the bridge. The concrete blocks on the fleet of
stone-boats were dropped overside, where there was any depth of water,
to guard the piers, and the empty boats themselves were poled under the
bridge down-stream. It was here that Peroo's pipe shrilled loudest, for
the first stroke of the big gong had brought the dinghy back at racing
speed, and Peroo and his people were stripped to the waist, working for
the honour and credit which are better than life.

"I knew she would speak," he cried. "I knew, but the telegraph gives us
good warning. O sons of unthinkable begetting--children of unspeakable
shame--are we here for the look of the thing?" It was two feet of
wire-rope frayed at the ends, and it did wonders as Peroo leaped from
gunnel to gunnel, shouting the language of the sea.

Findlayson was more troubled for the stone-boats than anything else.
McCartney, with his gangs, was blocking up the ends of the three
doubtful spans, but boats adrift, if the flood chanced to be a high one,
might endanger the girders; and there was a very fleet in the shrunken
channel.

"Get them behind the swell of the guard-tower," he shouted down to
Peroo. "It will be dead-water there. Get them below the bridge."

"Accha! [Very good.] I know; we are mooring them with wire-rope," was
the answer. "Heh! I Listen to the Chota Sahib. He is working hard."

From across the river came an almost continuous whistling of
locomotives, backed by the rumble of stone. Hitchcock at the last minute
was spending a few hundred more trucks of Tarakee stone in reinforcing
his spurs and embankments.

"The bridge challenges Mother Gunga," said Peroo, with a laugh. "But
when she talks I know whose voice will be the loudest."

For hours the naked men worked, screaming and shouting under the lights.
It was a hot, moonless night; the end of it was darkened by clouds and a
sudden squall that made Findlayson very grave.

"She moves!" said Peroo, just before the dawn. "Mother Gunga is awake!
Hear!" He dipped his hand over the side of a boat and the current
mumbled on it. A little wave hit the side of a pier with a crisp slap.

"Six hours before her time," said Findlayson, mopping his forehead
savagely. "Now we can't depend on anything. We'd better clear all hands
out of the river-bed."

Again the big gong beat, and a second time there was the rushing of
naked feet on earth and ringing iron; the clatter of tools ceased. In
the silence, men heard the dry yawn of w