They were only just in time, no more. Five minutes after they had joined the company gathered on the red-brick masonry of the canal head, under a canopy of waving garlands and gay bunting, with that inevitable British flag as the centre of all, the small man with the big star on his breast took a step forward, raised a handle, and, as the first drops of water trickled through a sluice, declared, in a violent Scotch accent, "that the Victoria-Kaiser-i-Hind" canal was open. So, keeping time as it were, slowly, majestically, to those (also inevitable) strains of "God save the Queen," the outer floodgates swung back, allowing the river to have permanent possession during good behaviour, of the walled basin between them and the inner ones. Thus, slowly, with a gurgling of water seeking its level, the surface rose till the half-open sluices in the second gates were reached, and a thin curve tipped over to fall with a splash, and send a tiny scout of a stream to find out what this new straight road might mean. Only a tiny scout, since the earthworks beyond had to be accustomed by degrees to their new tenant. Still the new way was open, and the current of the river hesitated in the old one. "Bravo, Smith!" cried George Dillon, coming round, when the cheering and general congratulations were over, to slap his colleague on the back, metaphorically and actually. "We've done that; and now perhaps, old man, you'll have time for other things." "Yes," assented the tall, gaunt man, dreamily; "now I shall have time to settle that point about the searchlight." "The what?" "Search-light. There's been a correspondence in the _Engineer_ about it; and as I've all the electric plant here, lying useless, now the show's over,--until it's wanted for something else, of course,--I am going to see if I can't overcome their difficulty in concentrating all the power on a sufficiently narrow area. I believe I know how to do it." George Dillon looked at him with fierce, humorous exasperation. "Believe!" he echoed. "I know you can! You are the most intolerably circumscribed, self-concentrated, narrow-minded machine of a man I ever came across. Heaven help you!" As he drove Mrs. Smith home again, it was his turn to sit mumchance until, womanlike, she relented faintly, and, exaggerating her own powers, trusted she had not been, _etc_., though of course, _etc_.-- "Not in the least, thank you," he replied. "I was only meditating if I should tell you that I think Eugene has softening of the brain." "Softening of the brain!" she echoed, horrified. "Oh, doctor, do you think it's that?" "Well, it isn't softening of the heart, anyhow," he said grimly. "But I'm not joking. If someone doesn't get a hold on some portion of that man--I don't care what it is--heart, brain, stomach, anything--and prevent him from killing himself with work, India will lose her best engineer. What he wants is someone to--to give him a nervous headache!"