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 gurus he'd leave us like a
shot. He was yarning away to me about praying to the dome of St.