The court ushers rushed to their places, the royal nakârahs sounded, and the cortège of the select few passed downward amid a seething shout of content from that dim crowd at the end of the garden. But above that strange sound like a surging wave, which seems to sweep along any densely packed mass of men, rose another.
This had a rumble in it, a sharp hiss, then a deafening low, long continued roar.
Akbar, who had just reached the narrow marble pathway, stopped dead and looked round him sharply.
"The reservoir!" he cried, "the reservoir above!"
His instinct was right. The rain of dawn had found some weak spot in the masonry and the next instant, bursting its hidden way beneath the dais and hurling great blocks of marble before it, a huge volume of water rose spurtling into the air.
"Run for it, Shaikie, run for it! Leap from the platform!"
The cry came not one moment too soon. Keeping within bounds by the very force of its onward impulse, the great wave of water, which would have hurled them down the marble cascade, but just touched their heels, as choosing different sides they leapt to safety.
Leapt turbanless, their ill-fitting head-dresses having tumbled off at their first start.
The general shriek of horror at the impending catastrophe subsided into confused babels of relief centring round the Prince on the left, the King on the right. So none noticed two men one on the right, one on the left of the wide central waterway who instantly started to race two half-floating half-sinking objects which, swept over the cascade by that wild impulse of flood, were now unsteadily swirling down to be engulfed under the low archway leading to subterreanean passages. And neither Khodadâd nor Birbal had eyes for anything save the prize of that race.
A sudden swerve to the left taking the Prince's turban with its talisman almost within reach of the enemy, decided Birbal. He paused a second. Then his low forward dive gave him a yard or two, and he rose to find his hand and Khodadâd's both clutching at what they sought. But his was the nearer.