The palanquin was lastly carried out of sight.
At the end of the passage or street nearest the town was a gate that
was seldom closed. Through this one had to pass to and from the city.
Going through this gate, one could make the hill (where the car of
Juggernaut stood) within fifteen minutes, while a detour round the
walls of the ancient city would consume three-quarters of an hour.
Umballa ordered the gates to be closed and stationed a guard there.
The gates clanged behind him and Kathlyn. This time he was guarding
every entrance. If his enemies were within they would naturally be
weak in numbers; outside, they would find it extremely difficult to
make an entrance. More than this, he had sent a troop toward the
colonel's camp.
The gates had scarcely been closed when Ahmed, his elephant and his
armed keepers came into view. The men sent Pundita back to camp, and
the actual warfare began. They approached the gate, demanding to be
allowed to pass. The soldiers refused. Instantly the keepers flung
themselves furiously upon the soldiers. The trooper 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.