The woman's reason, or unreason, had conquered the Strength of the World. But that was no new thing to the Diwân's wisdom.
But to the people outside in the open, huddling together under the pitiless downpour for safety's sake, it was more or less of an amusement to wonder how long the old tower would hold out against the mad stream sapping at its foundations. Not long; for already the ruined wall had gone, disclosing a portion of the secret stair, where Zainub, the old duenna, lay parched up almost to a mummy. A hideous sight, no doubt, had there been light enough to see it; but there was not, and the refugees upon the higher ground could discern nothing but the block of the old tower and the swirling water below. A faint light came from the balcony of the room where the Diwân was known to be; and, as they watched it, people speculated how the door came to be fastened. Perhaps it had swung-to, perhaps---- Well, he must be dead, or would soon be dead, since rescue was impossible; and, after all, he had lived his time. Khush-hâl had been saved from his swinging cradle, and then there was Dalel away up at Simla. Rulers enough for a poor country-side, if God spared it from the Great Flood; and if not, why then the old man was at least better off than they, exposed as they were to the elements. Far better; both he and the outcasts in their straw huts, which would hurt no one even if they fell. So the first in the land was as the last, and the last first. '_Sobhan ullah!_'
As the rain slackened the night grew darker, until even the block of the tower ceased to show against the sky, and the little company of watchers could only hear the thunder of its fall.
'God rest him,' muttered a peasant, muffled into a formless bundle in his blanket. 'He was a hard master, and the new one may be harder still. There will be a good crop anyway.'
And down on the very edge of the boiling stream, when the rain ceased, a light went twinkling up and down, up and down. It was the potter looking for his dead daughter as the _débris_ of the old wall, beneath which she had been buried sixteen years before, crumbled away bit by bit before the furious stream.
The dawn broke upon a new world as far as Hodinuggur was concerned. Where the desert had stretched thirsty and dry, lay a shoreless sea. Where the streak of silver had split the round horizon into halves, the double line of the canal banks looked like twin paths leading to some world beyond the waste of waters. They steered straight out of sight on either side, almost unbroken save for the great gap where the sluice-gate had stood. There the stream still swept sideways to circle round the island of Hodinuggur, which bore, like an ark, its company of refugees from the surrounding levels; a little company which straightway, taking advantage of the coming sun, began to wring out its wet garments and spread them to dry, until a general air of washing-day reduced the tragedy of the past night to the commonplace. And after all, what had happened? An old woman or two had been drowned, the Diwân and his tower swept away. But the world held too many old women and more than enough of nobles. For the rest, it had not been the Flood of the Most High; and though Death came to all in the end, and the loneliness of it must be dreary, still it was somehow more terrifying to die in batches, wholesale.