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 to be seen on the little patch in the flood—­a clump of thorn, a clump of swaying creaking bamboos, and a grey gnarled peepul overshadowing a Hindoo shrine, from whose dome floated a tattered red flag.  The holy man whose summer resting-place it was had long since abandoned it, and the weather had broken the red-daubed image of his god.  The two men stumbled, heavy-limbed and heavy-eyed, over the ashes of a brick-set cooking-place, and dropped down under the shelter of the branches, while the rain and river roared together.

The stumps of the indigo crackled, and there was a smell of cattle, as a huge and dripping Brahminee bull shouldered his way under the tree.  The flashes revealed the trident mark of Shiva on his flank, the insolence of head and hump, the luminous stag-like eyes, the brow crowned with a wreath of sodden marigold blooms, and the silky dewlap that almost swept the ground.  There was a noise behind him of other beasts coming up from the flood-line through the thicket, a sound of heavy feet and deep breathing.

“Here be more beside ourselves,” said Findlayson, his head against the treepole, looking through half-shut eyes, wholly at ease.

“Truly,” said Peroo, thickly, “and no small ones.”

“What are they, then?  I do not see clearly.”

“The Gods.  Who else?  Look!”

“Ah, true!  The Gods surely—­the Gods.”  Findlayson smiled as his head fell forward on his chest.  Peroo was eminently right.  After the Flood, who should be alive in the land except the Gods that made it—­the Gods to whom his village prayed nightly—­the Gods who were in all men’s mouths and about all men’s ways.  He could not raise his head or stir a finger for the trance that held him, and Peroo was smiling vacantly at the lightning.

The Bull paused by the shrine, his head lowered to the damp earth.  A green Parrot in the branches preened his wet wings and screamed against the thunder as the circle under the tree filled with the shifting shadows of beasts.  There was a black Buck at the Bull’s heels-such a Buck as Findlayson in his far-away life upon earth might have seen in dreams—­a Buck with a royal head, ebon back, silver belly, and gleaming straight horns.  Beside him, her head bowed to the ground, the green eyes burning under the heavy brows, with restless tail switching the dead grass, paced a Tigress, full-bellied and deep-jowled.