chunk: The lions are not the only challenge to completing the bridge project. Tensions between native workers and Sikhs brought in from British East India to work on the project (coolies) threaten to stop the project. At one point, Patterson meets a danger far greater than the lions â a fierce flood. It wipes out the supply bridges and wraps iron girders around tree trunks like wire. Uprooted tree trunks act like battering rams trying to annihilate the bridge. But the well-built bridge stays intact. This challenge proves that the year spent working on the bridge has not been wasted.