This night again the singer sang untiringly, the tom tom accompanying him with its weird hollow notes. And in the blackness, Desmond worked as he had never worked before, plying his saw hour after hour, never forgetting his caution, running no risks when he had warning of the sentry's approach. And hour after hour the shower of sawdust fell noiselessly into Babu's outspread dhoti. Then suddenly the beating of the tom tom ceased, the singer's voice died away on a lingering wail, and the silence of the night was unbroken save by the melancholy howl of a distant jackal, and the call of sentry to sentry as at intervals they went their rounds. At midnight the guard was relieved. The newcomer--a tall, thin, lanky Maratha--arriving at Desmond's shed, put his head in at the little window space, and flashed his lantern from left to right more carefully than the man whom he had just replaced. The nine forms lay flat or curled up on their charpoys--all was well. Coming back an hour later, he fancied he heard a slight sound within the shed. He went to the window and peered in, flashing his lantern before him from left to right. But as he did so, he felt upon his throat a grip as of steel. He struggled to free himself; his cry was stifled ere it was uttered; his matchlock fell with a clatter to the ground. He was like a child in the hands of his captor, and when the Gujarati in a fierce low whisper said to him: "Yield, hound, or I choke you!" his struggle ceased and he stood trembling in sweat. But now came the sentries' call, passed from man to man around the circuit of the fort. "Answer the call!" whispered the Gujarati, with a significant squeeze of the man's windpipe. When his turn arrived, the sentry took up the word, but it was a thin quavering call that barely reached the next man a hundred yards away. While this brief struggle had been going on, a light figure within the shed had mounted to the rafters and, gently feeling for and twisting round a couple of wooden pins, handed down to his companions below a section of the roof some two feet square, which had been kept in its place only by these temporary supports. The wood was placed silently on the floor. Then the figure above crawled out upon the roof, and let himself down by the aid of a rope held by the two Biluchis within. It was a pitch-dark night; nothing broke the blackness save the scattered points of light from the sentries' lanterns. Stepping to the side of the half-garroted Maratha, who was leaning passively against the shed, the sinewy hand of the Gujarati still pressing upon his windpipe, Desmond thrust a gag into his mouth and with quick deft movements bound his hands. Now he had cause to thank the destiny that had made him Bulger's shipmate; he had learned from Bulger how to tie a sailor's knot.