Mackenzie mounted. The noise had swelled to a pandemoniac babel.
"The whole gang of them are in the garden yonder," he said. "They're looking up towards the roof, yelling like fiends; I never saw such rage on such ugly faces. I'll run to the door and see what maddens them."
A minute later he emerged quietly into the courtyard, hidden from the priests by the intervening garden wall. Hastening to a spot where the whole upper portion of the pagoda was in view, he gazed up. The roof was built in three great tiers, one above another. From the second to the third a winding stair led to the summit, upon which there was a small square platform, fenced with a balustrade of ornamental gold work. The bent form of a frail old man was painfully climbing the last few steps. Mackenzie watched him. He gained the top, leant for a moment on the balustrade to rest, then stood with hands uplifted, looking in the distance like a quaint figure carved in ivory. His bald scalp had no protection; his wizened features were twisted in agony and despair. And there the Old Man remained, mute and motionless, gazing down upon the upturned faces of his two hundred priests.
Mackenzie slipped back. As he was relocking the door, Beresford said quietly:--
"I'm not a panic-monger; but do you know that if those yelling shavelings out yonder break through our hole, in a couple of seconds we shall all be blown sky-high?"
"Good heavens above!" ejaculated Mackenzie, aghast. "And we can't prevent 'em!"
"Only by warning them. I speak Chinese: I will go out and tell them."
"You'd never get the chance. They'd tear you limb from limb before you'd got a word out. But I tell you, now. There's a fellow here. Come away!"
He hurried Beresford through the hall and the Old Man's room to the door, outside which the bound priest still lay.
"Tell yon Chinky," he said: "then I'll kick him out."