“Look then!” he answered, and thrust his dark face close to the opening.

Even the utterly base have intuition.  Nothing else warned him.  In the very nick of time he stepped back, and Yasmini’s long dagger that shot forward like a stab of lightning only cut the cheek beneath the eye, and slit it to the corner of his mouth.

The blood poured down into his beard and added fury to determination.

“Guards, break in the gate!” he shouted, and Yasmini stood back in the darkest shadow, about as dangerous as a cobra guarding young ones.  With her left hand she signed to all six women to hide themselves; but Tess came and stood beside her, minded in that minute to give Gungadhura Western aftermath to reckon with as well as the combined present courage of two women.  Wondering desperately what she could do to help against armed men she suddenly snatched one of the long hat-pins that she herself had adjusted in her own hat on Yasmini’s head.

Yasmini hugged her close and kissed her.

“Better than sister!  Better than friend!” she whispered.

Gungadhura had not been idle while he waited for his message to reach Yasmini, but had sent some of the guard to find a baulk of timber for a battering-ram.  The butts of rifles would have been useless against that stout iron.

The gate shook now under the weight of the first assault, but the guards were handling the timber clumsily, not using their strength together.  Gungadhura cursed them, and spent two valuable minutes trying to show them how the trick should be worked, the blood that poured into his beard, and made of his mouth a sputtering crimson mess, not helping to make his raging orders any more intelligible.

Presently the second crash came, stronger and more elastic than the first.  The iron bent inward, and it was plainly only a matter of minutes before the bolt would go.  The gateman came creeping to Yasmini’s side, and, with yellow fangs showing in a grin meant to be affectionate, displayed an Afghan tulwar.

“Ismail!” she said.  “I thought you were afraid and ran to hide!”

“Nay!” he answered.  “My life is thine, Princess!  Gungadhura took away all weapons, but this I hid.  I went to find it.  See,” he grinned, feeling the edge with his thumb, “it is clean!  It is keen!  It will cut throats!”

“I will not forget!” Yasmini answered, but the words were lost in the din of the third blow of wood on iron.

The odds began not to look so bad—­two desperate women and a faithful Northern fighting man armed with a weapon that he loved and understood, against a wounded blackguard and three eunuchs.  Perhaps the guard might look on and not interfere.  There was a chance to make a battle royal of it, whose tumult would bring Dick Blaine and Tom Tripe to the rescue.  What was the dog doing?  Tess wondered whether any animal could be so intelligent after all as Tom pretended his was.  Perhaps the maharajah had seen the dog and killed him.