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+Project Gutenberg Etext The Bridge-Builders, by Rudyard Kipling
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+The Bridge-Builders
+
+by Rudyard Kipling
+
+May, 2000  [Etext #2163]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext The Bridge-Builders, by Rudyard Kipling
+******This file should be named brdgb10.txt or brdgb10.zip*****
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+
+
+
+This Project Gutenberg Etext prepared by Bill Stoddard
+hscrr@vgernet.net
+
+
+
+
+
+The Bridge-Builders
+
+by Ridyard Kipling
+
+
+
+
+The least that Findlayson, of the Public Works Department,
+expected was a C.I.E.; he dreamed of a C.S.I.  Indeed, his
+friends told him that he deserved more.  For three years he had
+endured heat and cold, disappointment, discomfort, danger, and
+disease, with responsibility almost to top-heavy for one pair of
+shoulders; and day by day, through that time, the great Kashi
+Bridge over the Ganges had grown under his charge.  Now, in less
+than three months, if all went well, his Excellency the Viceroy
+would open the bridge in state, an archbishop would bless it, and
+the first trainload of soldiers would come over it, and there
+would be speeches.
+
+Findlayson, C. E., sat in his trolley on a construction line
+that ran along one of the main revetments - the huge stone-faced
+banks that flared away north and south for three miles on either
+side of the river and permitted himself to think of the end. 
+With its approaches, his work was one mile and three-quarters in
+length; a lattice-girder bridge, trussed with the Findlayson
+truss standing on seven-and-twenty brick piers.  Each one of
+those piers was twenty-four feet in diameter, capped with red
+Agra stone and sunk eighty feet below the shifting sand of the
+Ganges' bed. Above them was a railway-line fifteen feet broad;
+above that, again, a cart-road of eighteen feet, flanked with
+footpaths.  At either end rose towers, of red brick, loopholed
+for musketry and pierced for big guns, and the ramp of the road
+was being pushed forward to their haunches.  The raw earth-ends
+were crawling and alive with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny asses
+climbing out of the yawning borrow-pit below with sackfuls of
+stuff; and the hot afternoon air was filled with the noise of
+hooves, the rattle of the drivers' sticks, and the swish and
+roll-down of the dirt. The river was very low, and on the
+dazzling white sand between the three centre piers stood squat
+cribs of railway-sleepers, filled within and daubed without with
+mud, to support the last of the girders as those were riveted up. 
+In the little deep water left by the drought, an overhead crane
+travelled to and fro along its spile-pier, jerking sections of
+iron into place, snorting and backing and grunting as an elephant
+grunts in the timberyard. Riveters by the hundred swarmed about
+the lattice side-work and the iron roof of the railway line hung
+from invisible staging under the bellies of the girders,
+clustered round the throats of the piers, and rode on the
+overhang of the footpath-stanchions; their fire-pots and the
+spurts of flame that answered each hammer-stroke showing no more
+than pale yellow in the sun's glare.  East and west and north and
+south the construction-trains rattled and shrieked up and down
+the embankments, the piled trucks of brown and white stone
+banging behind them till the side-boards were unpinned, and with
+a roar and a grumble a few thousand tons' more material were
+flung out to hold the river in place.
+
+Findlayson, C. E., turned on his trolley and looked over the
+face of the country that he had changed for seven miles around.
+Looked back on the humming village of five thousand work-men; up
+stream and down, along the vista of spurs and sand; across the
+river to the far piers, lessening in the haze; overhead to the
+guard-towers -and only he knew how strong those were - and with a
+sigh of contentment saw that his work was good.  There stood his
+bridge before him in the sunlight, lacking only a few weeks' work
+on the girders of the three middle piers - his bridge, raw and
+ugly as original sin, but pukka - permanent - to endure when all
+memory of the builder, yea, even of the splendid Findlayson
+truss, has perished.  Practically, the thing was done.
+
+Hitchcock, his assistant, cantered along the line on a little
+switch-tailed Kabuli pony who through long practice could have
+trotted securely over trestle, and nodded to his chief.
+
+"All but," said he, with a smile.
+
+"I've been thinking about it," the senior answered.  "Not half a
+bad job for two men, is it?"
+
+"One - and a half.  'Gad, what a Cooper's Hill cub I was when I
+came on the works!"  Hitchcock felt very old in the crowded
+experiences of the past three years, that had taught him power
+and responsibility.
+
+"You were rather a colt," said Findlayson.  "I wonder how you'll
+like going back to office-work when this job's over."
+
+"I shall hate it!" said the young man, and as he went on his eye
+followed Findlayson's, and he muttered, "Isn't it damned good?"
+
+"I think we'll go up the service together," Findlayson said to
+himself.  "You're too good a youngster to waste on another man.
+Cub thou wast; assistant thou art.  Personal assistant, and at Simla,
+thou shalt be, if any credit comes to me out of the business!"
+
+Indeed, the burden of the work had fallen altogether on
+Findlayson and his assistant, the young man whom he had chosen
+because of his rawness to break to his own needs.  There were
+labour contractors by the half-hundred - fitters and riveters,
+European, borrowed from the railway workshops, with, perhaps,
+twenty white and half-caste subordinates to direct, under
+direction, the bevies of workmen - but none knew better than
+these two, who trusted each other, how the underlings were not to
+be trusted.  They had been tried many times in sudden crises -
+by slipping of booms, by breaking of tackle, failure of cranes,
+and the wrath of the river - but no stress had brought to light
+any man among men whom Findlayson and Hitchcock would have
+honoured by working as remorselessly as they worked them-selves.
+Findlayson thought it over from the beginning: the months of
+offce-work destroyed at a blow when the Government of India, at
+the last moment, added two feet to the width of the bridge, under
+the impression that bridges were cut out of paper, and so brought
+to ruin at least half an acre of calculations- and Hitchcock, new
+to disappointment, buried his head in his arms and wept; the
+heart-breaking delays over the filling of the contracts in
+England; the futile correspondences hinting at great wealth of
+commissions if one, only one, rather doubtful consignment were
+passed; the war that followed the refusal; the careful, polite
+obstruction at the other end that followed the war, till young
+Hitchcock, putting one month's leave to another month, and
+borrowing ten days from Findlayson, spent his poor little savings
+of a year in a wild dash to London, and there, as his own tongue
+asserted and the later consignments proved, put the fear of God
+into a man so great that he feared only Parliament and said so
+till Hitchcock wrought with him across his own dinner table, and
+- he feared the Kashi Bridge and all who spoke in its name.  Then
+there was the cholera that came in the night to the village by
+the bridge works; and after the cholera smote the small-pox.  The
+fever they had always with them.  Hitchcock had been appointed a
+magistrate of the third class with whipping powers, for the
+better government of the community, and Findlayson watched him
+wield his powers temperately, learning what to overlook and what
+to look after.  It was a long, long reverie, and it covered
+storm, sudden freshets, death in every manner and shape, violent
+and awful rage against red tape half frenzying a mind that knows
+it should be busy on other things; drought, sanitation, finance;
+birth, wedding, burial, and riot in the village of twenty warring
+castes; argument, expostulation, persuasion, and the blank
+despair that a man goes to bed upon, thankful that his rifle is
+all in pieces in the gun-case.  Behind everything rose the black
+frame of the Kashi Bridge - plate by plate, girder by girder,
+span by span - and each pier of it recalled Hitchcock, the
+all-round man, who had stood by his chief without failing from
+the very first to this last.
+
+So the bridge was two men's work - unless one counted Peroo, as
+Peroo certainly counted himself.  He was a Lascar, a Kharva from
+Bulsar, familiar with every port between Rockhampton and London,
+who had risen to the rank of serang on the British India boats,
+but wearying of routine musters and clean clothes, had thrown up
+the service and gone inland, where men of his calibre were sure
+of employment.  For his knowledge of tackle and the handling of
+heavy weights, Peroo was worth almost any price he might have
+chosen to put upon his services; but custom decreed the wage of
+the overhead-men, and Peroo was not within many silver pieces of
+his proper value.  Neither running water nor extreme heights made
+him afraid; and, as an ex-serang, he knew how to hold authority.
+No piece of iron was so big or so badly placed that Peroo could
+not devise a tackle to lift it - a loose-ended, sagging
+arrangement, rigged with a scandalous amount of talking, but
+perfectly equal to the work in hand.  It was Peroo who had saved
+the girder of Number Seven pier from destruction when the new
+wire-rope jammed in the eye of the crane, and the huge plate
+tilted in its slings, threatening to slide out sideways.  Then
+the native workmen lost their heads with great shoutings, and
+Hitchcock's right arm was broken by a falling T-plate, and he
+buttoned it up in his coat and swooned, and came to and directed
+for four hours till Peroo, from the top of the crane, reported
+"All's well," and the plate swung home.  There was no one like
+Peroo, serang, to lash, and guy, and hold, to control the
+donkey-engines, to hoist a fallen locomotive craftily out of the
+borrow-pit into which it had tumbled; to strip, and dive, if need
+be, to see how the concrete blocks round the piers stood the
+scouring of Mother Gunga, or to adventure upstream on a monsoon
+night and report on the state of the embankment-facings.  He
+would interrupt the field-councils of Findlayson and Hitchcock
+without fear, till his wonderful English, or his still more
+wonderful linguafranca, half Portuguese and half Malay, ran out
+and he was forced to take string and show the knots that he would
+recommend.  He controlled his own gang of tackle men - mysterious
+relatives from Kutch Mandvi gathered month by month and tried to
+the uttermost.  No consideration of family or kin allowed
+Peroo to keep weak hands or a giddy head on the pay-roll.
+"My honour is the honour of this bridge," he would say to the
+about-to-be-dismissed.  "What do I care for your honour?
+Go and work on a steamer.  That is all you are fit for."
+
+The little cluster of huts where he and his gang lived centred
+round the tattered dwelling of a sea-priest - one who had never
+set foot on black water, but had been chosen as ghostly
+counsellor by two generations of sea-rovers all unaffected by
+port missions or those creeds which are thrust upon sailors by
+agencies along Thames bank.  The priest of the Lascars had
+nothing to do with their caste, or indeed with anything at all.
+He ate the offerings of his church, and slept and smoked, and
+slept again, "for," said Peroo, who had haled him a thousand
+miles inland, "he is a very holy man.  He never cares what you
+eat so long as you do not eat beef, and that is good, because on
+land we worship Shiva, we Kharvas; but at sea on the Kumpani's
+boats we attend strictly to the orders of the Burra Malum
+[the first mate], and on this bridge we observe what Finlinson
+Sahib says."
+
+Finlinson Sahib had that day given orders to clear the
+scaffolding from the guard-tower on the right bank, and Peroo
+with his mates was casting loose and lowering down the bamboo
+poles and planks as swiftly as ever they had whipped the cargo
+out of a coaster.
+
+From his trolley he could hear the whistle of the serang's silver
+pipe and the creek and clatter of the pulleys.  Peroo was
+standing on the top-most coping of the tower, clad in the blue
+dungaree of his abandoned service, and as Findlayson motioned to
+him to be careful, for his was no life to throw away, he gripped
+the last pole, and, shading his eyes ship-fashion, answered with
+the long-drawn wail of the fo'c'sle lookout:  "Ham dekhta hai"
+("I am looking out").
+
+Findlayson laughed and then sighed.  It was years since he had
+seen a steamer, and he was sick for home.  As his trolley passed
+under the tower, Peroo descended by a rope, ape-fashion, and
+cried: "It looks well now, Sahib.  Our bridge is all but done.
+What think you Mother Gunga will say when the rail runs over?"
+
+"She has said little so far.  It was never Mother Gunga that
+delayed us."
+
+"There is always time for her; and none the less there has been
+delay.  Has the Sahib forgotten last autumn's flood, when the
+stone-boats were sunk without warning - or only a half-day's
+warning?"
+
+"Yes, but nothing save a big flood could hurt us now.  The spurs
+are holding well on the West Bank."
+
+"Mother Gunga eats great allowances.  There is always room for
+more stone on the revetments.  I tell this to the Chota Sahib" -
+he meant Hitchcock - "and he laughs."
+
+"No matter, Peroo.  Another year thou wilt be able to build a
+bridge in thine own fashion."
+
+The Lascar grinned.  "Then it will not be in this way - with
+stonework sunk under water, as the Qyetta was sunk.  I like
+sus-sus-pen-sheen bridges that fly from bank to bank.  with one
+big step, like a gang-plank.  Then no water can hurt.  When does
+the Lord Sahib come to open the bridge?"
+
+"In three months, when the weather is cooler."
+
+"Ho! ho!  He is like the Burra Malum.  He sleeps below while the
+work is being done.  Then he comes upon the quarter-deck and
+touches with his finger, and says: 'This is not clean!  Dam
+jibboonwallah!'"
+
+"But the Lord Sahib does not call me a dam jibboonwallah, Peroo."
+
+"No, Sahib; but he does not come on deck till the work is all
+finished.  Even the Burra Malum of the Nerbudda said once at
+Tuticorin -"
+
+"Bah!  Go!  I am busy."
+
+"I, also!" said Peroo, with an unshaken countenance.  "May I take
+the light dinghy now and row along the spurs?"
+
+"To hold them with thy hands?  They are, I think, sufficiently heavy."
+
+"Nay, Sahib.  It is thus.  At sea, on the Black Water, we have
+room to be blown up and down without care.  Here we have no room
+at all.  Look you, we have put the river into a dock, and run her
+between stone sills."
+
+Findlayson smiled at the "we."
+
+"We have bitted and bridled her.  She is not like the sea, that
+can beat against a soft beach.  She is Mother Gunga - in irons."
+His voice fell a little.
+
+"Peroo, thou hast been up and down the world more even than I.
+Speak true talk, now.  How much dost thou in thy heart believe of
+Mother Gunga?"
+
+"All that our priest says.  London is London, Sahib.  Sydney is
+Sydney, and Port Darwin is Port Darwin.  Also Mother Gunga is
+Mother Gunga, and when I come back to her banks I know this and
+worship.  In London I did poojah to the big temple by the river
+for the sake of the God within. . . .  Yes, I will not take the
+cushions in the dinghy."
+
+Findlayson mounted his horse and trotted to the shed of a
+bungalow that he shared with his assistant.  The place had become
+home to him in the last three years.  He had grilled in the heat,
+sweated in the rains, and shivered with fever under the rude
+thatch roof; the lime-wash beside the door was covered with rough
+drawings and formulae, and the sentry-path trodden in the matting
+of the verandah showed where he had walked alone.  There is no
+eight-hour limit to an engineer's work, and the evening meal with
+Hitchcock was eaten booted and spurred: over their cigars they
+listened to the hum of the village as the gangs came up from the
+river-bed and the lights began to twinkle.
+
+"Peroo has gone up the spurs in your dinghy.  He's taken a couple
+of nephews with him, and he's lolling in the stern like a
+commodore," said Hitchcock.
+
+"That's all right.  He's got something on his mind.  You'd think
+that ten years in the British India boats would have knocked most
+of his religion out of him."
+
+"So it has," said Hitchcock, chuckling.  "I overheard him the
+other day in the middle of a most atheistical talk with that fat
+old guru of theirs.  Peroo denied the efficacy of prayer; and
+wanted the guru to go to sea and watch a gale out with him, and
+see if he could stop a monsoon."
+
+"All the same, if you carried off his guru he'd leave us like a
+shot.  He was yarning away to me about praying to the dome of St. 
+Paul's when he was in London."
+
+"He told me that the first time he went into the engine-room of a
+steamer, when he was a boy, he prayed to the low-pressure
+cylinder."
+
+"Not half a bad thing to pray to, either.  He's propitiating his
+own Gods now, and he wants to know what Mother Gunga will think
+of a bridge being run across her.  Who's there?"  A shadow darkened
+the doorway, and a telegram was put into Hitchcock's hand.
+
+"She ought to be pretty well used to it by this time.  Only a
+tar. It ought to be Ralli's answer about the new rivets. . . . 
+Great Heavens!"  Hitchcock jumped to his feet.
+
+"What is it?" said the senior, and took the form.  "that's what
+Mother Gunga thinks, is it," he said, reading.  "Keep cool,
+young 'un.  We've got all our work cut out for us.  Let's see. 
+Muir wired half an hour ago: 'Floods on the Ramgunga.  Look out.' 
+Well, that gives us - one, two - nine and a half for the flood to
+reach Melipur Ghaut and seven's sixteen and a half to Lataoli -
+say fifteen hours before it comes down to us."
+
+"Curse that hill-fed sewer of a Ramgunga!  Findlayson, this is two
+months before anything could have been expected, and the left bank
+is littered up with stuff still.  Two full months before the time!"
+
+"That's why it comes.  I've only known Indian rivers for
+five-and-twenty years, and I don't pretend to understand.  Here
+comes another tar." Findlayson opened the telegram.  "Cockran,
+this time, from the Ganges Canal: 'Heavy rains here.  Bad.'  He
+might have saved the last word.  Well, we don't want to know any
+more.  We've got to work the gangs all night and clean up the
+riverbed.  You'll take the east bank and work out to meet me in
+the middle.  Get everything that floats below the bridge: we
+shall have quite enough river-craft coming down adrift anyhow,
+without letting the stone-boats ram the piers.  What have you got
+on the east bank that needs looking after?
+
+"Pontoon - one big pontoon with the overhead crane on it. T'other
+overhead crane on the mended pontoon, with the cart-road rivets
+from Twenty to Twenty-three piers - two construction lines, and a
+turning-spur.  The pilework must take its chance," said
+Hitchcock.
+
+"All right.  Roll up everything you can lay hands on.  We'll give
+the gang fifteen minutes more to eat their grub."
+
+Close to the verandah stood a big night-gong, never used except
+for flood, or fire in the village.  Hitchcock had called for a
+fresh horse, and was off to his side of the bridge when
+Findlayson took the cloth-bound stick and smote with the rubbing
+stroke that brings out the full thunder of the metal.
+
+Long before the last rumble ceased every night-gong in the
+village had taken up the warning.  To these were added the hoarse
+screaming of conches in the little temples; the throbbing of
+drums and tom-toms; and, from the European quarters, where the
+riveters lived, McCartney's bugle, a weapon of offence on Sundays
+and festivals, brayed desperately, calling to "Stables."  Engine
+after engine toiling home along the spurs at the end of her day's
+work whistled in answer till the whistles were answered from the
+far bank.  Then the big gong thundered thrice for a sign that it
+was flood and not fire; conch, drum, and whistle echoed the
+call, and the village quivered to the sound of bare feet running
+upon soft earth.  The order in all cases was to stand by the
+day's work and wait instructions.  The gangs poured by in the
+dusk; men stopping to knot a loin-cloth or fasten a sandal;
+gang-foremen shouting to their subordinates as they ran or paused
+by the tool-issue sheds for bars and mattocks; locomotives
+creeping down their tracks wheel-deep in the crowd; till the
+brown torrent disappeared into the dusk of the river-bed, raced
+over the pilework, swarmed along the lattices, clustered by the
+cranes, and stood still - each man in his place.
+
+Then the troubled beating of the gong carried the order to take
+up everything and bear it beyond high-water mark, and the
+flare-lamps broke out by the hundred between the webs of dull
+iron as the riveters began a night's work, racing against the
+flood that was to come.  The girders of the three centre piers -
+those that stood on the cribs -were all but in position.  They
+needed just as many rivets as could be driven into them, for the
+flood would assuredly wash out their supports, and the ironwork
+would settle down on the caps of stone if they were not blocked
+at the ends.  A hundred crowbars strained at the sleepers of the
+temporary line that fed the unfinished piers.  It was heaved up
+in lengths, loaded into trucks, and backed up the bank beyond
+flood-level by the groaning locomotives.  The tool-sheds on the
+sands melted away before the attack of shouting armies, and with
+them went the stacked ranks of Government stores, iron-hound
+boxes of rivets, pliers, cutters, duplicate parts of the
+riveting-machines, spare pumps and chains.  The big crane would
+be the last to be shifted, for she was hoisting all the heavy
+stuff up to the main structure of the bridge.  The concrete
+blocks on the fleet of stone-boats were dropped overside, where
+there was any depth of water, to guard the piers, and the empty
+boats themselves were poled under the bridge down-stream.  It
+was here that Peroo's pipe shrilled loudest, for the first stroke
+of the big gong had brought the dinghy back at racing speed, and
+Peroo and his people were stripped to the waist, working for the
+honour and credit which are better than life.
+
+"I knew she would speak," he cried.  "I knew, but the telegraph
+gives us good warning.  O sons of unthinkable begetting -
+children of unspeakable shame - are we here for the look of the
+thing?"  It was two feet of wire-rope frayed at the ends, and it
+did wonders as Peroo leaped from gunnel to gunnel, shouting the
+language of the sea.
+
+Findlayson was more troubled for the stoneboats than anything
+else.  McCartney, with his gangs, was blocking up the ends of the
+three doubtful spans.  but boats adrift, if the flood chanced to
+be a high one, might endanger the girders; and there was a very
+fleet in the shrunken channel.
+
+"Get them behind the swell of the guardtower," he shouted down to
+Peroo.  "It will be dead-water there.  Get them below the bridge."
+
+"Accha!  [Very good.]  I know; we are mooring them with wire-rope,"
+was the answer.  "Heh!  Listen to the Chota Sahib.  He is working hard."
+
+From across the river came an almost continuous whistling of
+locomotives, backed by the rumble of stone.  Hitchcock at the
+last minute was spending a few hundred more trucks of Tarakee
+stone in reinforcing his spurs and embankments.
+
+"The bridge challenges Mother Gunga," said Peroo, with a laugh.
+"But when she talks I know whose voice will be the loudest."
+
+For hours the naked men worked, screaming and shouting under the
+lights.  It was a hot, moonless night; the end of it was darkened
+by clouds and a sudden squall that made Findlayson very grave.
+
+"She moves!" said Peroo, just before the dawn.  "Mother Gunga is
+awake!  Hear!" He dipped his hand over the side of a boat and the
+current mumbled on it.  A little wave hit the side of a pier
+with a crisp slap.
+
+"Six hours before her time," said Findlayson, mopping his
+forehead savagely.
+
+"Now we can't depend on anything.  We'd better clear all hands
+out of the riverbed."
+
+Again the big gong beat, and a second time there was the rushing
+of naked feet on earth and ringing iron; the clatter of tools
+ceased.  In the silence, men heard the dry yawn of water crawling
+over thirsty sand.
+
+Foreman after foreman shouted to Findlayson, who had posted
+himself by the guard-tower, that his section of the river-bed had
+been cleaned out, and when the last voice dropped Findlayson
+hurried over the bridge till the iron plating of the permanent
+way gave place to the temporary plank-walk over the three centre
+piers, and there he met Hitchcock.
+
+"'All clear your side?" said Findlayson.  The whisper rang in the
+box of lattice work.
+
+"Yes, and the east channel's filling now.  We're utterly out of
+our reckoning.  When is this thing down on us?"
+
+"There's no saying.  She's filling as fast as she can.  Look!"
+Findlayson pointed to the planks below his feet, where the sand,
+burned and defiled by months of work, was beginning to whisper
+and fizz.
+
+"What orders?" said Hitchcock.
+
+"Call the roll - count stores  sit on your hunkers - and pray for
+the bridge.  That's all I can think of Good night.  Don't risk
+your life trying to fish out anything that may go downstream."
+
+"Oh, I'll be as prudent as you are!  'Night.  Heavens, how she's
+filling!  Here's the rain in earnest."
+
+Findlayson picked his way back to his bank, sweeping the last of
+McCartney's riveters before him.  The gangs had spread themselves
+along the embankments, regardless of the cold rain of the dawn,
+and there they waited for the flood.  Only Peroo kept his men
+together behind the swell of the guard-tower, where the stone-boats
+lay tied fore and aft with hawsers, wire-rope, and chains.
+
+A shrill wail ran along the line, growing to a yell, half fear
+and half wonder: the face of the river whitened from bank to hank
+between the stone facings, and the far-away spurs went out in
+spouts of foam.  Mother Gunga had come bank-high in haste, and a
+wall of chocolate-coloured water was her messenger.  There was a
+shriek above the roar of the water, the complaint of the spans
+coming down on their blocks as the cribs were whirled out from
+under their bellies.  The stone-boats groaned and ground each
+other in the eddy that swung round the abutment, and their clumsy
+masts rose higher and higher against the dim sky-line.
+
+"Before she was shut between these walls we knew what she would
+do.  Now she is thus cramped God only knows what she will do!"
+said Peroo, watching the furious turmoil round the guard-tower.
+"Ohe'! Fight, then! Fight hard, for it is thus that a woman wears
+herself out."
+
+But Mother Gunga would not fight as Peroo desired.  After the
+first down-stream plunge there came no more walls of water, but
+the river lifted herself bodily, as a snake when she drinks in
+midsummer, plucking and fingering along the revetments, and
+banking up behind the piers till even Findlayson began to
+recalculate the strength of his work.
+
+When day came the village gasped.  "Only last night," men said,
+turning to each other, "it was as a town in the river-bed!  Look now!"
+
+And they looked and wondered afresh at the deep water, the
+racing water that licked the throat of the piers.  The farther
+bank was veiled by rain, into which the bridge ran out and
+vanished; the spurs up-stream were marked by no more than eddies
+and spoutings, and down-stream the pent river, once freed of her
+guide-lines, had spread like a sea to the horizon.  Then hurried
+by, rolling in the water, dead men and oxen together, with here
+and there a patch of thatched roof that melted when it touched a
+pier.
+
+"Big flood," said Peroo, and Findlayson nodded.  It was as big a
+flood as he had any wish to watch.  His bridge would stand
+what was upon her now, but not very much more, and if by any of a
+thousand chances there happened to be a weakness in the
+embankments, Mother Gunga would carry his honour to the sea with
+the other raffle.  Worst of all, there was nothing to do except
+to sit still; and Findlayson sat still under his macintosh till
+his helmet became pulp on his head, and his boots were over-ankle
+in mire.  He took no count of time, for the river was marking the
+hours, inch by inch and foot by foot, along the embankment, and
+he listened, numb and hungry, to the straining of the
+stone-boats, the hollow thunder under the piers, and the hundred
+noises that make the full note of a flood.  Once a dripping
+servant brought him food, but he could not eat; and once he
+thought that he heard a faint toot from a locomotive across the
+river, and then he smiled.  The bridge's failure would hurt his
+assistant not a little, hut Hitchcock was a young man with his
+big work yet to do.  For himself the crash meant everything -
+everything that made a hard life worth the living.  They would
+say, the men of his own profession . . .he remembered the
+half-pitying things that he himself had said when Lockhart's new
+waterworks burst and broke down in brick-heaps and sludge, and
+Lockhart's spirit broke in him and he died.  He remembered what
+he himself had said when the Sumao Bridge went out in the big
+cyclone by the sea; and most he remembered poor Hartopp's face
+three weeks later, when the shame had marked it.  His bridge was
+twice the size of Hartopp's, and it carried the Findlayson truss
+as well as the new pier-shoe - the Findlayson bolted shoe.  There
+were no excuses in his service.  Government might listen,
+perhaps, but his own kind would judge him by his bridge, as that
+stood or fell.  He went over it in his head, plate by plate, span
+by span, brick by brick, pier by pier, remembering, comparing,
+estimating, and recalculating, lest there should be any mistake;
+and through the long hours and through the flights of formulae
+that danced and wheeled before him a cold fear would come to
+pinch his heart.  His side of the sum was beyond question; but
+what man knew Mother Gunga's arithmetic?  Even as he was making
+all sure by the multiplication table, the river might be scooping
+a pot-hole to the very bottom of any one of those eighty-foot
+piers that carried his reputation.  Again a servant came to him
+with food, but his mouth was dry, and he could only drink and
+return to the decimals in his brain.  And the river was still
+rising.  Peroo, in a mat shelter coat, crouched at his feet,
+watching now his face and now the face of the river, but saying
+nothing.
+
+At last the Lascar rose and floundered through the mud towards
+the village, but he was careful to leave an ally to watch the
+boats.
+
+Presently he returned, most irreverently driving before him the
+priest of his creed - a fat old man, with a grey beard that
+whipped the wind with the wet cloth that blew over his shoulder.
+Never was seen so lamentable a guru.
+
+"What good are offerings and little kerosene lamps and dry
+grain," shouted Peroo, "if squatting in the mud is all that thou
+canst do?  Thou hast dealt long with the Gods when they were
+contented and well-wishing.  Now they are angry.  Speak to them!"
+
+"What is a man against the wrath of Gods?" whined the priest,
+cowering as the wind took him.  "Let me go to the temple, and I
+will pray there."
+
+"Son of a pig, pray here!  Is there no return for salt fish and
+curry powder and dried onions?  Call aloud!  Tell Mother Gunga we
+have had enough.  Bid her be still for the night.  I cannot pray,
+but I have been serving in the Kumpani's boats, and when men did
+not obey my orders I -"  A flourish of the wire-rope colt rounded
+the sentence, and the priest, breaking free from his disciple,
+fled to the village.
+
+"Fat pig!" said Peroo.  "After all that we have done for him!
+When the flood is down I will see to it that we get a new guru.
+Finlinson Sahib, it darkens for night now, and since yesterday
+nothing has been eaten.  Be wise, Sahib.  No man can endure
+watching and great thinking on an empty belly.  Lie down, Sahib.
+The river will do what the river will do." "The bridge is mine; I
+cannot leave it."
+
+"Wilt thou hold it up with thy hands, then?" said Peroo,
+laughing.  "I was troubled for my boats and sheers before the
+flood came.  Now we are in the hands of the Gods.  The Sahib will
+not eat and lie down?  Take these, then.  They are meat and good
+toddy together, and they kill all weariness, besides the fever
+that follows the rain.  I have eaten nothing else to-day at all."
+
+He took a small tin tobacco-box from his sodden waist-belt and
+thrust it into Findlayson's hand, saying: "Nay, do not be afraid. 
+It is no more than opium - clean Malwa opium."
+
+Findlayson shook two or three of the dark-brown pellets into his
+hand, and hardly knowing what he did, swallowed them.  The stuff
+was at least a good guard against fever -the fever that was
+creeping upon him out of the wet mud -and he had seen what Peroo
+could do in the stewing mists of autumn on the strength of a dose
+from the tin box.
+
+Peroo nodded with bright eyes.  "In a little - in a little the
+Sahib will find that he thinks well again.  I too will -"
+He dived into his treasure-box, resettled the rain-coat over
+his head, and squatted down to watch the boats.  It was too dark
+now to see beyond the first pier, and the night seemed to have
+given the river new strength.  Findlayson stood with his chin on
+his chest, thinking.  There was one point about one of the piers
+- the seventh - that he had not fully settled in his mind.  The
+figures would not shape themselves to the eye except one by one
+and at enormous intervals of time.  There was a sound rich and
+mellow in his ears like the deepest note of a double-bass - an
+entrancing sound upon which he pondered for several hours, as it
+seemed. Then Peroo was at his elbow, shouting that a wire hawser
+had snapped and the stone-boats were loose.  Findlayson saw the
+fleet open and swing out fanwise to a long-drawn shriek of wire
+straining across gunnels.
+
+"A tree hit them.  They will all go," cried Peroo.  "The main
+hawser has parted.  What does the Sahib do?"
+
+An immensely complex plan had suddenly flashed into Findlayson's
+mind.  He saw the ropes running from boat to boat in straight
+lines and angles - each rope a line of white fire.  But there was
+one rope which was the master rope.  He could see that rope.  If
+he could pull it once, it was absolutely and mathematically
+certain that the disordered fleet would reassemble itself in the
+backwater behind the guard-tower.  But why, he wondered, was
+Peroo clinging so desperately to his waist as he hastened down
+the bank?  It was necessary to put the Lascar aside, gently and
+slowly, because it was necessary to save the boats, and, further,
+to demonstrate the extreme ease of the problem that looked so
+difficult.  And then - but it was of no conceivable importance -
+a wire-rope raced through his hand, burning it, the high bank
+disappeared,  and with it all the slowly dispersing factors of
+the problem.  He was sitting in the rainy darkness - sitting in a
+boat that spun like a top, and Peroo was standing over him.
+
+"I had forgotten," said the Lascar, slowly, "that to those
+fasting and unused, the opium is worse than any wine.  Those who
+die in Gunga go to the Gods.  Still, I have no desire to present
+myself before such great ones.  Can the Sahib swim?"
+
+"What need?  He can fly - fly as swiftly as the wind," was the
+thick answer.
+
+"He is mad!" muttered Peroo, under his breath.  "And he threw me
+aside like a bundle of dung-cakes.  Well, he will not know his
+death.  The boat cannot live an hour here even if she strike
+nothing.  It is not good to look at death  with a clear eye."
+
+He refreshed himself again from the tin box, squatted down in the
+bows of the reeling, pegged, and stitched craft, staring through
+the mist at the nothing that was there.  A warm drowsiness crept
+over Findlayson, the Chief Engineer, whose duty was with his
+bridge.  The heavy raindrops struck him with a thousand tingling
+little thrills, and the weight of all time since time was made
+hung heavy on his eyelids.  He thought and perceived that he was
+perfectly secure, for the water was so solid that a man could
+surely step out upon it, and, standing still with his legs apart
+to keep his balance - this was the most important point - would
+be borne with great and easy speed to the shore.  But yet a
+better plan came to him.  It needed only an exertion of will for
+the soul to hurl the body ashore as wind drives paper, to waft it
+kite-fashion to the bank.  Thereafter - the boat spun dizzily -
+suppose the high wind got under the freed body?  Would it tower
+up like a kite and pitch headlong on the far-away sands, or would
+it duck about, beyond control, through all eternity?  Findlayson
+gripped the gunnel to anchor himself, for it seemed that he was
+on the edge of taking the flight before he had settled all his
+plans.  Opium has more effect on the white man than the black.
+Peroo was only comfortably indifferent to accidents.  "She cannot
+live," he grunted.  "Her seams open already.  If she were even a
+dinghy with oars we could have ridden it out; but a box with
+holes is no good.  Finlinson Sahib, she fills."
+
+"Accha!  I am going away.  Come thou also." In his mind,
+Findlayson had already escaped from the boat, and was circling
+high in air to find a rest for the sole of his foot.  His body -
+he was really sorry for its gross helplessness - lay in the
+stern, the water rushing about its knees.
+
+"How very ridiculous!" he said to himself from his eyrie -" that
+- is Findlayson -  chief of the Kashi Bridge.  The poor beast is
+going to be drowned, too.  Drowned when it's close to shore.  I'm
+- I'm on shore already.  Why doesn't  it come along?"
+
+To his intense disgust, he found his soul back in his body again,
+and that body spluttering and choking in deep water.  The pain of
+the reunion was atrocious, but it was necessary, also, to fight
+for the body.  He was conscious of grasping wildly at wet sand,
+and striding prodigiously, as one strides in a dream, to keep
+foothold in the swirling water, till at last he hauled himself
+clear of the hold of the river, and dropped, panting, on wet
+earth.
+
+"Not this night," said Peroo, in his ear.  "The Gods have
+protected us."  The Lascar moved his feet cautiously, and they
+rustled among dried stumps.  "This is some island of last year's
+indigo-crop," he went on.  "We shall find no men here; but have
+great care, Sahib; all the snakes of a hundred miles have been
+flooded out.  Here comes the lightning, on the heels of the
+wind. Now we shall be able to look; but walk carefully."
+
+Findlayson was far and far beyond any fear of snakes, or indeed
+any merely human emotion.  He saw, after he had rubbed the water
+from his eyes, with an immense clearness, and trod, so it seemed
+to himself with world-encompassing strides.  Somewhere in the
+night of time he had built a bridge - a bridge that spanned
+illimitable levels of shining seas; but the Deluge had swept it
+away, leaving this one island under heaven for Findlayson and his
+companion, sole survivors of the breed of Man.
+
+An incessant lightning, forked and blue, showed all that there was
+to be seen on the little patch in the flood - a clump of thorn,
+a clump of swaying creaking bamboos, and a grey gnarled peepul
+overshadowing a Hindoo shrine, from whose dome floated a
+tattered red flag.  The holy man whose summer resting-place it
+was had long since abandoned it, and the weather had broken the
+red-daubed image of his god.  The two men stumbled, heavy-limbed
+and heavy-eyed, over the ashes of a brick-set cooking-place, and
+dropped down under the shelter of the branches, while the rain
+and river roared together.
+
+The stumps of the indigo crackled, and there was a smell of
+cattle, as a huge and dripping Brahminee bull shouldered his way
+under the tree.  The flashes revealed the trident mark of
+Shiva on his flank, the insolence of head and hump, the luminous
+stag-like eyes, the brow crowned with a wreath of sodden marigold
+blooms, and the silky dewlap that almost swept the ground.  There
+was a noise behind him of other beasts coming up from the
+flood-line through the thicket, a sound of heavy feet and deep
+breathing.
+
+"Here be more beside ourselves," said Findlayson, his head against
+the treepole, looking through half-shut eyes, wholly at ease.
+
+"Truly," said Peroo, thickly, "and no small ones."
+
+"What are they, then?  I do not see clearly."
+
+"The Gods.  Who else?  Look!"
+
+"Ah, true!  The Gods surely - the Gods." Findlayson smiled as his
+head fell forward on his chest.  Peroo was eminently right. After
+the Flood, who should be alive in the land except the Gods that
+made it - the Gods to whom his village prayed nightly - the Gods
+who were in all men's mouths and about all men's ways.  He could
+not raise his head or stir a finger for the trance that held him,
+and Peroo was smiling vacantly at the lightning.
+
+The Bull paused by the shrine, his head lowered to the damp
+earth.  A green Parrot in the branches preened his wet wings and
+screamed against the thunder as the circle under the tree filled
+with the shifting shadows of beasts.  There was a black Buck
+at the Bull's heels-such a Buck as Findlayson in his far-away
+life upon earth might have seen in dreams - a Buck with a royal
+head, ebon back, silver belly, and gleaming straight horns. 
+Beside him, her head bowed to the ground, the green eyes burning
+under the heavy brows, with restless tail switching the dead
+grass, paced a Tigress, full-bellied and deep-jowled.
+
+The Bull crouched beside the shrine, and there leaped from the
+darkness a monstrous grey Ape, who seated himself man-wise in the
+place of the fallen image, and the rain spilled like jewels from
+the hair of his neck and shoulders.  Other shadows came and went
+behind the circle, among them a drunken Man flourishing staff and
+drinking-bottle.  Then a hoarse bellow broke out from near the
+ground.  "The flood lessens even now," it cried.  "Hour by hour
+the water falls, and their bridge still stands!"
+
+"My bridge," said Findlayson to himself "That must be very old
+work now.  What have the Gods to do with my bridge?"
+
+His eyes rolled in the darkness following the roar.  A Mugger -
+the blunt-nosed, ford-haunting Mugger of the Ganges -draggled
+herself before the beasts, lashing furiously to right and left
+with her tail.
+
+"They have made it too strong for me.  In all this night I have
+only torn away a handful of planks.  The walls stand.  The towers
+stand.  They have chained my flood, and the river is not free any
+more.  Heavenly Ones, take this yoke away!  Give me clear water
+between bank and bank!  It is I, Mother Gunga, that speak.  The
+Justice of the Gods!  Deal me the Justice of the Gods!"
+
+"What said I?" whispered Peroo.  "This is in truth a Punchayet of
+the Gods.  Now we know that all the world is dead, save you and
+I, Sahib."
+
+The Parrot screamed and fluttered again, and the Tigress, her
+ears flat to her head, snarled wickedly.
+
+Somewhere in the shadow, a great trunk and gleaming tusks swayed
+to and fro, and a low gurgle broke the silence that followed on
+the snarl.
+
+"We be here," said a deep voice, "the Great Ones.  One only and
+very many.  Shiv, my father, is here, with Indra.  Kali has
+spoken already.  Hanuman listens also."
+
+"Kashi is without her Kotwal to-night," shouted the Man with the
+drinking-bottle, flinging his staff to the ground, while the
+island rang to the baying of hounds.  "Give her the Justice of
+the Gods."
+
+"Ye were still when they polluted my waters," the great Crocodile
+bellowed.  "Ye made no sign when my river was trapped between the
+walls.  I had no help save my own strength, and that failed - the
+strength of Mother Gunga failed - before their guard-towers. What
+could I do?  I have done everything.  Finish now, Heavenly Ones!"
+
+"I brought the death; I rode the spotted sick-ness from hut to
+hut of their workmen, and yet they would not cease." A
+nose-slitten, hide-worn Ass, lame, scissor-legged, and galled,
+limped forward.  "I cast the death at them out of my nostrils,
+but they would not cease."
+
+Peroo would have moved, but the opium lay heavy upon him.
+
+"Bah!" he said, spitting.  "Here is Sitala herself; Mata - the
+small-pox.  Has the Sahib a handkerchief to put over his face?"
+
+"Little help!  They fed me the corpses for a month, and I flung
+them out on my sand-bars, but their work went forward.  Demons
+they are, and sons of demons! And ye left Mother Gunga alone for
+their fire-carriage to make a mock of The Justice of the Gods on
+the bridge-builders!"
+
+The Bull turned the cud in his mouth and answered slowly: "If the
+Justice of the Gods caught all who made a mock of holy things
+there would be many dark altars in the land, mother."
+
+"But this goes beyond a mock," said the Tigress, darting forward
+a griping paw.  "Thou knowest, Shiv, and ye, too, Heavenly Ones;
+ye know that they have defiled Gunga.  Surely they must come to
+the Destroyer.  Let Indra judge."
+
+The Buck made no movement as he answered:  "How long has this
+evil been?
+
+"Three years, as men count years," said the Mugger, close
+pressed to the earth.
+
+"Does Mother Gunga die, then, in a year, that she is so anxious
+to see vengeance now?  The deep sea was where she runs but
+yesterday, and to-morrow the sea shall cover her again as the
+Gods count that which men call time.  Can any say that this their
+bridge endures till to-morrow?" said the Buck.
+
+There was a long hush, and in the clearing of the storm the full
+moon stood up above the dripping trees.
+
+"Judge ye, then," said the River, sullenly.  "I have spoken my
+shame.  The flood falls still.  I can do no more."
+
+"For my own part " - it was the voice of the great Ape seated
+within the shrine -" it pleases me well to watch these men,
+remembering that I also builded no small bridge in the world's youth."
+
+"They say, too," snarled the Tiger, "that these men came of the
+wreck of thy armies, Hanuman, and therefore thou hast aided -"
+
+"They toil as my armies toiled in Lanka, and they believe that
+their toil endures.  Indra is too high, but Shiv, thou knowest
+how the land is threaded with their fire-carriages."
+
+"Yea, I know," said the Bull.  "Their Gods instructed them
+in the matter."
+
+A laugh ran round the circle.
+
+"Their Gods! What should their Gods know?  They were born yesterday,
+and those that made them are scarcely yet cold," said the Mugger.
+"To-morrow their Gods will die."
+
+"Ho!" said Peroo.  "Mother Gunga talks good talk.  I told that to
+the padre-sahib who preached on the Mombassa, and he asked the
+Burra Malum to put me in irons for a great rudeness."
+
+"Surely they make these things to please their Gods," said the Bull again.
+
+"Not altogether," the Elephant rolled forth.  "It is for the
+profit of my mahajuns - my fat money-lenders that worship me at
+each new year, when they draw my image at the head of the
+account-books.  I, looking over their shoulders by lamplight,
+see that the names in the books are those of men in far places -
+for all the towns are drawn together by the fire-carriage, and
+the money comes and goes swiftly, and the account-books grow as
+fat as - myself.  And I, who am Ganesh of Good Luck, I bless my
+peoples."
+
+"They have changed the face of the land-which is my land.  They
+have killed and made new towns on my banks," said the Mugger.
+
+"It is but the shifting of a little dirt.  Let the dirt dig in
+the dirt if it pleases the dirt," answered the Elephant.
+
+"But afterwards?" said the Tiger.  "Afterwards they will see that
+Mother Gunga can avenge no insult, and they fall away from her
+first, and later from us all, one by one.  In the end, Ganesh, we
+are left with naked altars."
+
+The drunken Man staggered to his feet, and hiccupped vehemently.
+
+"Kali lies.  My sister lies.  Also this my stick is the Kotwal of
+Kashi, and he keeps tally of my pilgrims.  When the time comes to
+worship Bhairon-and it is always time - the fire-carriages move
+one by one, and each bears a thousand pilgrims.  They do not come
+afoot any more, but rolling upon wheels, and my honour is
+increased."
+
+"Gunga, I have seen thy bed at Pryag black with the pilgrims,"
+said the Ape, leaning forward, "and but for the fire-carriage
+they would have come slowly and in fewer numbers.  Remember."
+
+"They come to me always," Bhairon went on thickly.  "By day and
+night they pray to me, all the Common People in the fields and
+the roads.  Who is like Bhairon to-day?  What talk is this of
+changing faiths?  Is my staff Kotwal of Kashi for nothing?
+He keeps the tally, and he says that never were so many altars
+as today, and the firecarriage serves them well.  Bhairon am I -
+Bhairon of the Common People, and the chiefest of the Heavenly
+Ones to-day.  Also my staff says -"
+
+"Peace, thou" lowed the Bull.  "The worship of the schools is
+mine, and they talk very wisely, asking whether I be one or many,
+as is the delight of my people, and ye know what I am.  Kali, my
+wife, thou knowest also."
+
+"Yea, I know," said the Tigress, with lowered head.
+
+"Greater am I than Gunga also.  For ye know who moved the minds
+of men that they should count Gunga holy among the rivers.  Who
+die in that water - ye know how  men say - come to us without
+punishment, and Gunga knows that the fire-carriage  has borne to
+her scores upon scores of such anxious ones; and Kali knows that
+she has held her chiefest festivals among the pilgrimages that
+are fed by the fire-carriage.  Who smote at Pooree, under the
+Image there, her thousands in a day and a night, and bound the
+sickness to the wheels of the fire-carriages, so that it ran from
+one end of the land to the other?  Who but Kali?  Before the
+fire-carriage came it was a heavy toil.  The fire-carriages have
+served thee well, Mother of Death.  But I speak for mine own
+altars, who am not Bhairon of the Common Folk, but Shiv.  Men go
+to and fro, making words and telling talk of strange Gods, and I
+listen.  Faith follows faith among my people in the schools,
+and I have no anger; for when all words are said, and the new
+talk is ended, to Shiv men return at the last."
+
+"True.  It is true," murmured Hanuman.  "To Shiv and to the
+others, mother, they return.  I creep from temple to temple in
+the North, where they worship one God and His Prophet; and
+presently my image is alone within their shrines."
+
+"Small thanks," said the Buck, turning his head slowly.  "I am
+that One and His Prophet also."
+
+"Even so, father," said Hanuman.  "And to the South I go who am
+the oldest of the Gods as men know the Gods, and presently I
+touch the shrines of the New Faith and the Woman whom we know is
+hewn twelve-armed, and still they call her Mary."
+
+"Small thanks, brother," said the Tigress.  "I am that Woman."
+
+"Even so, sister; and I go West among the fire-carriages, and
+stand before the bridge-builders in many shapes, and because of
+me they change their faiths and are very wise.  Ho! ho! I am the
+builder of bridges, indeed - bridges between this and that, and
+each bridge leads surely to Us in the end.  Be content, Gunga.
+Neither these men nor those that follow them mock thee at all."
+
+"Am I alone, then, Heavenly Ones?  Shall I smooth out my flood
+lest unhappily I bear away their walls?  Will Indra dry my
+springs in the hills and make me crawl humbly between their
+wharfs?  Shall I bury me in the sand ere I offend?"
+
+"And all for the sake of a little iron bar with the fire-carriage
+atop.  Truly, Mother Gunga is always young!" said Ganesh the
+Elephant.  "A child had not spoken more foolishly.  Let the dirt
+dig in the dirt ere it return to the dirt.  I know only that my
+people grow rich and praise me.  Shiv has said that the men of
+the schools do not forget; Bhairon is content for his crowd of
+the Common People; and Hanuman laughs."
+
+"Surely I laugh," said the Ape.  "My altars are few beside those
+of Ganesh or Bhairon, but the fire-carriages bring me new
+worshippers from beyond the Black Water - the men who believe
+that their God is toil.  I run before them beckoning, and they
+follow Hanuman."
+
+"Give them the toil that they desire, then," said the River.
+"Make a bar across my flood and throw the water back upon the bridge.
+Once thou wast strong in Lanka, Hanuman.  Stoop and lift my bed."
+
+"Who gives life can take life." The Ape scratched in the mud with
+a long forefinger.  "And yet, who would profit by the killing?
+Very many would die."
+
+There came up from the water a snatch of a love-song such as the
+boys sing when they watch their cattle in the noon heats of late
+spring.  The Parrot screamed joyously, sidling along his
+branch with lowered head as the song grew louder, and in a patch
+of clear moonlight stood revealed the young herd, the darling of
+the Gopis, the idol of dreaming maids and of mothers ere their
+children are born  Krishna the Well-beloved.  He stooped to knot
+up his long wet hair, and the Parrot fluttered to his shoulder.
+
+"Fleeting and singing, and singing and fleeting," hiccupped
+Bhairon.  "Those make thee late for the council, brother."
+
+"And then?" said Krishna, with a laugh, throwing back his head.
+"Ye can do little without me or Karma here." He fondled the
+Parrot's plumage and laughed again.  "What is this sitting and
+talking together?  I heard Mother Gunga roaring in the dark, and
+so came quickly from a hut where I lay warm.  And what have ye
+done to Karma, that he is so wet and silent?  And what does Mother
+Gunga here?  Are the heavens full that ye must come paddling in
+the mud beast-wise?  Karma, what do they do?"
+
+"Gunga has prayed for a vengeance on the bridge-builders, and
+Kali is with her.  Now she bids Hanuman whelm the bridge, that
+her honour may be made great," cried the Parrot.  "I waited here,
+knowing that thou wouldst come, O my master!
+
+"And the Heavenly Ones said nothing?  Did Gunga and the Mother of
+Sorrows out-talk them?  Did none speak for my people?"
+
+"Nay," said Ganesh, moving uneasily from foot to foot; "I said it
+was but dirt at play, and why should we stamp it flat?"
+
+"I was content to let them toil -well content," said Hanuman.
+
+"What had I to do with Gunga's anger?" said the Bull.
+
+"I am Bhairon of the Common Folk, and this my staff is Kotwal of
+all Kashi.  I spoke for the Common People."
+
+"Thou?" The young God's eyes sparkled.
+
+"Am I not the first of the Gods in their mouths to-day?" returned
+Bhairon, unabashed.  "For the sake of the Common People I said -
+very many wise things which I have now forgotten, but this my staff-"
+
+Krishna turned impatiently, saw the Mugger at his feet, and kneeling,
+slipped an arm round the cold neck.  "Mother," he said gently,
+"get thee to thy flood again.  The matter is not for thee.
+What harm shall thy honour take of this live dirt?  Thou hast
+given them their fields new year after year, and by thy
+flood they are made strong.  They come all to thee at the last. 
+What need to slay them now?  Have pity, mother, for a little - and
+it is only for a little."
+
+"If it be only for a little," the slow beast began.
+
+
+
+"Are they Gods, then?" Krishna returned with a laugh, his eyes
+looking into the dull eyes of the River.  "Be certain that it is
+only for a little.  The Heavenly Ones have heard thee, and
+presently justice will be done.  Go now, mother, to the flood
+again.  Men and cattle are thick on the waters - the banks fall -
+the villages melt because of thee."
+
+"But the bridge - the bridge stands." The Mugger turned grunting
+into the undergrowth as Krishna rose.
+
+"It is ended," said the Tigress, viciously.  "There is no more
+justice from the Heavenly Ones.  Ye have made shame and sport of
+Gunga, who asked no more than a few score lives."
+
+"Of my people - who lie under the leaf-roofs of the village
+yonder - of the young girls, and the young men who sing to them
+in the dark -of the child that will be born next morn - of that
+which was begotten to-night," said Krishna.  "And when all is
+done, what profit?  To-morrow sees them at work.  Ay, if ye swept
+the bridge out from end to end they would begin anew.  Hear me!
+Bhairon is drunk always.  Hanuman mocks his people with new riddles."
+
+"Nay, but they are very old ones," the Ape said, laughing.
+
+"Shiv hears the talk of the schools and the dreams of the holy
+men; Ganesh thinks only of his fat traders; but I - I live with
+these my people, asking for no gifts, and so receiving them
+hourly."
+
+"And very tender art thou of thy people," said the Tigress.
+
+"They are my own.  The old women dream of me turning in their
+sleep; the maids look and listen for me when they go to fill
+their lotahs by the river.  I walk by the young men waiting
+without the gates at dusk, and I call over my shoulder to the
+white-beards.  Ye know, Heavenly Ones, that I alone of us all
+walk upon the earth continually, and have no pleasure in our
+heavens so long as a green blade springs here, or there are two
+voices at twilight in the standing crops.  Wise are ye, but ye
+live far off; forgetting whence ye came.  So do I not forget. 
+And the fire-carriage feeds your shrines, ye say?  And the fire-
+carriages bring a thousand pilgrims where but ten came in the old
+years?  True.  That is true, to-day."
+
+"But to-morrow they are dead, brother," said Ganesh.
+
+"Peace!" said the Bull, as Hanuman leaned forward again.  "And
+to-morrow, beloved - what of to-morrow?"
+
+"This only.  A new word creeping from mouth to mouth among the
+Common Folk - a word that neither man nor God can lay hold of -
+an evil word - a little lazy word among the Common Folk,
+saying (and none know who set that word afoot) that they weary of
+ye, Heavenly Ones."
+
+The Gods laughed together softly.  "And then, beloved," they said.
+
+"And to cover that weariness they, my people, will bring to thee,
+Shiv, and to thee, Ganesh, at first greater offerings and a
+louder noise of worship.  But the word has gone abroad, and,
+after, they will pay fewer dues to your fat Brahmins.  Next they
+will forget your altars, but so slowly that no man can say how
+his forgetfulness began."
+
+"I knew - I knew!  I spoke this also, but they would not hear,"
+said the Tigress.  "We should have slain-we should have slain!"
+
+"It is too late now.  Ye should have slain at the beginning when
+the men from across the water had taught our folk nothing.  Now
+my people see their work, and go away thinking.  They do not
+think of the Heavenly Ones altogether.  They think of the
+fire-carriage and the other things that the bridge-builders have
+done, and when your priests thrust forward hands asking alms,
+they give a little unwillingly.  That is the beginning, among one
+or two, or five or ten - for I, moving among my people, know what
+is in their hearts."
+
+"And the end, Jester of the Gods?  What shall the end be?" said Ganesh.
+
+"The end shall be as it was in the beginning, O slothful son of Shiv!
+The flame shall die upon the altars and the prayer upon the
+tongue till ye become little Gods again - Gods of the jungle
+- names that the hunters of rats and noosers of dogs whisper in
+the thicket and among the caves -rag-Gods, pot Godlings of the
+tree, and the village-mark, as ye were at the beginning.  That is
+the end, Ganesh, for thee, and for Bhairon - Bhairon of the
+Common People."
+
+"It is very far away," grunted Bhairon.  "Also, it is a lie."
+
+"Many women have kissed Krishna.  They told him this to cheer
+their own hearts when the grey hairs came, and he has told us the
+tale," said the Bull, below his breath.
+
+"Their Gods came, and we changed them.  I took the Woman and made
+her twelve-armed.  So shall we twist all their Gods," said Hanuman.
+
+"Their Gods!  This is no question of their Gods - one or three -
+man or woman.  The matter is with the people.  I move, and not
+the Gods of the bridge-builders," said Krishna.
+
+"So be it.  I have made a man worship the fire-carriage as it stood
+still breathing smoke, and he knew not that he worshipped me,"
+said Hanuman the Ape.  "They will only change a little the names
+of their Gods.  I shall lead the builders of the bridges as
+of old; Shiv shall be worshipped in the schools by such as doubt
+and despise their fellows; Ganesh shall have his mahajuns,
+and Bhairon the donkey-drivers, the pilgrims, and the sellers
+of toys.  Beloved, they will do no more than change the names,
+and that we have seen a thousand times."
+
+"Surely they will do no more than change the names," echoed
+Ganesh; but there was an uneasy movement among the Gods.
+
+"They will change more than the names.  Me alone they cannot
+kill, so long as a maiden and a man meet together or the spring
+follows the winter rains.  Heavenly Ones, not for nothing have I
+walked upon the earth.  My people know not now what they know;
+but I, who live with them, I read their hearts.  Great Kings, the
+beginning of the end is born already.  The fire-carriages shout
+the names of new Gods that are not the old under new names. 
+Drink now and eat greatly!  Bathe your faces in the smoke of the
+altars before they grow cold!  Take dues and listen to the cymbals
+and the drums, Heavenly Ones, while yet there are flowers and
+songs.  As men count time the end is far off; but as we who know
+reckon it is to-day.  I have spoken."
+
+The young God ceased, and his brethren looked at each other long
+in silence.
+
+"This I have not heard before," Peroo whispered in his
+companion's ear.  "And yet sometimes, when I oiled the brasses
+in the engine-room of the Goorkha, I have wondered if our priests
+were so wise - so wise.  The day is coming, Sahib.  They will be
+gone by the morning."
+
+A yellow light broadened in the sky, and the tone of the river
+changed as the darkness withdrew.
+
+Suddenly the Elephant trumpeted aloud as though man had goaded him.
+
+"Let Indra judge.  Father of all, speak thou!  What of the things
+we have heard?  Has Krishna lied indeed?  Or --"
+
+"Ye know," said the Buck, rising to his feet.  "Ye know the
+Riddle of the Gods.  When Brahm ceases to dream, the Heavens and
+the Hells and Earth disappear.  Be content.  Brahm dreams still. 
+The dreams come and go, and the nature of the dreams changes, but
+still Brahm dreams.  Krishna has walked too long upon earth, and
+yet I love him the more for the tale he has told.  The Gods
+change, beloved - all save One!"
+
+"Ay, all save one that makes love in the hearts of men," said
+Krishna, knotting his girdle.  "It is but a little time to wait,
+and ye shall know if I lie.  Truly it is but a little time, as
+thou sayest, and we shall know.  Get thee to thy huts again,
+beloved, and make sport for the young things, for still Brahm
+dreams.  Go, my children!  Brahm dreams and till he wakes the
+Gods die not."
+
+"Whither went they?" said the Lascar, awe-struck, shivering a
+little with the cold.
+
+"God knows!" said Findlayson.  The river and the island lay in
+full daylight now, and there was never mark of hoof or pug on the
+wet earth under the peepul.  Only a parrot screamed in the
+branches, bringing down showers of water-drops as he fluttered
+his wings.
+
+"Up!  We are cramped with cold!  Has the opium died out.
+Canst thou move, Sahib?"
+
+Findlayson staggered to his feet and shook himself.  His bead
+swam and ached, but the work of the opium was over, and, as he
+sluiced his forehead in a pool, the Chief Engineer of the Kashi
+Bridge was wondering how he had managed to fall upon the island,
+what chances the day offered of return, and, above all, how his
+work stood.
+
+"Peroo, I have forgotten much I was under the guard-tower
+watching the river; and then --- Did the flood sweep us away?"
+
+"No.  The boats broke loose, Sahib, and" (if the Sahib had
+forgotten about the opium, decidedly Peroo would not remind him)
+"in striving to retie them, so it seemed to me but it was dark -
+a rope caught the Sahib and threw him upon a boat.  Considering
+that we two, with Hitchcock Sahib, built, as it were, that
+bridge, I came also upon the boat, which came riding on
+horseback, as it were, on the nose of this island, and so,
+splitting, cast us ashore.  I made a great cry when the boat left
+the wharf and without doubt Hitchcock Sahib will come for us.  As
+for the bridge, so many have died in the building that it cannot
+fall." A fierce sun, that drew out all the smell of the sodden
+land, had followed the storm, and in that clear light there was
+no room for a man to think of the dreams of the dark.  Findlayson
+stared upstream, across the blaze of moving water, till his eyes
+ached.  There was no sign of any bank to the Ganges, much less of
+a bridge-line.
+
+"We came down far," he said.  "It was wonderful that we were not
+drowned a hundred times."
+
+"That was the least of the wonder, for no man dies before his
+time.  I have seen Sydney, I have seen London, and twenty great
+ports, but" - Peroo looked at the damp, discoloured shrine under
+the peepul - "never man has seen that we saw here."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Has the Sahib forgotten; or do we black men only see the Gods?"
+
+"There was a fever upon me." Findlayson was still looking
+uneasily across the water.  "It seemed that the island was full
+of beasts and men talking, but I do not remember.  A boat could
+live in this water now, I think."
+
+"Oho!  Then it is true.  'When Brahm ceases to dream, the Gods
+die.' Now I know, indeed, what he meant.  Once, too, the guru
+said as much to me; but then I did not understand.  Now I am wise."
+
+"What?" said Findlayson, over his shoulder.
+
+Peroo went on as if he were talking to himself "Six - seven - ten
+monsoons since, I was watch on the fo'c'sle of the Rewah - the
+Kumpani's big boat - and there was a big tufan; green and black
+water beating, and I held fast to the life-lines, choking under
+the waters.  Then I thought of the Gods - of Those whom we saw
+to-night "- he stared curiously at Findlayson's back, but the
+white man was looking across the flood.  "Yes, I say of Those
+whom we saw this night past, and I called upon Them to protect
+me.  And while I prayed, still keeping my lookout, a big wave
+came and threw me forward upon the ring of the great black
+bow-anchor, and the Rewah rose high and high, leaning towards the
+left-hand side, and the water drew away from beneath her nose,
+and I lay upon my belly, holding the ring, and looking down into
+those great deeps. Then I thought, even in the face of death: If
+I lose hold I die, and for me neither the Rewah nor my place by
+the galley where the rice is cooked, nor Bombay, nor Calcutta,
+nor even London, will be any more for me.  'How shall I be sure,'
+I said,  'that the Gods to whom I pray will abide at all?'  This I
+thought, and the Rewah dropped her nose as a hammer falls, and
+all the sea came in and slid me backwards along the fo'c'sle and
+over the break of the fo'c'sle, and I very badly bruised my shin
+against the donkey-engine: but I did not die, and I have seen the
+Gods. They are good for live men, but for the dead. . . .  They
+have spoken Themselves.  Therefore, when I come to the village I
+will beat the guru for talking riddles which are no riddles. 
+When Brahm ceases to dream the Gods go."
+
+"Look up-stream.  The light blinds.  Is there smoke yonder?"
+
+Peroo shaded his eyes with his hands.  "He is a wise man and
+quick.  Hitchcock Sahib would not trust a rowboat.  He has
+borrowed the Rao Sahib's steam-launch, and comes to look for us.
+I have always said that there should have been a steam-launch on
+the bridge works for us.
+
+The territory of the Rao of Baraon lay within ten miles of the
+bridge; and Findlayson and Hitchcock had spent a fair portion of
+their scanty leisure in playing billiards and shooting blackbuck
+with the young man.  He had been bearled by an English tutor of
+sporting tastes for some five or six years, and was now royally
+wasting the revenues accumulated during his minority by the
+Indian Government.  His steam-launch, with its silver-plated
+rails, striped silk awning, and mahogany decks, was a new toy
+which Findlayson had found horribly in the way when the Rao came
+to look at the bridge works.
+
+"It's great luck," murmured Findlayson, but he was none the less
+afraid, wondering what news might be of the bridge.
+
+The gaudy blue-and-white funnel came downstream swiftly.  They
+could see Hitchcock in the bows, with a pair of opera-glasses,
+and his face was unusually white.  Then Peroo hailed, and the
+launch made for the tail of the island.  The Rao Sahib, in tweed
+shooting-suit and a seven-hued turban, waved his royal hand, and
+Hitchcock shouted.  But he need have asked no questions, for
+Findlayson's first demand was for his bridge.
+
+"All serene!  'Gad, I never expected to see you again, Findlayson.
+You're seven koss downstream.  Yes; there's not a stone shifted
+anywhere; but how are you?  I borrowed the Rao Sahib's launch, and
+he was good enough to come along.  Jump in.  "Ah, Finlinson, you
+are very well, eh?  That was most unprecedented calamity last
+night, eh?  My royal palace, too, it leaks like the devil, and the
+crops will also be short all about my country.  Now you shall
+back her out, Hitchcock.  I - I do not understand steam-engines. 
+You are wet?  You are cold, Finlinson?  I have some things to eat
+here, and you will take a good drink."
+
+"I'm immensely grateful, Rao Sahib.  I believe you've saved my
+life.  How did Hitchcock -"
+
+"Oho!  His hair was upon end.  He rode to me in the middle of the
+night and woke me up in the arms of Morpheus.  I was most truly
+concerned, Finlinson, so I came too.  My head-priest he is very
+angry just now.  We will go quick, Mister Hitchcock.  I am due to
+attend at twelve forty-five in the state temple, where we
+sanctify some new idol.  If not so I would have asked you to
+spend the day with me.  They are dam-bore, these religious
+ceremonies, Finlinson, eh?"
+
+Peroo, well known to the crew, had possessed himself of the
+inlaid wheel, and was taking the launch craftily up-stream.  But
+while he steered he was, in his mind, handling two feet of
+partially untwisted wire-rope; and the back upon which he beat
+was the back of his guru.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Bridge-Builders, by Rudyard Kipling
+
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