"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 doesn'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