the big gong had brought the dinghy back 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
gives 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 channel.

"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. "Heh! 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.