“Pardon, Ramabai!” cried Ahmed contritely.  “Pardon!”

“Ah! finally you understand?”

“Yes.  You are not only a good man but a great one.  If you gave the sign to your men there would be no one in yonder dungeon-keep alive!”

“They know, and I could not stay the tempest once I loosed it.  There, that is all.  That is the battle I have fought and won.”

The colonel reached down and offered his hand.

“Ramabai, you’re a man.”

“Thanks, Sahib.  And I tell you this:  I love my people.  I was born among them.  They are simple and easily led.  I wish to see them happy, but I can not step over the dead body of one who was kind to me.  And this I add:  When you, my friends, are free, I will make him free also.  Young men are my followers, and in the blood of the young there is much heat.  My plan may appear to you weak and absurd, but I know my people.  Besides, it is our only chance.”

“Well, Ramabai, we will try your plan, though I do so half heartedly.  So many times have we escaped, only to be brought back.  I am tired, in the heart, in the mind, in the body.  I want to lie down somewhere and sleep for days.”

Kathlyn reached out, touched his hand and patted it.  She knew.  The pain and terror in his heart were not born of his own miseries but of theirs, hers and Winnie’s.

“Why doesn’t my brain snap?” she queried inwardly.  “Why doesn’t the thread break?  Why can’t I cry out and laugh and grow hysterical like other women?”

“I shall take charge of everything,” continued Ramabai.  “Your tribulations affect my own honor.  None of you must be seen, however; not even you, Ahmed.  I shall keep you informed.  Ahmed will instruct the keepers to obey me.  No harm will come to them, since no one can identify them as having been Umballa’s assailants.  My wife will not be molested in any way for remaining at the bungalow.”

Without another word Ramabai curled himself up and went to sleep; and one by one the others followed his example.  Bruce was last to close his eyes.  He glanced moodily round, noted the guards patrolling the boundaries of their secluded camp, the mahout sleeping in the shadow of the elephant; and then he looked down at Kathlyn.  Only a bit of her forehead was exposed.  One brown shapely hand clutched the howdah blanket.  A patch of moonshine touched her temple.  Silently he stooped and laid a kiss upon the hand, then crept over to Ahmed and lay down with his back to the Mohammedan’s.

After a while the hand clutching the howdah blanket slid under and finally nestled beneath the owner’s chin.

But Winnie could not sleep.  Every sound brought her to an upright position; and to-night the palace seemed charged with mysterious noises.  The muttering of the cockatoo, the tinkle of the fountain as the water fell into the basin, the scrape and slither of sandals beyond the lattice partitions, the rattle of a gun butt somewhere in the outer corridors—­these sounds she heard.  Once she thought she heard the sputter of rifle shots afar, but she was not sure.