“Whither went they?” said the Lascar, awe-struck, shivering a little with the cold.

“God knows!” said Findlayson.  The river and the island lay in full daylight now, and there was never mark of hoof or pug on the wet earth under the peepul.  Only a parrot screamed in the branches, bringing down showers of water-drops as he fluttered his wings.

“Up!  We are cramped with cold!  Has the opium died out.  Canst thou move, Sahib?”

Findlayson staggered to his feet and shook himself.  His bead swam and ached, but the work of the opium was over, and, as he sluiced his forehead in a pool, the Chief Engineer of the Kashi Bridge was wondering how he had managed to fall upon the island, what chances the day offered of return, and, above all, how his work stood.

“Peroo, I have forgotten much I was under the guard-tower watching the river; and then—­Did the flood sweep us away?”

“No.  The boats broke loose, Sahib, and,” (if the Sahib had forgotten about the opium, decidedly Peroo would not remind him) “in striving to retie them, so it seemed to me but it was dark—­a rope caught the Sahib and threw him upon a boat.  Considering that we two, with Hitchcock Sahib, built, as it were, that bridge, I came also upon the boat, which came riding on horseback, as it were, on the nose of this island, and so, splitting, cast us ashore.  I made a great cry when the boat left the wharf and without doubt Hitchcock Sahib will come for us.  As for the bridge, so many have died in the building that it cannot fall.”  A fierce sun, that drew out all the smell of the sodden land, had followed the storm, and in that clear light there was no room for a man to think of the dreams of the dark.  Findlayson stared upstream, across the blaze of moving water, till his eyes ached.  There was no sign of any bank to the Ganges, much less of a bridge-line.

“We came down far,” he said.  “It was wonderful that we were not drowned a hundred times.”

“That was the least of the wonder, for no man dies before his time.  I have seen Sydney, I have seen London, and twenty great ports, but,”—­Peroo looked at the damp, discoloured shrine under the peepul—­“never man has seen that we saw here.”

“What?”

“Has the Sahib forgotten; or do we black men only see the Gods?”

“There was a fever upon me.”  Findlayson was still looking uneasily across the water.  “It seemed that the island was full of beasts and men talking, but I do not remember.  A boat could live in this water now, I think.”

“Oho!  Then it is true.  ‘When Brahm ceases to dream, the Gods die.’  Now I know, indeed, what he meant.  Once, too, the guru said as much to me; but then I did not understand.  Now I am wise.”

“What?” said Findlayson, over his shoulder.