The Days Work, vol 1 | Page 6

might endanger the girders; and there was a very fleet in the shrunken
channel.
"Get them behind the swell of the guard-tower," he shouted down to
Peroo. "It will be dead-water there. Get them below the bridge."
"Accha! [Very good.] I know; we are mooring them with wire-rope,"
was the answer. " Heh! I Listen to the Chota Sahib. He is working

hard."
>From across the river came an almost continuous whistling of
locomotives, backed by the rumble of stone. Hitchcock at the last
minute was spending a few hundred more trucks of Tarakee stone in
reinforcing his spurs and embankments.
"The bridge challenges Mother Gunga," said Peroo, with a laugh. "But
when she talks I know whose voice will be the loudest."
For hours the naked men worked, screaming and shouting under the
lights. It was a hot, moonless night; the end of it was darkened by
clouds and a sudden squall that made Findlayson very grave.
"She moves! " said Peroo, just before the dawn. "Mother Gunga is
awake! Hear!" He dipped his hand over the side of a boat and the
current mumbled on it. A little wave hit the side of a pier with a crisp
slap.
"Six hours before her time," said Findlayson, mopping his forehead
savagely. "Now we can't depend on anything. We'd better clear all
hands out of the river-bed."
Again the big gong beat, and a second time there was the rushing of
naked feet on earth and ringing iron; the clatter of tools ceased. In the
silence, men heard the dry yawn of water crawling over thirsty sand.
Foreman after foreman shouted to Findlayson, who had posted himself
by the guard-tower, that his section of the river-bed had been cleaned
out, and when the last voice dropped Findlayson hurried over the
bridge till the iron plating of the permanent way gave place to the
temporary plank-walk over the three centre piers, and there he met
Hitchcock.
"All clear your side?" said Findlayson. The whisper rang in the box of
latticework.
"Yes, and the east channel's filling now. We're utterly out of our

reckoning. When is this thing down on us?"
"There's no saying. She's filling as fast as she can. Look!" Findlayson
pointed to the planks below his feet, where the sand, burned and defiled
by months of work, was beginning to whisper and fizz.
"What orders?" said Hitchcock.
"Call the roll - count stores -sit on your hunkers - and pray for the
bridge. That's all I can think of. Good night. Don't risk your life trying
to fish out anything that may go down-stream."
"Oh, I'll be as prudent as you are! 'Night. Heavens, how she's filling!
Here's the rain in earnest!" Findlayson picked his way back to his bank,
sweeping the last of McCartney's riveters before him. The gangs had
spread themselves along the embankments, regardless of the cold rain
of the dawn, and there they waited for the flood. Only Peroo kept his
men together behind the swell of the guard-tower, where the
stone-boats lay tied fore and aft with hawsers, wire-rope, and chains.
A shrill wail ran along the line, growing to a yell, half fear and half
wonder: the face of the river whitened from bank to bank between the
stone facings, and the faraway spurs went out in spouts of foam.
Mother Gunga had come bank-high in haste, and a wall of
chocolate-coloured water was her messenger. There was a shriek above
the roar of the water, the complaint of the spans coming down on their
blocks as the cribs were whirled out from under their bellies. The
stone-boats groaned and ground each other in the eddy that swung
round the abutment, and their clumsy masts rose higher and higher
against the dim sky-line.
"Before she was shut between these walls we knew what she would do.
Now she is thus cramped God only knows what she will do!" said
Peroo, watching the furious turmoil round the guard-tower. "Ohe! Fight,
then! Fight hard, for it is thus that a woman wears herself out."
But Mother Gunga would not fight as Peroo desired. After the first
down-stream plunge there came no more walls of water, but the river

lifted herself bodily, as a snake when she drinks in midsummer,
plucking and fingering along the revetments, and banking up behind
the piers till even Findlayson began to recalculate the strength of his
work.
When day came the village gasped. "Only last night," men said, turning
to each other," it was as a town in the river-bed! Look now!"
And they looked and wondered afresh at the deep water, the racing
water that licked the throat of the piers. The farther bank was veiled by
rain, into which the bridge ran out and vanished; the spurs up-stream
were marked by