"Mother Ganges demands toll of those who curb her."
Suddenly he understood. He understood Barclay's smile and Ayeshi's acquiescence. He recognized those pillars. They were motionless. They held their place in the torrent like the defiant remnant of an annihilated army, like tragic monuments to man's futility.
The bridge had gone.
For a moment he drew Arabella to a standstill. He had lost all sense of anxiety, all thought of failure. Methodically but rapidly, he threw overboard every unnecessary weight: his water-logged riding boots, various small items in his pockets, a heavy belt with a metal clasp, his coat. With an effort he managed to cut the girths and finally to remove the saddle itself, flinging it to the rest. Then he turned Arabella's head towards the river.
They were moving quickly now—perilously quickly. In what seemed no more than a minute they had reached the limit. The water rose above his knees, he could feel it circling round him—a living monster, awaiting its moment. He bent forward and patted Arabella's neck and whispered to her, and kissed her warm sleekness. She whinnied challengingly, tossing her head. Then plunged.
The torrent passed over them. He went down under a crushing opaque mass of delirious water. It seemed many minutes—perhaps it was only a second or two—then they rose again. Arabella's head was turned downstream. She made no effort. She was panic-stricken—helpless. He called to her. He himself was stunned and could barely keep his seat. Invisible forces had hold of him, dragging at him. At last he had her head round, and she struck out with the energy of terror. They were moving now. He could judge their progress by the two pillars mere specks on the rushing greyness. A fierce exultation possessed him—the glory of struggle—they were moving. Arabella had found her stride. Though they drifted, too, they were not wholly at the mercy of the current. Foot by foot, they were winning their way across. It did not matter that they were being swept farther down the river. Once on dry land they could make up for lost time. Then Arabella would not fail.
But now he was afraid for her. He could feel in his own nerves and sinews the cost of her heroic effort—the rising agony of her exhaustion. He believed that already she was finished. He felt her go down under him. Then, in answer to a supreme demand of her spirit, she rose again—the blood streaming from her nostrils. He called to her, and she turned her head a little. He could see her eyes, their whites veined with red, and he remembered Wickie. It was the same look, the same unfaltering confidence, the same patient acceptance of suffering. For herself alone she would not have struggled farther; but for him, for his life she accepted the crushing, heart-breaking burden of living.
Strange things raced past them—fragments horrible in their significance—an unhinged door, a table, a wooden image swept from some village shrine, its battered face staring from out of the foaming water in grotesque serenity; dead things—the carcase of a bullock, a woman's rigid hand tossed up in horrible semblance of appeal, a baby's body; living things—the hideous snout of a mugger battling against the stream, its jaws snapping greedily at the passing provender, a cheetah, caught perhaps in the midst of some marauding expedition, which struggled to Tristram's side and kept close to him. He called to it and it turned its eyes to him in frantic supplication and terror. In that dread moment they were comrades, fighting shoulder to shoulder against the common enemy.
They reached midstream. In a minute they would be out of the worst—out of danger. He turned his head; he wanted to measure by the pillars how far they had still to go. He saw the end coming. It was grotesque—absurd—a native hovel that had been caught up bodily. It bore down upon him, staggering drunkenly on the full breast of the current. It seemed to blot out the sky—a monstrous, towering Juggernaut.
A figure clung to the thatched roof. It was gesticulating wildly—in fear or warning, he could not tell. But there was no escape. The rocking structure was travelling with the speed of an express,—Arabella had almost ceased to move. Tristram slipped quietly from her back, only holding to her bridle, and she rose buoyantly. In that final moment, a deep-rooted instinct in him had prevailed. She was to have her chance. He struck out—turning his head for a last time towards the onrushing catastrophe. It was not more than twenty yards away. He could see the man's dark face—staring down into the water—aghast, silly-looking. His grotesque vessel seemed suddenly to stop, to draw back, quivering like a frightened, death-stricken animal—then plunged headlong—flashed like a pebble over the edge of a precipice.