils to capture you.
"How's that?" asked the girl, surprised. "It is a law of the ocean," declared Anko, "that whoever saves any living creature from violent death owns that creature forever afterward, while life lasts. You will realize how just this law is when you remember that had I not saved you from Zog, you would now be dead. The law was suggested by Captain Kid Glove, when he once visited me."
"Finally," continued Anko, "I sent to inquire as to what had become of you, and Merla said you had been gone from the palace a long time and she was getting anxious about you. Then I made inquiries. Everyone in the sea loves to serve me except those sea devils and their cousins, the octopi and it wasn't long before I heard you had been captured by Zog."
Anko, having ascended the throne after an armed contest with his elder brother, which ended in the latter's suicide, desired to arrange a marriage between his younger brother, Ohatsuse, and a sister of his uncle, Okusaka.
But nothing in the sea could equal the strength and quickness of King Anko when he was roused. In a flash the sea serpent had caught Zog fast in his coils, and his mighty body swept round the monster and imprisoned him tightly.
He despatched Ne no Omi, a trusted envoy, to confer with the latter, who gladly consented, and, in token of approval, handed to Ne no Omi a richly jewelled coronet for conveyance to the Emperor. But Ne no Omi, covetous of the gems, secreted the coronet, and told the Emperor that Okusaka had rejected the proposal with scorn. Anko took no steps to investigate the truth of this statement.
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