"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.
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