The following year, however, things were organised on a larger scale, and he was opposed by Anang-pal, who met no better fate than his father, and fled incontinently to Kashmir. But Mahmûd's progress southward was checked by the news of revolt in Ghuzni, and he had to return in order to count scores with his pet converted Hindu, one Sek Pal, who, left governor, had resumed his Brahmanical thread, and was in full swing of conspiracy with his fellows in India. It took the burly Mahomedan short time to settle his shrift, and send him to cells for life, so that the next fall of the leaf found Mahmûd ready for his fourth invasion of India. A real invasion, a real resistance this time. For the Rajas of Lahôre, Delhi, Gwalîor, Ujjain, Ajmir, Kanauj, had joined confederacy to rout the Unclean Stranger. It was a holy war: women sold their jewels, and men sent their hoards to furnish forth its munitions. To no purpose. It is true that at the outset Mahmûd suffered a reverse. The Ghakkars, Scythic warrior race of the Salt Range, laughed at the invader's entrenched camp amongst their bare hills, bore down on it, overpowered his outposts, and accounted for some four thousand of his army. But even that failed to stop these big, burly men, bent on plunder, bent on proselytising at the sword's point. The result of this raid was the destruction of Nagar-kôt, ancient town hard by the temple called Jawâla-Mukhi, or Flame's Mouth, where, since the beginning of Time, the jets of combustible gas issuing from the ground amongst the dark shadows of the sheltering spire have burnt bravely as emanations, manifestations, of the Goddess Dûrga, that Fury of Womanhood. According to native historians Mahmûd's returning army must have been a perfect caravan, for it carried with it about seven thousand pounds weight of gold coins, six thousand of gold and silver plate, fifteen hundred of golden ingots, a hundred and twenty-eight thousand of unwrought silver, and more than a hundred and fifty pounds weight of pearls, corals, diamonds and rubies. But the combustible gas must have remained to be re-lit in honour of Mai Dûrga, and so have remained to help the memories of the iconoclasts! A fine trade this, that of smashing golden idols in the name of the Prophet, and carrying the bits and the diamond and sapphire eyes away in the name of Mammon! It found its apotheosis in the twelfth and last expedition to India, when Mahmûd directed all his energy towards Som-nâth, a temple renowned throughout India, set proudly on a peninsula in Guzerât, surrounded on all sides save one by the sea. The intervening seven excursions were all marked by noteworthy incidents, all full to the brim of reckless romance, and each left India the more helpless, the more ready to let the invader pass to fresh, more southern conquests. Indeed, a certain suzerainty was acknowledged by many Hindu rajahs, and on one occasion Mahmûd's march was ostensibly to the relief of a feudatory.