"It shall do the work," he said, with another grin, as he fastened the air-buoyed bed to a ring placed for the purpose in one of the logs. Then he clucked emphatically. "Lo! who would grudge men's brains to the Masters when they are clever as the Gods themselves? The Miss will see how fast this goes. We shall be at Eshwara before the night turns to day." Something in his tone warned her that the recurrence of the phrase was not pure chance. "That is when the prisoners were to escape?" she said quickly. He did not affirm or deny it. "So many things happen in the fight of Dawn," he said affably. That was all; but she thought rapidly. The rising, or whatever the conspiracy aimed at, could scarcely have happened just after they left Eshwara the night before. In that case the news must have followed them on the road. Therefore, if it was to happen at all, if this were not all talk--and Father Ninian's words came to make her doubt its being so--it would happen in a few hours. So she must be there in time to give warning. As she thought this, a sudden strain at the tow-rope, a quick dip of the boat-shaped prow of the raft, a louder swish of the water as it curved out from its rising stern, told her she was adrift, indeed, on the way to Eshwara! It seemed almost more incredible than what had gone before. But there was nothing to be ashamed of here. It was the only possible thing to do under the circumstances. Her journey might prove unnecessary, but it might not; and supposing anything should really happen--to--to _anybody_--she would never be able to forgive herself if, knowing this chance of danger, she had not done her best to avert it. CHAPTER XIX JULIET The copper-coloured glow, into which weather-wise Am-ma had looked, distrustfully, as it domed the little valley set in its rim of hills, had replaced that of sunset in Eshwara also, and Pidar Narâyan's eyes, weather-wise as the fisherman's, looked at it as doubtfully, as he walked home with Lance and Vincent Dering when the long strain at the Pool of Immortality was over. "If it were not so early in the year, I should predict a dust-storm--a real electrical dust-storm," he said. Lance, whose hands were full of cut-paper Gods--for in obedience to a sudden impulse, he had stopped on his way through the crowd to buy up the old Brahmin's whole stock in trade, and give him an extra eight annas to go away and not drum any more--looked up also, and filled his broad chest with a great breath. "Perhaps that is it. I've felt choking all day--horrid!"