The Days Work, vol 1 | Page 9

for the water was so solid that a
man could surely step out upon it, and, standing still with his legs apart
to keep his balance - this was the most important point - would be
borne with great and easy speed to the shore. But yet a better plan came
to him. It needed only an exertion of will for the soul to hurl the body
ashore as wind drives paper, to waft it kite-fashion to the bank.
Thereafter - the boat spun dizzily - suppose the high wind got under the
freed body? Would it tower up like a kite and pitch headlong on the
far-away sands, or would it duck about, beyond control, through all
eternity? Findlayson gripped the gunnel to anchor himself, for it
seemed that he was on the edge of taking the flight before he had
settled all his plans. 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 onshore
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.
"Not this night," said Peroo, in his ear. "The Gods have protected us."
The Lascar moved his feet cautiously, and they rustled among dried
stumps. "This is some island of last year's indigo-crop," he went on.
"We shall find no men here; but have great care, Sahib; all the snakes
of a hundred miles have been flooded out. Here comes the lightning, on
the heels of the wind. Now we shall be able to look; but walk
carefully."
Findlayson was far and far beyond any fear of snakes, or indeed any
merely human emotion. He saw, after he had rubbed the water from his
eyes, with an immense clearness, and trod, so it seemed to himself,
with world-encompassing strides. Somewhere in the night of time he
had built a bridge - a bridge that spanned illimitable levels of shining
seas; but the Deluge had swept it away, leaving this one island under
heaven for Findlayson and his companion, sole survivors of the breed
of Man.
An incessant lightning, forked and blue, showed all that there was to be
seen on the little patch in the flood - a clump of thorn, a clump of
swaying creaking bamboos, and a grey gnarled peepul overshadowing a
Hindoo shrine, from whose dome floated a tattered red flag. The holy
man whose summer resting-place it was had long since abandoned it,
and the weather had broken the red-daubed image of his god. The two
men stumbled, heavy limbed and heavy-eyed, over the ashes of a
brick-set cooking-place, and dropped down under the shelter of the
branches, while the rain and river roared together.
The stumps of the indigo crackled, and there was a smell of cattle, as a
huge and dripping Brahminee bull shouldered his way under the tree.
The flashes revealed the trident mark of Shiva on his flank, the

insolence of head and hump, the luminous stag-like eyes, the brow
crowned with a wreath of sodden marigold blooms, and the silky
dewlap that almost swept the ground. There was a noise behind him of
other beasts coming up from the floodline through the thicket, a sound
of heavy feet and deep breathing.
"Here be more beside ourselves," said Findlayson, his head against the
tree-pole, looking through half-shut eyes, wholly at ease.
" Truly," said Peroo, thickly, "and no small ones."
"What are they, then? I do not see clearly."
"The Gods. Who else? Look!"
"Ah, true! The Gods surely - the Gods." Findlayson smiled as his head
fell forward on his