The Day's Work — Themes and Context

“_Accha!_ [Very good.] _I_ know; we are mooring them with wire-rope,” was the answer. “Heh! 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. “But when _she_ talks I know whose voice will be the loudest.”

For hours the naked men worked, screaming and shouting under the lights. It was a hot, moonless night; the end of it was darkened by clouds and a sudden squall that made Findlayson very grave.

“She moves!” said Peroo, just before the dawn. “Mother Gunga is awake! Hear!” He dipped his hand over the side of a boat and the current mumbled on it. A little wave hit the side of a pier with a crisp slap.

“Six hours before her time,” said Findlayson, mopping his forehead savagely. “Now we can’t depend on anything. We’d better clear all hands out of the river-bed.”

Again the big gong beat, and a second time there was the rushing of naked feet on earth and ringing iron; the clatter of tools ceased. In the silence, men heard the dry yawn of water crawling over thirsty sand.

Foreman after foreman shouted to Findlayson, who had posted himself by the guard-tower, that his section of the river-bed had been cleaned out, and when the last voice dropped Findlayson hurried over the bridge till the iron plating of the permanent way gave place to the temporary plank-walk over the three centre piers, and there he met Hitchcock.

“All clear your side?” said Findlayson. The whisper rang in the box of latticework.

“Yes, and the east channel’s filling now. We’re utterly out of our reckoning. When is this thing down on us?”

“There’s no saying. She’s filling as fast as she can. Look!” Findlayson pointed to the planks below his feet, where the sand, burned and defiled by months of work, was beginning to whisper and fizz.

“What orders?” said Hitchcock.

“Call the roll—count stores—sit on your hunkers—and pray for the bridge. That’s all I can think of. Good night. Don’t risk your life trying to fish out anything that may go down-stream.”

“Oh, I’ll be as prudent as you are! ’Night. Heavens, how she’s filling! Here’s the rain in earnest!” Findlayson picked his way back to his bank, sweeping the last of McCartney’s riveters before him. The gangs had spread themselves along the embankments, regardless of the cold rain of the dawn, and there they waited for the flood. Only Peroo kept his men together behind the swell of the guard-tower, where the stone-boats lay tied fore and aft with hawsers, wire-rope, and chains.

A shrill wail ran along the line, growing to a yell, half fear and half wonder: the face of the river whitened from bank to bank between the stone facings, and the faraway spurs went out in spouts of foam. Mother Gunga had come bank-high in haste, and a wall of chocolate-coloured water was her messenger. There was a shriek above the roar of the water, the complaint of the spans coming down on their blocks as the cribs were whirled out from under their bellies. The stone-boats groaned and ground each other in the eddy that swung round the abutment, and their clumsy masts rose higher and higher against the dim sky-line.

“Before she was shut between these walls we knew what she would do. Now she is thus cramped God only knows what she will do!” said Peroo, watching the furious turmoil round the guard-tower. “Ohé! Fight, then! Fight hard, for it is thus that a woman wears herself out.”

But Mother Gunga would not fight as Peroo desired. After the first down-stream plunge there came no more walls of water, but the river lifted herself bodily, as a snake when she drinks in midsummer, plucking and fingering along the revetments, and banking up behind the piers till even Findlayson began to recalculate the strength of his work.

When day came the village gasped. “Only last night,” men said, turning to each other, “it was as a town in the river-bed! Look now!”