{"id":3474,"date":"2025-07-05T02:05:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-05T02:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=3474"},"modified":"2025-07-05T02:05:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-05T02:05:18","slug":"the-bridge-builders-by-rudyard-kipling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=3474","title":{"rendered":"The Bridge Builders by Rudyard Kipling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>First published in 1893, The Bridge Builders by <a href=\"https:\/\/quizlit.org\/the-knife-and-the-naked-chalk-by-rudyard-kipling\">Rudyard Kipling<\/a>  is a tale of the revenge of the earth, in this case, specifically, Mother Gunga, Goddess of the River Ganga, against the men who confine her power.<\/p>\n<p><em>This post may contain affiliate links that earn us a commission at no extra cost to you.<\/em><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">The Bridge Builders by Rudyard Kipling<\/h2>\n<div class=\"epyt-video-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"__youtube_prefs__ epyt-facade no-lazyload\"><button class=\"epyt-facade-play\"><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">The Bridge Builders by Rudyard Kipling<\/h3>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Findlayson, C. E., sat in his trolley on a construction line that ran along one of the main revetments\u2014the 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\u2019 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\u2019 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\u2019s 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\u2019 more material were flung out to hold the river in place.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014and only he knew how strong those were\u2014and 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\u2019 work on the girders of the three middle piers\u2014his bridge, raw and ugly as original sin, but pukka\u2014permanent\u2014to endure when all memory of the builder, yea, even of the splendid Findlayson truss, has perished. Practically, the thing was done.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll but,\u201d said he, with a smile.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve been thinking about it,\u201d the senior answered. \u201cNot half a bad job for two men, is it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne\u2014and a half. \u2018Gad, what a Cooper\u2019s Hill cub I was when I came on the works!\u201d Hitchcock felt very old in the crowded experiences of the past three years, that had taught him power and responsibility.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou were rather a colt,\u201d said Findlayson. \u201cI wonder how you\u2019ll like going back to office-work when this job\u2019s over.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI shall hate it!\u201d said the young man, and as he went on his eye followed Findlayson\u2019s, and he muttered, \u201cIsn\u2019t it damned good?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think we\u2019ll go up the service together,\u201d Findlayson said to himself. \u201cYou\u2019re 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!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014fitters and riveters, European, borrowed from the railway workshops, with, perhaps, twenty white and half-caste subordinates to direct, under direction, the bevies of workmen\u2014but 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\u2014by slipping of booms, by breaking of tackle, failure of cranes, and the wrath of the river\u2014but 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 office-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\u2014and 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\u2019s 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\u2014he 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\u2014plate by plate, girder by girder, span by span\u2014and 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.<\/p>\n<p>So the bridge was two men\u2019s work\u2014unless 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\u2014a 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\u2019s 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 \u201cAll\u2019s well,\u201d 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\u2014mysterious 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. \u201cMy honour is the honour of this bridge,\u201d he would say to the about-to-be-dismissed. \u201cWhat do I care for your honour? Go and work on a steamer. That is all you are fit for.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The little cluster of huts where he and his gang lived centred round the tattered dwelling of a sea-priest\u2014one 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, \u201cfor,\u201d said Peroo, who had haled him a thousand miles inland, \u201che 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\u2019s boats we attend strictly to the orders of the Burra Malum [the first mate], and on this bridge we observe what Finlinson Sahib says.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>From his trolley he could hear the whistle of the serang\u2019s 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\u2019c\u2019sle lookout: \u201cHam dekhta hai\u201d (\u201cI am looking out\u201d).<\/p>\n<p>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: \u201cIt looks well now, Sahib. Our bridge is all but done. What think you Mother Gunga will say when the rail runs over?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe has said little so far. It was never Mother Gunga that delayed us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is always time for her; and none the less there has been delay. Has the Sahib forgotten last autumn\u2019s flood, when the stone-boats were sunk without warning\u2014or only a half-day\u2019s warning?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, but nothing save a big flood could hurt us now. The spurs are holding well on the West Bank.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMother Gunga eats great allowances. There is always room for more stone on the revetments. I tell this to the Chota Sahib,\u201d\u2014he meant Hitchcock\u2014\u201cand he laughs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo matter, Peroo. Another year thou wilt be able to build a bridge in thine own fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Lascar grinned. \u201cThen it will not be in this way\u2014with 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?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn three months, when the weather is cooler.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHo! 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: \u2018This is not clean! Dam jibboonwallah!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut the Lord Sahib does not call me a dam jibboonwallah, Peroo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, 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\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBah! Go! I am busy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI, also!\u201d said Peroo, with an unshaken countenance. \u201cMay I take the light dinghy now and row along the spurs?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo hold them with thy hands? They are, I think, sufficiently heavy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNay, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Findlayson smiled at the \u201cwe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have bitted and bridled her. She is not like the sea, that can beat against a soft beach. She is Mother Gunga\u2014in irons.\u201d His voice fell a little.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeroo, 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?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeroo has gone up the spurs in your dinghy. He\u2019s taken a couple of nephews with him, and he\u2019s lolling in the stern like a commodore,\u201d said Hitchcock.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s all right. He\u2019s got something on his mind. You\u2019d think that ten years in the British India boats would have knocked most of his religion out of him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo it has,\u201d said Hitchcock, chuckling. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll the same, if you carried off his guru he\u2019d leave us like a shot. He was yarning away to me about praying to the dome of St. Paul\u2019s when he was in London.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot half a bad thing to pray to, either. He\u2019s propitiating his own Gods now, and he wants to know what Mother Gunga will think of a bridge being run across her. Who\u2019s there?\u201d A shadow darkened the doorway, and a telegram was put into Hitchcock\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe ought to be pretty well used to it by this time. Only a tar. It ought to be Ralli\u2019s answer about the new rivets. . . . Great Heavens!\u201d Hitchcock jumped to his feet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat is it?\u201d said the senior, and took the form. \u201cThat\u2019s what Mother Gunga thinks, is it,\u201d he said, reading. \u201cKeep cool, young \u2018un. We\u2019ve got all our work cut out for us. Let\u2019s see. Muir wired half an hour ago: \u2018Floods on the Ramgunga. Look out.\u2019 Well, that gives us\u2014one, two\u2014nine and a half for the flood to reach Melipur Ghaut and seven\u2019s sixteen and a half to Lataoli\u2014say fifteen hours before it comes down to us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCurse 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!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s why it comes. I\u2019ve only known Indian rivers for five-and-twenty years, and I don\u2019t pretend to understand. Here comes another tar.\u201d Findlayson opened the telegram. \u201cCockran, this time, from the Ganges Canal: \u2018Heavy rains here. Bad.\u2019 He might have saved the last word. Well, we don\u2019t want to know any more. We\u2019ve got to work the gangs all night and clean up the riverbed. You\u2019ll 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?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPontoon\u2014one big pontoon with the overhead crane on it. T\u2019other overhead crane on the mended pontoon, with the cart-road rivets from Twenty to Twenty-three piers\u2014two construction lines, and a turning-spur. The pilework must take its chance,\u201d said Hitchcock.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll right. Roll up everything you can lay hands on. We\u2019ll give the gang fifteen minutes more to eat their grub.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s bugle, a weapon of offence on Sundays and festivals, brayed desperately, calling to \u201cStables.\u201d Engine after engine toiling home along the spurs at the end of her day\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2014each man in his place.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s work, racing against the flood that was to come. The girders of the three centre piers\u2014those that stood on the cribs\u2014were 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-bound 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI knew she would speak,\u201d he cried. \u201cI knew, but the telegraph gives us good warning. O sons of unthinkable begetting\u2014children of unspeakable shame\u2014are we here for the look of the thing?\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGet them behind the swell of the guardtower,\u201d he shouted down to Peroo. \u201cIt will be dead-water there. Get them below the bridge.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAccha! [Very good.] I know; we are mooring them with wire-rope,\u201d was the answer. \u201cHeh! Listen to the Chota Sahib. He is working hard.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe bridge challenges Mother Gunga,\u201d said Peroo, with a laugh. \u201cBut when she talks I know whose voice will be the loudest.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe moves!\u201d said Peroo, just before the dawn. \u201cMother Gunga is awake! Hear!\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSix hours before her time,\u201d said Findlayson, mopping his forehead savagely.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow we can\u2019t depend on anything. We\u2019d better clear all hands out of the riverbed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u2018All clear your side?\u201d said Findlayson. The whisper rang in the box of lattice work.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, and the east channel\u2019s filling now. We\u2019re utterly out of our reckoning. When is this thing down on us?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s no saying. She\u2019s filling as fast as she can. Look!\u201d Findlayson pointed to the planks below his feet, where the sand, burned and defiled by months of work, was beginning to whisper and fizz.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat orders?\u201d said Hitchcock.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCall the roll\u2014count stores sit on your hunkers\u2014and pray for the bridge. That\u2019s all I can think of Good night. Don\u2019t risk your life trying to fish out anything that may go downstream.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, I\u2019ll be as prudent as you are! \u2018Night. Heavens, how she\u2019s filling! Here\u2019s the rain in earnest.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Findlayson picked his way back to his bank, sweeping the last of McCartney\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBefore she was shut between these walls we knew what she would do. Now she is thus cramped God only knows what she will do!\u201d said Peroo, watching the furious turmoil round the guard-tower. \u201cOhe\u2019! Fight, then! Fight hard, for it is thus that a woman wears herself out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>When day came the village gasped. \u201cOnly last night,\u201d men said, turning to each other, \u201cit was as a town in the river-bed! Look now!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBig flood,\u201d 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\u2019s failure would hurt his assistant not a little, but Hitchcock was a young man with his big work yet to do. For himself the crash meant everything\u2014everything 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\u2019s new waterworks burst and broke down in brick-heaps and sludge, and Lockhart\u2019s 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\u2019s face three weeks later, when the shame had marked it. His bridge was twice the size of Hartopp\u2019s, and it carried the Findlayson truss as well as the new pier-shoe\u2014the 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Presently he returned, most irreverently driving before him the priest of his creed\u2014a 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat good are offerings and little kerosene lamps and dry grain,\u201d shouted Peroo, \u201cif 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!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat is a man against the wrath of Gods?\u201d whined the priest, cowering as the wind took him. \u201cLet me go to the temple, and I will pray there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSon 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\u2019s boats, and when men did not obey my orders I\u2014\u201d A flourish of the wire-rope colt rounded the sentence, and the priest, breaking free from his disciple, fled to the village.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFat pig!\u201d said Peroo. \u201cAfter 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe bridge is mine; I cannot leave it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWilt thou hold it up with thy hands, then?\u201d said Peroo, laughing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He took a small tin tobacco-box from his sodden waist-belt and thrust it into Findlayson\u2019s hand, saying: \u201cNay, do not be afraid. It is no more than opium\u2014clean Malwa opium.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014the fever that was creeping upon him out of the wet mud\u2014and he had seen what Peroo could do in the stewing mists of autumn on the strength of a dose from the tin box.<\/p>\n<p>Peroo nodded with bright eyes. \u201cIn a little\u2014in a little the Sahib will find that he thinks well again. I too will\u2014\u201d 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\u2014the seventh\u2014that 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\u2014an 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA tree hit them. They will all go,\u201d cried Peroo. \u201cThe main hawser has parted. What does the Sahib do?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>An immensely complex plan had suddenly flashed into Findlayson\u2019s mind. He saw the ropes running from boat to boat in straight lines and angles\u2014each 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\u2014but it was of no conceivable importance\u2014a 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\u2014sitting in a boat that spun like a top, and Peroo was standing over him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had forgotten,\u201d said the Lascar, slowly, \u201cthat 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?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat need? He can fly\u2014fly as swiftly as the wind,\u201d was the thick answer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe is mad!\u201d muttered Peroo, under his breath. \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014this was the most important point\u2014would 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\u2014the boat spun dizzily\u2014suppose 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. \u201cShe cannot live,\u201d he grunted. \u201cHer 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAccha! I am going away. Come thou also.\u201d 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\u2014he was really sorry for its gross helplessness\u2014lay in the stern, the water rushing about its knees.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow very ridiculous!\u201d he said to himself from his eyrie\u2014\u201cthat\u2014is Findlayson\u2014chief of the Kashi Bridge. The poor beast is going to be drowned, too. Drowned when it\u2019s close to shore. I\u2019m\u2014I\u2019m on shore already. Why doesn\u2019t it come along?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot this night,\u201d said Peroo, in his ear. \u201cThe Gods have protected us.\u201d The Lascar moved his feet cautiously, and they rustled among dried stumps. \u201cThis is some island of last year\u2019s indigo-crop,\u201d he went on. \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014a 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.<\/p>\n<p>An incessant lightning, forked and blue, showed all that there was to be seen on the little patch in the flood\u2014a 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHere be more beside ourselves,\u201d said Findlayson, his head against the treepole, looking through half-shut eyes, wholly at ease.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTruly,\u201d said Peroo, thickly, \u201cand no small ones.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat are they, then? I do not see clearly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Gods. Who else? Look!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAh, true! The Gods surely\u2014the Gods.\u201d 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\u2014the Gods to whom his village prayed nightly\u2014the Gods who were in all men\u2019s mouths and about all men\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s heels-such a Buck as Findlayson in his far-away life upon earth might have seen in dreams\u2014a 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.<\/p>\n<p>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. \u201cThe flood lessens even now,\u201d it cried. \u201cHour by hour the water falls, and their bridge still stands!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy bridge,\u201d said Findlayson to himself \u201cThat must be very old work now. What have the Gods to do with my bridge?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His eyes rolled in the darkness following the roar. A Mugger\u2014the blunt-nosed, ford-haunting Mugger of the Ganges\u2014draggled herself before the beasts, lashing furiously to right and left with her tail.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey 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!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat said I?\u201d whispered Peroo. \u201cThis is in truth a Punchayet of the Gods. Now we know that all the world is dead, save you and I, Sahib.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Parrot screamed and fluttered again, and the Tigress, her ears flat to her head, snarled wickedly.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe be here,\u201d said a deep voice, \u201cthe Great Ones. One only and very many. Shiv, my father, is here, with Indra. Kali has spoken already. Hanuman listens also.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKashi is without her Kotwal to-night,\u201d shouted the Man with the drinking-bottle, flinging his staff to the ground, while the island rang to the baying of hounds. \u201cGive her the Justice of the Gods.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYe were still when they polluted my waters,\u201d the great Crocodile bellowed. \u201cYe made no sign when my river was trapped between the walls. I had no help save my own strength, and that failed\u2014the strength of Mother Gunga failed\u2014before their guard-towers. What could I do? I have done everything. Finish now, Heavenly Ones!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI brought the death; I rode the spotted sick-ness from hut to hut of their workmen, and yet they would not cease.\u201d A nose-slitten, hide-worn Ass, lame, scissor-legged, and galled, limped forward. \u201cI cast the death at them out of my nostrils, but they would not cease.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Peroo would have moved, but the opium lay heavy upon him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBah!\u201d he said, spitting. \u201cHere is Sitala herself; Mata\u2014the small-pox. Has the Sahib a handkerchief to put over his face?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLittle 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!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Bull turned the cud in his mouth and answered slowly: \u201cIf the Justice of the Gods caught all who made a mock of holy things there would be many dark altars in the land, mother.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut this goes beyond a mock,\u201d said the Tigress, darting forward a griping paw. \u201cThou knowest, Shiv, and ye, too, Heavenly Ones; ye know that they have defiled Gunga. Surely they must come to the Destroyer. Let Indra judge.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Buck made no movement as he answered: \u201cHow long has this evil been?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThree years, as men count years,\u201d said the Mugger, close pressed to the earth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDoes 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?\u201d said the Buck.<\/p>\n<p>There was a long hush, and in the clearing of the storm the full moon stood up above the dripping trees.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJudge ye, then,\u201d said the River, sullenly. \u201cI have spoken my shame. The flood falls still. I can do no more.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor my own part,\u201d\u2014it was the voice of the great Ape seated within the shrine\u2014\u201cit pleases me well to watch these men, remembering that I also builded no small bridge in the world\u2019s youth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey say, too,\u201d snarled the Tiger, \u201cthat these men came of the wreck of thy armies, Hanuman, and therefore thou hast aided\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYea, I know,\u201d said the Bull. \u201cTheir Gods instructed them in the matter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A laugh ran round the circle.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTheir Gods! What should their Gods know? They were born yesterday, and those that made them are scarcely yet cold,\u201d said the Mugger. \u201cTo-morrow their Gods will die.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHo!\u201d said Peroo. \u201cMother 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSurely they make these things to please their Gods,\u201d said the Bull again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot altogether,\u201d the Elephant rolled forth. \u201cIt is for the profit of my mahajuns\u2014my 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\u2014for 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\u2014myself. And I, who am Ganesh of Good Luck, I bless my peoples.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey have changed the face of the land-which is my land. They have killed and made new towns on my banks,\u201d said the Mugger.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is but the shifting of a little dirt. Let the dirt dig in the dirt if it pleases the dirt,\u201d answered the Elephant.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut afterwards?\u201d said the Tiger. \u201cAfterwards 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The drunken Man staggered to his feet, and hiccupped vehemently.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKali 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\u2014the 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGunga, I have seen thy bed at Pryag black with the pilgrims,\u201d said the Ape, leaning forward, \u201cand but for the fire-carriage they would have come slowly and in fewer numbers. Remember.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey come to me always,\u201d Bhairon went on thickly. \u201cBy 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 fire-carriage serves them well. Bhairon am I\u2014Bhairon of the Common People, and the chiefest of the Heavenly Ones to-day. Also my staff says\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeace, thou,\u201d lowed the Bull. \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYea, I know,\u201d said the Tigress, with lowered head.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGreater 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\u2014ye know how men say\u2014come 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTrue. It is true,\u201d murmured Hanuman. \u201cTo 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSmall thanks,\u201d said the Buck, turning his head slowly. \u201cI am that One and His Prophet also.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEven so, father,\u201d said Hanuman. \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSmall thanks, brother,\u201d said the Tigress. \u201cI am that Woman.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEven 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\u2014bridges 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAm 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?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd all for the sake of a little iron bar with the fire-carriage atop. Truly, Mother Gunga is always young!\u201d said Ganesh the Elephant. \u201cA 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSurely I laugh,\u201d said the Ape. \u201cMy altars are few beside those of Ganesh or Bhairon, but the fire-carriages bring me new worshippers from beyond the Black Water\u2014the men who believe that their God is toil. I run before them beckoning, and they follow Hanuman.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGive them the toil that they desire, then,\u201d said the River. \u201cMake 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho gives life can take life.\u201d The Ape scratched in the mud with a long forefinger. \u201cAnd yet, who would profit by the killing? Very many would die.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFleeting and singing, and singing and fleeting,\u201d hiccupped Bhairon. \u201cThose make thee late for the council, brother.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd then?\u201d said Krishna, with a laugh, throwing back his head. \u201cYe can do little without me or Karma here.\u201d He fondled the Parrot\u2019s plumage and laughed again. \u201cWhat 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?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGunga 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,\u201d cried the Parrot. \u201cI waited here, knowing that thou wouldst come, O my master!<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd the Heavenly Ones said nothing? Did Gunga and the Mother of Sorrows out-talk them? Did none speak for my people?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNay,\u201d said Ganesh, moving uneasily from foot to foot; \u201cI said it was but dirt at play, and why should we stamp it flat?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was content to let them toil\u2014well content,\u201d said Hanuman.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat had I to do with Gunga\u2019s anger?\u201d said the Bull.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am Bhairon of the Common Folk, and this my staff is Kotwal of all Kashi. I spoke for the Common People.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThou?\u201d The young God\u2019s eyes sparkled.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAm I not the first of the Gods in their mouths to-day?\u201d returned Bhairon, unabashed. \u201cFor the sake of the Common People I said\u2014very many wise things which I have now forgotten, but this my staff-\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Krishna turned impatiently, saw the Mugger at his feet, and kneeling, slipped an arm round the cold neck. \u201cMother,\u201d he said gently, \u201cget 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\u2014and it is only for a little.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf it be only for a little,\u201d the slow beast began.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAre they Gods, then?\u201d Krishna returned with a laugh, his eyes looking into the dull eyes of the River. \u201cBe 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\u2014the banks fall\u2014the villages melt because of thee.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut the bridge\u2014the bridge stands.\u201d The Mugger turned grunting into the undergrowth as Krishna rose.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is ended,\u201d said the Tigress, viciously. \u201cThere 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf my people\u2014who lie under the leaf-roofs of the village yonder\u2014of the young girls, and the young men who sing to them in the dark\u2014of the child that will be born next morn\u2014of that which was begotten to-night,\u201d said Krishna. \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNay, but they are very old ones,\u201d the Ape said, laughing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShiv hears the talk of the schools and the dreams of the holy men; Ganesh thinks only of his fat traders; but I\u2014I live with these my people, asking for no gifts, and so receiving them hourly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd very tender art thou of thy people,\u201d said the Tigress.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut to-morrow they are dead, brother,\u201d said Ganesh.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeace!\u201d said the Bull, as Hanuman leaned forward again. \u201cAnd to-morrow, beloved\u2014what of to-morrow?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis only. A new word creeping from mouth to mouth among the Common Folk\u2014a word that neither man nor God can lay hold of\u2014an evil word\u2014a little lazy word among the Common Folk, saying (and none know who set that word afoot) that they weary of ye, Heavenly Ones.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Gods laughed together softly. \u201cAnd then, beloved,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI knew\u2014I knew! I spoke this also, but they would not hear,\u201d said the Tigress. \u201cWe should have slain-we should have slain!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt 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\u2014for I, moving among my people, know what is in their hearts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd the end, Jester of the Gods? What shall the end be?\u201d said Ganesh.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe 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\u2014Gods of the jungle\u2014names that the hunters of rats and noosers of dogs whisper in the thicket and among the caves\u2014rag-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\u2014Bhairon of the Common People.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is very far away,\u201d grunted Bhairon. \u201cAlso, it is a lie.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMany 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,\u201d said the Bull, below his breath.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTheir Gods came, and we changed them. I took the Woman and made her twelve-armed. So shall we twist all their Gods,\u201d said Hanuman.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTheir Gods! This is no question of their Gods\u2014one or three\u2014man or woman. The matter is with the people. I move, and not the Gods of the bridge-builders,\u201d said Krishna.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo 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,\u201d said Hanuman the Ape. \u201cThey 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSurely they will do no more than change the names,\u201d echoed Ganesh; but there was an uneasy movement among the Gods.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The young God ceased, and his brethren looked at each other long in silence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis I have not heard before,\u201d Peroo whispered in his companion\u2019s ear. \u201cAnd yet sometimes, when I oiled the brasses in the engine-room of the Goorkha, I have wondered if our priests were so wise\u2014so wise. The day is coming, Sahib. They will be gone by the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A yellow light broadened in the sky, and the tone of the river changed as the darkness withdrew.<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly the Elephant trumpeted aloud as though man had goaded him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet Indra judge. Father of all, speak thou! What of the things we have heard? Has Krishna lied indeed? Or\u2014-\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYe know,\u201d said the Buck, rising to his feet. \u201cYe 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\u2014all save One!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAy, all save one that makes love in the hearts of men,\u201d said Krishna, knotting his girdle. \u201cIt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhither went they?\u201d said the Lascar, awe-struck, shivering a little with the cold.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGod knows!\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUp! We are cramped with cold! Has the opium died out. Canst thou move, Sahib?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeroo, I have forgotten much I was under the guard-tower watching the river; and then\u2014Did the flood sweep us away?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo. The boats broke loose, Sahib, and,\u201d (if the Sahib had forgotten about the opium, decidedly Peroo would not remind him) \u201cin striving to retie them, so it seemed to me but it was dark\u2014a 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.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe came down far,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was wonderful that we were not drowned a hundred times.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat 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,\u201d\u2014Peroo looked at the damp, discoloured shrine under the peepul\u2014\u201cnever man has seen that we saw here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHas the Sahib forgotten; or do we black men only see the Gods?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere was a fever upon me.\u201d Findlayson was still looking uneasily across the water. \u201cIt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOho! Then it is true. \u2018When Brahm ceases to dream, the Gods die.\u2019 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat?\u201d said Findlayson, over his shoulder.<\/p>\n<p>Peroo went on as if he were talking to himself \u201cSix\u2014seven\u2014ten monsoons since, I was watch on the fo\u2019c\u2019sle of the Rewah\u2014the Kumpani\u2019s big boat\u2014and 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\u2014of Those whom we saw to-night,\u201d\u2014he stared curiously at Findlayson\u2019s back, but the white man was looking across the flood. \u201cYes, 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. \u2018How shall I be sure,\u2019 I said, \u2018that the Gods to whom I pray will abide at all?\u2019 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\u2019c\u2019sle and over the break of the fo\u2019c\u2019sle, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLook up-stream. The light blinds. Is there smoke yonder?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Peroo shaded his eyes with his hands. \u201cHe is a wise man and quick. Hitchcock Sahib would not trust a rowboat. He has borrowed the Rao Sahib\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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 bearded 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s great luck,\u201d murmured Findlayson, but he was none the less afraid, wondering what news might be of the bridge.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s first demand was for his bridge.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll serene! \u2018Gad, I never expected to see you again, Findlayson. You\u2019re seven koss downstream. Yes; there\u2019s not a stone shifted anywhere; but how are you? I borrowed the Rao Sahib\u2019s 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\u2014I 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m immensely grateful, Rao Sahib. I believe you\u2019ve saved my life. How did Hitchcock\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOho! 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?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">Rudyard Kipling Books to Read<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4cJAMiz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4cBpA7N\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3V8uDF2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><br \/>\nClick on the image to buy a copy<\/p>\n<p>If you enjoyed The Bridge Builders by Rudyard Kipling, check out <a href=\"https:\/\/quizlit.org\/an-arrest-by-ambrose-bierce\">An Arrest by Ambrose Bierce<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Narrated by Tony Addison, courtesy of Librivox<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First published in 1893, The Bridge Builders by Rudyard Kipling is a tale of the revenge of the earth, in this case, specifically, Mother Gunga, Goddess of the River Ganga, against the men who confine her power. This post may contain affiliate links that earn us a commission at no extra cost to you. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3475,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3474"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}