“That’s why it comes.  I’ve only known Indian rivers for five-and-twenty years, and I don’t pretend to understand.  Here comes another tar.”  Findlayson opened the telegram.  “Cockran, this time, from the Ganges Canal:  ‘Heavy rains here.  Bad.’  He might have saved the last word.  Well, we don’t want to know any more.  We’ve got to work the gangs all night and clean up the riverbed.  You’ll take the east bank and work out to meet me in the middle.  Get everything that floats below the bridge:  we shall have quite enough river-craft coming down adrift anyhow, without letting the stone-boats ram the piers.  What have you got on the east bank that needs looking after?

“Pontoon—­one big pontoon with the overhead crane on it.  T’other overhead crane on the mended pontoon, with the cart-road rivets from Twenty to Twenty-three piers—­two construction lines, and a turning-spur.  The pilework must take its chance,” said Hitchcock.

“All right.  Roll up everything you can lay hands on.  We’ll give the gang fifteen minutes more to eat their grub.”

Close to the verandah stood a big night-gong, never used except for flood, or fire in the village.  Hitchcock had called for a fresh horse, and was off to his side of the bridge when Findlayson took the cloth-bound stick and smote with the rubbing stroke that brings out the full thunder of the metal.

Long before the last rumble ceased every night-gong in the village had taken up the warning.  To these were added the hoarse screaming of conches in the little temples; the throbbing of drums and tom-toms; and, from the European quarters, where the riveters lived, McCartney’s bugle, a weapon of offence on Sundays and festivals, brayed desperately, calling to “Stables.”  Engine after engine toiling home along the spurs at the end of her day’s work whistled in answer till the whistles were answered from the far bank.  Then the big gong thundered thrice for a sign that it was flood and not fire; conch, drum, and whistle echoed the call, and the village quivered to the sound of bare feet running upon soft earth.  The order in all cases was to stand by the day’s work and wait instructions.  The gangs poured by in the dusk; men stopping to knot a loin-cloth or fasten a sandal; gang-foremen shouting to their subordinates as they ran or paused by the tool-issue sheds for bars and mattocks; locomotives creeping down their tracks wheel-deep in the crowd; till the brown torrent disappeared into the dusk of the river-bed, raced over the pilework, swarmed along the lattices, clustered by the cranes, and stood still—­each man in his place.