Twelve times the gong throbbed as it quivered from a blow, and as the last whimpering note died away in a forest echo a circling ripple spread from the shadow of a pipal, and now the rippling waves came fast, darting here and there like serpents of gold or silver in the moonlight.
Men gasped in awe; some touched their foreheads prone to the marble floor as a boat of gold, its prow a serpent's head with gleaming ruby eyes, came up out of the water and floated upon the surface.
King Jogendra clothed in a rich garment, his turban gleaming red and blue and white and gold where the moon flashed upon jewels, rose from a bier and lifted a hand as if to invoke the favour of the gods upon the prince who had called him from his long sleep.
Even Swinton, knowing that it was but a trick of the German engineers, shivered as if he caught a fragment of the spell that almost stilled the beating of hearts below.
And then from the sal forest came floating to this stillness of death the soft, sweet "Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle!" of the sapphire bell.
Burra Moti threw up her trunk, uttering a cry that was like the sob of a frightened child, and cocked her huge ears. As the bell called again, "Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle!" she thrust her trunk beneath her neck cloth; but her fingers found no bell; it had been stolen.
With a scream of rage she surged to her feet, and, trampling men, throwing them to one side like bags of chaff with her ivory spears, she crashed through the table and fled.
"Now, sahib!" Darna Singh cried.
In answer to Swinton's pull of the lever the plateau rose up, the palace quivered, the waters of the Lake of the Golden Coin swept across the terrace over a flattened, yellow-robed figure that had been Prince Ananda, and then was sucked back to disappear through a yawning crevice.
"Come, sahib; there will be no revolt, for Ananda is dead," Darna Singh said softly.