Findlayson shook two or three of the dark-brown pellets into his hand, and hardly knowing what he did, swallowed them.  The stuff was at least a good guard against fever—­the fever that was creeping upon him out of the wet mud—­and he had seen what Peroo could do in the stewing mists of autumn on the strength of a dose from the tin box.

Peroo nodded with bright eyes.  “In a little—­in a little the Sahib will find that he thinks well again.  I too will—­” He dived into his treasure-box, resettled the rain-coat over his head, and squatted down to watch the boats.  It was too dark now to see beyond the first pier, and the night seemed to have given the river new strength.  Findlayson stood with his chin on his chest, thinking.  There was one point about one of the piers—­the seventh—­that he had not fully settled in his mind.  The figures would not shape themselves to the eye except one by one and at enormous intervals of time.  There was a sound rich and mellow in his ears like the deepest note of a double-bass—­an entrancing sound upon which he pondered for several hours, as it seemed.  Then Peroo was at his elbow, shouting that a wire hawser had snapped and the stone-boats were loose.  Findlayson saw the fleet open and swing out fanwise to a long-drawn shriek of wire straining across gunnels.

“A tree hit them.  They will all go,” cried Peroo.  “The main hawser has parted.  What does the Sahib do?”

An immensely complex plan had suddenly flashed into Findlayson’s mind.  He saw the ropes running from boat to boat in straight lines and angles—­each rope a line of white fire.  But there was one rope which was the master rope.  He could see that rope.  If he could pull it once, it was absolutely and mathematically certain that the disordered fleet would reassemble itself in the backwater behind the guard-tower.  But why, he wondered, was Peroo clinging so desperately to his waist as he hastened down the bank?  It was necessary to put the Lascar aside, gently and slowly, because it was necessary to save the boats, and, further, to demonstrate the extreme ease of the problem that looked so difficult.  And then—­but it was of no conceivable importance—­a wire-rope raced through his hand, burning it, the high bank disappeared, and with it all the slowly dispersing factors of the problem.  He was sitting in the rainy darkness—­sitting in a boat that spun like a top, and Peroo was standing over him.

“I had forgotten,” said the Lascar, slowly, “that to those fasting and unused, the opium is worse than any wine.  Those who die in Gunga go to the Gods.  Still, I have no desire to present myself before such great ones.  Can the Sahib swim?”

“What need?  He can fly—­fly as swiftly as the wind,” was the thick answer.

“He is mad!” muttered Peroo, under his breath.  “And he threw me aside like a bundle of dung-cakes.  Well, he will not know his death.  The boat cannot live an hour here even if she strike nothing.  It is not good to look at death with a clear eye.”