In half an hour the servants and a camel—which had been waiting—had started for the Doctor's destination, a place on the Salt Range some twelve miles away.
At daybreak three horses arrived, and the Doctor and his two companions started for their camp.
After breakfast the Doctor took his son and Tom Ellison, accompanied by a servant, to a small valley about a quarter of a mile from the camp.
"Here you are," said the Doctor; "this is the exact spot where I found the pieces of slab."
"Then I should say the rest can't be far away," remarked Tom, and they commenced poking around with the ends of iron-shod sticks. They had been twenty minutes at their task when a boy in charge of some goats planted himself on a rock not far away and keenly watched the Sahibs at work.
"Don't you think it would be a good plan, Doctor, if we got a few coolies to loosen the subsoil and turn over some of these loose stones about here?—it would be easier for us to search," suggested Tom.
"Yes, we may as well make a thorough search now we are at it," replied the Doctor, who at once sent the servant to the village near the camp for some coolies and tools.
The boy had disappeared before the coolies arrived, for he had received a signal from a man who was secretly watching the search-party from the top of a cliff some seventy yards away.
The natives had not been long at work when one of them slipped, and his puggari pitched off exactly on to the spot where the next coolie had turned over a stone. The man picked up his puggari and moved a few yards off to wind it round his head again, and almost immediately the goat-boy appeared and asked him if he had seen a stray goat.