The Day's Work

In The Bridge-Builders, Rudyard Kipling turns the construction of the Kashi Bridge across the Ganges into a gripping test of endurance, leadership, and human ingenuity. Engineer Findlayson and his young assistant Hitchcock have spent years wrestling with delays, bureaucracy, disease, and unrest to raise a monumental bridge of piers and iron girders above a river that seems to resist being mastered. Their work depends not only on discipline and nerve, but on the practical brilliance of Peroo, a lascar serang whose command of men and machinery adds a multicultural, hard-won dimension to the enterprise. When flood warnings arrive, the story shifts into a race against time. Gongs, whistles, and conches summon hundreds of laborers to drag tools, boats, and equipment beyond the danger line before Mother Gunga surges in with terrifying force, turning the works into a battleground between human skill and nature's power. As the river rises, Findlayson is forced to confront the possibility that the bridge, and his honor, may be lost. Elsewhere, Kipling explores colonial authority through Chinn, whose bond with the Bhils is shaped by hunting, rumor, and superstition. Believed to be the reincarnation of a protective ancestor, he navigates tribal loyalty and legend with wit, caution, and uneasy power. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.