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.
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