Page:Under the Sun.djvu/104

80, by all thy Vedic glories, we invoke thee, be merciful!” Miles down they will know it by the sudden rush, — the bridges of boats that will part asunder, and the clumsy, high-prowed native craft that will sink; but here, where the mischief has its source, where the heavy rain is falling and the deluge brewing, there is nothing to mark the change. But the river swells up secretly, as it were, from underneath. The flood is to be a surprise; and lo! suddenly, the water is spread out on either side, over crops and grass fields. Where are the islands gone on which the wiseacre adjutant-birds were yesterday promenading? Are those babool-trees or fishermen’s platforms out yonder in the middle of the river? Surely there used to be a large field hereabouts with a buffalo’s whitened skull lying in the corner, and a young mango-tree growing about the middle of it? Can that be the mango-tree yonder where the current takes a sudden swerve? Alas for the squirrels that had their nest in it! Alas for the vagrant guinea-fowl which far from home had hidden her speckled eggs in the tall tussock of sharp-edged grass which grew by the buffalo skull!

Those two villages yonder were yesterday separated only by a green valley streaked by a hundred footpaths; they now look at each other across a lake. The kine used to know their way home, but are puzzled. Here, they feel certain, is the tree at which yesterday they turned to the right, and this is the path which led them down a hill and up another, but it ends to-day in water! How cautiously they tread their way, sinking lower, lower — so gradually that we can hardly tell that they have begun to swim; but there is now a rod and more between the last cow and the shore where the herdsman