Not a sound was heard.

Then he said: 

“Men of Lalpuri, who have come among these fools in thirst for blood.  You have heard of me.  You have seen my power.  You see me.  Go back to your city.  Tell them there that I, who fed my elephants on the flesh of your comrades in the forest, shall come to them riding on my steed sacred to Gunesh.  If they spare the evil counselors among them, then them I will not spare.  Of their city no stone shall remain.  Go back to them and bear this message to all within and without the walls, ’The British Raj shall endure.  It is my will.’  Tell them to engrave it on their hearts, on their children’s hearts.”

He paused.  Then he spoke again: 

“Rise, all ye people.  Ye have my leave to go.”

Noiselessly they obeyed.  He watched them move away in terrified silence.  Not a whisper was heard.

Then he smiled as he said to himself: 

“That should keep them quiet.”

He turned Badshah towards the bungalow.

Forty miles away, when darkness fell on the mountains that night, the army of the invaders slept soundly in their bivouacs around the doomed post of Ranga Duar.  On the morrow the last feeble resistance of its garrison must cease, and happy those of the defenders who died.  Luckless they that lived.  For the worst tortures that even China knew would be theirs.

But when the morrow came there was no longer an investing army.  Panic-stricken, the scattered remnants of the once formidable host staggered blindly up the inhospitable mountains only to perish in the snows of the passes.  For in the dark hours annihilation had come upon the rest.  Countless monsters, worse, far worse, than the legendary dragons of their native land, had come from the skies, sprung from the earth.  And under their huge feet the army had perished.

When the sun rose Dermot knelt beside the mattress on which Parker lay among the heaps of rubble that had once been the Fort.  An Indian officer, the only one left, and a few haggard sepoys stood by.  The rest of the few survivors of the gallant band had thrown themselves down to sleep haphazard among the ruins that covered the bodies of their comrades.

“Is it all true, Major?  Are they really gone?” whispered the subaltern feebly.

“Yes, Parker, it’s quite true.  They’ve gone.  You’ve helped to save India.  You held them off—­God knows how you did it.  Your wound’s a nasty one; but you’ll get over it.”

He rose and held out his hands to the others. "Shabash! (Well done!) Subhedar Sahib, Mohammed Khan, Gulab Khan, Shaikh Bakar, well done.”

And the men of the alien race pressed round him and clasped his hands gratefully.

The defeat of the invaders in this little-known corner of the Indian Empire was but the forerunner of the disasters that befell the other enemies of the British dominion, though many months passed before peace settled on the land again.  But Lalpuri had not so long to wait for Dermot to redeem his promise to visit it.  When he did he rode on Badshah at the head of a British force.  The gates were flung open wide; and he passed through submissive crowds to see the blackened ruins of the Palace that, stormed, looted, and burnt by its rebel soldiery, hid the ashes of the Dewan.