layson 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 good. Finlinson
Sahib, she fills."

"Accha! I am going away. Come thou also."

In his mind, Findlayson had already escaped from the boat, and was
circling high in air to find a rest for the sole of his foot. His
body--he was really sorry for its gross helplessness--lay in the stern,
the water rushing about its knees.

"How very ridiculous!" he said to himself, from his eyrie--"that is
Findlayson--chief of the Kashi Bridge. The poor beast is going to
be drowned, too. Drowned when it's close to shore. I'm--I'm onshore
already. Why doesn't it come along."

To his intense disgust, he found his soul back in his body again, and
that body spluttering and choking in deep water. The pain of the reunion
was atrocious, but it was necessary, also, to fight for the body. He was
conscious of grasping wildly at wet sand, and striding prodigiously, as
one strides in a dream, to keep foothold in the swirling water, till
at last he hauled himself clear of the hold of the river, and dropped,
panting, on wet earth.

"Not this night," said Peroo, in his ear. "The Gods have protected
us." The Lascar moved his feet cautiously, and they rustled among dried
stumps. "This is some island of last year's indigo-crop," he went on.
"We shall find no men here; but have great care, Sahib; all the snakes
of a hundred miles have been flooded out. Here comes the lightning,
on the heels of the wind. Now we shall be able to look; but walk
carefully."

Findlayson was far and far beyond any fear of snakes, or indeed any
merely human emotion. He saw, after he had rubbed the water from his
eyes, with an immense clearness, and trod, so it seemed to himself, with
world-encompassing strides. Somewhere in the night of time he had built
a bridge--a bridge that spanned illimitable levels of shining seas; but
the Deluge had swept it away, leaving this one island under heaven for
Findlayson and his companion, sole survivors of the breed of Man.

An incessant lightning, forked and blue, showed all that there was to
be seen on the little patch in the flood--a clump of thorn