“Listen!” she urged.  “Tell your maids to stampede for the street the instant the door breaks in.  That will give the guard their work to do to hold them.  Meanwhile—­”

“Thump!” came the timber on the gate again, and even the hinges shook in their stone setting.

“Listen!” said Yasmini.

There was another noise up-street—­a rushing to and fro, and a trumpeting that no one could mistake.

“I said that—­”

“Thump!” came the baulk of timber—­not so powerfully as before.  There was distraction affecting the team-work.  The scream of an elephant fighting mad, and the yelp of a dog, that pierces every other noise, rent the darkness close at hand.

“I said that the gods—­”

There came the thud of a very heavy body colliding with a wall, and another blood-curdling scream of rage—­then the thunder of what might have been an avalanche as part of a near-by wall collapsed, and a brute as big as Leviathan approached at top speed.

There was another thud, but this time caused by the hulk of timber falling on the ground, as guard, eunuchs and Gungadhura all took to their heels.

“Allah!  Il hamdul illah!” swore the gateman. (Thanks be to God!)

“I said that the gods would help tonight!” Yasmini cried exultantly.

“O Lord, what has happened to Dick?” groaned Tess between set teeth.

The thunder of pursuit drew nearer.  Possessed by some instinct she never offered to explain, Yasmini stepped to the gate, drew back the bolt, and opened it a matter of inches.  In shot Tom Tripe’s dog, with his tongue hanging out and the fear of devils blazing in his eyes.  Yasmini slammed the gate again in the very face of a raging elephant, and shot the bolt in the nick of time to take the shock of his impact.

It was only a charge in half-earnest or he would have brought the gate down.  An elephant is a very short-sighted beast, and it was pitch-dark.  He could not believe that a dog could disappear through a solid iron gate, and after testing the obstruction for a moment or two, grumbling to himself angrily, he stood to smell the air and listen.  There was a noise farther along the street of a stampede of some kind.  That was likely enough his quarry, probably frightening other undesirables along in front of him.  With a scream of mingled frenzy and delight he went off at once full pelt.

“Oh, Trotters!  Good dog, Trotters!” sobbed Tess, kneeling down to make much of him, and giving way to the reaction that overcomes men as well as women.  “Where’s your master?  Oh, if you could tell me where my husband is!”