are, I think, sufficiently heavy."

"Nay, Sahib. It is thus. At sea, on the Black Water, we have room to
be blown up and down without care. Here we have no room at all. Look
you, we have put the river into a dock, and run her between stone
sills."

Findlayson smiled at the "we."

"We have bitted and bridled her. She is not like the sea, that can
beat against a soft beach. She is Mother Gunga--in irons." His voice
fell a little.

"Peroo, thou hast been up and down the world more even than I. Speak
true talk, now. How much dost thou in thy heart believe of Mother
Gunga?"

"All that our priest says. London is London, Sahib. Sydney is Sydney,
and Port Darwin is Port Darwin. Also Mother Gunga is Mother Gunga, and
when I come back to her banks I know this and worship. In London I did
poojah to the big temple by the river for the sake of the God
within.... Yes, I will not take the cushions in the dinghy."

Findlayson mounted his horse and trotted to the shed of a bungalow
that he shared with his assistant. The place had become home to him in
the last three years. He had grilled in the heat, sweated in the
rains, and shivered with fever under the rude thatch roof; the
lime-wash beside the door was covered with rough drawings and formulae,
and the sentry-path trodden in the matting of the veranda showed where
he had walked alone. There is no eight-hour limit to an engineer's
work, and the evening meal with Hitchcock was eaten booted and
spurred: over their cigars they listened to the hum of the village as
the gangs came up from the river-bed and the lights began to twinkle.

"Peroo has gone up the spurs in your dinghy. He's taken a couple of
nephews with him, and he's lolling in the stern like a commodore,"
said Hitchcock.

"That's all right. He's got something on his mind. You 'd think that
ten years in the British India boats would have knocked most of his
religion out of him."

"So it has," said Hitchcock, chuckling. "I over-heard him the other
day in the middle of a most atheistical talk with that fat old _guru_
of theirs. Peroo denied the efficacy of prayer; and wanted the _guru_
to go to sea and watch a gale out with him, and see if he could stop a
monsoon."

"All the same, if you carried off his _guru_ he'd 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