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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.
For his knowledge of tackle and the handling of heavy weights, Peroo was worth almost any price he might have chosen to put upon his services; but custom decreed the wage of the overhead-men, and Peroo was not within many silver pieces of his proper value. Neither running water nor extreme heights made him afraid; and, as an ex-serang, he knew how to hold authority.
When does the Lord Sahib come to open the bridge?" "In three months, when the weather is cooler." "Ho! ho! He is like the Burra Malum. He sleeps below while the work is being done. Then he comes upon the quarter-deck and touches with his finger, and says: 'This is not clean! Dam jibboonwallah!" "But the Lord Sahib does not call me a dam jibboonwallah, Peroo."
When does the Lord Sahib come to open the bridge?" "In three months, when the weather is cooler." "Ho! ho! He is like the Burra Malum. He sleeps below while the work is being done. Then he comes upon the quarter-deck and touches with his finger, and says: 'This is not clean! Dam jibboonwallah!" "But the Lord Sahib does not call me a dam jibboonwallah, Peroo."
Indra is too high, but Shiv, thou knowest how the land is threaded with their fire-carriages." "Yea, I know," said the Bull. "Their Gods instructed them in the matter." A laugh ran round the circle. "Their Gods! What should their Gods know? They were born yesterday, and those that made them are scarcely yet cold," said the Mugger. "To-morrow their Gods will die." "Ho!" said Peroo.
Then the native workmen lost their heads with great shoutings, and Hitchcock's right arm was broken by a falling T-plate, and he buttoned it up in his coat and swooned, and came to and directed for four hours till Peroo, from the top of the crane, reported "All's well," and the plate swung home.
There was no one like Peroo, serang, to lash, and guy, and hold, to control the donkey-engines, to hoist a fallen locomotive craftily out of the borrow-pit into which it had tumbled; to strip, and dive, if need be, to see how the concrete blocks round the piers stood the scouring of Mother Gunga, or to adventure upstream on a monsoon night and report on the state of the embankment-facings.
"It was wonderful that we were not drowned a hundred times." "That was the least of the wonder, for no man dies before his time. I have seen Sydney, I have seen London, and twenty great ports, but," Peroo looked at the damp, discoloured shrine under the peepul "never man has seen that we saw here." "What?" "Has the Sahib forgotten; or do we black men only see the Gods?"
There was a noise behind him of other beasts coming up from the flood-line through the thicket, a sound of heavy feet and deep breathing. "Here be more beside ourselves," said Findlayson, his head against the tree pole, looking through half-shut eyes, wholly at ease. "Truly," said Peroo, thickly, "and no small ones." "What are they, then? I do not see clearly." "The Gods. Who else? Look!"
Behind everything rose the black frame of the Kashi Bridge plate by plate, girder by girder, span by span-and each pier of it recalled Hitchcock, the all-round man, who had stood by his chief without failing from the very first to this last. So the bridge was two men's work unless one counted Peroo, as Peroo certainly counted himself.
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