s child.

"Three!"

They strained their utmost, and the huge stone trap gave way with a
sudden jerk.

"For the love of--"

They all jumped, but they were strained in the wrong position for a
quick recovery, and the ten-ton rock rolled back on unseen hinges to
crush them all, and rolled back and yet farther back--and then stayed!
Brown had snatched a rifle, and had placed it between the rolling rock
and the wall!

He stood wiping the sweat from his forehead, while the rest recovered
their lost balance and walked out from behind unscathed. The rifle
creaked and bent and split. Then the stone leaned farther back, reached
the wall and stayed there!

"A near thing that!" said Brown. "That fakir's a bright beauty, isn't
he!"

"Shall I kick him, sir?" asked one of Brown's men.

"Kick him? No! What good'd that do? What next, Juggut Khan?"

But Juggut Khan was bending down, and listening at the hole laid bare by
the huge hinged trap.

"Silence!" commanded Brown.

The men held their breath, even, but not a sound came up from the
darkness down below.

"Are they dead, d'you suppose?" asked Brown.

And, even as he asked it, some one in the darkness snuffled, and he
heard a woman's voice that moaned.

"Snff-snff-snff! I wonder if I'm dead yet! I wouldn't be, I know, if
Bill were here! He'd ha' got us out!"

"There is one of them alive!" said Juggut Khan.

"So I notice!" answered Brown, with a strange dry quaver in his voice.
"Go down and bring her up, please! Take three or four men with you. It
won't do to bring women and a child up here and let 'em see this awful
fakir and these corpses. Take your time about bringing 'em up, while
I make the prisoners carry their dead up on to the roof. I'll take the
fakir up there too where he's out of mischief!"

Just as a six-foot-wide pathway ran round and round the outside of the
dome, another one, scarcely more than a yard wide, ran round the
inside, and formed a roadway to the top in place of a stair. It took the
prisoners and Brown's men fifteen minutes of continuous effort to carry
up the dead and the fakir, and lay them on the roof.

"Pitch the dead over!" ordered Brown, and the mutineers obeyed.

"I've a mind to pitch you over too!" he growled at the fakir, and the
strange creature seemed to understand him, for his eyes changed from
their baleful hatred to a look of fear.

The bodies slid and rolled down the rounded roof, and fell with a thud
against the battle