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Updated: September 2, 2025
You are afraid about your horses, but you needn't use them. The stone-boats would run down alone. Do you understand now?" Kit started. "I expect you have found the way, Miss Osborn, and we owe you some thanks. In fact, you're cleverer than the lot!" "The admission doesn't seem to hurt you," Grace rejoined. "But I imagine to feel you had to make it was something of a shock."
Then Peroo was at his elbow, shouting that a wire hawser had snapped and the stone-boats were loose. Findlayson saw the fleet open and swing out fanwise to a long-drawn shriek of wire straining across gunnels. "A tree hit them. They will all go," cried Peroo. "The main hawser has parted. What does the Sahib do?" An immensely complex plan had suddenly flashed into Findlayson's mind.
He took no count of time, for the river was marking the hours, inch by inch and foot by foot, along the embankment, and he listened, numb and hungry, to the straining of the stone-boats, the hollow thunder under the piers, and the hundred noises that make the full note of a flood.
"There is always time for her; and none the less there has been delay. Has the Sahib forgotten last autumn's flood, when the stone-boats were sunk without warning or only a half-day's warning?" "Yes, but nothing save a big flood could hurt us now. The spurs are holding well on the West Bank." "Mother Gunga eats great allowances. There is always room for more stone on the revetments.
"There is always time for her; and none the less there has been delay. Has the Sahib forgotten last autumn's flood, when the stone-boats were sunk without warning or only a half-day's warning?" "Yes, but nothing save a big flood could hurt us now. The spurs are holding well on the West Bank." "Mother Gunga eats great allowances. There is always room for more stone on the revetments.
Bad. He might have saved the last word. Well, we don't want to know any more. We've got to work the gangs all night and clean up the riverbed. You'll take the east bank and work out to meet me in the middle. Get everything that floats below the bridge: we shall have quite enough river-craft coming down adrift anyhow, without letting the stone-boats ram the piers.
At its front flowed the tranquil river, its surface painted with cloud-forms and the reflections of drifting arks and stone-boats; behind it rose the woody steeps to the base of the lofty precipice; from the top of the precipice frowned a vast castle, its long stretch of towers and bastions mailed in vines; beyond the river, a league to the left, was a tumbled expanse of forest-clothed hills cloven by winding gorges where the sun never penetrated; and to the right a precipice overlooked the river, and between it and the hills just spoken of lay a far-reaching plain dotted with little homesteads nested among orchards and shade trees.
The gangs had spread themselves along the embankments, regardless of the cold rain of the dawn, and there they waited for the flood. Only Peroo kept his men together behind the swell of the guard-tower, where the stone-boats lay tied fore and aft with hawsers, wire-rope, and chains.
There was a shriek above the roar of the water, the complaint of the spans coming down on their blocks as the cribs were whirled out from under their bellies. The stone-boats groaned and ground each other in the eddy that swung round the abutment, and their clumsy masts rose higher and higher against the dim sky-line. "Before she was shut between these walls we knew what she would do.
Bad. He might have saved the last word. Well, we don't want to know any more. We've got to work the gangs all night and clean up the riverbed. You'll take the east bank and work out to meet me in the middle. Get everything that floats below the bridge: we shall have quite enough river-craft coming down adrift anyhow, without letting the stone-boats ram the piers.
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