THE BUILDING OF THE TSAVO BRIDGE
During all this troublesome period the construction of the railway had
been going steadily forward, and the first important piece of work
which I had commenced on arrival was completed. This was the widening
of a rock cutting through which the railway ran just before it, reached
the river. In the hurry of pushing on the laying of the line, just
enough of the rock had originally been cut away to allow room for an
engine to pass, and consequently any material which happened to,
project outside the wagons or trucks caught on the jagged faces of the
cutting. I myself saw the door of a guard's van, which had been left
ajar, smashed to atoms in this way; and accordingly I put a gang of
rock-drillers to work at once and soon had ample room made for all
traffic to pass unimpeded. While this was going on, another gang of men
were laying the foundations of a girder bridge which was to span a
gully between this cutting and Tsavo Station. This would have taken too
long to erect when railhead was at the place, so a diversion had been
made round it, the temporary track leading down almost to the bed of
the nullah and up again on the further side. When the foundations and
abutments were ready, the gully was spanned by an iron girder, the
slopes leading up to it banked up on either side, and the permanent way
laid on an easy grade.
Then, also, a water supply had to be established; and this meant some
very pleasant work for me in taking levels up the banks of the river
under the cool shade of the palms. While doing this, I often took my
camp-kit with me, and a luncheon served in the wilds, with occasionally
a friend to share it--when a friend was available--was delightful. On
one occasion in particular, I went a long way up the river and was
accompanied by a young member of my staff. The day had been exceedingly
hot and we were both correspondingly tired when our work was finished,
so my companion suggested that we should build a raft and float
down-stream home. I was rather doubtful, of the feasibility of the
scheme, but nevertheless he decided to give it a trial. Setting to work
with our axes, we soon had a raft built, lashing the poles together
with the fibre which grows in abundance all over the district. When it
was finished, we pushed it out of the little backwater where it had
been constructed, and the young engineer jumped aboard. All went well
until it got out into midstream, when much to my amusement it promptly
toppled gracefully over. I helped my friend to scramble quickly up the
bank out of reach of possible crocodiles, when, none the worse for his
ducking, he laughed as heartily as I at the adventure.
Except for an occasional relaxation of this sort, every moment of my
time was fully occupied. Superintending the various works and a hundred
other duties kept me busy all day long, while my evenings were given up
to settling disputes among the coolies, hearing reports and complaints
from the various jemadars and workpeople, and in studying the Swahili
language. Preparations, too, for the principal piece of work in the
district--the building of the railway bridge over the Tsavo river--were
going on apace. These involved, much personal work on my part; cross
and oblique sections of the river had to be taken, the rate of the
current and the volume of water at flood, mean, and low levels had to
be found, and all the necessary calculations made. These having at
length been completed, I marked out the positions for the abutments and
piers, and the work of sinking their foundations was begun. The two
centre piers in particular caused a great deal of trouble, as the river
broke in several times, and had to be dammed up and pumped dry again
before work could be resumed. Then we found we had to sink much deeper
than we expected in order to reach a solid foundation indeed, the
sinking went on and on, until I began to despair of finding one and was
about to resort to pile-driving, when at last, to my relief, we struck
solid rock on which the huge foundation-stones could be laid with
perfect safety.
Another great difficulty with which we had to contend was the absence
of suitable stone in the neighbourhood. It was not that there was none
to be found, for the whole district abounds in rock, but that it was so
intensely hard as to be almost impossible to work, and a bridge built
of it would have been very costly. I spent many a weary day trudging
through the thorny wilderness vainly searching for suitable material,
and was beginning to think that we should be forced to use iron columns
for the piers, when one day I stumbled quite by accident on the very
thing. Brock and I were out "pot-hunting," and hearing some guinea-fowl
cackling among the bushes, I made a circuit half round them so that
Brock, on getting in his shot, should drive them over in my direction.
I eventually got into position on the edge of a deep ravine and knelt
on one knee, crouching down among the ferns. There I had scarcely time
to load when over flew a bird, which I missed badly; and I did not have
another chance, for Brock had got to work, and being a first-rate shot
had quickly bagged a brace. Meanwhile I felt the ground very hard under
my knee, and on examination found that the bank of the ravine was
formed of stone, which extended for some distance, and which was
exactly the kind of material for which I had long been fruitlessly
searching. I was greatly delighted with my unexpected discovery, though
at first I had grave misgivings about the distance to be traversed and
the difficulty of transporting the stone across the intervening
country. Indeed, I found in the end that the only way of getting the
material to the place where it was wanted was by laying down a tram
line right along the ravine, throwing a temporary bridge across the
Tsavo, following the stream down and re-crossing it again close to the
site of the permanent bridge. Accordingly, I set men to work at once to
cut down the jungle and prepare a road on which to lay the double
trolley line. One morning when they were thus engaged, a little paa--a
kind of very small antelope--sprang out and found itself suddenly in
the midst of a gang of coolies. Terrified and confused by the shouting
of the men, it ran straight at Shere Shah, the jemadar, who promptly
dropped a basket over it and held it fast. I happened to arrive just in
time to save the graceful little animal's life, and took it home to my
camp, where it very soon became a great pet. Indeed, it grew so tame
that it would jump upon my table at meal times and eat from my hand.
When the road for the trolley line was cleared, the next piece of work
was the building of the two temporary bridges over the river. These we
made in the roughest fashion out of palm trees and logs felled at the
crossing places, and had a flood come down they would, of course, have
both been swept away; fortunately, however, this did not occur until
the permanent work was completed. The whole of this feeding line was
finished in a very short time, and trollies were soon plying backwards
and forwards with loads of stone and sand, as we also discovered the
latter in abundance and of good quality in the bed of the ravine. An
amusing incident occurred one day when I was taking a photograph of an
enormous block of stone which was being hauled across one of these
temporary bridges. As the trolley with its heavy load required very
careful manipulation, my head mason, Heera Singh, stood on the top of
the stone to direct operations, while the overseer, Purshotam Hurjee,
superintended the gangs of men who hauled the ropes at either end in
order to steady it up and down the inclines. But we did not know that
the stream had succeeded in washing away the foundations of one of the
log supports; and as the weight of the trolley with the stone came on
the undermined pier, the rails tilted up and over went the whole thing
into the river, just as I snapped the picture. Heera Singh made a wild
spring into the water to get clear of the falling stone, while
Purshotam and the rest fled as if for their lives to the bank. It was
altogether a most comical sight, and an extraordinary chance that at
the very moment of the accident I should be taking a photograph of the
operation. Fortunately, no one was injured in the slightest, and the
stone was recovered undamaged with but little trouble.
Not long after this occurrence my own labours were one day nearly
brought to a sudden and unpleasant end. I was travelling along in an
empty trolley which, pushed by two sturdy Pathans, was returning to the
quarry for sand. Presently we came to the sharp incline which led to
the log bridge over the river. Here it was the custom of the men,
instead of running beside the trolley, to step on to it and to let its
own momentum take it down the slope, moderating its speed when
necessary by a brake in the shape of a pole, which one of them carried
and by which the wheels could be locked. On this occasion, however, the
pole was by some accident dropped overboard, and down the hill we flew
without brake of any kind. Near the bridge there was a sharp curve in
the line, where I was afraid the trolley would jump the rails; still, I
thought it was better to stick to it than to risk leaping off. A moment
afterwards I felt myself flying head first over the edge of the bridge,
just missing by a hair's breadth a projecting beam; but luckily I
landed on a sand bank at the side of the river, the heavy trolley
falling clear of me with a dull thud close by. This accident, also, was
happily unattended by injury to anyone.