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.
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