And Ranjoor Singh looked too. Under the writhing German, and back again over him, there crawled a six-foot hooded cobra, seeming to caress the carcass of his prey. "He will be dead in five--ten minutes," said Yasmini, "and then I will catch my snake again! If you want to ask him questions you had better hurry!" Then Ranjoor Singh recalled the offices that men had done for him when he was wounded. He asked the German if he might send messages, and to whom. But the dying man seemed to be speechless, and only writhed. It was nearly a minute before Ranjoor Singh divined his purpose, and pounced on the hand that lay underneath him. He wrenched away another pistol only just in time. The snake crawled away, and Yasmini coaxed it slowly back into its basket. "Now," she said, "when he is dead we will drive back to Delhi and amuse ourselves! You shall run away to fight men you never quarreled with, and I will govern India! Is that not so?" Ranjoor Singh did not answer her. He kept trying again and again to get some message from the German to send perhaps to a friend in Germany. But the man died speechless, and Ranjoor Singh could find no scrap of paper on him or no mark that would give any clue to his identity. "Come!" said Yasmini. "Lock the door on him. We will tell the general sahib, and the general sahib will send some one to bury him. Come!" "Not yet," said Ranjoor Singh. "Speak. When did you first know that these Germans had taken this vault to use?" "More than two years ago," she boasted, "when the old priest, that was no priest at all, came to me to be doorkeeper." "And when did you know that they were storing dynamite in here?" "I did not know." "Then, blankets?" "Bah! Two years ago, when a Customs clerk with too much money began to make love to a maid of mine." "Then why did you not warn the government at once, and so save all this trouble?" "Buffalo! Much fun that would have been! Ranjoor Singh, thy Jat imagination does thee justice. Come, come and chase that regiment of thine, and spill those stupid brains in France! Lock the door and come away!" Brother, a favor I came to crave, Oh, more than brother, oh, more than friend! Spare me a half o' thy soldier grave, That I sleep with thee at the end! Spur to spur, and knee to knee, Brother, I'll ride to death with thee! CHAPTER XIV The crew of the Messageries Maritimes steamship _Duc d'Orleans_ will tell of a tall Sikh officer, with many medals on his breast, who boarded their ship in Bombay with letters to the captain from a British officer of such high rank as to procure him instant accession to his request. Bound homeward from Singapore, the _Duc d'Orleans_ had put into Bombay for coal, supplies and orders. She left with orders for Marseilles, and on board her there went this same Sikh officer, who, it seemed, had missed the transport on which his regiment had sailed.