f the crane, and the huge plate tilted in
its slings, threatening to slide out sideways. Then the native workmen
lost their heads with great shoutings, and Hitchcock's right arm was
broken by a falling T-plate, and he buttoned it up in his coat and
swooned, and came to and directed for four hours till Peroo, from the
top of the crane reported, "All's well," and the plate swung home.
There was no one like Peroo, serang, to lash and guy and hold, to
control the donkey-engines, to hoist a fallen locomotive craftily out
of the borrow-pit into which it had tumbled; to strip and dive, if
need be, to see how the concrete blocks round the piers stood the
scouring of Mother Gunga, or to adventure up-stream on a monsoon night
and report on the state of the embankment-facings. He would interrupt
the field-councils of Findlayson and Hitchcock without fear, till his
wonderful English, or his still more wonderful _lingua-franca_, half
Portuguese and half Malay, ran out and he was forced to take string
and show the knots that he would recommend. He controlled his own gang
of tacklemen--mysterious relatives from Kutch Mandvi gathered month by
month and tried to the uttermost. No consideration of family or kin
allowed Peroo to keep weak hands or a giddy head on the pay-roll. "My
honour is the honour of this bridge," he would say to the about-to-be
dismissed. "What do I care for your honour? Go and work on a steamer.
That is all you are fit for."

The little cluster of huts where he and his gang lived centred round
the tattered dwelling of a sea-priest--one who had never set foot on
Black Water, but had been chosen as ghostly counsellor by two
generations of sea-rovers, all unaffected by port missions or those
creeds which are thrust upon sailors by agencies along Thames' bank.
The priest of the lascars had nothing to do with their caste, or
indeed with anything at all. He ate the offerings of his church, and
slept and smoked, and slept again, "for," said Peroo, who had haled
him a thousand miles inland, "he is a very holy man. He never cares
what you eat so long as you do not eat beef, and that is good, because
on land we worship Shiva, we Kharvas; but at sea on the Kumpani's
boats we attend strictly to the orders of the Burra Malum (the first
mate), and on this bridge we observe what Finlinson Sahib says."

Findlayson Sahib had that day given orders to clear the scaffolding
from the guard-tower on the right bank, and Peroo with his ma