The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Day's Work, Volume 1, by Rudyard Kipling

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Title: The Day's Work, Volume 1

Author: Rudyard Kipling

Posting Date: December 13, 2008 [EBook #2569]
Release Date: March, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE DAY'S WORK

By Rudyard Kipling

CONTENTS

THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS
A WALKING DELEGATE
THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF
THE TOMB OF HIS ANCESTORS
THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR
.007
THE MALTESE CAT
BREAD UPON THE WATERS
AN ERROR IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION
MY SUNDAY AT HOME
THE BRUSHWOOD BOY

THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS

The least that Findlayson, of the Public Works Department, expected was
a C. I. E.; he dreamed of a C. S. I.: indeed, his friends told him
that he deserved more. For three years he had endured heat and cold,
disappointment, discomfort, danger, and disease, with responsibility
almost too heavy for one pair of shoulders; and day by day, through that
time, the great Kashi Bridge over the Ganges had grown under his charge.
Now, in less than three months, if all went well, his Excellency the
Viceroy would open the bridge in state, an archbishop would bless it,
and the first trainload of soldiers would come over it, and there would
be speeches.

Findlayson, C. E., sat in his trolley on a construction line that ran
along one of the main revetments--the huge stone-faced banks that flared
away north and south for three miles on either side of the river--and
permitted himself to think of the end. With its approaches, his work was
one mile and three-quarters fin length; a lattice-girder bridge, trussed
with the Findlayson truss, standing on seven-and-twenty brick pies. Each
one of those piers was twenty-four feet in diameter, capped with red
Agra stone and sunk eighty feet below the shifting sand of the Ganges'
bed. Above them was a railway-line fifteen feet broad; above that,
again, a cart-road of eighteen feet, flanked with footpaths. At either
end rose towers of red brick, lo