"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.
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