But the dog took that for a call to do his thinking, and let go for a better hold. His long fangs closed again on the victim's jugular, and tore it out. The long knife clattered on the stone floor, and then Tom got his dog by the jaws and hauled him off.
"You can't blame the dog," he grumbled. "He knew the smell of him.
He'd been told to kill him if he got the chance."
"Gungadhura!" said Yasmini again, holding her lantern over the dying man. "So Gungadhura was Tom Tripe's ghost! What a pity that the dog should kill him, when all he wanted was a battle to the death with me! I would have given him his fight!"
Dick was in no bad way. He had three flesh wounds on his right side, and none of them serious. Tess staunched them with torn linen, and she and Tom Tripe propped him against some bags of bullion, while Utirupa threw his cloak over Gungadhura's dead body.
"How did Gungadhura get in here?" wondered Tess.
"Through the hole at the end of the mine-shaft, I suppose," said Dick. "I built up the lower one—he came one day and saw me doing it—but left a space at the top that looked too small for a man to crawl through. Then I blocked the mouth of the tunnel afterward, and shut him in, I suppose. He's had the men's rice and water-bottles, and they left a lot of faggots in the tunnel, too, I remember. That accounts for the smell of smoke."
"But what was the digging I've heard o' nights?" demanded Tom. "I'm not the only one. The British garrison was scared out of its wits."
Utirupa was hunting about with a lantern in his hand, watching the dog go sniffing in the shadows.
"Come and see what he has done!" he called suddenly, and Yasmini ran to his side.
In a corner of the vault one of the great facing stones had been removed, disclosing a deep fissure in the rock. One of Dick Blaine's crow-bars that he had left in the tunnel lay beside it.