Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/94

72 "It is the twenty-mile lock," said David, shaking with wrath. "The manager has gone to bed and will not open the lock again until morning, and we shall not get to Seven Pagodas before ten o'clock. They will always do it for the gentries, but they do not believe when poor native says he has gentries waiting in a boat." With one lantern and an escort of innumerable shadows in ghostly clothes, we went and pounded on the lock-keeper's door, and besought him as the most courteous of a whole race of kindly disposed people to consider a tourist's precious time and consuming zeal for rock-sculpture, and open his locks and let us wing and track our way to Mahabalipur, "Certingly, certingly. Right away, mem-sahib," and the lock-keeper came out with his keys, our crew worked the gates and levers, and while we walked and talked with our benefactor of the tropic night, the waters swirled in and lifted the boat to the next level.

They drove a stake in the soft sand and made fast at three in the morning, and in the gray-blue dawn we woke to find ourselves and three budgery-boats lying at the edge of a great sandy flat, beyond which a white house and some palm-trees promised government cheer. We went over to the dak bangla and demanded baths, breakfasts, and chair-bearers at once. The first two demands were complied with; but at six o'clock it was "wait a little," as it had been at five-thirty, and, realizing that the sooner we began the five-mile walk in the sun and sand the better were our chances of surviving and accomplishing it all before noon, we set forth in the cool of the