But Leo was up and far across the fields, driven forward by the fear

of death for himself and for the Girl, who was dearer to him than

himself. Presently he came across the Bull drowsing in the moonlight

after a hard day's work, and looking through half-shut eyes at the

beautiful straight furrows that he had made.

"Ho!" said the Bull. "So you have been told these things too. Which of

the Houses holds your death?"

Leo pointed upward to the dark House of the Crab and groaned. "And he

will come for the Girl too," he said.

"Well," said the Bull, "what will you do?"

Leo sat down on the dike and said that he did not know.

"You cannot pull a plough," said the Bull, with a little touch of

contempt. "I can, and that prevents me from thinking of the Scorpion."

Leo was angry, and said nothing till the dawn broke, and the

cultivator came to yoke the Bull to his work.

"Sing," said the Bull, as the stiff, muddy ox-bow creaked and

strained. "My shoulder is galled. Sing one of the songs that we sang

when we thought we were all Gods together."

Leo stepped back into the canebrake, and lifted up his voice in a song

of the Children of the Zodiac--the war-whoop of the young Gods who are

afraid of nothing. At first he dragged the song along unwillingly, and

then the song dragged him, and his voice rolled across the fields, and

the Bull stepped to the tune, and the cultivator banged his flanks out

of sheer light-heartedness, and the furrows rolled away behind the

plough more and more swiftly. Then the Girl came across the fields

looking for Leo, and found him singing in the cane. She joined her

voice to his, and the cultivator's wife brought her spinning into the

open and listened with all her children round her. When it was time

for the nooning, Leo and the Girl had sung themselves both thirsty and

hungry, but the cultivator and his wife gave them rye bread and milk,

and many thanks; and the Bull found occasion to say:

"You have helped me to do a full half field more than I should have

done. But the hardest part of the day is to come, brother."

Leo wished to lie down and brood over the words of the Crab. The Girl

went away to talk to the cultivator's wife and baby, and the afternoon

ploughing began.

"Help us now," said the Bull. "The tides of the day are running down.

My legs are very stiff. Sing, if you never sang before."

"To a mud-spattered villager?" said Leo.

"He is under the same doom as ourselves. Are you a coward?" said the

Bull.

Leo flushed, and began again with a sore throat and a bad temper.

Little by little he dropped away from the songs of the Children and

made up a song as he went along; and this was a thing he could never

have done had he not met the Crab face to face. He remembered facts

concerning cultivators and bullocks and rice-fields that he had not

particularly noticed before the interview, and he strung them all

together, growing more interested as he sang, and he told the

cultivator much more about himself and his work than the cultivator

knew. The Bull grunted approval as he toiled down the furrows for the

last time that day, and the song ended, leaving the cultivator with a

very good opinion of himself in his aching bones. The Girl came out of

the hut where she had been keeping the children quiet, and talking

woman-talk to the wife, and they all ate the evening meal together.

"Now yours must be a very pleasant life," said the cultivator;

"sitting as you do on a dyke all day and singing just what comes into

your head. Have you been at it long, you two--gipsies?"

"Ah!" lowed the Bull from his byre. "That's all the thanks you will

ever get from men, brother."

"No. We have only just begun it," said the Girl; "but we are going to

keep to it as long as we live. Are we not, Leo?"

"Yes," said he; and they went away hand in hand.

"You can sing beautifully, Leo," said she, as a wife will to her

husband.

"What were you doing?" said he.

"I was talking to the mother and the babies," she said. "You would not

understand the little things that make us women laugh."

"And--and I am to go on with this--this gipsy work?" said Leo.

"Yes, dear, and I will help you."

There is no written record of the life of Leo and of the Girl, so we

cannot tell how Leo took to his new employment which he detested. We

are only sure that the Girl loved him when and wherever he sang; even

when, after the song was done, she went round with the equivalent of a

tambourine and collected the pence for the daily bread. There were

times, too, when it was Leo's very hard task to console the Girl for

the indignity of horrible praise that people gave him and her--for the

silly wagging peacock feathers that they stuck in his cap, and the

buttons and pieces of cloth that they sewed on his coat. Woman-like,

she could advise and help to the end, but the meanness of the means

revolted.

"What does it matter," Leo would say, "so long as the songs make them

a little happier?" And they would go down the road and begin again on

the old, old refrain--that whatever came or did not come the children

of men must not be afraid. It was heavy teaching at first, but in

process of years Leo discovered that he could make men laugh and hold

them listening to him even when the rain fell. Yet there were people

who would sit down and cry softly, though the crowd was yelling with

delight, and there were people who maintained that Leo made them do

this; and the Girl would talk to them in the pauses of the performance

and do her best to comfort them. People would die, too, while Leo was

talking and singing and laughing; for the Archer and the Scorpion and

the Crab and the other Houses were as busy as ever. Sometimes the

crowd broke, and were frightened, and Leo strove to keep them steady

by telling them that this was cowardly; and sometimes they mocked at

the Houses that were killing them, and Leo explained that this was

even more cowardly than running away.

In their wanderings they came across the Bull, or the Ram, or the

Twins, but all were too busy to do more than nod to each other across

the crowd, and go on with their work. As the years rolled on even that

recognition ceased, for the Children of the Zodiac had forgotten that

they had ever been Gods working for the sake of men. The star

Aldebaran was crusted with caked dirt on the Bull's forehead, the

Ram's fleece was dusty and torn, and the Twins were only babies

fighting over the cat on the door-step. It was then that Leo said,

"Let us stop singing and making jokes." And it was then that the Girl

said, "No." But she did not know why she said "No" so energetically.

Leo maintained that it was perversity, till she herself, at the end of

a dusty day, made the same suggestion to him, and he said, "Most

certainly not!" and they quarrelled miserably between the hedgerows,

forgetting the meaning of the stars above them. Other singers and

other talkers sprang up in the course of the years, and Leo,

forgetting that there could never be too many of these, hated them for

dividing the applause of the children of men, which he thought should

be all his own. The Girl would grow angry too, and then the songs

would be broken, and the jests fall flat for weeks to come, and the

children of men would shout: "Go home, you two gipsies. Go home and

learn something worth singing!"

After one of these sorrowful, shameful days, the Girl, walking by

Leo's side through the fields, saw the full moon coming up over the

trees, and she clutched Leo's arm, crying: "The time has come now. Oh,

Leo, forgive me!"

"What is it?" said Leo. He was thinking of the other singers.

"My husband!" she answered, and she laid his hand upon her breast, and

the breast that he knew so well was hard as stone. Leo groaned,

remembering what the Crab had said.

"Surely we were Gods once," he cried.

"Surely we are Gods still," said the Girl. "Do you not remember when

you and I went to the House of the Crab and--were not very much

afraid? And since then ... we have forgotten what we were singing

for--we sang for the pence, and, oh, we fought for them!--We, who are

the Children of the Zodiac!"

"It was my fault," said Leo.

"How can there be any fault of yours that is not mine too?" said the

Girl. "My time has come, but you will live longer, and...." The look

in her eyes said all she could not say.

"Yes, I will remember that we are Gods," said Leo.

It is very hard, even for a child of the Zodiac who has forgotten his

Godhead, to see his wife dying slowly, and to know that he cannot help

her. The Girl told Leo in those last months of all that she had said

and done among the wives and the babies at the back of the roadside

performances, and Leo was astonished that he knew so little of her who

had been so much to him. When she was dying she told him never to

fight for pence or quarrel with the other singers; and, above all, to

go on with his singing immediately after she was dead.

Then she died, and after he had buried her he went down the road to a

village that he knew, and the people hoped that he would begin

quarrelling with a new singer that had sprung up while he had been

away. But Leo called him "my brother." The new singer was newly

married--and Leo knew it--and when he had finished singing Leo

straightened himself, and sang the "Song of the Girl," which he had

made coming down the road. Every man who was married, or hoped to be

married, whatever his rank or colour, understood that song--even the

bride leaning on the new husband's arm understood it too--and

presently when the song ended, and Leo's heart was bursting in him,

the men sobbed. "That was a sad tale," they said at last, "now make us

laugh." Because Leo had known all the sorrow that a man could know,

including the full knowledge of his own fall who had once been a

God--he, changing his song quickly, made the people laugh till they

could laugh no more. They went away feeling ready for any trouble in

reason, and they gave Leo more peacock feathers and pence than he

could count. Knowing that pence led to quarrels and that peacock

feathers were hateful to the Girl, he put them aside and went away to

look for his brothers, to remind them that they too were Gods.

He found the Bull goring the undergrowth in a ditch, for the Scorpion

had stung him, and he was dying, not slowly, as the Girl had died, but

quickly.

"I know all," the Bull groaned, as Leo came up. "I had forgotten, too,

but I remember now. Go and look at the fields I ploughed. The furrows

are straight. I forgot that I was a God, but I drew the plough

perfectly straight, for all that. And you, brother?"

"I am not at the end of the ploughing," said Leo. "Does Death hurt?"

"No; but dying does," said the Bull, and he died. The cultivator who

then owned him was much annoyed, for there was a field still

unploughed.

It was after this that Leo made the Song of the Bull who had been a

God and forgotten the fact, and he sang it in such a manner that half

the young men in the world conceived that they too might be Gods

without knowing it. A half of that half grew impossibly conceited, and

died early. A half of the remainder strove to be Gods and failed, but

the other half accomplished four times more work than they would have

done under any other delusion.

Later, years later, always wandering up and down, and making the

children of men laugh, he found the Twins sitting on the bank of a

stream waiting for the Fishes to come and carry them away. They were

not in the least afraid, and they told Leo that the woman of the House

had a real baby of her own, and that when that baby grew old enough to

be mischievous he would find a well-educated cat waiting to have its

tail pulled. Then the Fishes came for them, but all that the people

saw was two children drowning in a brook; and though their

foster-mother was very sorry, she hugged her own real baby to her

breast, and was grateful that it was only the foundlings.

Then Leo made the Song of the Twins who had forgotten that they were

Gods, and had played in the dust to amuse a foster-mother. That song

was sung far and wide among the women. It caused them to laugh and cry

and hug their babies closer to their hearts all in one breath; and

some of the women who remembered the Girl said: "Surely that is the

voice of Virgo. Only she could know so much about ourselves."

After those three songs were made, Leo sang them over and over again,

till he was in danger of looking upon them as so many mere words, and

the people who listened grew tired, and there came back to Leo the

old temptation to stop singing once and for all. But he remembered the

Girl's dying words and went on.

One of his listeners interrupted him as he was singing. "Leo," said

he, "I have heard you telling us not to be afraid for the past forty

years. Can you not sing something new now?"

"No," said Leo; "it is the only song that I am allowed to sing. You

must not be afraid of the Houses, even when they kill you."

The man turned to go, wearily, but there came a whistling through the

air, and the arrow of the Archer was seen skimming low above the

earth, pointing to the man's heart. He drew himself up, and stood

still waiting till the arrow struck home.

"I die," he said, quietly. "It is well for me, Leo, that you sang for

forty years."

"Are you afraid?" said Leo, bending over him.

"I am a man, not a God," said the man. "I should have run away but for

your Songs. My work is done, and I die without making a show of my

fear."

"I am very well paid," said Leo to himself. "Now that I see what my

songs are doing, I will sing better ones."

He went down the road, collected his little knot of listeners, and

began the Song of the Girl. In the middle of his singing he felt the

cold touch of the Crab's claw on the apple of his throat. He lifted

his hand, choked, and stopped for an instant.

"Sing on, Leo," said the crowd. "The old song runs as well as ever it

did."

Leo went on steadily till the end, with the cold fear at his heart.

When his song was ended, he felt the grip on his throat tighten. He

was old, he had lost the Girl, he knew that he was losing more than

half his power to sing, he could scarcely walk to the diminishing

crowds that waited for him, and could not see their faces when they

stood about him. None the less he cried angrily to the Crab:

"Why have you come for me _now_?"

"You were born under my care. How can I help coming for you?" said the

Crab, wearily. Every human being whom the Crab killed had asked that

same question.

"But I was just beginning to know what my songs were doing," said Leo.

"Perhaps that is why," said the Crab, and the grip tightened.

"You said you would not come till I had taken the world by the

shoulders," gasped Leo, falling back.

"I always keep my word. You have done that three times, with three

songs. What more do you desire?"

"Let me live to see the world know it," pleaded Leo. "Let me be sure

that my songs----"

"Make men brave?" said the Crab. "Even then there would be one man who

was afraid. The Girl was braver than you are. Come."

Leo was standing close to the restless, insatiable mouth. "I forgot,"

said he, simply. "The Girl was braver. But I am a God too, and I am

not afraid."

"What is that to me?" said the Crab.

Then Leo's speech was taken from him, and he lay still and dumb,

watching Death till he died.

Leo was the last of the Children of the Zodiac. After his death there

sprang up a breed of little mean men, whimpering and flinching and

howling because the Houses killed them and theirs, who wished to live

forever without any pain. They did not increase their lives, but they

increased their own torments miserably, and there were no Children of

the Zodiac to guide them, and the greater part of Leo's songs were

lost.

Only he had carved on the Girl's tombstone the last verse of the Song

of the Girl, which stands at the head of this story.

One of the children of men, coming thousands of years later, rubbed

away the lichen, read the lines, and applied them to a trouble other

than the one Leo meant. Being a man, men believed that he had made the

verses himself; but they belong to Leo, the Child of the Zodiac, and

teach, as he taught, that what comes or does not come, we must not be

afraid.

III

THE BRIDGE BUILDERS

The least that Findlayson, of the Public Works Department, expected

was a C.I.E.; he dreamed of a C.S.I.: indeed his friends told him that

he deserved more. For three years he had endured heat and cold,

disappointment, discomfort, danger, and disease, with responsibility

almost too heavy for one pair of shoulders; and day by day, through

that time, the great Kashi Bridge over the Ganges had grown under his

charge. Now, in less than three months, if all went well, His

Excellency the Viceroy would open the bridge in state, an archbishop

would bless it, the first train-load of soldiers would come over it,

and there would be speeches.

Findlayson, C. E., sat in his trolley on a construction-line that ran

along one of the main revetments--the huge, stone-faced banks that flared

away north and south for three miles on either side of the river--and

permitted himself to think of the end. With its approaches, his work was

one mile and three-quarters in length; a lattice-girder bridge, trussed

with the Findlayson truss, standing on seven-and-twenty brick piers. Each

one of those piers was twenty-four feet in diameter, capped with red Agra

stone and sunk eighty feet below the shifting sand of the Ganges' bed.

Above them ran the railway-line fifteen feet broad; above that, again, a

cart-road of eighteen feet, flanked with footpaths. At either end rose

towers of red brick, loopholed for musketry and pierced for big guns, and

the ramp of the road was being pushed forward to their haunches. The raw

earth-ends were crawling and alive with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny

asses climbing out of the yawning borrow-pit below with sackfuls of stuff;

and the hot afternoon air was filled with the noise of hooves, the rattle

of the drivers' sticks, and the swish and roll-down of the dirt. The river

was very low, and on the dazzling white sand between the three centre

piers stood squat cribs of railway-sleepers, filled within and daubed

without with mud, to support the last of the girders as those were riveted

up. In the little deep water left by the drought, an overhead-crane

travelled to and fro along its spile-pier, jerking sections of iron into

place, snorting and backing and grunting as an elephant grunts in the

timber-yard. Riveters by the hundred swarmed about the lattice side-work

and the iron roof of the railway-line, hung from invisible staging under

the bellies of the girders, clustered round the throats of the piers, and

rode on the overhang of the footpath-stanchions; their fire-pots and the

spurts of flame that answered each hammer-stroke showing no more than pale

yellow in the sun's glare. East and west and north and south the

construction-trains rattled and shrieked up and down the embankments, the

piled trucks of brown and white stone banging behind them till the

side-boards were unpinned, and with a roar and a grumble a few thousand

tons more material were thrown out to hold the river in place.

Findlayson, C. E., turned on his trolley and looked over the face of the

country that he had changed for seven miles around. Looked back on the

humming village of five thousand workmen; up stream and down, along the

vista of spurs and sand; across the river to the far piers, lessening in

the haze; overhead to the guard-towers--and only he knew how strong those

were--and with a sigh of contentment saw that his work was good. There

stood his bridge before him in the sunlight, lacking only a few weeks'

work on the girders of the three middle piers--his bridge, raw and ugly as

original sin, but _pukka_--permanent--to endure when all memory of the

builder, yea, even of the splendid Findlayson truss, had perished.

Practically, the thing was done.

Hitchcock, his assistant, cantered along the line on a little

switch-tailed Kabuli pony, who, through long practice, could have

trotted securely over a trestle, and nodded to his chief.

"All but," said he, with a smile.

"I've been thinking about it," the senior answered, "Not half a bad

job for two men, is it?" "One--and a half. 'Gad, what a Cooper's Hill

cub I was when I came on the works!" Hitchcock felt very old in the

crowded experiences of the past three years, that had taught him power

and responsibility.

"You _were_ rather a colt," said Findlayson. "I wonder how you'll like

going back to office work when this job's over."

"I shall hate it!" said the young man, and as he went on his eye

followed Findlayson's, and he muttered, "Is n't it good?"

"I think we'll go up the service together," Findlayson said to

himself. "You're too good a youngster to waste on another man. Cub

thou wast; assistant thou art. Personal assistant, and at Simla, thou

shalt be, if any credit comes to me out of the business!"

Indeed, the burden of the work had fallen altogether on Findlayson and

his assistant, the young man whom he had chosen because of his rawness

to break to his own needs. There were labour-contractors by the

half-hundred--fitters and riveters, European, borrowed from the

railway workshops, with perhaps twenty white and half-caste

subordinates to direct, under direction, the bevies of workmen--but

none knew better than these two, who trusted each other, how the

underlings were not to be trusted. They had been tried many times in

sudden crises--by slipping of booms, by breaking of tackle, failure

of cranes, and the wrath of the river--but no stress had brought to

light any man among them whom Findlayson and Hitchcock would have

honoured by working as remorselessly as they worked themselves.

Findlayson thought it over from the beginning: the months of office

work destroyed at a blow when the Government of India, at the last

moment, added two feet to the width of the bridge, under the

impression that bridges were cut out of paper, and so brought to ruin

at least half an acre of calculations--and Hitchcock, new to

disappointment, buried his head in his arms and wept; the

heart-breaking delays over the filling of the contracts in England;

the futile correspondences hinting at great wealth of commission if

one, only one, rather doubtful consignment were passed; the war that

followed the refusal; the careful, polite obstruction at the other end

that followed the war, till young Hitchcock, putting one month's leave

to another month, and borrowing ten days from Findlayson, spent his

poor little savings of a year in a wild dash to London, and there, as

his own tongue asserted, and the later consignments proved, put the

Fear of God into a man so great that he feared only Parliament, and

said so till Hitchcock wrought with him across his own dinner-table,

and--he feared the Kashi Bridge and all who spoke in its name. Then

there was the cholera that came in the night to the village by the

bridge-works; and after the cholera smote the small-pox. The fever

they had always with them. Hitchcock had been appointed a magistrate

of the third class with whipping powers, for the better government of

the community, and Findlayson watched him wield his powers

temperately, learning what to overlook and what to look after. It was

a long, long reverie, and it covered storm, sudden freshets, death in

every manner and shape, violent and awful rage against red tape half

frenzying a mind that knows it should be busy on other things;

drought, sanitation, finance; birth, wedding, burial, and riot in the

village of twenty warring castes; argument, expostulation, persuasion,

and the blank despair that a man goes to bed upon, thankful that his

rifle is all in pieces in the gun-case. 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. He was a lascar, a Kharva from

Bulsar, familiar with every port between Rockhampton and London, who

had risen to the rank of serang on the British India boats, but

wearying of routine musters and clean clothes, had thrown up the

service and gone inland, where men of his calibre were sure of

employment. 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. No piece of iron was so big

or so badly placed that Peroo could not devise a tackle to lift it--a

loose-ended, sagging arrangement, rigged with a scandalous amount of

talking, but perfectly equal to the work in hand. It was Peroo who had

saved the girder of Number Seven Pier from destruction when the new

wire rope jammed in the eye of the crane, and the huge plate tilted in

its slings, threatening to slide out sideways. 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 up-stream on a monsoon night

and report on the state of the embankment-facings. He would interrupt

the field-councils of Findlayson and Hitchcock without fear, till his

wonderful English, or his still more wonderful _lingua-franca_, half

Portuguese and half Malay, ran out and he was forced to take string

and show the knots that he would recommend. He controlled his own gang

of tacklemen--mysterious relatives from Kutch Mandvi gathered month by

month and tried to the uttermost. No consideration of family or kin

allowed Peroo to keep weak hands or a giddy head on the pay-roll. "My

honour is the honour of this bridge," he would say to the about-to-be

dismissed. "What do I care for your honour? Go and work on a steamer.

That is all you are fit for."

The little cluster of huts where he and his gang lived centred round

the tattered dwelling of a sea-priest--one who had never set foot on

Black Water, but had been chosen as ghostly counsellor by two

generations of sea-rovers, all unaffected by port missions or those

creeds which are thrust upon sailors by agencies along Thames' bank.

The priest of the lascars had nothing to do with their caste, or

indeed with anything at all. He ate the offerings of his church, and

slept and smoked, and slept again, "for," said Peroo, who had haled

him a thousand miles inland, "he is a very holy man. He never cares

what you eat so long as you do not eat beef, and that is good, because

on land we worship Shiva, we Kharvas; but at sea on the Kumpani's

boats we attend strictly to the orders of the Burra Malum (the first

mate), and on this bridge we observe what Finlinson Sahib says."

Findlayson Sahib had that day given orders to clear the scaffolding

from the guard-tower on the right bank, and Peroo with his mates was

casting loose and lowering down the bamboo poles and planks as swiftly

as ever they had whipped the cargo out of a coaster.

From his trolley he could hear the whistle of the serang's silver pipe

and the creak and clatter of the pulleys. Peroo was standing on the

topmost coping of the tower, clad in the blue dungaree of his

abandoned service, and as Findlayson motioned to him to be careful,

for his was no life to throw away, he gripped the last pole, and,

shading his eyes ship-fashion, answered with the long-drawn wail of

the fo'c'sle lookout: "_Ham dekhta hai_" ("I am looking out").

Findlayson laughed, and then sighed. It was years since he had seen a

steamer, and he was sick for home. As his trolley passed under the

tower, Peroo descended by a rope, ape-fashion, and cried: "It looks

well now, Sahib. Our bridge is all but done. What think you Mother

Gunga will say when the rail runs over?"

"She has said little so far. It was never Mother Gunga that delayed

us."

"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. I tell this to the Chota Sahib"--he meant

Hitchcock--"and he laughs."

"No matter, Peroo. Another year thou wilt be able to build a bridge in

thine own fashion."

The lascar grinned. "Then it will not be in this way--with stonework

sunk under water, as the _Quetta_ was sunk. I like sus-sus-pen-sheen

bridges that fly from bank to bank, with one big step, like a

gang-plank. Then no water can hurt. 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! Jiboon-wallah!'"

"But the Lord Sahib does not call me a jiboon-wallah, Peroo."

"No, Sahib; but he does not come on deck till the work is all

finished. Even the Burra Malum of the _Nerbudda_ said once at

Tuticorin----"

"Bah! Go! I am busy."

"I, also!" said Peroo, with an unshaken countenance. "May I take the

light dinghy now and row along the spurs?"

"To hold them with thy hands? They are, I think, sufficiently heavy."

"Nay, Sahib. It is thus. At sea, on the Black Water, we have room to

be blown up and down without care. Here we have no room at all. Look

you, we have put the river into a dock, and run her between stone

sills."

Findlayson smiled at the "we."

"We have bitted and bridled her. She is not like the sea, that can

beat against a soft beach. She is Mother Gunga--in irons." His voice

fell a little.

"Peroo, thou hast been up and down the world more even than I. Speak

true talk, now. How much dost thou in thy heart believe of Mother

Gunga?"

"All that our priest says. London is London, Sahib. Sydney is Sydney,

and Port Darwin is Port Darwin. Also Mother Gunga is Mother Gunga, and

when I come back to her banks I know this and worship. In London I did

poojah to the big temple by the river for the sake of the God

within.... Yes, I will not take the cushions in the dinghy."

Findlayson mounted his horse and trotted to the shed of a bungalow

that he shared with his assistant. The place had become home to him in

the last three years. He had grilled in the heat, sweated in the

rains, and shivered with fever under the rude thatch roof; the

lime-wash beside the door was covered with rough drawings and formulae,

and the sentry-path trodden in the matting of the veranda showed where

he had walked alone. There is no eight-hour limit to an engineer's

work, and the evening meal with Hitchcock was eaten booted and

spurred: over their cigars they listened to the hum of the village as

the gangs came up from the river-bed and the lights began to twinkle.

"Peroo has gone up the spurs in your dinghy. He's taken a couple of

nephews with him, and he's lolling in the stern like a commodore,"

said Hitchcock.

"That's all right. He's got something on his mind. You 'd think that

ten years in the British India boats would have knocked most of his

religion out of him."

"So it has," said Hitchcock, chuckling. "I over-heard him the other

day in the middle of a most atheistical talk with that fat old _guru_

of theirs. Peroo denied the efficacy of prayer; and wanted the _guru_

to go to sea and watch a gale out with him, and see if he could stop a

monsoon."

"All the same, if you carried off his _guru_ he'd leave us like a

shot. He was yarning away to me about praying to the dome of St.

Paul's when he was in London."

"He told me that the first time he went into the engine-room of a

steamer, when he was a boy, he prayed to the low-pressure cylinder."

"Not half bad a thing to pray to, either. He's propitiating his own

Gods now, and he wants to know what Mother Gunga will think of a

bridge being run across her. Who's there?" A shadow darkened the

doorway, and a telegram was put into Hitchcock's hand.

"She ought to be pretty well used to it by this time. Only a _tar_. It

ought to be Ralli's answer about the new rivets.... Great Heavens!"

Hitchcock jumped to his feet.

"What is it?" said the senior, and took the form. "_That's_ what

Mother Gunga thinks, is it," he said, reading. "Keep cool, young 'un.

We've got all our work cut out for us. Let's see. Muir wires, half an

hour ago: '_Floods on the Ramgunga. Look out._' Well, that gives

us--one, two--nine and a half for the flood to reach Melipur Ghaut and

seven's sixteen and a half to Latodi--say fifteen hours before it

comes down to us."

"Curse that hill-fed sewer of a Ramgunga! Findlayson, this is two

months before anything could have been expected, and the left bank is

littered up with stuff still. Two full months before the time!"

"That's why it happens. I've only known Indian rivers for five and

twenty years, and I don't pretend to understand. Here comes another

_tar_." Findlayson opened the telegram. "Cockran, this time, from the

Ganges Canal: '_Heavy rains here. 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 river-bed. 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. What

have you got on the east bank that needs looking after?"

"Pontoon, one big pontoon with the overhead crane on it. T'other

overhead crane on the mended pontoon, with the cart-road rivets from

Twenty to Twenty-three piers--two construction lines, and a

turning-spur. The pile-work must take its chance," said Hitchcock.

"All right. Roll up everything you can lay hands on. We'll give the

gang fifteen minutes more to eat their grub."

Close to the veranda stood a big night-gong, never used except for

flood, or fire in the village. Hitchcock had called for a fresh horse,

and was off to his side of the bridge when Findlayson took the

cloth-bound stick and smote with the rubbing stroke that brings out

the full thunder of the metal.

Long before the last rumble ceased every night-gong in the village had

taken up the warning. To these were added the hoarse screaming of

conches in the little temples; the throbbing of drums and tom-toms;

and from the European quarters, where the riveters lived, McCartney's

bugle, a weapon of offence on Sundays and festivals, brayed

desperately, calling to "Stables." Engine after engine toiling home

along the spurs after her day's work whistled in answer till the

whistles were answered from the far bank. Then the big gong thundered

thrice for a sign that it was flood and not fire; conch, drum, and

whistle echoed the call, and the village quivered to the sound of bare

feet running upon soft earth. The order in all cases was to stand by

the day's work and wait instructions. The gangs poured by in the dusk;

men stopping to knot a loin-cloth or fasten a sandal; gang-foremen

shouting to their subordinates as they ran or paused by the tool-issue

sheds for bars and mattocks; locomotives creeping down their tracks

wheel-deep in the crowd, till the brown torrent disappeared into the

dusk of the river-bed, raced over the pile-work, swarmed along the

lattices, clustered by the cranes, and stood still, each man in his

place.

Then the troubled beating of the gong carried the order to take up

everything and bear it beyond high-water mark, and the flare-lamps

broke out by the hundred between the webs of dull iron as the riveters

began a night's work racing against the flood that was to come. The

girders of the three centre piers--those that stood on the cribs--were

all but in position. They needed just as many rivets as could be

driven into them, for the flood would assuredly wash out the supports,

and the ironwork would settle down on the caps of stone if they were

not blocked at the ends. A hundred crowbars strained at the sleepers

of the temporary line that fed the unfinished piers. It was heaved up

in lengths, loaded into trucks, and backed up the bank beyond

flood-level by the groaning locomotives. The tool-sheds on the sands

melted away before the attack of shouting armies, and with them went

the stacked ranks of Government stores, iron-bound boxes of rivets,

pliers, cutters, duplicate parts of the rivet-machines, spare pumps

and chains. The big crane would be the last to be shifted, for she was

hoisting all the heavy stuff up to the main structure of 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 aback the dinghy 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 gave

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 channels.

"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. "Hah! 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 water crawling over thirsty

sand.

Foreman after foreman shouted to Findlayson, who had posted himself by

the guard-tower, that his section of the river-bed had been cleaned

out, and when the last voice dropped Findlayson hurried over the

bridge till the iron plating of the permanent way gave place to the

temporary plank-walk over the three centre piers, and there he met

Hitchcock.

"All clear your side?" said Findlayson. The whisper rang in the box of

latticework.

"Yes, and the east channel's filling now. We're utterly out of our

reckoning. When is this thing down on us?"

"There's no saying. She's filling as fast as she can. Look!"

Findlayson pointed to the planks below his feet, where the sand,

burned and defiled by months of work, was beginning to whisper and

fizz.

"What orders?" said Hitchcock.

"Call the roll--count stores--sit on your bunkers--and pray for the

bridge. That's all I can think of. Good night. Don't risk your life

trying to fish out anything that may go down-stream."

"Oh, I'll be as prudent as you are! 'Night. Heavens, how she's

filling! Here's the rain in earnest!" Findlayson picked his way back

to his bank, sweeping the last of McCartney's riveters before him. 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-ropes, and

chains.

A shrill wail ran along the line, growing to a yell, half fear and

half wonder: the face of the river whitened from bank to bank between

the stone facings, and the far-away spurs went out in spouts of foam.

Mother Gunga had come bank-high in haste, and a wall of

chocolate-coloured water was her messenger. 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.

Now she is thus cramped God only knows what she will do!" said Peroo,

watching the furious turmoil round the guard-tower. "Ohe! Fight, then!

Fight hard, for it is thus that a woman wears herself out."

But Mother Gunga would not fight as Peroo desired. After the first

down-stream plunge there came no more walls of water, but the river

lifted herself bodily, as a snake when she drinks in mid-summer,

plucking and fingering along the revetments, and banking up behind the

piers till even Findlayson began to recalculate the strength of his

work.

When day came the village gasped. "Only last night," men said, turning

to each other, "it was as a town in the river-bed! Look now!"

And they looked and wondered afresh at the deep water, the racing

water that licked the throat of the piers. The farther bank was veiled

by rain, into which the bridge ran out and vanished; the spurs

up-stream were marked by no more than eddies and spoutings, and

down-stream the pent river, once freed of her guide-lines, had spread

like a sea to the horizon. Then hurried by, rolling in the water, dead

men and oxen together, with here and there a patch of thatched roof

that melted when it touched a pier.

"Big flood," said Peroo, and Findlayson nodded. It was as big a flood

as he had any wish to watch. His bridge would stand what was upon her

now, but not very much more; and if by any of a thousand chances there

happened to be a weakness in the embankments, Mother Gunga would carry

his honour to the sea with the other raffle. Worst of all, there was

nothing to do except to sit still; and Findlayson sat still under his

macintosh till his helmet became pulp on his head, and his boots were

over ankle in mire. 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. Once a dripping servant

brought him food, but he could not eat; and once he thought that he

heard a faint toot from a locomotive across the river, and then he

smiled. The bridge's failure would hurt his assistant not a little,

but Hitchcock was a young man with his big work yet to do. For himself

the crash meant everything--everything that made a hard life worth the

living. They would say, the men of his own profession--he remembered

the half-pitying things that he himself had said when Lockhart's big

water-works burst and broke down in brick heaps and sludge, and

Lockhart's spirit broke in him and he died. He remembered what he

himself had said when the Sumao Bridge went out in the big cyclone by

the sea; and most he remembered poor Hartopp's face three weeks

later, when the shame had marked it. His bridge was twice the size of

Hartopp's, and it carried the Findlayson truss as well as the new

pier-shoe--the Findlayson bolted shoe. There were no excuses in his

service. Government might listen, perhaps, but his own kind would

judge him by his bridge, as that stood or fell. He went over it in his

head, plate by plate, span by span, brick by brick, pier by pier,

remembering, comparing, estimating, and recalculating, lest there

should be any mistake; and through the long hours and through the

nights of formulae that danced and wheeled before him, a cold fear

would come to pinch his heart. His side of the sum was beyond

question; but what man knew Mother Gunga's arithmetic? Even as he was

making all sure by the multiplication-table, the river might be

scooping pot-holes to the very bottom of any one of those eighty-foot

piers that carried his reputation. Again a servant came to him with

food, but his mouth was dry, and he could only drink and return to the

decimals in his brain. And the river was still rising. Peroo, in a mat

shelter-coat, crouched at his feet, watching now his face and now the

face of the river, but saying nothing.

At last the lascar rose and floundered through the mud toward the

village, but he was careful to leave an ally to watch the boats.

Presently he returned, most irreverently driving before him the

priest of his creed--a fat old man with a gray beard that whipped the

wind with the wet cloth that blew over his shoulder. Never was seen so

lamentable a _guru_.

"What good are offerings and little kerosene lamps and dry grain,"

shouted Peroo, "if squatting in the mud is all that thou canst do?

Thou hast dealt long with the Gods when they were contented and

well-wishing. Now they are angry. Speak to them!"

"What is a man against the wrath of Gods?" whined the priest, cowering

as the wind took him. "Let me go to the temple, and I will pray

there."

"Son of a pig, pray _here_! Is there no return for salt fish and curry

powder and dried onions? Call aloud! Tell Mother Gunga we have had

enough. Bid her be still for the night. I cannot pray, but I have

served in the Kumpani's boats, and when men did not obey my orders

I----" A flourish of the wire-rope colt rounded the sentence, and the

priest, breaking from his disciple, fled to the village.

"Fat pig!" said Peroo. "After all that we have done for him! When the

flood is down I will see to it that we get a new _guru_. Finlinson

Sahib, it darkens for night now, and since yesterday nothing has been

eaten. Be wise, Sahib. No man can endure watching and great thinking

on an empty belly. Lie down, Sahib. The river will do what the river

will do."

"The bridge is mine; I cannot leave it."

"Wilt thou hold it up with thy hands, then?" said Peroo, laughing. "I

was troubled for my boats and sheers _before_ the flood came. Now we

are in the hands of the Gods. The Sahib will not eat and lie down?

Take these, then. They are meat and good toddy together, and they kill

all weariness, besides the fever that follows the rain. I have eaten

nothing else to-day at all."

He took a small tin tobacco-box from his sodden waist-belt and thrust

it into Findlayson's hand, saying, "Nay, do not be afraid. It is no

more than opium--clean Malwa opium!"

Findlayson shook two or three of the dark-brown pellets into his hand,

and hardly knowing what he did, swallowed them. The stuff was at least

a good guard against fever--the fever that was creeping upon him out

of the wet mud--and he had seen what Peroo could do in the stewing

mists of autumn on the strength of a dose from the tin box.

Peroo nodded with bright eyes. "In a little--in a little the Sahib

will find that he thinks well again. I too will----" He dived into his

treasure-box, resettled the rain-coat over his head, and squatted down

to watch the boats. It was too dark now to see beyond the first pier,

and the night seemed to have given the river new strength. Findlayson

stood with his chin on his chest, thinking. There was one point about

one of the piers--the Seventh--that that he had not fully settled in

his mind. The figures would not shape themselves to the eye except one

by one and at enormous intervals of time. There was a sound, rich and

mellow in his ears, like the deepest note of a double-bass--an

entrancing sound upon which he pondered for several hours, as it

seemed. 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 saw the ropes running from boat to boat in straight lines and

angles--each rope a line of white fire. But there was one rope which

was the master-rope. He could see that rope. If he could pull it once,

it was absolutely and mathematically certain that the disordered fleet

would reassemble itself in the backwater behind the guard-tower. But

why, he wondered, was Peroo clinging so desperately to his waist as he

hastened down the bank? It was necessary to put the lascar aside,

gently and slowly, because it was necessary to save the boats, and,

further, to demonstrate the extreme ease of the problem that looked so

difficult. And then--but it was of no conceivable importance--a wire

rope raced through his hand burning it, the high bank disappeared, and

with it all the slowly dispersing factors of the problem. He was

sitting in the rainy darkness--sitting in a boat that spun like a top,

and Peroo was standing over him.

"I had forgotten," said the lascar slowly, "that to those fasting and

unused the opium is worse than any wine. Those who die in Gunga go to

the Gods. Still, I have no desire to present myself before such great

ones. Can the Sahib swim?"

"What need? He can fly--fly as swiftly as the wind," was the thick

answer.

"He is mad!" muttered Peroo under his breath. "And he threw me aside

like a bundle of dung-cakes. Well, he will not know his death. The

boat cannot live an hour here even if she strike nothing. It is not

good to look at death with a clear eye."

He refreshed himself again from the tin box, squatted down in the bows

of the reeling, pegged, and stitched craft staring through the mist at

the nothing that was there. A warm drowsiness crept over Findlayson,

the Chief Engineer, whose duty was with his bridge. The heavy

raindrops struck him with a thousand tingling little thrills, and the

weight of all time since time was made hung heavy on his eyelids. He

thought and perceived that he was perfectly secure, for the water was

so solid that a man could surely step out upon it, and standing still

with his legs apart to keep his balance--this was the most important

point--would be borne with great and easy speed to the shore. But yet

a better plan came to him. It needed only an exertion of will for the

soul to hurl the body ashore as wind drives paper; to waft it

kite-fashion to the bank. Thereafter--the boat spun dizzily--suppose

the high wind got under the freed body? Would it tower up like a kite

and pitch headlong on the far-away sands, or would it duck about

beyond control through all eternity? Findlayson 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 on shore

already. Why does n'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, a clump of

swaying, creaking bamboos, and a gray, gnarled peepul over-shadowing a

Hindoo shrine, from whose dome floated a tattered red flag. The holy

man whose summer resting-place it was had long since abandoned it, and

the weather had broken the red-daubed image of his God. The two men

stumbled, heavy-limbed and heavy-eyed, over the ashes of a brick-set

cooking-place, and dropped down under the shelter of the branches,

while the rain and river roared together.

The stumps of the indigo crackled, and there was a smell of cattle, as

a huge and dripping Brahminee Bull shouldered his way under the tree.

The flashes revealed the trident mark of Shiva on his flank, the

insolence of head and hump, the luminous stag-like eyes, the brow

crowned with a wreath of sodden marigold blooms and the silky dewlap

that night swept the ground. 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!"

"Ah, true! The Gods surely--the Gods." Findlayson smiled as his head

fell forward on his chest. Peroo was eminently right. After the Flood,

who should be alive in the land except the Gods that made it--the Gods

to whom his village prayed nightly--the Gods who were in all men's

mouths and about all men's ways? He could not raise his head or stir a

finger for the trance that held him, and Peroo was smiling vacantly at

the lightning.

The Bull paused by the shrine, his head lowered to the damp earth. A

green Parrot in the branches preened his wet wings and screamed

against the thunder as the circle under the tree filled with the

shifting shadows of beasts. There was a Black-buck at the Bull's

heels--such a buck as Findlayson in his far-away life upon earth might

have seen in dreams--a buck with a royal head, ebon back, silver

belly, and gleaming straight horns. Beside him, her head bowed to the

ground, the green eyes burning under the heavy brows, with restless

tail switching the dead grass, paced a Tigress, full-bellied and

deep-jowled.

The Bull crouched beside the shrine and there leaped from the darkness

a monstrous gray Ape, who seated himself man-wise in the place of the

fallen image, and the rain spilled like jewels from the hair of his

neck and shoulders.

Other shadows came and went behind the circle, among them a drunken

Man flourishing staff and drinking-bottle. Then a hoarse bellow broke

out from near the ground. "The flood lessens even now," it cried.

"Hour by hour the water falls, and their bridge still stands!"

"My bridge," said Findlayson to himself. "That must be very old work

now. What have the Gods to do with my bridge?"

His eyes rolled in the darkness following the roar. A Crocodile--the

blunt-nosed, ford-haunting Mugger of the Ganges--draggled herself

before the beasts, lashing furiously to right and left with her tail.

"They have made it too strong for me. In all this night I have only

torn away a handful of planks. The walls stand! The towers stand! They

have chained my flood, and my river is not free any more. Heavenly

Ones, take this yoke away! Give me clear water between bank and bank!

It is I, Mother Gunga, that speak. The Justice of the Gods! Deal me

the Justice of the Gods!"

"What said I?" whispered Peroo. "This is in truth a Punchayet of the

Gods. Now we know that all the world is dead, save you and I, Sahib."

The Parrot screamed and fluttered again, and the Tigress, her ears

flat to her head, snarled wickedly.

Somewhere in the shadow a great trunk and gleaming tusks swayed to

and fro, and a low gurgle broke the silence that followed on the

snarl.

"We be here," said a deep voice, "the Great Ones. One only and very

many. Shiv, my father, is here, with Indra. Kali has spoken already.

Hanuman listens also."

"Kashi is without her Kotwal to-night," shouted the Man with the

drinking-bottle, flinging his staff to the ground, while the island

rang to the baying of hounds. "Give her the Justice of the Gods."

"Ye were still when they polluted my waters," the great Crocodile

bellowed. "Ye made no sign when my river was trapped between the

walls. I had no help save my own strength, and that failed--the

strength of Mother Gunga failed--before their guard-towers. What could

I do? I have done everything. Finish now, Heavenly Ones!"

"I brought the death; I rode the spotted sickness from hut to hut of

their workmen, and yet they would not cease." A nose-slitten,

hide-worn Ass, lame, scissor-legged, and galled, limped forward. "I

cast the death at them out of my nostrils, but they would not cease."

Peroo would have moved, but the opium lay heavy upon him.

"Bah!" he said, spitting. "Here is Sitala herself; Mata--the

small-pox. Has the Sahib a handkerchief to put over his face?"

"Small help! They fed me the corpses for a month, and I flung them

out on my sand-bars, but their work went forward! Demons they are, and

so sons of demons! And ye left Mother Gunga alone for their

fire-carriage to make a mock of. The Justice of the Gods on the

bridge-builders!"

The Bull turned the cud in his mouth and answered slowly, "If the

Justice of the Gods caught all who made a mock of holy things, there

would be many dark altars in the land, mother."

"But this goes beyond a mock," said the Tigress, darting forward a

griping paw. "Thou knowest, Shiv, and ye, too, Heavenly Ones; ye know

that they have defiled Gunga. Surely they must come to the Destroyer.

Let Indra judge."

The Buck made no movement as he answered, "How long has this evil

been?"

"Three years, as men count years," said the Mugger, close pressed to

the earth.

"Does Mother Gunga die, then, in a year, that she is so anxious to see

vengeance now? The deep sea was where she runs but yesterday, and

to-morrow the sea shall cover her again as the Gods count that which

men call time. Can any say that this their bridge endures till

to-morrow?" said the Buck.

There was a long hush, and in the clearing of the storm the full moon

stood up above the dripping trees.

"Judge ye, then," said the River sullenly. "I have spoken my shame.

The flood falls still. I can do no more."

"For my own part"--it was the voice of the great Ape seated within the

shrine--"it pleases me well to watch these men, remembering that I

also builded no small bridge in the world's youth."

"They say, too," snarled the Tiger, "that these men came of the wreck

of thy armies, Hanuman, and therefore thou hast aided----"

"They toil as my armies toiled in Lanka, and they believe that their

toil endures. 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. "Mother Gunga talks good talk. I told that to the

padre-sahib who preached on the _Mombassa_, and he asked the Burra

Malum to put me in irons for a great rudeness."

"Surely they make these things to please their Gods," said the Bull

again.

"Not altogether," the Elephant rolled forth. "It is for the profit of

my mahajuns--my fat money-lenders that worship me at each new year,

when they draw my image at the head of the account-books. I, looking

over their shoulders by lamplight, see that the names in the books

are those of men in far places--for all the towns are drawn together

by the fire-carriage, and the money comes and goes swiftly, and the

account-books grow as fat as--myself. And I, who am Ganesh of Good

Luck, I bless my peoples."

"They have changed the face of the land--which is my land. They have

killed and made new towns on my banks," said the Mugger.

"It is but the shifting of a little dirt. Let the dirt dig in the dirt

if it pleases the dirt," answered the Elephant.

"But afterward?" said the Tiger. "Afterward they will see that Mother

Gunga can avenge no insult, and they fall away from her first, and

later from us all, one by one. In the end, Ganesh, we are left with

naked altars."

The drunken Man staggered to his feet, and hiccupped vehemently in the

face of the assembled Gods.

"Kali lies. My sister lies. Also this my stick is the Kotwal of Kashi,

and he keeps tally of my pilgrims. When the time comes to worship

Bhairon--and it is always time--the fire-carriages move one by one,

and each bears a thousand pilgrims. They do not come afoot any more,

but rolling upon wheels, and my honour is increased."

"Gunna, I have seen thy bed at Pryag black with the pilgrims," said

the Ape, leaning forward "and but for the fire-carriage they would

have come slowly and in fewer numbers. Remember."

"They come to me always," Bhairon went on thickly. "By day and night

they pray to me, all the Common People in the fields and the roads.

Who is like Bhairon to-day? What talk is this of changing faiths? Is

my staff Kotwal of Kashi for nothing? He keeps the tally, and he says

that never were so many altars as to-day, and the fire-carriage serves

them well. Bhairon am I--Bhairon of the Common People, and the

chiefest of the Heavenly Ones to-day. Also my staff says----"

"Peace, thou!" lowed the Bull. "The worship of the schools is mine,

and they talk very wisely, asking whether I be one or many, as is the

delight of my people, and ye know what I am. Kali, my wife, thou

knowest also."

"Yea, I know," said the Tigress, with lowered head.

"Greater am I than Gunga also. For ye know who moved the minds of men

that they should count Gunga holy among the rivers. Who die in that

water--ye know how men say--come to us without punishment, and Gunga

knows that the fire-carriage has borne to her scores upon scores of

such anxious ones; and Kali knows that she has held her chiefest

festivals among the pilgrimages that are fed by the fire-carriage. Who

smote at Pooree, under the Image there, her thousands in a day and a

night, and bound the sickness to the wheels of the fire-carriages, so

that it ran from one end of the land to the other? Who but Kali?

Before the fire-carriage came it was a heavy toil. The fire-carriages

have served thee well, Mother of Death. But I speak for mine own

altars, who am not Bhairon of the Common Folk, but Shiv. Men go to and

fro, making words and telling talk of strange Gods, and I listen.

Faith follows faith among my people in the schools, and I have no

anger; for when the words are said, and the new talk is ended, to Shiv

men return at the last."

"True. It is true," murmured Hanuman. "To Shiv and to the others,

mother, they return. I creep from temple to temple in the North, where

they worship one God and His Prophet; and presently my image is alone

within their shrines."

"Small thanks," said the Buck, turning his head slowly. "I am that One

and His Prophet also."

"Even so, father," said Hanuman. "And to the South I go who am the

oldest of the Gods as men know the Gods, and presently I touch the

shrines of the new faith and the Woman whom we know is hewn

twelve-armed, and still they call her Mary."

"Small thanks, brother," said the Tigress. "I am that Woman."

"Even so, sister; and I go West among the fire-carriages, and stand

before the bridge-builder in many shapes, and because of me they

change their faiths and are very wise. Ho! ho! I am the builder of

bridges, indeed--bridges between this and that, and each bridge leads

surely to Us in the end. Be content, Gunga. Neither these men nor

those that follow them mock thee at all."

"Am I alone, then, Heavenly Ones? Shall I smooth out my flood lest

unhappily I bear away their walls? Will Indra dry my springs in the

hills and make me crawl humbly between their wharfs? Shall I bury me

in the sand ere I offend?"

"And all for the sake of a little iron bar with the fire-carriage

atop. Truly, Mother Gunga is always young!" said Ganesh the Elephant.

"A child had not spoken more foolishly. Let the dirt dig in the dirt

ere it return to the dirt. I know only that my people grow rich and

praise me. Shiv has said that the men of the schools do not forget;

Bhairon is content for his crowd of the Common People; and Hanuman

laughs."

"Surely I laugh," said the Ape. "My altars are few beside those of

Ganesh or Bhairon, but the fire-carriages bring me new worshippers

from beyond the Black Water--the men who believe that their God is

toil. I run before them beckoning, and they follow Hanuman."

"Give them the toil that they desire, then," said the River. "Make a

bar across my flood and throw the water back upon the bridge. Once

thou wast strong in Lanka, Hanuman. Stoop and lift my bed."

"Who gives life can take life." The Ape scratched in the mud with a

long forefinger. "And yet, who would profit by the killing? Very many

would die."

There came up from the water a snatch of a love-song such as the boys

sing when they watch their cattle in the noon heats of late spring.

The Parrot screamed joyously, sidling along his branch with lowered

head as the song grew louder, and in a patch of clear moonlight stood

revealed the young herd, the darling of the Gopis, the idol of

dreaming maids and of mothers ere their children are born--Krishna the

Well-beloved. He stooped to knot up his long, wet hair, and the parrot

fluttered to his shoulder.

"Fleeting and singing, and singing and fleeting," hiccupped Bhairon.

"Those make thee late for the council, brother."

"And then?" said Krishna, with a laugh, throwing back his head. "Ye

can do little without me or Karma here." He fondled the Parrot's

plumage and laughed again. "What is this sitting and talking together?

I heard Mother Gunga roaring in the dark, and so came quickly from a

hut where I lay warm. And what have ye done to Karma, that he is so

wet and silent? And what does Mother Gunga here? Are the heavens full

that ye must come paddling in the mud beast-wise? Karma, what do they

do?"

"Gunga has prayed for a vengeance on the bridge-builders, and Kali is

with her. Now she bids Hanuman whelm the bridge, that her honour may

be made great," cried the Parrot. "I waited here, knowing that thou

wouldst come O my master!"

"And the Heavenly Ones said nothing? Did Gunga and the Mother of

Sorrows out-talk them? Did none speak for my people?"

"Nay," said Ganesh, moving uneasily from foot to foot; "I said it was

but dirt at play, and why should we stamp it flat?"

"I was content to let them toil--well content," said Hanuman.

"What had I to do with Gunga's anger?" said the Bull.

"I am Bhairon of the Common Folk, and this my staff is Kotwal of all

Kashi. I spoke for the Common People."

"Thou?" The young God's eyes sparkled.

"Am I not the first of the Gods in their mouths to-day?" returned

Bhairon, unabashed. "For the sake of the Common People I said--very

many wise things which I have now forgotten--but this my staff----"

Krishna turned impatiently, saw the Mugger at his feet, and kneeling,

slipped an arm round the cold neck. "Mother," he said gently, "get

thee to thy flood again. The matter is not for thee. What harm shall

thy honour take of this live dirt? Thou hast given them their fields

new year after year, and by thy flood they are made strong. They come

all to thee at the last. What need to slay them now? Have pity,

mother, for a little--and it is only for a little."

"If it be only for a little----" the slow beast began.

"Are they Gods, then?" Krishna returned with a laugh, his eyes looking

into the dull eyes of the River. "Be certain that it is only for a

little. The Heavenly Ones have heard thee, and presently justice will

be done. Go, now, mother, to the flood again. Men and cattle are thick

on the waters--the banks fall--the villages melt because of thee."

"But the bridge--the bridge stands." The Mugger turned grunting into

the undergrowth as Krishna rose.

"It is ended," said the Tigress, viciously. "There is no more justice

from the Heavenly Ones. Ye have made shame and sport of Gunga, who

asked no more than a few score lives."

"Of _my_ people--who lie under the leaf-roofs of the village

yonder--of the young girls, and the young men who sing to them," said

Krishna. "And when all is done, what profit? To-morrow sees them at

work. Ay, if ye swept the bridge out from end to end they would begin

anew. Hear me! Bhairon is drunk always. Hanuman mocks his people with

new riddles."

"Nay, but they are very old ones," the Ape said, laughing.

"Shiv hears the talk of the schools and the dreams of the holy men;

Ganesh thinks only of his fat traders; but I--I live with these my

people, asking for no gifts, and so receiving them hourly."

"And very tender art thou of thy people," said the Tigress.

"They are my own. The old women dream of me, turning in their sleep;

the maids look and listen for me when they go to fill their lotahs by

the river. I walk by the young men waiting without the gates at dusk,

and I call over my shoulder to the white-beards. Ye know, Heavenly

Ones, that I alone of us all walk upon the earth continually, and have

no pleasure in our heavens so long as a green blade springs here, or

there are two voices at twilight in the standing crops. Wise are ye,

but ye live far off, forgetting whence ye came. So do I not forget.

And the fire-carriage feeds your shrines, ye say? And the

fire-carriages bring a thousand pilgrimages where but ten came in the

old years? True. That is true to-day."

"But to-morrow they are dead, brother," said Ganesh.

"Peace!" said the Bull, as Hanuman leaned forward again. "And

to-morrow, beloved--what of to-morrow?"

"This only. A new word creeping from mouth to mouth among the Common

Folk--a word that neither man nor God can lay hold of--an evil word--a

little lazy word among the Common Folk, saying (and none know who set

that word afoot) that they weary of ye, Heavenly Ones."

The Gods laughed together softly. "And then, beloved?" they said.

"And to cover that weariness they, my people, will bring to thee,

Shiv, and to thee, Ganesh, at first greater offerings and a louder

noise of worship. But the word has gone abroad, and, after, they will

pay fewer dues to your fat Brahmins. Next they will forget your

altars, but so slowly that no man can say how his forgetfulness

began."

"I knew--I knew! I spoke this also, but they would not hear," said the

Tigress. "We should have slain--we should have slain!"

"It is too late now. Ye should have slain at the beginning, when the

men from across the water had taught our folk nothing. Now my people

see their work, and go away thinking. They do not think of the

Heavenly Ones altogether. They think of the fire-carriage and the

other things that the bridge-builders have done, and when your priests

thrust forward hands asking alms, they give unwillingly a little. That

is the beginning, among one or two, or five or ten--for I, moving

among my people, know what is in their hearts."

"And the end, Jester of the Gods? What shall the end be?" said Ganesh.

"The end shall be as it was in the beginning, O slothful son of Shiv!

The flame shall die upon the altars and the prayer upon the tongue

till ye become little Gods again--Gods of the jungle--names that the

hunters of rats and noosers of dogs whisper in the thicket and among

the caves--rag-Gods, pot Godlings of the tree, and the village-mark,

as ye were at the beginning. That is the end, Ganesh, for thee, and

for Bhairon--Bhairon of the Common People."

"It is very far away," grunted Bhairon. "Also, it is a lie."

"Many women have kissed Krishna. They told him this to cheer their own

hearts when the gray hairs came, and he has told us the tale," said

the Bull, below his breath.

"Their Gods came, and we changed them. I took the woman and made her

twelve-armed. So shall we twist all their Gods," said Hanuman.

"Their Gods! This is no question of their Gods--one or three--man or

woman. The matter is with the people. _They_ move, and not the Gods of

the bridge-builders," said Krishna.

"So be it. I have made a man worship the fire-carriage as it stood

still breathing smoke, and he knew not that he worshipped me," said

Hanuman the Ape. "They will only change a little the names of their

Gods. I shall lead the builders of the bridges as of old; Shiv shall

be worshipped in the schools by such as doubt and despise their

fellows; Ganesh shall have his mahajuns, and Bhairon the

donkey-drivers, the pilgrims, and the sellers of toys. Beloved, they

will do no more than change the names, and that we have seen a

thousand times."

"Surely they will do no more than change the names," echoed Ganesh:

but there was an uneasy movement among the Gods.

"They will change more than the names. Me alone they cannot kill, so

long as maiden and man meet together or the spring follows the winter

rains. Heavenly Ones, not for nothing have I walked upon the earth. My

people know not now what they know; but I, who live with them, I read

their hearts. Great Kings, the beginning of the end is born already.

The fire-carriages shout the names of new Gods that are _not_ the old

under new names. Drink now and eat greatly! Bathe your faces in the

smoke of the altars before they grow cold! Take dues and listen to the

cymbals and the drums, Heavenly Ones, while yet there are flowers and

songs. As men count time the end is far off; but as we who know reckon

it is to-day. I have spoken."

The young God ceased, and his brethren looked at each other long in

silence.

"This I have not heard before," Peroo whispered in his companion's

ear. "And yet sometimes, when I oiled the brasses in the engine-room

of the _Goorkha_, I have wondered if our priests were so wise--so

wise. The day is coming, Sahib. They will be gone by the morning."

A yellow light broadened in the sky, and the tone of the river changed

as the darkness withdrew.

Suddenly the Elephant trumpeted aloud as though men had goaded him.

"Let Indra judge. Father of all, speak thou! What of the things we

have heard? Has Krishna lied indeed? Or----"

"Ye know," said the Buck, rising to his feet. "Ye know the Riddle of

the Gods. When Brahm ceases to dream the Heavens and the Hells and

Earth disappear. Be content. Brahm dreams still. The dreams come and

go, and the nature of the dreams changes, but still Brahm dreams.

Krishna has walked too long upon earth, and yet I love him the more

for the tale he has told. The Gods change, beloved--all save One!"

"Ay, all save one that makes love in the hearts of men," said Krishna,

knotting his girdle. "It is but a little time to wait, and ye shall

know if I lie."

"Truly it is but a little time, as thou sayest, and we shall know. Get

thee to thy huts again, beloved, and make sport for the young things,

for still Brahm dreams. Go, my children! Brahm dreams--and till He

wakes the Gods die not."

* * * * *

"Whither went they?" said the Lascar, awe-struck, shivering a little

with the cold.

"God knows!" said Findlayson. The river and the island lay in full

daylight now, and there was never mark of hoof or pug on the wet earth

under the peepul. Only a parrot screamed in the branches, bringing

down showers of water-drops as he fluttered his wings.

"Up! We are cramped with cold! Has the opium died out? Canst thou

move, Sahib?"

Findlayson staggered to his feet and shook himself. His head swam and

ached, but the work of the opium was over, and, as he sluiced his

forehead in a pool, the Chief Engineer of the Kashi Bridge was

wondering how he had managed to fall upon the island, what chances the

day offered of return, and, above all, how his work stood.

"Peroo, I have forgotten much. I was under the guard-tower watching

the river; and then--Did the flood sweep us away?"

"No. The boats broke loose, Sahib, and" (if the Sahib had forgotten

about the opium, decidedly Peroo would not remind him) "in striving to

retie them, so it seemed to me--but it was dark--a rope caught the

Sahib and threw him upon a boat. Considering that we two, with

Hitchcock Sahib, built, as it were, that bridge, I came also upon the

boat, which came riding on horseback, as it were, on the nose of this

island, and so, splitting, cast us ashore. I made a great cry when the

boat left the wharf, and without doubt Hitchcock Sahib will come for

us. As for the bridge, so many have died in the building that it

cannot fall."

A fierce sun, that drew out all the smell of the sodden land, had

followed the storm, and in that clear light there was no room for a

man to think of dreams of the dark. Findlayson stared up-stream,

across the blaze of moving water, till his eyes ached. There was no

sign of any bank to the Ganges, much less of a bridge-line.

"We came down far," he said. "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 fever upon me." Findlayson was still looking uneasily

across the water. "It seemed that the island was full of beasts and

men talking, but I do not remember. A boat could live in this water

now, I think."

"Oho! Then it _is_ true. 'When Brahm ceases to dream, the Gods die.'

Now I know, indeed, what he meant. Once, too, the _guru_ said as much

to me; but then I did not understand. Now I am wise."

"What?" said Findlayson over his shoulder.

Peroo went on as if he were talking to himself. "Six--seven--ten

monsoons since, I was watch on the fo'c'sle of the _Rewah_--the

Kumpani's big boat--and there was a big _tufan_, green and black water

beating; and I held fast to the life-lines, choking under the waters.

Then I thought of the Gods--of Those whom we saw to-night"--he stared

curiously at Findlayson's back, but the white man was looking across

the flood. "Yes, I say of Those whom we saw this night past, and I

called upon Them to protect me. And while I prayed, still keeping my

lookout, a big wave came and threw me forward upon the ring of the

great black bow-anchor, and the _Rewah_ rose high and high, leaning

toward the left-hand side, and the water drew away from beneath her

nose, and I lay upon my belly, holding the ring, and looking down into

those great deeps. Then I thought, even in the face of death, if I

lose hold I die, and for me neither the _Rewah_ nor my place by the

galley where the rice is cooked, nor Bombay, nor Calcutta, nor even

London, will be any more for me. 'How shall I be sure,' I said, 'that

the Gods to whom I pray will abide at all?' This I thought, and the

_Rewah_ dropped her nose as a hammer falls, and all the sea came in

and slid me backward along the fo'c'sle and over the break of the

fo'c'sle, and I very badly bruised my shin against the donkey-engine:

but I did not die, and I have seen the Gods. They are good for live

men, but for the dead----They have spoken Themselves. Therefore, when

I come to the village I will beat the _guru_ for talking riddles which

are no riddles. When Brahm ceases to dream, the Gods go."

"Look up-stream. The light blinds. Is there smoke yonder?"

Peroo shaded his eyes with his hands. "He is a wise man and quick.

Hitchcock Sahib would not trust a rowboat. He has borrowed the Rao

Sahib's steam-launch, and comes to look for us. I have always said

that there should have been a steam-launch on the bridge-works for

us."

The territory of the Rao of Baraon lay within ten miles of the bridge;

and Findlayson and Hitchcock had spent a fair portion of their scanty

leisure in playing billiards and shooting Black-buck with the young

man. He had been bear-led by an English tutor of sporting tastes for

some five or six years, and was now royally wasting the revenues

accumulated during his minority by the Indian Government. His

steam-launch, with its silver-plated rails, striped silk awning, and

mahogany decks, was a new toy which Findlayson had found horribly in

the way when the Rao came to look at the bridge-works.

"It's great luck," murmured Findlayson, but he was none the less

afraid, wondering what news might be of the bridge.

The gaudy blue and white funnel came down-stream swiftly. They could

see Hitchcock in the bows, with a pair of opera-glasses, and his face

was unusually white. Then Peroo hailed, and the launch made for the

tail of the island. The Rao Sahib, in tweed shooting-suit and a

seven-hued turban, waved his royal hand, and Hitchcock shouted. But he

need have asked no questions, for Findlayson's first demand was for

his bridge.

"All serene! 'Gad, I never expected to see you again, Findlayson.

You're seven koss down-stream. Yes, there's not a stone shifted

anywhere; but how are you? I borrowed the Rao Sahib's launch, and he

was good enough to come along. Jump in."

"Ah, Finlinson, you are very well, eh? That was most unprecedented

calamity last night, eh? My royal palace, too, it leaks like the

devil, and the crops will also be short all about my country. Now you

shall back her out, Hitchcock. I--I do not understand steam-engines.

You are wet? You are cold Finlinson? I have some things to eat here,

and you will take a good drink."

"I'm immensely grateful, Rao Sahib. I believe you've saved my life.

How did Hitchcock----"

"Oho! His hair was upon end. He rode to me in the middle of the night and

woke me up in the arms of Morphus. I was most truly concerned, Finlinson,

so I came too. My head-priest he is very angry just now. We will go quick,

Mister Hitchcock. I am due to attend at twelve-forty-five in the state

temple, where we sanctify some new idol. If not so I would have asked you

to spend the day with me. They are dam-bore, these religious ceremonies,

Finlinson, eh?"

Peroo, well known to the crew, had possessed himself of the wheel, and

was taking the launch craftily up-stream. But while he steered he was,

in his mind, handling two feet of partially untwisted wire-rope; and

the back upon which he beat was the back of his _guru_.

IV

THE MIRACLES

I sent a message to my dear--

A thousand leagues and more to her--

The dumb sea-levels thrilled to hear,

And lost Atlantis bore to her.

Behind my message hard I came,

And nigh had found a grave for me;

But that I launched of steel and flame

Did war against the wave for me.

Uprose the deep, by gale on gale,

To bid me change my mind again--

He broke his teeth along my rail,

And, roaring, swung behind again.

I stayed the sun at noon to tell

My way across the waste of it;

I read the storm before it fell

And made the better haste of it.

Afar, I hailed the land at night--

The towers I built had heard of me--

And, ere my rocket reached its height,

Had flashed my Love the word of me.

Earth gave her chosen men of strength

(They lived and strove and died for me)

To drive my road a nation's length,

And toss the miles aside for me.

I snatched their toil to serve my needs--

Too slow their fleetest flew for me--

I tired twenty smoking steeds,

And bade them bait a new for me.

I sent the lightnings forth to see

Where hour by hour she waited me.

Among ten million one was she,

And surely all men hated me!

Dawn ran to meet us at my goal--

Ah, day no tongue shall tell again!--

And little folk of little soul

Rose up to buy and sell again!

V

OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS

1897

(_Canadian Preferential Tariff, 1897_)

A Nation spoke to a Nation.

A Queen sent word to a Throne:

"Daughter am I in my mother's house

But mistress in my own.

The gates are mine to open,

As the gates are mine to close,

And I set my house in order,"

Said our Lady of the Snows.

"Neither with laughter nor weeping,

Fear or the child's amaze--

Soberly under the White Man's law

My white men go their ways.

Not for the Gentiles' clamour--

Insult or threat of blows--

Bow we the knee to Baal,"

Said our Lady of the Snows.

"My speech is clean and single,

I talk of common things--

Words of the wharf and the market-place

And the ware the merchant brings:

Favour to those I favour,

But a stumbling-block to my foes.

Many there be that hate us,"

Said our Lady of the Snows.

"I called my chiefs to council

In the din of a troubled year;

For the sake of a sign ye would not see,

And a word ye would not hear.

This is our message and answer;

This is the path we chose:

For we be also a people,"

Said our Lady of the Snows.

"Carry the word to my sisters--

To the Queens of the East and the South

I have proven faith in the Heritage

By more than the word of the mouth.

They that are wise may follow

Ere the world's war-trumpet blows,

But I--I am first in the battle,"

Said our Lady of the Snows.

_A Nation spoke to a Nation,

A Throne sent word to a Throne:

"Daughter am I in my mother's house,

But mistress in my own.

The gates are mine to open,

As the gates are mine to close,

And I abide by my Mother's House,"

Said our Lady of the Snows._

VI

THE SONG OF THE WOMEN

(_Lady Dufferin's Fund for medical Aid to the Women of India_).

How shall she know the worship we would do her?

The walls are high, and she is very far.

How shall the women's message reach unto her

Above the tumult of the packed bazaar?

Free wind of March, against the lattice blowing,

Bear thou our thanks, lest she depart unknowing.

Go forth across the fields we may not roam in,

Go forth beyond the trees that rim the city,

To whatsoe'er fair place she hath her home in,

Who dowered us with wealth of love and pity.

Out of our shadow pass, and seek her singing--

"I have no gifts but Love alone for bringing."

Say that we be a feeble folk who greet her,

But old in grief, and very wise in tears;

Say that we, being desolate, entreat her

That she forget us not in after years;

For we have seen the light, and it were grievous

To dim that dawning if our lady leave us.

By life that ebbed with none to stanch the failing,

By love's sad harvest garnered in the spring,

When Love in ignorance wept unavailing

O'er young buds dead before their blossoming;

By all the gray owl watched, the pale moon viewed,

In past grim years, declare our gratitude!

By hands uplifted to the Gods that heard not,

By gifts that found no favour in their sight,

By faces bent above the babe that stirred not,

By nameless horrors of the stifling night;

By ills foredone, by peace her toils discover,

Bid Earth be good beneath and Heaven above her!

If she have sent her servants in our pain,

If she have fought with Death and dulled his sword;

If she have given back our sick again,

And to the breast the weakling lips restored,

Is it a little thing that she has wrought?

Then Life and Death and Motherhood be naught.

Go forth, oh, wind, our message on thy wings,

And they shall hear thee pass and bid thee speed,

In red-roofed hut, or white-walled home of kings,

Who have been helped by her in their need.

All spring shall give thee fragrance, and the wheat

Shall be a tasselled floor-cloth to thy feet.

Haste, for our hearts are with thee, take no rest,

Loud-voiced ambassador, from sea to sea

Proclaim the blessing, manifold, confest,

Of those in darkness by her hand set free;

Then very softly to her presence move,

And whisper: "Lady, lo, they know and love!"

VII

THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN

1899

Take up the White Man's burden--

Send forth the best ye breed--

Go bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives' need;

To wait in heavy harness,

On fluttered folk and wild--

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half-devil and half child.

Take up the White Man's burden--

In patience to abide,

To veil the threat of terror

And check the show of pride;

By open speech and simple,

An hundred times made plain,

To seek another's profit,

And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--

The savage wars of peace--

Fill full the mouth of Famine

And bid the sickness cease;

And when your goal is nearest

The end for others sought,

Watch Sloth and heathen Folly

Bring all your hope to naught.

Take up the White Man's burden--

No tawdry rule of kings,

But toil of serf and sweeper--

The tale of common things.

The ports ye shall not enter,

The roads ye shall not tread,

Go make them with your living,

And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--

And reap his old reward;

The blame of those ye better,

The hate of those ye guard--

The cry of hosts ye humour

(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--

"Why brought ye us from bondage,

Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--

Ye dare not stoop to less--

Nor call too loud on Freedom

To cloak your weariness;

By all ye cry or whisper,

By all ye leave or do,

The silent, sullen peoples

Shall weigh your Gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--

Have done with childish days--

The lightly proffered laurel

The easy, ungrudged praise.

Comes now, to search your manhood

Through all the thankless years,

Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,

The judgment of your peers!

* * * * *