rooper who held the key
threw it over the wall just before he was overpowered. But Ahmed had
come prepared. From out the howdah he took a heavy leather pad, which
he adjusted over the fore skull of the elephant, and gave a command.

The skull of the elephant is thick. Hunters will tell you that bullets
glance off it as water from the back of a duck. Thus, protected by the
leather pad, the elephant becomes a formidable battering-ram, backed by
tons of weight. Only the solidity of stone may stay him.

Ahmed's elephant shouldered through the gates grandly. For all the
resistance they offered that skull they might have been constructed of
papier mache.

Through the dust they hurried. Whenever a curious native got in the
way the butt of a rifle bestirred him out of it.

Umballa had lashed Kathlyn to a sapling which was laid across the path
of the car. The man was mad, stark mad, this night. Even the soldiers
and the devotees surrounding the car were terrified. One did not force
sacrifices to Juggernaut. One soldier had protested, and he lay at the
bottom of the hill, his skull crushed. The others, pulled one way by
greed of money and love of life, stirred no hand.

But Kathlyn Mem-sahib did not die under the broad wheels of the car of
Juggernaut. So interested in Umballa were his men that they forgot the
vigilance required to conduct such a ceremony free of interruption. A
crackling of shots, a warning cry to drop their arms, the plunging of
an elephant in the path of the car, which was already thundering down
the hill, spoiled Umballa's classic.

CHAPTER XVIII

PATIENCE

While Bruce and two of his men carried Kathlyn out of harm's way to the
shelter of the underbrush, where he liberated her, Ahmed drove Umballa
and his panic-stricken soldiers over the brow of the hill. Umballa
could be distinguished by his robes and turban, but in the moonlight
Ahmed and his followers were all of a color, like cats in the dark.
With mad joy in his heart Ahmed could not resist propelling the furious
regent down-hill, using the butt of his rifle and pretending he did not
know who it was he was treating with these indignities. And Umballa
could not tell who his assailant was because he was given no
opportunity to turn.

"Soor!" Ahmed shouted. "Swine! Take that, and that, and that!"

Stumbling on, Umballa cried out in pain; but he did not ask for mercy.

"Soor! Tell your master, Durga Ram, how bites this gu