[Illustration: _Then came the shudder and shock as Asoka struck the wall with his enormous forehead._] Asoka staggered through the gap. Behind him the horsemen streamed through, wheeling right and left. And then confusion, in which Bamjee scrambled to the ground by clinging to Asoka's tail and vanished into the building. Asoka swung a limp trunk, swaying with his eyes shut, more than half-stunned by the impact. Quorn slipped to the ground. "Lean against that wall, you sucker. Keep your feet. No lying down or you'll kid yourself you're all in." For a moment or two he watched the elephant, since that was his first charge. He decided Asoka would stand there--at the worst he would hardly stray far--at the utmost worst he might stagger off home to the elephant lines in Narada; but he was likeliest to stand. He left him. There was fighting going on in every direction--horsemen charging; Brahmins and their own hired ruffians at throat-grips, some of them rolling on the ground together; other ruffians trying to climb the wall and being skewered by the Rajput lances; two men in the gap to guard that, sabering whoever tried to slip through; and a maniac--a leaping maniac--a prancing, yelling maniac who jabbered in an unknown tongue as he raced around the parapet of the rambling building, brandishing an empty Colt revolver. "Maraj!" Quorn muttered to himself. "I guess you're my meat!" But he had no weapon, nor any notion how he was going to kill the maniac. He ran all along the building looking for an entrance. There were dozens of doors, all leading into cells, but he came on a passage at last that led between two cells into a dark hall under a dome, with columns to support the dome. He saw the Ranee leaning on Rana Raj Singh's arm. The prince's saber was all bloody and there were several dead men lying around the door of the cell from which the Ranee had been rescued. The door had not been opened, it was smashed in, but Quorn had not time to be curious how that had happened--he saw a stairway leading to the roof. It was narrow. Near its summit stood the high priest, taking refuge there for fear his sacred person might be defiled by the touch of common mortals--much more afraid of that than of being killed or injured. In fact, he did not appear afraid. Quorn charged up the steps. The high priest retreated in front of him, dreading that Quorn might bump against him. Three steps backward, and he bumped into the door that opened on the roof--it yielded, and there he was out on the roof with Quorn staring at him, until Maraj came prancing along the parapet. The high priest looked afraid then, as Maraj paused, grinning at him--grinning at Quorn, too: and Quorn cursed himself for a bigger idiot than any one, because he had no weapon. Maraj twisted the Colt revolver in his hands, broke it as if his hands were a gorilla's, dropped it as if he had never been conscious of it. And then human speech returned to him.