Broon-_sahib_ put his pipe in his pocket, looked through a glass darkly, stood up, raised his helmet, wiped his forehead, and put it on again.
The time had come--there was a nibble of shadow on the ball of light!--the monster had begun his meal!
As he looked round, unarmed, defenceless, on the hundreds of thousands of dark heads which held this thought, he smiled and nodded with the words.
"Have patience, brethren; there is time!" Doubtless, but not much time to think of other things beyond the mere keeping of that forward crush of bathers, that backward crush of those that had bathed, from inextricable confusion.
So much the better, perhaps. Less time, at any rate, for expectation of the new King who was to fall from the sun and sweep away existing kingdoms. Less time to notice the white horse led out ostentatiously by the Brahmins at the biggest temple, sign that such talk was true, that one æon had passed away, and another--in which Vishnu should appear in his final incarnation--had begun.
That was the burden of the cry from the few white faces dotted among the dark ones, and it was caught up and echoed by the connecting links of yellow-legged policemen stationed every ten yards along the lowest step.
Broon-_sahib_ slipped down from the plinth and collared an old pantaloon just as he fell, hefted him up like a baby, and set him squatting in safety above. Then an old woman, gasping, gurgling from the first mouthful of the water into which, regardless of depth, she had literally been propelled.
"Have patience, brethren! Have patience!"
A harder saying, now that all things had grown grey; though still--weird, uncanny, beyond belief--not a shadow had shifted.
Hopelessly grey, and hopelessly cold--so cold. So curiously quiet, too; for the great roar of voices seemed to have severed itself from things earthly, and was like a mighty wind from heaven.
"Have patience, brethren! Have patience! There is time!"
A harder saying still, when in the greyness, the coldness, a flock of scared pigeons overhead sent a weird flight of faint grey shadows down that long length of angled curve, packed by expectant humanity.
Was He coming indeed?--that new ruler? Were these the heralds?
There was quite a little row, now, of rescued old dodderers on Mai Kâli's plinth, whence the blood had dropped forty years ago.