The Bridge-Builders | Page 7

leave us like a shot. He
was yarning away to me about praying to the dome of St. Paul's when
he was in London."

"He 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."
"Not half a bad thing to pray to, either. He's propitiating his own Gods
now, and he wants to know what Mother Gunga will think of a bridge
being run across her. Who's there?" A shadow darkened the doorway,
and a telegram was put into Hitchcock's hand.
"She ought to be pretty well used to it by this time. Only a tar. It ought
to be Ralli's answer about the new rivets. . . . Great Heavens!"
Hitchcock jumped to his feet.
"What is it?" said the senior, and took the form. "that's what Mother
Gunga thinks, is it," he said, reading. "Keep cool, young 'un. We've got
all our work cut out for us. Let's see. Muir wired half an hour ago:
'Floods on the Ramgunga. Look out.' Well, that gives us - one, two -
nine and a half for the flood to reach Melipur Ghaut and seven's sixteen
and a half to Lataoli - say fifteen hours before it comes down to us."
"Curse 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!"
"That's why it comes. I've only known Indian rivers for five-and-twenty
years, and I don't pretend to understand. Here comes another tar."
Findlayson opened the telegram. "Cockran, this time, from the Ganges
Canal: 'Heavy rains here. Bad.' He might have saved the last word.
Well, we don't want to know any more. We've got to work the gangs all
night and clean up the riverbed. You'll 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?
"Pontoon - one big pontoon with the overhead crane on it. T'other
overhead crane on the mended pontoon, with the cart-road rivets from
Twenty to Twenty-three piers - two construction lines, and a
turning-spur. The pilework must take its chance," said Hitchcock.

"All right. Roll up everything you can lay hands on. We'll give the gang
fifteen minutes more to eat their grub."
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.
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's
bugle, a weapon of offence on Sundays and festivals, brayed
desperately, calling to "Stables." Engine after engine toiling home
along the spurs at the end of her day's 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's
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 - each man in his place.
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's work, racing against the flood that was to come. The
girders of the three centre piers - those that stood on the cribs -were 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