Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/172

158 Of water dropped into the valley, flop,

And drowned some five and twenty villagers,

And did a lakh or two of detriment

To crops and cattle. When the flood went down

We found him dead, beneath an old dead horse,

Full six miles down the valley. So we said

He was a victim to the Demon Drink,

And moralized upon him for a week,

And then forgot him. Which was natural.

But, in the valley of the Gauri, men

Beneath the shadow of the big new dam,

Relate a foolish legend of the flood,

Accounting for the little loss of life

(Only those five and twenty villagers)

In this wise:—On the evening of the flood,

They heard the groaning of the rotten dam,

And voices of the Mountain Devils. Then

An incarnation of the local God,

Mounted upon a monster-neighing horse,

And flourishing a flail-like whip, came down,

Breathing ambrosia, to the villages,

And fell upon the simple villagers

With yells beyond the power of mortal throat,

And blows beyond the power of mortal hand,