The Days Work, vol 1

THE DAY'S WORK
by Rudyard Kipling

CONTENTS
THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS
A WALKING DELEGATE
THE SHIP
THAT FOUND HERSELF
THE TOMB OF HIS ANCESTORS

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA
WILLIAM THE
CONQUEROR
.007
THE MALTESE CAT
BREAD UPON THE
WATERS
AN ERROR IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION
MY
SUNDAY AT HOME
THE BRUSHWOOD BOY

THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS
The least that Findlayson, of the Public Works Department, expected
was a C. I. E.; he dreamed of a C. S. I.: indeed, his friends told him that
he deserved more. For three years he had endured heat and cold,
disappointment, discomfort, danger, and disease, with responsibility
almost too heavy for one pair of shoulders; and day by day, through
that time, the great Kashi Bridge over the Ganges had grown under his
charge. Now, in less than three months, if all went well, his Excellency
the Viceroy would open the bridge in state, an archbishop would bless
it, and the first trainload of soldiers would come over it, and there
would be speeches.
Findlayson, C. E., sat in his trolley on a construction line that ran along
one of the main revetments - the huge stone-faced banks that flared
away north and south for three miles on either side of the river - and

permitted himself to think of the end. With its approaches, his work
was one mile and three-quarters fin length; a lattice-girder bridge,
trussed with the Findlayson truss, standing on seven-and-twenty brick
pies. Each one of those piers was twenty-four feet in diameter, capped
with red Agra stone and sunk eighty feet below the shifting sand of the
Ganges' bed. Above them was a railway-line fifteen feet broad; above
that, again, a cart-road of eighteen feet, flanked with footpaths. At
either end rose towers of red brick, loopholed for musketry and pierced
for big guns, and the ramp of the road was being pushed forward to
their haunches. The raw earth-ends were crawling and alive with
hundreds upon hundreds of tiny asses climbing out of the yawning
borrow-pit below with sackfuls of stuff; and the hot afternoon air was
filled with the noise of hooves, the rattle of the drivers' sticks, and the
swish and roll-down of the dirt. The river was very low, and on the
dazzling white sand between the three centre piers stood squat cribs of
railway-sleepers, filled within and daubed without with mud, to support
the last of the girders as those were riveted up. In the little deep water
left by the drought, an overhead-crane travelled to and fro along its
spile-pier, jerking sections of iron into place, snorting and backing and
grunting as an elephant grunts in the timber-yard. Riveters by the
hundred swarmed about the lattice side-work and the iron roof of the
railway-line, hung from invisible staging under the bellies of the
girders, clustered round the throats of the piers, and rode on the
overhang of the footpath-stanchions; their fire-pots and the spurts of
flame that answered each hammer-stroke showing no more than pale
yellow in the sun's glare. East and west and north and south the
construction-trains rattled and shrieked up and down the embankments,
the piled trucks of brown and white stone banging behind them till the
side-boards were unpinned, and with a roar and a grumble a few
thousand tons more material were flung out to hold the river in place.
Findlayson, C. E., turned on his trolley and looked over the face of the
country that he had changed for seven miles around. Looked back on
the humming village of five thousand workmen; up stream and down,
along the vista of spurs and sand; across the river to the far piers,
lessening in the haze; overhead to the guard-towers - and only he knew
how strong those were - and with a sigh of contentment saw that his

work was good. There stood his bridge before him in the sunlight,
lacking only a few weeks' work on the girders of the three middle piers
- his bridge, raw and ugly as original sin, but pukka - permanent - to
endure when all memory of the builder, yea, even of the splendid
Findlayson truss, had perished. Practically, the thing was done.
Hitchcock, his assistant, cantered along the line on a little switch-tailed
Kabuli pony who through long practice could have trotted securely
over a trestle, and nodded to his chief.
"All but," said he, with a smile.
"I've been thinking about it," the senior answered. "Not half a bad job
for two men, is it?"
"One-and a half. Gad, what a Cooper's Hill cub I was when I came on
the works!" Hitchcock felt very old in the crowded experiences of the
past three years, that had taught him power and responsibility.
"You were rather a colt," said Findlayson. "I wonder how you'll like
going back to office-work when this job's over."