In the Permanent Way

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

"Why, man, that thing!--that thing in the permanent way!" I replied, nettled at his manner.

He gave an odd little laugh, just audible above the first whir of the wheels as we started again.

"That's about it. In the permanent way--considerably." He paused, and I thought he was going to relapse into the silence for which he was famous; but he suddenly seemed to change his mind.

"Look here," he said, "it's a fifteen mile run to the first curve, and no trains due, so if you like I'll tell you why we left the track."

And he did.

* * * * *

When they were aligning this section I was put on to it--preliminary survey work under an R.E. man who wore boiled shirts in the wilderness, and was great on "Departmental Discipline." He is in Simla now, of course. Well, we were driving a straight line through the whole solar system and planting it out with little red flags, when one afternoon, just behind that big wave of a sand hill, we came upon something in the way. It was a man. For further description I should say it was a thin man. There is nothing more to be said. He may have been old, he may have been young, he may have been tall, he may have been short, he may have been halt and maimed, he may have been blind, deaf, or dumb, or any or all of these. The only thing I know for certain is that he was thin. The kalassies[^[4]] said he was some kind of a Hindu saint, and they fell at his feet promptly. I shall never forget the R.E.'s face as he stood trying to classify the creature according to Wilson's Hindu Sects, or his indignation at the kalassies' ignorant worship of a man who, for all they knew, might be a follower of Shiva, while they were bound to Vishnu, or vice versa. He was very learned over the Vaishnavas and the Saivas; and all the time that bronze image with its hands on its knees squatted in the sand staring into space perfectly unmoved. Perhaps the man saw us, perhaps he didn't. I don't know; as I said before, he was thin.

So after a time we stuck a little red flag in the ground close to the small of his back, and went on our way rejoicing until we came to our camp, a mile further on. It doesn't look like it, but there is a brackish well and a sort of a village away there to the right, and of course we always took advantage of water when we could.

It must have been a week later, just as we came to the edge of the sand hills, and could see a landmark or two, that I noticed the R.E. come up from his prismatic compass looking rather pale. Then he fussed over to me at the plane table.

"We're out," he said, "there is a want of Departmental Discipline in this party, and we are out." I forget how many fractions he said, but some infinitesimal curve would have been required to bring us plumb on the next station, and as that would have ruined the R.E.'s professional reputation we harked back to rectify the error. We found the bronze image still sitting on the sand with its hands on its knees; but apparently it had shifted its position some three feet or so to the right, for the flag was fully that distance to the left of it. That night the R.E. came to my tent with his hands full of maps and his mind of suspicions.