CHAPTER XXII.
HOW UMSLOPOGAAS HELD THE STAIR We looked at one another.
'Thou seest,' I said, 'they have taken away the door.

Is there aught with which we may fill the place?
Speak quickly for they will be on us ere the daylight.' I spoke thus, because I knew that we must hold this place or none, as there were no inner doors in the palace, the rooms being separated one from another by curtains.

I also knew that if we could by any means defend this doorway the murderers could get in nowhere else; for the palace is absolutely impregnable, that is, since the secret door by which Sorais had entered on that memorable night of attempted murder had, by Nyleptha's order, been closed up with masonry.
'I have it,' said Nyleptha, who, as usual with her, rose to the emergency in a wonderful way.

'On the farther side of the courtyard are blocks of cut marble -- the workmen brought them there for the bed of the new statue of Incubu, my lord; let us block the door with them.' I jumped at the idea; and having despatched one of the remaining maidens down the great stair to see if she could obtain assistance from the docks below, where her father, who was a great merchant employing many men, had his dwelling-place, and set another to watch through the doorway, we made our way back across the courtyard to where the hewn marble lay; and here we met Kara returning from despatching the first two messengers.

There were the marble blocks, sure enough, broad, massive lumps, some six inches thick, and weighing about eighty pounds each, and there, too, were a couple of implements like small stretchers, that the workmen used to carry them on.