by pier, remembering, comparing, estimating, and recalculating, lest there should be any mistake; and through the long hours and through the flights of formulae that danced and wheeled before him a cold fear would come to pinch his heart.  His side of the sum was beyond question; but what man knew Mother Gunga’s arithmetic?  Even as he was making all sure by the multiplication table, the river might be scooping a pot-hole to the very bottom of any one of those eighty-foot piers that carried his reputation.  Again a servant came to him with food, but his mouth was dry, and he could only drink and return to the decimals in his brain.  And the river was still rising.  Peroo, in a mat shelter coat, crouched at his feet, watching now his face and now the face of the river, but saying nothing.

At last the Lascar rose and floundered through the mud towards the village, but he was careful to leave an ally to watch the boats.

Presently he returned, most irreverently driving before him the priest of his creed—­a fat old man, with a grey beard that whipped the wind with the wet cloth that blew over his shoulder.  Never was seen so lamentable a guru.

“What good are offerings and little kerosene lamps and dry grain,” shouted Peroo, “if squatting in the mud is all that thou canst do?  Thou hast dealt long with the Gods when they were contented and well-wishing.  Now they are angry.  Speak to them!”

“What is a man against the wrath of Gods?” whined the priest, cowering as the wind took him.  “Let me go to the temple, and I will pray there.”

“Son of a pig, pray here!  Is there no return for salt fish and curry powder and dried onions?  Call aloud!  Tell Mother Gunga we have had enough.  Bid her be still for the night.  I cannot pray, but I have been serving in the Kumpani’s boats, and when men did not obey my orders I—­” A flourish of the wire-rope colt rounded the sentence, and the priest, breaking free from his disciple, fled to the village.

“Fat pig!” said Peroo.  “After all that we have done for him!  When the flood is down I will see to it that we get a new guru.  Finlinson Sahib, it darkens for night now, and since yesterday nothing has been eaten.  Be wise, Sahib.  No man can endure watching and great thinking on an empty belly.  Lie down, Sahib.  The river will do what the river will do.”

“The bridge is mine; I cannot leave it.”

“Wilt thou hold it up with thy hands, then?” said Peroo, laughing.

“I was troubled for my boats and sheers before the flood came.  Now we are in the hands of the Gods.  The Sahib will not eat and lie down?  Take these, then.  They are meat and good toddy together, and they kill all weariness, besides the fever that follows the rain.  I have eaten nothing else to-day at all.”

He took a small tin tobacco-box from his sodden waist-belt and thrust it into Findlayson’s hand, saying:  “Nay, do not be afraid.  It is no more than opium—­clean Malwa opium.”