The Bridge-Builders. Rudyard Kipling

Hitchcock without fear, till his wonderful English, or his still more wonderful linguafranca, 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 tackle men – 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.”

      Finlinson 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 creek and clatter of the pulleys. Peroo was standing on the top-most 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 Qyetta 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! Dam jibboonwallah!’”

      “But the Lord Sahib does not call me a dam jibboonwallah, 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 verandah 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 overheard 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 a bad 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.