This Project Gutenberg Etext was prepared by Bill Stoddard
hscrr@vgernet.net
By RUDYARD KIPLING
The least that Findlayson, of the Public Works Department,expected was a C.I.E.; he dreamed of a C. S. I. Indeed, hisfriends told him that he deserved more. For three years he hadendured heat and cold, disappointment, discomfort, danger, anddisease, with responsibility almost to top-heavy for one pair ofshoulders; and day by day, through that time, the great KashiBridge over the Ganges had grown under his charge. Now, in lessthan three months, if all went well, his Excellency the Viceroywould open the bridge in state, an archbishop would bless it,and the first trainload of soldiers would come over it, andthere would be speeches.
Findlayson, C. E., sat in his trolley on a construction line thatran along one of the main revetments - the huge stone-facedbanks that flared away north and south for three miles on eitherside of the river and permitted himself to think of the end.With its approaches, his work was one mile and three-quarters inlength; a lattice~girder bridge, trussed with the Findlaysontruss standing on seven-and-twenty brick piers. Each one of thosepiers was twenty-four feet in diameter, capped with red Agrastone and sunk eighty feet below the shifting sand of the Ganges'bed. Above them was a railway-line fifteen feet broad; abovethat, again, a cart-road of eighteen feet, flanked withfootpaths. At either end rose towers, of red brick, loopholedfor musketry and pierced for big guns, and the ramp of the roadwas being pushed forward to their haunches. The raw earth-endswere crawling and alive with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny assesclimbing out of the yawning borrow-pit below with sackfuls ofstuff; and the hot afternoon air was filled with the noise ofhooves, the rattle of the drivers' sticks, and the swish androll-down of the dirt. The river was very low, and on thedazzling white sand between the three centre piers stood squatcribs of railway~sleepers, filled within and daubed without withmud, to support the last of the girders as those were riveted up.In the little deep water left by the drought, an overhead cranetravelled to and fro along its spile-pier, jerking sections ofiron into place, snorting and backing and grunting as an elephantgrunts in the timberyard. Riveters by the hundred swarmed aboutthe lattice side-work and the iron roof of the railway line hungfrom invisible staging under the bellies of the girders,clustered round the throats of the piers, and rode on theoverhangof the footpath-stanchions; their fire-pots and the spurts offlame that answered each hammer-stroke showing no more than paleyellow in the sun's glare. East and west and north and south theconstruction-trains rattled and shrieked up and down theembankments, the piled trucks of brown and white stone bangingbehind them till the side-boards were unpinned, and with a roarand a grumble a few thousand tons' more material were flung outto hold the river in place. Findlayson, C. E., turned on histrolley and looked over the face of the country that he hadchanged for seven miles around. Looked back on the hummingvillage