it was necessary to save the boats, and, further,
to demonstrate the extreme ease of the problem that looked so difficult.
And then--but it was of no conceivable importance--a wire-rope raced
through his hand, burning it, the high bank disappeared, and with it
all the slowly dispersing factors of the problem. He was sitting in the
rainy darkness--sitting in a boat that spun like a top, and Peroo was
standing over him.

"I had forgotten," said the Lascar, slowly, "that to those fasting and
unused, the opium is worse than any wine. Those who die in Gunga go to
the Gods. Still, I have no desire to present myself before such great
ones. Can the Sahib swim?"

"What need? He can fly--fly as swiftly as the wind," was the thick
answer.

"He is mad!" muttered Peroo, under his breath. "And he threw me aside
like a bundle of dung-cakes. Well, he will not know his death. The boat
cannot live an hour here even if she strike nothing. It is not good to
look at death with a clear eye."

He refreshed himself again from the tin box, squatted down in the bows
of the reeling, pegged, and stitched craft, staring through the mist at
the nothing that was there. A warm drowsiness crept over Findlayson,
the Chief Engineer, whose duty was with his bridge. The heavy raindrops
struck him with a thousand tingling little thrills, and the weight of
all time since time was made hung heavy on his eyelids. He thought and
perceived that he was perfectly secure, 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 goo