The Videlian captain smiled. "I accept your thanks, Lord Ramaíya, but I need them not. My heart tells me I have done well. Godspeed to you!"
And he was gone. Sheng-ti and Ramey took concealment in convenient shadows, and again embarked on the nerve-wracking experience of waiting ... waiting ... waiting ... until an alarm should sound the moment for their next move.
It came at last, after so long a time that Ramey's muscles were stiff with crouching, his palms damply cold with apprehension, his nerves atingle with flame. It came with a crashing croo-oo-onge! of sound that smashed through the corridors of Lanka, rolling and echoing, re-echoing. The beat of a mighty hammer on a monstrous gong.
Then voices shattered the silence of the sleeping citadel, the vaulted avenues rang shrill with the clatter of armed men racing to their appointed posts, and—it may have been pure imagination—from far below Ramey thought his ear detected the harsher cries of battling men, the faint echoes of weapons clashing in combat.
His every instinct yearned to be part of that combat, but such was not his rôle in the campaign. Lightly he rose from his hiding place, raced across to the windows. As Thalakka had predicted, the curious guard had been drawn from his post by the clamor. By the filtering gleam of a newborn moon Ramey saw the dock and the tiny, bobbing object at its side.
"All right!" he breathed to Sheng-ti. "Come on!"
And the hopes of his well-wishers were realized. No eye spied them as they clambered through the portal, over a tiny balcony, and down to the lakeside. No voice lifted to question them as they unleashed the rocking craft beside the pier. Elsewhere on Lanka new lights flashed from a score of windows, the cries of captains rallying their men split the quiet night. But as far removed from all this hubbub as two gray ghosts were Ramey Winters and his companion. Silently they slipped boat from wharf, silently dipped blades into the water. And in the space of a dozen breaths, they were off to the distant shore on which dimly gleamed the campfires of the army of Sugriva.
It was a tedious trip for two oarsmen, one of whom had not touched an oar for twenty years, the other of whose hands was more accustomed to the slim control stick of an airplane. But dimmer and more shadowy in the distance grew the isle of slaves, ever nearer and more cheerful loomed before them the camp toward which they strained. Until at last they could distinguish figures about the campfires, could almost hear the voices of their friends. And then—
"Ramey! Ramey Winters!" Sheng-ti stopped pulling at his oars, craned back toward his friend. "Hark! I heard the crack of oarlocks—"