THE SON OF HIS FATHER

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 to top-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,
and the first trainload 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 was a 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