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
onshore 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 any
merely human emotion. He saw, after he had rubbed the water from
his eyes, with an immense clearness, and trod, so it seemed to
himself, with world-encompassing strides. Somewhere in the night
of time he had built a bridge - a bridge that spanned illimitable
levels of shining seas; but the Deluge had swept it away, leaving
this one island under heaven for Findlayson and his companion,
sole survivors of the breed of Man.

An incessant lightning, forked and blue, showed all that there was