"I knew she would speak," he cried. "I knew, but the telegraph
gives us good warning. O sons of unthinkable begetting - children
of unspeakable shame - are we here for the look of the thing?" It
was two feet of wire-rope frayed at the ends, and it did wonders
as Peroo leaped from gunnel to gunnel, shouting the language of
the sea.
Findlayson was more troubled for the stone-boats than anything else.
McCartney, with his gangs, was blocking up the ends of the three
doubtful spans, but boats adrift, if the flood chanced to be a high
one, might endanger the girders; and there was a very fleet in the
shrunken channel.
"Get them behind the swell of the guard-tower," he shouted down to
Peroo. "It will be dead-water there. Get them below the bridge."
"Accha! [Very good.] I know; we are mooring them with wire-rope,"
was the answer. " Heh! I Listen to the Chota Sahib. He is working
hard."
>From across the river came an almost continuous whistling of
locomotives, backed by the rumble of stone. Hitchcock at the last
minute was spending a few hundred more trucks of Tarakee stone in
reinforcing his spurs and embankments.
"The bridge challenges Mother Gunga," said Peroo, with a laugh.
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