"Peroo has gone up the spurs in your dinghy. He's taken a couple
of nephews with him, and he's lolling in the stern like a
commodore," said Hitchcock.
"That's all right. He's got something on his mind. You'd think
that ten years in the British India boats would have knocked most
of his religion out of him."
"So it has," said Hitchcock, chuckling. "I overheard him the other
day in the middle of a most atheistical talk with that fat old guru
of theirs. Peroo denied the efficacy of prayer; and wanted the
guru to go to sea and watch a gale out with him, and see if he
could stop a monsoon."
"All the same, if you carried off his gurus he'd leave us like a
shot. He was yarning away to me about praying to the dome of St.
Paul's when he was in London."
"He told me that the first time he went into the engine-room of a
steamer, when he was a boy, he prayed to the low-pressure cylinder."
"Not half a bad thing to pray to, either. He's propitiating his own
Gods now, and he wants to know what Mother Gunga will think of a
bridge being run across her. Who's there?" A shadow darkened the
doorway, and a telegram was put into Hitchcock's hand.
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