He refreshed himself again from the tin box, squatted down in the bows of the reeling, pegged, and stitched craft, staring through the mist at the nothing that was there. A warm drowsiness crept over Findlayson, the Chief Engineer, whose duty was with his bridge. The heavy raindrops struck him with a thousand tingling little thrills, and the weight of all time since time was made hung heavy on his eyelids. He thought and perceived that he was perfectly secure, for the water was so solid that a man could surely step out upon it, and, standing still with his legs apart to keep his balance--this was the most important point--would be borne with great and easy speed to the shore. But yet a better plan came to him. It needed only an exertion of will for the soul to hurl the body ashore as wind drives paper, to waft it kite-fashion to the bank. Thereafter--the boat spun dizzily--suppose the high wind got under the freed body? Would it tower up like a kite and pitch headlong on the far-away sands, or would it duck about, beyond control, through all eternity? Findlayson gripped the gunnel to anchor himself, for it seemed that he was on the edge of taking the flight before he had settled all his plans. Opium has more effect on the white man than the black. Peroo was only comfortably indifferent to accidents. “She cannot live,” he grunted. “Her seams open already. If she were even a dinghy with oars we could have ridden it out; but a box with holes is no good. Finlinson Sahib, she fills.” “Accha! I am going away. Come thou also.” In his mind, Findlayson had already escaped from the boat, and was circling high in air to find a rest for the sole of his foot. His body--he was really sorry for its gross helplessness--lay in the stern, the water rushing about its knees. “How very ridiculous!” he said to himself from his eyrie--“that--is Findlayson--chief of the Kashi Bridge. The poor beast is going to be drowned, too. Drowned when it’s close to shore. I’m--I’m on shore already. Why doesn’t it come along?” To his intense disgust, he found his soul back in his body again, and that body spluttering and choking in deep water. The pain of the reunion was atrocious, but it was necessary, also, to fight for the body. He was conscious of grasping wildly at wet sand, and striding prodigiously, as one strides in a dream, to keep foothold in the swirling water, till at last he hauled himself clear of the hold of the river, and dropped, panting, on wet earth. “Not this night,” said Peroo, in his ear. “The Gods have protected us.” The Lascar moved his feet cautiously, and they rustled among dried stumps. “This is some island of last year’s indigo-crop,” he went on. “We shall find no men here; but have great care, Sahib; all the snakes of a hundred miles have been flooded out. Here comes the lightning, on the heels of the wind. Now we shall be able to look; but walk carefully.”