rubbing stroke that brings out the
full thunder of the metal.

Long before the last rumble ceased every night-gong in the village
had taken up the warning. To these were added the hoarse screaming of
conches in the little temples; the throbbing of drums and tom-toms; and,
from the European quarters, where the riveters lived, McCartney's
bugle, a weapon of offence on Sundays and festivals, brayed desperately,
calling to "Stables." Engine after engine toiling home along the spurs
at the end of her day's work whistled in answer till the whistles were
answered from the far bank. Then the big gong thundered thrice for a
sign that it was flood and not fire; conch, drum, and whistle echoed the
call, and the village quivered to the sound of bare feet running upon
soft earth. The order in all cases was to stand by the day's work and
wait instructions. The gangs poured by in the dusk; men stopping to
knot a loin-cloth or fasten a sandal; gang-foremen shouting to their
subordinates as they ran or paused by the tool-issue sheds for bars
and mattocks; locomotives creeping down their tracks wheel-deep in
the crowd; till the brown torrent disappeared into the dusk of the
river-bed, raced over the pilework, swarmed along the lattices,
clustered by the cranes, and stood still each man in his place.

Then the troubled beating of the gong carried the order to take up
everything and bear it beyond highwater mark, and the flare-lamps broke
out by the hundred between the webs of dull iron as the riveters began a
night's work, racing against the flood that was to come. The girders of
the three centre piers--those that stood on the cribs--were all but in
position. They needed just as many rivets as could be driven into them,
for the flood would assuredly wash out their supports, and the ironwork
would settle down on the caps of stone if they were not blocked at the
ends. A hundred crowbars strained at the sleepers of the temporary line
that fed the unfinished piers. It was heaved up in lengths, loaded
into trucks, and backed up the bank beyond flood-level by the groaning
locomotives. The tool-sheds on the sands melted away before the attack
of shouting armies, and with them went the stacked ranks of Government
stores, iron-bound boxes of rivets, pliers, cutters, duplicate parts of
the riveting-machines, spare pumps and chains. The big crane would be
the last to be shifted, for she was hoisting all the heavy stuff up to
the main structure of