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 as before 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 struggles 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-garrotted Maratha, who was leaning passively against the shed, the sinewy hand of the Gujarati still pressed 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 learnt from Bulger how to tie a sailor’s knot. Scarcely had he bound the sentry’s hands when he was joined by one of his fellow-prisoners, and soon seven of them stood with him in the shadow of the shed. The last man, the Gujarati, had held the rope while the Babu descended. There was no one left to hold the rope for him, but he swung himself up to the roof and climbed down on the shoulders of one of the Biluchis. Meanwhile the sentry, whose lantern had been extinguished and from the folds of whose garments his flint and tinder-box had been taken, had now been completely trussed up, and lay helpless and perforce silent against the wall of the shed. From the time when the hapless man first felt the grip of the Gujarati upon his throat scarcely five minutes had elapsed.