rkens for night now, and since yesterday nothing has been
eaten. Be wise, Sahib. No man can endure watching and great thinking
on an empty belly. Lie down, Sahib. The river will do what the river
will do."

"The bridge is mine; I cannot leave it."

"Wilt thou hold it up with thy hands, then?" said Peroo, laughing. "I
was troubled for my boats and sheers _before_ the flood came. Now we
are in the hands of the Gods. The Sahib will not eat and lie down?
Take these, then. They are meat and good toddy together, and they kill
all weariness, besides the fever that follows the rain. I have eaten
nothing else to-day at all."

He took a small tin tobacco-box from his sodden waist-belt and thrust
it into Findlayson's hand, saying, "Nay, do not be afraid. It is no
more than opium--clean Malwa opium!"

Findlayson shook two or three of the dark-brown pellets into his hand,
and hardly knowing what he did, swallowed them. The stuff was at least
a good guard against fever--the fever that was creeping upon him out
of the wet mud--and he had seen what Peroo could do in the stewing
mists of autumn on the strength of a dose from the tin box.

Peroo nodded with bright eyes. "In a little--in a little the Sahib
will find that he thinks well again. I too will----" He dived into his
treasure-box, resettled the rain-coat over his head, and squatted down
to watch the boats. It was too dark now to see beyond the first pier,
and the night seemed to have given the river new strength. Findlayson
stood with his chin on his chest, thinking. There was one point about
one of the piers--the Seventh--that that he had not fully settled in
his mind. The figures would not shape themselves to the eye except one
by one and at enormous intervals of time. There was a sound, rich and
mellow in his ears, like the deepest note of a double-bass--an
entrancing sound upon which he pondered for several hours, as it
seemed. Then Peroo was at his elbow, shouting that a wire hawser had
snapped and the stone-boats were loose. Findlayson saw the fleet open
and swing out fanwise to a long-drawn shriek of wire straining across
gunnels.

"A tree hit them. They will all go," cried Peroo. "The main hawser has
parted. What does the Sahib do?"

An immensely complex plan had suddenly flashed into Findlayson's mind.
He saw the ropes running from boat to boat in straight lines and
angles--each rope a line of white fire. But there was one rope which
was the master-rope. He coul