[THE BLUE-THROATED GOD]
We sat after lunch in the stern of the steam launch watching the bridge grow from the semblance of a caterpillar hung across the horizon between clusters of temples and topes, to that of some monstrous skeleton whose vaulting ribs rose high overhead into the pale sky.
Bannerman and I had come out from England together, and come up-country together; I to take up work at the bridge, he on a sporting tour, with letters of introduction to the chief engineer. We had been doing the sights of the native city, and now, in company with several officials of sorts, were on our way home to the reaches above. And as we surged through the yellow-brown flood we talked vaguely and airily of old gods and new, of Siva's religion of stern reality, and Krishna's pleasure-loving cult.
"You should read Prem Sâgar, sir," said Mr. Chuckerbutty, the native assistant-engineer, aside to Bannerman, who had given his vote for the latter; "it is of much merit, containing the loves of Krishna and other cognate matter."
"It's a mere question of temperament," went on Bannerman, unheeding the interruption. "Some people are born to one thing, some to another. I was born to enjoy myself--Hullo! what's that?"
That was a low note like a bird's, a flash in the sunlight beyond the huge pier along which we were edging our way up the current, and then a cloop like a cork.
"Sambo," said some one.
"His name is Rudra, sir," replied Mr. Chuckerbutty.
"Nilkunta,[[27]] Huzoor," suggested the captain of the launch. I looked from one to the other interrogatively.
"The bridge-diver," said the first speaker, "sees after the foundations and that sort of thing--knows the bottom of the river as well as most of us know the top. A queer sort of animal--there he is to your right."