"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.
"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—"