ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 125 



baggage-carts was crawling along behind. The route, with 

 its roads and bridges, had been reported safe ; it was an 

 entirely new one to us both. 



Suddenly I awoke with a strong sense of something un- 

 toward impending ; then, that same instant, knew two 

 things, namely, that we were approaching a bridge and 

 that some of its planks were broken ! 



Very urgently I pulled the check-string and made the 

 driver stop, telling him why. Not a question did the man 

 ask as to how the Dursani could know ; he only held his 

 bullocks in tightly. F. now rode up to see what was the 

 matter, and as I told him he too listened without argument, 

 then dismounted, unhitched a bull's-eye lantern, and walked 

 forward with it, throwing its light full upon the bridge, 

 which he found exactly as I had described : several planks 

 on the right-hand side were broken in at a junction, and 

 looking close down he saw blood not yet dry, and white 

 hairs sticking to the splintered ends, affording plain proof 

 that the leg of a bullock had crashed through, to its grievous 

 hurt, not long since. 



By keeping to the extreme left-hand edge of the bridge 

 it was found possible to get the carts over ; a false step by 

 lantern light on the bad side — although the break was not 

 a wide one — could not be risked, nor that indefinable power 

 that lurks in ' suggestion ' ignored, though some people 

 think fit to ignore such power. «, 



But for my receiving that premonition one of our ponder- 

 ous bullocks must inevitably have put his leg into the hole, 

 which lay just in the natural line for one animal of a pair 

 to take. 



F. refrained from asking me the futile question, How 

 did I know ? taking it for granted that I should have 

 told him if I could. The reason the warning came to us 

 rather than to those preceding us must have been that it 

 was meant to especially safeguard some one of our number. 



