Kim

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Title: Kim

Author: Rudyard Kipling

Posting Date: January 15, 2009 [EBook #2226]

Release Date: June, 2000

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Patricia Franks, Karyl Basmajian, Nancy K.

Smith, Dave Bruchie.

Kim

by

Rudyard Kipling

JTABLE 4 15 1

Chapter 1

O ye who tread the Narrow Way

By Tophet-flare to judgment Day,

Be gentle when 'the heathen' pray

To Buddha at Kamakura!

Buddha at Kamakura.

He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam Zammah on

her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher--the Wonder House, as

the natives call the Lahore Museum. Who hold Zam-Zammah, that

'fire-breathing dragon', hold the Punjab, for the great green-bronze

piece is always first of the conqueror's loot.

There was some justification for Kim--he had kicked Lala Dinanath's boy

off the trunnions--since the English held the Punjab and Kim was

English. Though he was burned black as any native; though he spoke the

vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue in a clipped uncertain

sing-song; though he consorted on terms of perfect equality with the

small boys of the bazar; Kim was white--a poor white of the very

poorest. The half-caste woman who looked after him (she smoked opium,

and pretended to keep a second-hand furniture shop by the square where

the cheap cabs wait) told the missionaries that she was Kim's mother's

sister; but his mother had been nursemaid in a Colonel's family and had

married Kimball O'Hara, a young colour-sergeant of the Mavericks, an

Irish regiment. He afterwards took a post on the Sind, Punjab, and

Delhi Railway, and his Regiment went home without him. The wife died

of cholera in Ferozepore, and O'Hara fell to drink and loafing up and

down the line with the keen-eyed three-year-old baby. Societies and

chaplains, anxious for the child, tried to catch him, but O'Hara

drifted away, till he came across the woman who took opium and learned

the taste from her, and died as poor whites die in India. His estate

at death consisted of three papers--one he called his 'ne varietur'

because those words were written below his signature thereon, and

another his 'clearance-certificate'. The third was Kim's

birth-certificate. Those things, he was used to say, in his glorious

opium-hours, would yet make little Kimball a man. On no account was

Kim to part with them, for they belonged to a great piece of

magic--such magic as men practised over yonder behind the Museum, in

the big blue-and-white Jadoo-Gher--the Magic House, as we name the

Masonic Lodge. It would, he said, all come right some day, and Kim's

horn would be exalted between pillars--monstrous pillars--of beauty and

strength. The Colonel himself, riding on a horse, at the head of the

finest Regiment in the world, would attend to Kim--little Kim that

should have been better off than his father. Nine hundred first-class

devils, whose God was a Red Bull on a green field, would attend to Kim,

if they had not forgotten O'Hara--poor O'Hara that was gang-foreman on

the Ferozepore line. Then he would weep bitterly in the broken rush

chair on the veranda. So it came about after his death that the woman

sewed parchment, paper, and birth-certificate into a leather

amulet-case which she strung round Kim's neck.

'And some day,' she said, confusedly remembering O'Hara's prophecies,

'there will come for you a great Red Bull on a green field, and the

Colonel riding on his tall horse, yes, and' dropping into

English--'nine hundred devils.'

'Ah,' said Kim, 'I shall remember. A Red Bull and a Colonel on a horse

will come, but first, my father said, will come the two men making

ready the ground for these matters. That is how my father said they

always did; and it is always so when men work magic.'

If the woman had sent Kim up to the local Jadoo-Gher with those papers,

he would, of course, have been taken over by the Provincial Lodge, and

sent to the Masonic Orphanage in the Hills; but what she had heard of

magic she distrusted. Kim, too, held views of his own. As he reached

the years of indiscretion, he learned to avoid missionaries and white

men of serious aspect who asked who he was, and what he did. For Kim

did nothing with an immense success. True, he knew the wonderful

walled city of Lahore from the Delhi Gate to the outer Fort Ditch; was

hand in glove with men who led lives stranger than anything Haroun al

Raschid dreamed of; and he lived in a life wild as that of the Arabian

Nights, but missionaries and secretaries of charitable societies could

not see the beauty of it. His nickname through the wards was 'Little

Friend of all the World'; and very often, being lithe and

inconspicuous, he executed commissions by night on the crowded

housetops for sleek and shiny young men of fashion. It was

intrigue,--of course he knew that much, as he had known all evil since

he could speak,--but what he loved was the game for its own sake--the

stealthy prowl through the dark gullies and lanes, the crawl up a

waterpipe, the sights and sounds of the women's world on the flat

roofs, and the headlong flight from housetop to housetop under cover of

the hot dark. Then there were holy men, ash-smeared fakirs by their

brick shrines under the trees at the riverside, with whom he was quite

familiar--greeting them as they returned from begging-tours, and, when

no one was by, eating from the same dish. The woman who looked after

him insisted with tears that he should wear European clothes--trousers,

a shirt and a battered hat. Kim found it easier to slip into Hindu or

Mohammedan garb when engaged on certain businesses. One of the young

men of fashion--he who was found dead at the bottom of a well on the

night of the earthquake--had once given him a complete suit of Hindu

kit, the costume of a lowcaste street boy, and Kim stored it in a

secret place under some baulks in Nila Ram's timber-yard, beyond the

Punjab High Court, where the fragrant deodar logs lie seasoning after

they have driven down the Ravi. When there was business or frolic

afoot, Kim would use his properties, returning at dawn to the veranda,

all tired out from shouting at the heels of a marriage procession, or

yelling at a Hindu festival. Sometimes there was food in the house,

more often there was not, and then Kim went out again to eat with his

native friends.

As he drummed his heels against Zam-Zammah he turned now and again from

his king-of-the-castle game with little Chota Lal and Abdullah the

sweetmeat-seller's son, to make a rude remark to the native policeman

on guard over rows of shoes at the Museum door. The big Punjabi grinned

tolerantly: he knew Kim of old. So did the water-carrier, sluicing

water on the dry road from his goat-skin bag. So did Jawahir Singh,

the Museum carpenter, bent over new packing-cases. So did everybody in

sight except the peasants from the country, hurrying up to the Wonder

House to view the things that men made in their own province and

elsewhere. The Museum was given up to Indian arts and manufactures,

and anybody who sought wisdom could ask the Curator to explain.

'Off! Off! Let me up!' cried Abdullah, climbing up Zam-Zammah's wheel.

'Thy father was a pastry-cook, Thy mother stole the ghi,' sang Kim.

'All Mussalmans fell off Zam-Zammah long ago!'

'Let me up!' shrilled little Chota Lal in his gilt-embroidered cap.

His father was worth perhaps half a million sterling, but India is the

only democratic land in the world.

'The Hindus fell off Zam-Zammah too. The Mussalmans pushed them off.

Thy father was a pastry-cook--'

He stopped; for there shuffled round the corner, from the roaring Motee

Bazar, such a man as Kim, who thought he knew all castes, had never

seen. He was nearly six feet high, dressed in fold upon fold of dingy

stuff like horse-blanketing, and not one fold of it could Kim refer to

any known trade or profession. At his belt hung a long open-work iron

pencase and a wooden rosary such as holy men wear. On his head was a

gigantic sort of tam-o'-shanter. His face was yellow and wrinkled, like

that of Fook Shing, the Chinese bootmaker in the bazar. His eyes

turned up at the corners and looked like little slits of onyx.

'Who is that?' said Kim to his companions.

'Perhaps it is a man,' said Abdullah, finger in mouth, staring.

'Without doubt,' returned Kim; 'but he is no man of India that I have

ever seen.'

'A priest, perhaps,' said Chota Lal, spying the rosary. 'See! He goes

into the Wonder House!'

'Nay, nay,' said the policeman, shaking his head. 'I do not understand

your talk.' The constable spoke Punjabi. 'O Friend of all the World,

what does he say?'

'Send him hither,' said Kim, dropping from Zam-Zammah, flourishing his

bare heels. 'He is a foreigner, and thou art a buffalo.'

The man turned helplessly and drifted towards the boys. He was old,

and his woollen gaberdine still reeked of the stinking artemisia of the

mountain passes.

'O Children, what is that big house?' he said in very fair Urdu.

'The Ajaib-Gher, the Wonder House!' Kim gave him no title--such as

Lala or Mian. He could not divine the man's creed.

'Ah! The Wonder House! Can any enter?'

'It is written above the door--all can enter.'

'Without payment?'

'I go in and out. I am no banker,' laughed Kim.

'Alas! I am an old man. I did not know.' Then, fingering his rosary,

he half turned to the Museum.

'What is your caste? Where is your house? Have you come far?' Kim

asked.

'I came by Kulu--from beyond the Kailas--but what know you? From the

Hills where'--he sighed--'the air and water are fresh and cool.'

'Aha! Khitai [a Chinaman],' said Abdullah proudly. Fook Shing had

once chased him out of his shop for spitting at the joss above the

boots.

'Pahari [a hillman],' said little Chota Lal.

'Aye, child--a hillman from hills thou'lt never see. Didst hear of

Bhotiyal [Tibet]? I am no Khitai, but a Bhotiya [Tibetan], since you

must know--a lama--or, say, a guru in your tongue.'

'A guru from Tibet,' said Kim. 'I have not seen such a man. They be

Hindus in Tibet, then?'

'We be followers of the Middle Way, living in peace in our lamasseries,

and I go to see the Four Holy Places before I die. Now do you, who are

children, know as much as I do who am old.' He smiled benignantly on

the boys.

'Hast thou eaten?'

He fumbled in his bosom and drew forth a worn, wooden begging-bowl. The

boys nodded. All priests of their acquaintance begged.

'I do not wish to eat yet.' He turned his head like an old tortoise in

the sunlight. 'Is it true that there are many images in the Wonder

House of Lahore?' He repeated the last words as one making sure of an

address.

'That is true,' said Abdullah. 'It is full of heathen busts. Thou

also art an idolater.'

'Never mind him,' said. Kim. 'That is the Government's house and

there is no idolatry in it, but only a Sahib with a white beard. Come

with me and I will show.'

'Strange priests eat boys,' whispered Chota Lal.

'And he is a stranger and a but-parast [idolater],' said Abdullah, the

Mohammedan.

Kim laughed. 'He is new. Run to your mothers' laps, and be safe.

Come!'

Kim clicked round the self-registering turnstile; the old man followed

and halted amazed. In the entrance-hall stood the larger figures of

the Greco-Buddhist sculptures done, savants know how long since, by

forgotten workmen whose hands were feeling, and not unskilfully, for

the mysteriously transmitted Grecian touch. There were hundreds of

pieces, friezes of figures in relief, fragments of statues and slabs

crowded with figures that had encrusted the brick walls of the Buddhist

stupas and viharas of the North Country and now, dug up and labelled,

made the pride of the Museum. In open-mouthed wonder the lama turned

to this and that, and finally checked in rapt attention before a large

alto-relief representing a coronation or apotheosis of the Lord Buddha.

The Master was represented seated on a lotus the petals of which were

so deeply undercut as to show almost detached. Round Him was an adoring

hierarchy of kings, elders, and old-time Buddhas. Below were

lotus-covered waters with fishes and water-birds. Two butterfly-winged

devas held a wreath over His head; above them another pair supported an

umbrella surmounted by the jewelled headdress of the Bodhisat.

'The Lord! The Lord! It is Sakya Muni himself,' the lama half sobbed;

and under his breath began the wonderful Buddhist invocation:

To Him the Way, the Law, apart, Whom Maya held beneath her heart,

Ananda's Lord, the Bodhisat.

'And He is here! The Most Excellent Law is here also. My pilgrimage

is well begun. And what work! What work!'

'Yonder is the Sahib.' said Kim, and dodged sideways among the cases

of the arts and manufacturers wing. A white-bearded Englishman was

looking at the lama, who gravely turned and saluted him and after some

fumbling drew forth a note-book and a scrap of paper.

'Yes, that is my name,' smiling at the clumsy, childish print.

'One of us who had made pilgrimage to the Holy Places--he is now Abbot

of the Lung-Cho Monastery--gave it me,' stammered the lama. 'He spoke

of these.' His lean hand moved tremulously round.

'Welcome, then, O lama from Tibet. Here be the images, and I am

here'--he glanced at the lama's face--'to gather knowledge. Come to my

office awhile.' The old man was trembling with excitement.

The office was but a little wooden cubicle partitioned off from the

sculpture-lined gallery. Kim laid himself down, his ear against a

crack in the heat-split cedar door, and, following his instinct,

stretched out to listen and watch.

Most of the talk was altogether above his head. The lama, haltingly at

first, spoke to the Curator of his own lamassery, the Such-zen,

opposite the Painted Rocks, four months' march away. The Curator

brought out a huge book of photos and showed him that very place,

perched on its crag, overlooking the gigantic valley of many-hued

strata.

'Ay, ay!' The lama mounted a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles of Chinese

work. 'Here is the little door through which we bring wood before

winter. And thou--the English know of these things? He who is now

Abbot of Lung-Cho told me, but I did not believe. The Lord--the

Excellent One--He has honour here too? And His life is known?'

'It is all carven upon the stones. Come and see, if thou art rested.'

Out shuffled the lama to the main hall, and, the Curator beside him,

went through the collection with the reverence of a devotee and the

appreciative instinct of a craftsman.

Incident by incident in the beautiful story he identified on the

blurred stone, puzzled here and there by the unfamiliar Greek

convention, but delighted as a child at each new trove. Where the

sequence failed, as in the Annunciation, the Curator supplied it from

his mound of books--French and German, with photographs and

reproductions.

Here was the devout Asita, the pendant of Simeon in the Christian

story, holding the Holy Child on his knee while mother and father

listened; and here were incidents in the legend of the cousin

Devadatta. Here was the wicked woman who accused the Master of

impurity, all confounded; here was the teaching in the Deer-park; the

miracle that stunned the fire-worshippers; here was the Bodhisat in

royal state as a prince; the miraculous birth; the death at Kusinagara,

where the weak disciple fainted; while there were almost countless

repetitions of the meditation under the Bodhi tree; and the adoration

of the alms-bowl was everywhere. In a few minutes the Curator saw that

his guest was no mere bead-telling mendicant, but a scholar of parts.

And they went at it all over again, the lama taking snuff, wiping his

spectacles, and talking at railway speed in a bewildering mixture of

Urdu and Tibetan. He had heard of the travels of the Chinese pilgrims,

Fu-Hiouen and Hwen-Tsiang, and was anxious to know if there was any

translation of their record. He drew in his breath as he turned

helplessly over the pages of Beal and Stanislas Julien. ''Tis all

here. A treasure locked.' Then he composed himself reverently to

listen to fragments hastily rendered into Urdu. For the first time he

heard of the labours of European scholars, who by the help of these and

a hundred other documents have identified the Holy Places of Buddhism.

Then he was shown a mighty map, spotted and traced with yellow. The

brown finger followed the Curator's pencil from point to point. Here

was Kapilavastu, here the Middle Kingdom, and here Mahabodhi, the Mecca

of Buddhism; and here was Kusinagara, sad place of the Holy One's

death. The old man bowed his head over the sheets in silence for a

while, and the Curator lit another pipe. Kim had fallen asleep. When

he waked, the talk, still in spate, was more within his comprehension.

'And thus it was, O Fountain of Wisdom, that I decided to go to the

Holy Places which His foot had trod--to the Birthplace, even to Kapila;

then to Mahabodhi, which is Buddh Gaya--to the Monastery--to the

Deer-park--to the place of His death.'

The lama lowered his voice. 'And I come here alone. For

five--seven--eighteen--forty years it was in my mind that the Old Law

was not well followed; being overlaid, as thou knowest, with devildom,

charms, and idolatry. Even as the child outside said but now. Ay,

even as the child said, with but-parasti.'

'So it comes with all faiths.'

'Thinkest thou? The books of my lamassery I read, and they were dried

pith; and the later ritual with which we of the Reformed Law have

cumbered ourselves--that, too, had no worth to these old eyes. Even

the followers of the Excellent One are at feud on feud with one

another. It is all illusion. Ay, maya, illusion. But I have another

desire'--the seamed yellow face drew within three inches of the

Curator, and the long forefinger-nail tapped on the table. 'Your

scholars, by these books, have followed the Blessed Feet in all their

wanderings; but there are things which they have not sought out. I

know nothing--nothing do I know--but I go to free myself from the Wheel

of Things by a broad and open road.' He smiled with most simple

triumph. 'As a pilgrim to the Holy Places I acquire merit. But there

is more. Listen to a true thing. When our gracious Lord, being as yet

a youth, sought a mate, men said, in His father's Court, that He was

too tender for marriage. Thou knowest?'

The Curator nodded, wondering what would come next.

'So they made the triple trial of strength against all comers. And at

the test of the Bow, our Lord first breaking that which they gave Him,

called for such a bow as none might bend. Thou knowest?'

'It is written. I have read.'

'And, overshooting all other marks, the arrow passed far and far beyond

sight. At the last it fell; and, where it touched earth, there broke

out a stream which presently became a River, whose nature, by our

Lord's beneficence, and that merit He acquired ere He freed himself, is

that whoso bathes in it washes away all taint and speckle of sin.'

'So it is written,' said the Curator sadly.

The lama drew a long breath. 'Where is that River? Fountain of

Wisdom, where fell the arrow?'

'Alas, my brother, I do not know,' said the Curator.

'Nay, if it please thee to forget--the one thing only that thou hast

not told me. Surely thou must know? See, I am an old man! I ask with

my head between thy feet, O Fountain of Wisdom. We know He drew the

bow! We know the arrow fell! We know the stream gushed! Where, then,

is the River? My dream told me to find it. So I came. I am here. But

where is the River?'

'If I knew, think you I would not cry it aloud?'

'By it one attains freedom from the Wheel of Things,' the lama went on,

unheeding. 'The River of the Arrow! Think again! Some little stream,

maybe--dried in the heats? But the Holy One would never so cheat an

old man.'

'I do not know. I do not know.'

The lama brought his thousand-wrinkled face once more a handsbreadth

from the Englishman's. 'I see thou dost not know. Not being of the

Law, the matter is hid from thee.'

'Ay--hidden--hidden.'

'We are both bound, thou and I, my brother. But I'--he rose with a

sweep of the soft thick drapery--'I go to cut myself free. Come also!'

'I am bound,' said the Curator. 'But whither goest thou?'

'First to Kashi [Benares]: where else? There I shall meet one of the

pure faith in a Jain temple of that city. He also is a Seeker in

secret, and from him haply I may learn. Maybe he will go with me to

Buddh Gaya. Thence north and west to Kapilavastu, and there will I

seek for the River. Nay, I will seek everywhere as I go--for the place

is not known where the arrow fell.'

'And how wilt thou go? It is a far cry to Delhi, and farther to

Benares.'

'By road and the trains. From Pathankot, having left the Hills, I came

hither in a te-rain. It goes swiftly. At first I was amazed to see

those tall poles by the side of the road snatching up and snatching up

their threads,'--he illustrated the stoop and whirl of a telegraph-pole

flashing past the train. 'But later, I was cramped and desired to

walk, as I am used.'

'And thou art sure of thy road?' said the Curator.

'Oh, for that one but asks a question and pays money, and the appointed

persons despatch all to the appointed place. That much I knew in my

lamassery from sure report,' said the lama proudly.

'And when dost thou go?' The Curator smiled at the mixture of

old-world piety and modern progress that is the note of India today.

'As soon as may be. I follow the places of His life till I come to the

River of the Arrow. There is, moreover, a written paper of the hours

of the trains that go south.'

'And for food?' Lamas, as a rule, have good store of money somewhere

about them, but the Curator wished to make sure.

'For the journey, I take up the Master's begging-bowl. Yes. Even as

He went so go I, forsaking the ease of my monastery. There was with me

when I left the hills a chela [disciple] who begged for me as the Rule

demands, but halting in Kulu awhile a fever took him and he died. I

have now no chela, but I will take the alms-bowl and thus enable the

charitable to acquire merit.' He nodded his head valiantly. Learned

doctors of a lamassery do not beg, but the lama was an enthusiast in

this quest.

'Be it so,' said the Curator, smiling. 'Suffer me now to acquire

merit. We be craftsmen together, thou and I. Here is a new book of

white English paper: here be sharpened pencils two and three--thick

and thin, all good for a scribe. Now lend me thy spectacles.'

The Curator looked through them. They were heavily scratched, but the

power was almost exactly that of his own pair, which he slid into the

lama's hand, saying: 'Try these.'

'A feather! A very feather upon the face.' The old man turned his

head delightedly and wrinkled up his nose. 'How scarcely do I feel

them! How clearly do I see!'

'They be bilaur--crystal--and will never scratch. May they help thee

to thy River, for they are thine.'

'I will take them and the pencils and the white note-book,' said the

lama, 'as a sign of friendship between priest and priest--and now--' He

fumbled at his belt, detached the open-work iron pincers, and laid it

on the Curator's table. 'That is for a memory between thee and me--my

pencase. It is something old--even as I am.'

It was a piece of ancient design, Chinese, of an iron that is not

smelted these days; and the collector's heart in the Curator's bosom

had gone out to it from the first. For no persuasion would the lama

resume his gift.

'When I return, having found the River, I will bring thee a written

picture of the Padma Samthora such as I used to make on silk at the

lamassery. Yes--and of the Wheel of Life,' he chuckled, 'for we be

craftsmen together, thou and I.'

The Curator would have detained him: they are few in the world who

still have the secret of the conventional brush-pen Buddhist pictures

which are, as it were, half written and half drawn. But the lama

strode out, head high in air, and pausing an instant before the great

statue of a Bodhisat in meditation, brushed through the turnstiles.

Kim followed like a shadow. What he had overheard excited him wildly.

This man was entirely new to all his experience, and he meant to

investigate further, precisely as he would have investigated a new

building or a strange festival in Lahore city. The lama was his trove,

and he purposed to take possession. Kim's mother had been Irish, too.

The old man halted by Zam-Zammah and looked round till his eye fell on

Kim. The inspiration of his pilgrimage had left him for awhile, and he

felt old, forlorn, and very empty.

'Do not sit under that gun,' said the policeman loftily.

'Huh! Owl!' was Kim's retort on the lama's behalf. 'Sit under that

gun if it please thee. When didst thou steal the milkwoman's slippers,

Dunnoo?'

That was an utterly unfounded charge sprung on the spur of the moment,

but it silenced Dunnoo, who knew that Kim's clear yell could call up

legions of bad bazaar boys if need arose.

'And whom didst thou worship within?' said Kim affably, squatting in

the shade beside the lama.

'I worshipped none, child. I bowed before the Excellent Law.'

Kim accepted this new God without emotion. He knew already a few score.

'And what dost thou do?'

'I beg. I remember now it is long since I have eaten or drunk. What is

the custom of charity in this town? In silence, as we do of Tibet, or

speaking aloud?'

'Those who beg in silence starve in silence,' said Kim, quoting a

native proverb. The lama tried to rise, but sank back again, sighing

for his disciple, dead in far-away Kulu. Kim watched head to one side,

considering and interested.

'Give me the bowl. I know the people of this city--all who are

charitable. Give, and I will bring it back filled.'

Simply as a child the old man handed him the bowl.

'Rest, thou. I know the people.'

He trotted off to the open shop of a kunjri, a low-caste

vegetable-seller, which lay opposite the belt-tramway line down the

Motee Bazar. She knew Kim of old.

'Oho, hast thou turned yogi with thy begging-bowl?' she cried.

'Nay.' said Kim proudly. 'There is a new priest in the city--a man

such as I have never seen.'

'Old priest--young tiger,' said the woman angrily. 'I am tired of new

priests! They settle on our wares like flies. Is the father of my son

a well of charity to give to all who ask?'

'No,' said Kim. 'Thy man is rather yagi [bad-tempered] than yogi [a

holy man]. But this priest is new. The Sahib in the Wonder House has

talked to him like a brother. O my mother, fill me this bowl. He

waits.'

'That bowl indeed! That cow-bellied basket! Thou hast as much grace

as the holy bull of Shiv. He has taken the best of a basket of onions

already, this morn; and forsooth, I must fill thy bowl. He comes here

again.'

The huge, mouse-coloured Brahmini bull of the ward was shouldering his

way through the many-coloured crowd, a stolen plantain hanging out of

his mouth. He headed straight for the shop, well knowing his

privileges as a sacred beast, lowered his head, and puffed heavily

along the line of baskets ere making his choice. Up flew Kim's hard

little heel and caught him on his moist blue nose. He snorted

indignantly, and walked away across the tram-rails, his hump quivering

with rage.

'See! I have saved more than the bowl will cost thrice over. Now,

mother, a little rice and some dried fish atop--yes, and some vegetable

curry.'

A growl came out of the back of the shop, where a man lay.

'He drove away the bull,' said the woman in an undertone. 'It is good

to give to the poor.' She took the bowl and returned it full of hot

rice.

'But my yogi is not a cow,' said Kim gravely, making a hole with his

fingers in the top of the mound. 'A little curry is good, and a fried

cake, and a morsel of conserve would please him, I think.'

'It is a hole as big as thy head,' said the woman fretfully. But she

filled it, none the less, with good, steaming vegetable curry, clapped

a fried cake atop, and a morsel of clarified butter on the cake, dabbed

a lump of sour tamarind conserve at the side; and Kim looked at the

load lovingly.

'That is good. When I am in the bazar the bull shall not come to this

house. He is a bold beggar-man.'

'And thou?' laughed the woman. 'But speak well of bulls. Hast thou

not told me that some day a Red Bull will come out of a field to help

thee? Now hold all straight and ask for the holy man's blessing upon

me. Perhaps, too, he knows a cure for my daughter's sore eyes. Ask.

him that also, O thou Little Friend of all the World.'

But Kim had danced off ere the end of the sentence, dodging pariah dogs

and hungry acquaintances.

'Thus do we beg who know the way of it,' said he proudly to the lama,

who opened his eyes at the contents of the bowl. 'Eat now and--I will

eat with thee. Ohe, bhisti!' he called to the water-carrier, sluicing

the crotons by the Museum. 'Give water here. We men are thirsty.'

'We men!' said the bhisti, laughing. 'Is one skinful enough for such

a pair? Drink, then, in the name of the Compassionate.'

He loosed a thin stream into Kim's hands, who drank native fashion; but

the lama must needs pull out a cup from his inexhaustible upper

draperies and drink ceremonially.

'Pardesi [a foreigner],' Kim explained, as the old man delivered in an

unknown tongue what was evidently a blessing.

They ate together in great content, clearing the beggingbowl. Then the

lama took snuff from a portentous wooden snuff-gourd, fingered his

rosary awhile, and so dropped into the easy sleep of age, as the shadow

of Zam-Zammah grew long.

Kim loafed over to the nearest tobacco-seller, a rather lively young

Mohammedan woman, and begged a rank cigar of the brand that they sell

to students of the Punjab University who copy English customs. Then he

smoked and thought, knees to chin, under the belly of the gun, and the

outcome of his thoughts was a sudden and stealthy departure in the

direction of Nila Ram's timber-yard.

The lama did not wake till the evening life of the city had begun with

lamp-lighting and the return of white-robed clerks and subordinates

from the Government offices. He stared dizzily in all directions, but

none looked at him save a Hindu urchin in a dirty turban and

Isabella-coloured clothes. Suddenly he bowed his head on his knees and

wailed.

'What is this?' said the boy, standing before him. 'Hast thou been

robbed?'

'It is my new chela [disciple] that is gone away from me, and I know

not where he is.'

'And what like of man was thy disciple?'

'It was a boy who came to me in place of him who died, on account of

the merit which I had gained when I bowed before the Law within there.'

He pointed towards the Museum. 'He came upon me to show me a road

which I had lost. He led me into the Wonder House, and by his talk

emboldened me to speak to the Keeper of the Images, so that I was

cheered and made strong. And when I was faint with hunger he begged

for me, as would a chela for his teacher. Suddenly was he sent.

Suddenly has he gone away. It was in my mind to have taught him the

Law upon the road to Benares.'

Kim stood amazed at this, because he had overheard the talk in the

Museum, and knew that the old man was speaking the truth, which is a

thing a native on the road seldom presents to a stranger.

'But I see now that he was but sent for a purpose. By this I know that

I shall find a certain River for which I seek.'

'The River of the Arrow?' said Kim, with a superior smile.

'Is this yet another Sending?' cried the lama. 'To none have I spoken

of my search, save to the Priest of the Images. Who art thou?'

'Thy chela,' said Kim simply, sitting on his heels. 'I have never seen

anyone like to thee in all this my life. I go with thee to Benares.

And, too, I think that so old a man as thou, speaking the truth to

chance-met people at dusk, is in great need of a disciple.'

'But the River--the River of the Arrow?'

'Oh, that I heard when thou wast speaking to the Englishman. I lay

against the door.'

The lama sighed. 'I thought thou hadst been a guide permitted. Such

things fall sometimes--but I am not worthy. Thou dost not, then, know

the River?'

'Not I,' Kim laughed uneasily. 'I go to look for--for a bull--a Red.

Bull on a green field who shall help me.' Boylike, if an acquaintance

had a scheme, Kim was quite ready with one of his own; and, boylike, he

had really thought for as much as twenty minutes at a time of his

father's prophecy.

'To what, child?' said the lama.

'God knows, but so my father told me'. I heard thy talk in the Wonder

House of all those new strange places in the Hills, and if one so old

and so little--so used to truth-telling--may go out for the small

matter of a river, it seemed to me that I too must go a-travelling. If

it is our fate to find those things we shall find them--thou, thy

River; and I, my Bull, and the Strong Pillars and some other matters

that I forget.'

'It is not pillars but a Wheel from which I would be free,' said the

lama.

'That is all one. Perhaps they will make me a king,' said Kim,

serenely prepared for anything.

'I will teach thee other and better desires upon the road,' the lama

replied in the voice of authority. 'Let us go to Benares.'

'Not by night. Thieves are abroad. Wait till the day.'

'But there is no place to sleep.' The old man was used to the order of

his monastery, and though he slept on the ground, as the Rule decrees,

preferred a decency in these things.

'We shall get good lodging at the Kashmir Serai,' said Kim, laughing at

his perplexity. 'I have a friend there. Come!'

The hot and crowded bazars blazed with light as they made their way

through the press of all the races in Upper India, and the lama mooned

through it like a man in a dream. It was his first experience of a

large manufacturing city, and the crowded tram-car with its continually

squealing brakes frightened him. Half pushed, half towed, he arrived

at the high gate of the Kashmir Serai: that huge open square over

against the railway station, surrounded with arched cloisters, where

the camel and horse caravans put up on their return from Central Asia.

Here were all manner of Northern folk, tending tethered ponies and

kneeling camels; loading and unloading bales and bundles; drawing water

for the evening meal at the creaking well-windlasses; piling grass

before the shrieking, wild-eyed stallions; cuffing the surly caravan

dogs; paying off camel-drivers; taking on new grooms; swearing,

shouting, arguing, and chaffering in the packed square. The cloisters,

reached by three or four masonry steps, made a haven of refuge around

this turbulent sea. Most of them were rented to traders, as we rent

the arches of a viaduct; the space between pillar and pillar being

bricked or boarded off into rooms, which were guarded by heavy wooden

doors and cumbrous native padlocks. Locked doors showed that the owner

was away, and a few rude--sometimes very rude--chalk or paint scratches

told where he had gone. Thus: 'Lutuf Ullah is gone to Kurdistan.'

Below, in coarse verse: 'O Allah, who sufferest lice to live on the

coat of a Kabuli, why hast thou allowed this louse Lutuf to live so

long?'

Kim, fending the lama between excited men and excited beasts, sidled

along the cloisters to the far end, nearest therailway station, where

Mahbub Ali, the horse-trader, lived when he came in from that

mysterious land beyond the Passes of the North.

Kim had had many dealings with Mahbub in his little life, especially

between his tenth and his thirteenth year--and the big burly Afghan,

his beard dyed scarlet with lime (for he was elderly and did not wish

his grey hairs to show), knew the boy's value as a gossip. Sometimes

he would tell Kim to watch a man who had nothing whatever to do with

horses: to follow him for one whole day and report every soul with

whom he talked. Kim would deliver himself of his tale at evening, and

Mahbub would listen without a word or gesture. It was intrigue of some

kind, Kim knew; but its worth lay in saying nothing whatever to anyone

except Mahbub, who gave him beautiful meals all hot from the cookshop

at the head of the serai, and once as much as eight annas in money.

'He is here,' said Kim, hitting a bad-tempered camel on the nose. 'Ohe.

Mahbub Ali!' He halted at a dark arch and slipped behind the

bewildered lama.

The horse-trader, his deep, embroidered Bokhariot belt unloosed, was

lying on a pair of silk carpet saddle-bags, pulling lazily at an

immense silver hookah. He turned his head very slightly at the cry;

and seeing only the tall silent figure, chuckled in his deep chest.

'Allah! A lama! A Red Lama! It is far from Lahore to the Passes.

What dost thou do here?'

The lama held out the begging-bowl mechanically.

'God's curse on all unbelievers!' said Mahbub. 'I do not give to a

lousy Tibetan; but ask my Baltis over yonder behind the camels. They

may value your blessings. Oh, horseboys, here is a countryman of

yours. See if he be hungry.'

A shaven, crouching Balti, who had come down with the horses, and who

was nominally some sort of degraded Buddhist, fawned upon the priest,

and in thick gutturals besought the Holy One to sit at the horseboys'

fire.

'Go!' said Kim, pushing him lightly, and the lama strode away, leaving

Kim at the edge of the cloister.

'Go!' said Mahbub Ali, returning to his hookah. 'Little Hindu, run

away. God's curse on all unbelievers! Beg from those of my tail who

are of thy faith.'

'Maharaj,' whined Kim, using the Hindu form of address, and thoroughly

enjoying the situation; 'my father is dead--my mother is dead--my

stomach is empty.'

'Beg from my men among the horses, I say. There must be some Hindus in

my tail.'

'Oh, Mahbub Ali, but am I a Hindu?' said Kim in English.

The trader gave no sign of astonishment, but looked under shaggy

eyebrows.

'Little Friend of all the World,' said he, 'what is this?'

'Nothing. I am now that holy man's disciple; and we go a pilgrimage

together--to Benares, he says. He is quite mad, and I am tired of

Lahore city. I wish new air and water.'

'But for whom dost thou work? Why come to me?' The voice was harsh

with suspicion.

'To whom else should I come? I have no money. It is not good to go

about without money. Thou wilt sell many horses to the officers. They

are very fine horses, these new ones: I have seen them. Give me a

rupee, Mahbub Ali, and when I come to my wealth I will give thee a bond

and pay.'

'Um!' said Mahbub Ali, thinking swiftly. 'Thou hast never before lied

to me. Call that lama--stand back in the dark.'

'Oh, our tales will agree,' said Kim, laughing.

'We go to Benares,' said the lama, as soon as he understood the drift

of Mahbub Ali's questions. 'The boy and I, I go to seek for a certain

River.'

'Maybe--but the boy?'

'He is my disciple. He was sent, I think, to guide me to that River.

Sitting under a gun was I when he came suddenly. Such things have

befallen the fortunate to whom guidance was allowed. But I remember

now, he said he was of this world--a Hindu.'

'And his name?'

'That I did not ask. Is he not my disciple?'

'His country--his race--his village? Mussalman--Sikh Hindu--Jain--low

caste or high?'

'Why should I ask? There is neither high nor low in the Middle Way.

If he is my chela--does--will--can anyone take him from me? for, look

you, without him I shall not find my River.' He wagged his head

solemnly.

'None shall take him from thee. Go, sit among my Baltis,' said Mahbub

Ali, and the lama drifted off, soothed by the promise.

'Is he not quite mad?' said Kim, coming forward to the light again.

'Why should I lie to thee, Hajji?'

Mahbub puffed his hookah in silence. Then he began, almost whispering:

'Umballa is on the road to Benares--if indeed ye two go there.'

'Tck! Tck! I tell thee he does not know how to lie--as we two know.'

'And if thou wilt carry a message for me as far as Umballa, I will give

thee money. It concerns a horse--a white stallion which I have sold to

an officer upon the last time I returned from the Passes. But

then--stand nearer and hold up hands as begging--the pedigree of the

white stallion was not fully established, and that officer, who is now

at Umballa, bade me make it clear.' (Mahbub here described the horse

and the appearance of the officer.) 'So the message to that officer

will be: "The pedigree of the white stallion is fully established."

By this will he know that thou comest from me. He will then say "What

proof hast thou?" and thou wilt answer: "Mahbub Ali has given me the

proof."'

'And all for the sake of a white stallion,' said Kim, with a giggle,

his eyes aflame.

'That pedigree I will give thee now--in my own fashion and some hard

words as well.' A shadow passed behind Kim, and a feeding camel.

Mahbub Ali raised his voice.

'Allah! Art thou the only beggar in the city? Thy mother is dead. Thy

father is dead. So is it with all of them. Well, well--'

He turned as feeling on the floor beside him and tossed a flap of soft,

greasy Mussalman bread to the boy. 'Go and lie down among my horseboys

for tonight--thou and the lama. Tomorrow I may give thee service.'

Kim slunk away, his teeth in the bread, and, as he expected, he found a

small wad of folded tissue-paper wrapped in oilskin, with three silver

rupees--enormous largesse. He smiled and thrust money and paper into

his leather amulet-case. The lama, sumptuously fed by Mahbub's Baltis,

was already asleep in a corner of one of the stalls. Kim lay down

beside him and laughed. He knew he had rendered a service to Mahbub

Ali, and not for one little minute did he believe the tale of the

stallion's pedigree.

But Kim did not suspect that Mahbub Ali, known as one of the best

horse-dealers in the Punjab, a wealthy and enterprising trader, whose

caravans penetrated far and far into the Back of Beyond, was registered

in one of the locked books of the Indian Survey Department as C25 IB.

Twice or thrice yearly C25 would send in a little story, baldly told

but most interesting, and generally--it was checked by the statements

of R17 and M4--quite true. It concerned all manner of out-of-the-way

mountain principalities, explorers of nationalities other than English,

and the guntrade--was, in brief, a small portion of that vast mass of

'information received' on which the Indian Government acts. But,

recently, five confederated Kings, who had no business to confederate,

had been informed by a kindly Northern Power that there was a leakage

of news from their territories into British India. So those Kings'

Prime Ministers were seriously annoyed and took steps, after the

Oriental fashion. They suspected, among many others, the bullying,

red-bearded horsedealer whose caravans ploughed through their

fastnesses belly-deep in snow. At least, his caravan that season had

been ambushed and shot at twice on the way down, when Mahbub's men

accounted for three strange ruffians who might, or might not, have been

hired for the job. Therefore Mahbub had avoided halting at the

insalubrious city of Peshawur, and had come through without stop to

Lahore, where, knowing his country-people, he anticipated curious

developments.

And there was that on Mahbub Ali which he did not wish to keep an hour

longer than was necessary--a wad of closely folded tissue-paper,

wrapped in oilskin--an impersonal, unaddressed statement, with five

microscopic pin-holes in one corner, that most scandalously betrayed

the five confederated Kings, the sympathetic Northern Power, a Hindu

banker in Peshawur, a firm of gun-makers in Belgium, and an important,

semi-independent Mohammedan ruler to the south. This last was R17's

work, which Mahbub had picked up beyond the Dora Pass and was carrying

in for R17, who, owing to circumstances over which he had no control,

could not leave his post of observation. Dynamite was milky and

innocuous beside that report of C25; and even an Oriental, with an

Oriental's views of the value of time, could see that the sooner it was

in the proper hands the better. Mahbub had no particular desire to die

by violence, because two or three family blood-feuds across the Border

hung unfinished on his hands, and when these scores were cleared he

intended to settle down as a more or less virtuous citizen. He had

never passed the serai gate since his arrival two days ago, but had

been ostentatious in sending telegrams to Bombay, where he banked some

of his money; to Delhi, where a sub-partner of his own clan was selling

horses to the agent of a Rajputana state; and to Umballa, where an

Englishman was excitedly demanding the pedigree of a white stallion.

The public letter-writer, who knew English, composed excellent

telegrams, such as: 'Creighton, Laurel Bank, Umballa. Horse is Arabian

as already advised. Sorrowful delayed pedigree which am translating.'

And later to the same address: 'Much sorrowful delay. Will forward

pedigree.' To his sub-partner at Delhi he wired: 'Lutuf Ullah. Have

wired two thousand rupees your credit Luchman Narain's bank--' This was

entirely in the way of trade, but every one of those telegrams was

discussed and rediscussed, by parties who conceived themselves to be

interested, before they went over to the railway station in charge of a

foolish Balti, who allowed all sorts of people to read them on the road.

When, in Mahbub's own picturesque language, he had muddied the wells of

inquiry with the stick of precaution, Kim had dropped on him, sent from

Heaven; and, being as prompt as he was unscrupulous, Mahbub Ali used to

taking all sorts of gusty chances, pressed him into service on the spot.

A wandering lama with a low-caste boy-servant might attract a moment's

interest as they wandered about India, the land of pilgrims; but no one

would suspect them or, what was more to the point, rob.

He called for a new light-ball to his hookah, and considered the case.

If the worst came to the worst, and the boy came to harm, the paper

would incriminate nobody. And he would go up to Umballa leisurely

and--at a certain risk of exciting fresh suspicion--repeat his tale by

word of mouth to the people concerned.

But R17's report was the kernel of the whole affair, and it would be

distinctly inconvenient if that failed to come to hand. However, God

was great, and Mahbub Ali felt he had done all he could for the time

being. Kim was the one soul in the world who had never told him a lie.

That would have been a fatal blot on Kim's character if Mahbub had not

known that to others, for his own ends or Mahbub's business, Kim could

lie like an Oriental.

Then Mahbub Ali rolled across the serai to the Gate of the Harpies who

paint their eyes and trap the stranger, and was at some pains to call

on the one girl who, he had reason to believe, was a particular friend

of a smooth-faced Kashmiri pundit who had waylaid his simple Balti in

the matter of the telegrams. It was an utterly foolish thing to do;

because they fell to drinking perfumed brandy against the Law of the

Prophet, and Mahbub grew wonderfully drunk, and the gates of his mouth

were loosened, and he pursued the Flower of Delight with the feet of

intoxication till he fell flat among the cushions, where the Flower of

Delight, aided by a smooth-faced Kashmiri pundit, searched him from

head to foot most thoroughly.

About the same hour Kim heard soft feet in Mahbub's deserted stall.

The horse-trader, curiously enough, had left his door unlocked, and his

men were busy celebrating their return to India with a whole sheep of

Mahbub's bounty. A sleek young gentleman from Delhi, armed with a

bunch of keys which the Flower had unshackled from the senseless one's

belt, went through every single box, bundle, mat, and saddle-bag in

Mahbub's possession even more systematically than the Flower and the

pundit were searching the owner.

'And I think.' said the Flower scornfully an hour later, one rounded

elbow on the snoring carcass, 'that he is no more than a pig of an

Afghan horse-dealer, with no thought except women and horses.

Moreover, he may have sent it away by now--if ever there were such a

thing.'

'Nay--in a matter touching Five Kings it would be next his black

heart,' said the pundit. 'Was there nothing?'

The Delhi man laughed and resettled his turban as he entered. 'I

searched between the soles of his slippers as the Flower searched his

clothes. This is not the man but another. I leave little unseen.'

'They did not say he was the very man,' said the pundit thoughtfully.

'They said, "Look if he be the man, since our counsels are troubled."'

'That North country is full of horse-dealers as an old coat of lice.

There is Sikandar Khan, Nur Ali Beg, and Farrukh Shah all heads of

kafilas [caravans]--who deal there,' said the Flower.

'They have not yet come in,' said the pundit. 'Thou must ensnare them

later.'

Phew!' said the Flower with deep disgust, rolling Mahbub's head from

her lap. 'I earn my money. Farrukh Shah is a bear, Ali Beg a

swashbuckler, and old Sikandar Khan--yaie! Go! I sleep now. This

swine will not stir till dawn.'

When Mahbub woke, the Flower talked to him severely on the sin of

drunkenness. Asiatics do not wink when they have outmanoeuvred an

enemy, but as Mahbub Ali cleared his throat, tightened his belt, and

staggered forth under the early morning stars, he came very near to it.

'What a colt's trick!' said he to himself. 'As if every girl in

Peshawur did not use it! But 'twas prettily done. Now God He knows

how many more there be upon the Road who have orders to test

me--perhaps with the knife. So it stands that the boy must go to

Umballa--and by rail--for the writing is something urgent. I abide

here, following the Flower and drinking wine as an Afghan coper should.'

He halted at the stall next but one to his own. His men lay there

heavy with sleep. There was no sign of Kim or the lama.

'Up!' He stirred a sleeper. 'Whither went those who lay here last

even--the lama and the boy? Is aught missing?'

'Nay,' grunted the man, 'the old madman rose at second cockcrow saying

he would go to Benares, and the young one led him away.'

'The curse of Allah on all unbelievers!' said Mahbub heartily, and

climbed into his own stall, growling in his beard.

But it was Kim who had wakened the lama--Kim with one eye laid against

a knot-hole in the planking, who had seen the Delhi man's search

through the boxes. This was no common thief that turned over letters,

bills, and saddles--no mere burglar who ran a little knife sideways

into the soles of Mahbub's slippers, or picked the seams of the

saddle-bags so deftly. At first Kim had been minded to give the

alarm--the long-drawn choor--choor! [thief! thief!] that sets the

serai ablaze of nights; but he looked more carefully, and, hand on

amulet, drew his own conclusions.

'It must be the pedigree of that made-up horse-lie,' said he, 'the

thing that I carry to Umballa. Better that we go now. Those who

search bags with knives may presently search bellies with knives.

Surely there is a woman behind this. Hai! Hai! in a whisper to the

light-sleeping old man. 'Come. It is time--time to go to Benares.'

The lama rose obediently, and they passed out of the serai like shadows.

Chapter 2

And whoso will, from Pride released;

Contemning neither creed nor priest,

May feel the Soul of all the East.

About him at Kamakura.

Buddha at Kamakura.

They entered the fort-like railway station, black in the end of night;

the electrics sizzling over the goods-yard where they handle the heavy

Northern grain-traffic.

'This is the work of devils!' said the lama, recoiling from the hollow

echoing darkness, the glimmer of rails between the masonry platforms,

and the maze of girders above. He stood in a gigantic stone hall

paved, it seemed, with the sheeted dead third-class passengers who had

taken their tickets overnight and were sleeping in the waiting-rooms.

All hours of the twenty-four are alike to Orientals, and their

passenger traffic is regulated accordingly.

'This is where the fire-carriages come. One stands behind that

hole'--Kim pointed to the ticket-office--'who will give thee a paper to

take thee to Umballa.'

'But we go to Benares,' he replied petulantly.

'All one. Benares then. Quick: she comes!'

'Take thou the purse.'

The lama, not so well used to trains as he had pretended, started as

the 3.25 a.m. south-bound roared in. The sleepers sprang to life, and

the station filled with clamour and shoutings, cries of water and

sweetmeat vendors, shouts of native policemen, and shrill yells of

women gathering up their baskets, their families, and their husbands.

'It is the train--only the te-rain. It will not come here. Wait!'

Amazed at the lama's immense simplicity (he had handed him a small bag

full of rupees), Kim asked and paid for a ticket to Umballa. A sleepy

clerk grunted and flung out a ticket to the next station, just six

miles distant.

'Nay,' said Kim, scanning it with a grin. 'This may serve for farmers,

but I live in the city of Lahore. It was cleverly done, Babu. Now

give the ticket to Umballa.'

The Babu scowled and dealt the proper ticket.

'Now another to Amritzar,' said Kim, who had no notion of spending

Mahbub Ali's money on anything so crude as a paid ride to Umballa.

'The price is so much. The small money in return is just so much. I

know the ways of the te-rain ... Never did yogi need chela as thou

dost,' he went on merrily to the bewildered lama. 'They would have

flung thee out at Mian Mir but for me. This way! Come!' He returned

the money, keeping only one anna in each rupee of the price of the

Umballa ticket as his commission--the immemorial commission of Asia.

The lama jibbed at the open door of a crowded third-class carriage.

'Were it not better to walk?' said he weakly.

A burly Sikh artisan thrust forth his bearded head. 'Is he afraid? Do

not be afraid. I remember the time when I was afraid of the te-rain.

Enter! This thing is the work of the Government.'

'I do not fear,' said the lama. 'Have ye room within for two?'

'There is no room even for a mouse,' shrilled the wife of a well-to-do

cultivator--a Hindu Jat from the rich Jullundur, district. Our night

trains are not as well looked after as the day ones, where the sexes

are very strictly kept to separate carriages.

'Oh, mother of my son, we can make space,' said the blueturbaned

husband. 'Pick up the child. It is a holy man, see'st thou?'

'And my lap full of seventy times seven bundles! Why not bid him sit

on my knee, Shameless? But men are ever thus!' She looked round for

approval. An Amritzar courtesan near the window sniffed behind her

head drapery.

'Enter! Enter!' cried a fat Hindu money-lender, his folded

account-book in a cloth under his arm. With an oily smirk: 'It is

well to be kind to the poor.'

'Ay, at seven per cent a month with a mortgage on the unborn calf,'

said a young Dogra soldier going south on leave; and they all laughed.

'Will it travel to Benares?' said the lama.

'Assuredly. Else why should we come? Enter, or we are left,' cried

Kim.

'See!' shrilled the Amritzar girl. 'He has never entered a train. Oh,

see!'

'Nay, help,' said the cultivator, putting out a large brown hand and

hauling him in. 'Thus is it done, father.'

'But--but--I sit on the floor. It is against the Rule to sit on a

bench,' said the lama. 'Moreover, it cramps me.'

'I say,' began the money-lender, pursing his lips, 'that there is not

one rule of right living which these te-rains do not cause us to break.

We sit, for example, side by side with all castes and peoples.'

'Yea, and with most outrageously shameless ones,' said the wife,

scowling at the Amritzar girl making eyes at the young sepoy.

'I said we might have gone by cart along the road,' said the husband,

'and thus have saved some money.'

'Yes--and spent twice over what we saved on food by the way. That was

talked out ten thousand times.'

'Ay, by ten thousand tongues,' grunted he.

'The Gods help us poor women if we may not speak. Oho! He is of that

sort which may not look at or reply to a woman.' For the lama,

constrained by his Rule, took not the faintest notice of her. 'And his

disciple is like him?'

'Nay, mother,' said Kim most promptly. 'Not when the woman is

well-looking and above all charitable to the hungry.'

'A beggar's answer,' said the Sikh, laughing. 'Thou hast brought it on

thyself, sister!' Kim's hands were crooked in supplication.

'And whither goest thou?' said the woman, handing him the half of a

cake from a greasy package.

'Even to Benares.'

'Jugglers belike?' the young soldier suggested. 'Have ye any tricks

to pass the time? Why does not that yellow man answer?'

'Because,' said Kim stoutly, 'he is holy, and thinks upon matters

hidden from thee.'

'That may be well. We of the Ludhiana Sikhs'--he rolled it out

sonorously--'do not trouble our heads with doctrine. We fight.'

'My sister's brother's son is naik [corporal] in that regiment,' said

the Sikh craftsman quietly. 'There are also some Dogra companies

there.' The soldier glared, for a Dogra is of other caste than a Sikh,

and the banker tittered.

'They are all one to me,' said the Amritzar girl.

'That we believe,' snorted the cultivator's wife malignantly.

'Nay, but all who serve the Sirkar with weapons in their hands are, as

it were, one brotherhood. There is one brotherhood of the caste, but

beyond that again'--she looked round timidly--'the bond of the

Pulton--the Regiment--eh?'

'My brother is in a Jat regiment,' said the cultivator. 'Dogras be

good men.'

'Thy Sikhs at least were of that opinion,' said the soldier, with a

scowl at the placid old man in the corner. 'Thy Sikhs thought so when

our two companies came to help them at the Pirzai Kotal in the face of

eight Afridi standards on the ridge not three months gone.'

He told the story of a Border action in which the Dogra companies of

the Ludhiana Sikhs had acquitted themselves well. The Amritzar girl

smiled; for she knew the talk was to win her approval.

'Alas!' said the cultivator's wife at the end. 'So their villages

were burnt and their little children made homeless?'

'They had marked our dead. They paid a great payment after we of the

Sikhs had schooled them. So it was. Is this Amritzar?'

'Ay, and here they cut our tickets,' said the banker, fumbling at his

belt.

The lamps were paling in the dawn when the half-caste guard came round.

Ticket-collecting is a slow business in the East, where people secrete

their tickets in all sorts of curious places. Kim produced his and was

told to get out.

'But I go to Umballa,' he protested. 'I go with this holy man.'

'Thou canst go to Jehannum for aught I care. This ticket is only--'

Kim burst into a flood of tears, protesting that the lama was his

father and his mother, that he was the prop of the lama's declining

years, and that the lama would die without his care. All the carriage

bade the guard be merciful--the banker was specially eloquent here--but

the guard hauled Kim on to the platform. The lama blinked--he could

not overtake the situation and Kim lifted up his voice and wept outside

the carriage window.

'I am very poor. My father is dead--my mother is dead. O charitable

ones, if I am left here, who shall tend that old man?'

'What--what is this?' the lama repeated. 'He must go to Benares. He

must come with me. He is my chela. If there is money to be paid--'

'Oh, be silent,' whispered Kim; 'are we Rajahs to throw away good

silver when the world is so charitable?'

The Amritzar girl stepped out with her bundles, and it was on her that

Kim kept his watchful eye. Ladies of that persuasion, he knew, were

generous.

'A ticket--a little tikkut to Umballa--O Breaker of Hearts!' She

laughed. 'Hast thou no charity?'

'Does the holy man come from the North?'

'From far and far in the North he comes,' cried Kim. 'From among the

hills.'

'There is snow among the pine-trees in the North--in the hills there is

snow. My mother was from Kulu. Get thee a ticket. Ask him for a

blessing.'

'Ten thousand blessings,' shrilled Kim. 'O Holy One, a woman has given

us in charity so that I can come with thee--a woman with a golden

heart. I run for the tikkut.'

The girl looked up at the lama, who had mechanically followed Kim to

the platform. He bowed his head that he might not see her, and

muttered in Tibetan as she passed on with the crowd.

'Light come--light go,' said the cultivator's wife viciously.

'She has acquired merit,' returned the lama. 'Beyond doubt it was a

nun.'

'There be ten thousand such nuns in Amritzar alone. Return, old man,

or the te-rain may depart without thee,' cried the banker.

'Not only was it sufficient for the ticket, but for a little food

also,' said Kim, leaping to his place. 'Now eat, Holy One. Look. Day

comes!'

Golden, rose, saffron, and pink, the morning mists smoked away across

the flat green levels. All the rich Punjab lay out in the splendour of

the keen sun. The lama flinched a little as the telegraph-posts swung

by.

'Great is the speed of the te-rain,' said the banker, with a

patronizing grin. 'We have gone farther since Lahore than thou couldst

walk in two days: at even, we shall enter Umballa.'

'And that is still far from Benares,' said the lama wearily, mumbling

over the cakes that Kim offered. They all unloosed their bundles and

made their morning meal. Then the banker, the cultivator, and the

soldier prepared their pipes and wrapped the compartment in choking,

acrid smoke, spitting and coughing and enjoying themselves. The Sikh

and the cultivator's wife chewed pan; the lama took snuff and told his

beads, while Kim, cross-legged, smiled over the comfort of a full

stomach.

'What rivers have ye by Benares?' said the lama of a sudden to the

carriage at large.

'We have Gunga,' returned the banker, when the little titter had

subsided.

'What others?'

'What other than Gunga?'

'Nay, but in my mind was the thought of a certain River of healing.'

'That is Gunga. Who bathes in her is made clean and goes to the Gods.

Thrice have I made pilgrimage to Gunga.' He looked round proudly.

'There was need,' said the young sepoy drily, and the travellers' laugh

turned against the banker.

'Clean--to return again to the Gods,' the lama muttered. 'And to go

forth on the round of lives anew--still tied to the Wheel.' He shook

his head testily. 'But maybe there is a mistake. Who, then, made

Gunga in the beginning?'

'The Gods. Of what known faith art thou?' the banker said, appalled.

'I follow the Law--the Most Excellent Law. So it was the Gods that

made Gunga. What like of Gods were they?'

The carriage looked at him in amazement. It was inconceivable that

anyone should be ignorant of Gunga.

'What--what is thy God?' said the money-lender at last.

'Hear!' said the lama, shifting the rosary to his hand. 'Hear: for I

speak of Him now! O people of Hind, listen!'

He began in Urdu the tale of the Lord Buddha, but, borne by his own

thoughts, slid into Tibetan and long-droned texts from a Chinese book

of the Buddha's life. The gentle, tolerant folk looked on reverently.

All India is full of holy men stammering gospels in strange tongues;

shaken and consumed in the fires of their own zeal; dreamers, babblers,

and visionaries: as it has been from the beginning and will continue

to the end.

'Um!' said the soldier of the Ludhiana Sikhs. 'There was a Mohammedan

regiment lay next to us at the Pirzai Kotal, and a priest of theirs--he

was, as I remember, a naik--when the fit was on him, spake prophecies.

But the mad all are in God's keeping. His officers overlooked much in

that man.'

The lama fell back on Urdu, remembering that he was in a strange land.

'Hear the tale of the Arrow which our Lord loosed from the bow,' he

said.

This was much more to their taste, and they listened curiously while he

told it. 'Now, O people of Hind, I go to seek that River. Know ye

aught that may guide me, for we be all men and women in evil case.'

'There is Gunga--and Gunga alone--who washes away sin.' ran the murmur

round the carriage.

'Though past question we have good Gods Jullundur-way,' said the

cultivator's wife, looking out of the window. 'See how they have

blessed the crops.'

'To search every river in the Punjab is no small matter,' said her

husband. 'For me, a stream that leaves good silt on my land suffices,

and I thank Bhumia, the God of the Home-stead.' He shrugged one

knotted, bronzed shoulder.

'Think you our Lord came so far North?' said the lama, turning to Kim.

'It may be,' Kim replied soothingly, as he spat red pan-juice on the

floor.

'The last of the Great Ones,' said the Sikh with authority, 'was

Sikander Julkarn [Alexander the Great]. He paved the streets of

Jullundur and built a great tank near Umballa. That pavement holds to

this day; and the tank is there also. I never heard of thy God.'

'Let thy hair grow long and talk Punjabi,' said the young soldier

jestingly to Kim, quoting a Northern proverb. 'That is all that makes

a Sikh.' But he did not say this very loud.

The lama sighed and shrank into himself, a dingy, shapeless mass. In

the pauses of their talk they could hear the low droning 'Om mane pudme

hum! Om mane pudme hum!'--and the thick click of the wooden rosary

beads.

'It irks me,' he said at last. 'The speed and the clatter irk me.

Moreover, my chela, I think that maybe we have over-passed that River.'

'Peace, peace,' said Kim. 'Was not the River near Benares? We are yet

far from the place.'

'But--if our Lord came North, it may be any one of these little ones

that we have run across.'

'I do not know.'

'But thou wast sent to me--wast thou sent to me?--for the merit I had

acquired over yonder at Such-zen. From beside the cannon didst thou

come--bearing two faces--and two garbs.'

'Peace. One must not speak of these things here,' whispered Kim.

'There was but one of me. Think again and thou wilt remember. A

boy--a Hindu boy--by the great green cannon.'

'But was there not also an Englishman with a white beard holy among

images--who himself made more sure my assurance of the River of the

Arrow?'

'He--we--went to the Ajaib-Gher in Lahore to pray before the Gods

there,' Kim explained to the openly listening company. 'And the Sahib

of the Wonder House talked to him--yes, this is truth as a brother. He

is a very holy man, from far beyond the Hills. Rest, thou. In time we

come to Umballa.'

'But my River--the River of my healing?'

'And then, if it please thee, we will go hunting for that River on

foot. So that we miss nothing--not even a little rivulet in a

field-side.'

'But thou hast a Search of thine own?' The lama--very pleased that he

remembered so well--sat bolt upright.

'Ay,' said Kim, humouring him. The boy was entirely happy to be out

chewing pan and seeing new people in the great good-tempered world.

'It was a bull--a Red Bull that shall come and help thee and carry

thee--whither? I have forgotten. A Red Bull on a green field, was it

not?'

'Nay, it will carry me nowhere,' said Kim. 'It is but a tale I told

thee.'

'What is this?' The cultivator's wife leaned forward, her bracelets

clinking on her arm. 'Do ye both dream dreams? A Red Bull on a green

field, that shall carry thee to the heavens or what? Was it a vision?

Did one make a prophecy? We have a Red Bull in our village behind

Jullundur city, and he grazes by choice in the very greenest of our

fields!'

'Give a woman an old wife's tale and a weaver-bird a leaf and a

thread', they will weave wonderful things,' said the Sikh. 'All holy

men dream dreams, and by following holy men their disciples attain that

power.'

'A Red Bull on a green field, was it?' the lama repeated. 'In a

former life it may be thou hast acquired merit, and the Bull will come

to reward thee.'

'Nay--nay--it was but a tale one told to me--for a jest belike. But I

will seek the Bull about Umballa, and thou canst look for thy River and

rest from the clatter of the train.'

'It may be that the Bull knows--that he is sent to guide us both.'

said the lama, hopefully as a child. Then to the company, indicating

Kim: 'This one was sent to me but yesterday. He is not, I think, of

this world.'

'Beggars aplenty have I met, and holy men to boot, but never such a

yogi nor such a disciple,' said the woman.

Her husband touched his forehead lightly with one finger and smiled.

But the next time the lama would eat they took care to give him of

their best.

And at last--tired, sleepy, and dusty--they reached Umballa City

Station.

'We abide here upon a law-suit,' said the cultivator's wife to Kim.

'We lodge with my man's cousin's younger brother. There is room also

in the courtyard for thy yogi and for thee. Will--will he give me a

blessing?'

'O holy man! A woman with a heart of gold gives us lodging for the

night. It is a kindly land, this land of the South. See how we have

been helped since the dawn!'

The lama bowed his head in benediction.

'To fill my cousin's younger brother's house with wastrels--' the

husband began, as he shouldered his heavy bamboo staff.

'Thy cousin's younger brother owes my father's cousin something yet on

his daughter's marriage-feast,' said the woman crisply. 'Let him put

their food to that account. The yogi will beg, I doubt not.'

'Ay, I beg for him,' said Kim, anxious only to get the lama under

shelter for the night, that he might seek Mahbub Ali's Englishman and

deliver himself of the white stallion's pedigree.

'Now,' said he, when the lama had come to an anchor in the inner

courtyard of a decent Hindu house behind the cantonments, 'I go away

for a while--to--to buy us victual in the bazar. Do not stray abroad

till I return.'

'Thou wilt return? Thou wilt surely return?' The old man caught at

his wrist. 'And thou wilt return in this very same shape? Is it too

late to look tonight for the River?'

'Too late and too dark. Be comforted. Think how far thou art on the

road--an hundred miles from Lahore already.'

'Yea--and farther from my monastery. Alas! It is a great and terrible

world.'

Kim stole out and away, as unremarkable a figure as ever carried his

own and a few score thousand other folk's fate slung round his neck.

Mahbub Ali's directions left him little doubt of the house in which his

Englishman lived; and a groom, bringing a dog-cart home from the Club,

made him quite sure. It remained only to identify his man, and Kim

slipped through the garden hedge and hid in a clump of plumed grass

close to the veranda. The house blazed with lights, and servants moved

about tables dressed with flowers, glass, and silver. Presently forth

came an Englishman, dressed in black and white, humming a tune. It was

too dark to see his face, so Kim, beggar-wise, tried an old experiment.

'Protector of the Poor!'

The man backed towards the voice.

'Mahbub Ali says--'

'Hah! What says Mahbub Ali?' He made no attempt to look for the

speaker, and that showed Kim that he knew.

'The pedigree of the white stallion is fully established.'

'What proof is there?' The Englishman switched at the rose-hedge in

the side of the drive.

'Mahbub Ali has given me this proof.' Kim flipped the wad of folded

paper into the air, and it fell in the path beside the man, who put his

foot on it as a gardener came round the corner. When the servant passed

he picked it up, dropped a rupee--Kim could hear the clink--and strode

into the house, never turning round. Swiftly Kim took up the money;

but for all his training, he was Irish enough by birth to reckon silver

the least part of any game. What he desired was the visible effect of

action; so, instead of slinking away, he lay close in the grass and

wormed nearer to the house.

He saw--Indian bungalows are open through and through--the Englishman

return to a small dressing-room, in a comer of the veranda, that was

half office, littered with papers and despatch-boxes, and sit down to

study Mahbub Ali's message. His face, by the full ray of the kerosene

lamp, changed and darkened, and Kim, used as every beggar must be to

watching countenances, took good note.

'Will! Will, dear!' called a woman's voice. 'You ought to be in the

drawing-room. They'll be here in a minute.'

The man still read intently.

'Will!' said the voice, five minutes later. 'He's come. I can hear

the troopers in the drive.'

The man dashed out bareheaded as a big landau with four native troopers

behind it halted at the veranda, and a tall, black haired man, erect as

an arrow, swung out, preceded by a young officer who laughed pleasantly.

Flat on his belly lay Kim, almost touching the high wheels. His man

and the black stranger exchanged two sentences.

'Certainly, sir,' said the young officer promptly. 'Everything waits

while a horse is concerned.'

'We shan't be more than twenty minutes,' said Kim's man. 'You can do

the honours--keep 'em amused, and all that.'

'Tell one of the troopers to wait,' said the tall man, and they both

passed into the dressing-room together as the landau rolled away. Kim

saw their heads bent over Mahbub Ali's message, and heard the

voices--one low and deferential, the other sharp and decisive.

'It isn't a question of weeks. It is a question of days--hours

almost,' said the elder. 'I'd been expecting it for some time, but

this'--he tapped Mahbub Ali's paper--'clinches it. Grogan's dining

here to-night, isn't he?'

'Yes, sir, and Macklin too.'

'Very good. I'll speak to them myself. The matter will be referred to

the Council, of course, but this is a case where one is justified in

assuming that we take action at once. Warn the Pined and Peshawar

brigades. It will disorganize all the summer reliefs, but we can't

help that. This comes of not smashing them thoroughly the first time.

Eight thousand should be enough.'

'What about artillery, sir?'

'I must consult Macklin.'

'Then it means war?'

'No. Punishment. When a man is bound by the action of his

predecessor--'

'But C25 may have lied.'

'He bears out the other's information. Practically, they showed their

hand six months back. But Devenish would have it there was a chance of

peace. Of course they used it to make themselves stronger. Send off

those telegrams at once--the new code, not the old--mine and Wharton's.

I don't think we need keep the ladies waiting any longer. We can

settle the rest over the cigars. I thought it was coming. It's

punishment--not war.'

As the trooper cantered off, Kim crawled round to the back of the

house, where, going on his Lahore experiences, he judged there would be

food--and information. The kitchen was crowded with excited scullions,

one of whom kicked him.

'Aie,' said Kim, feigning tears. 'I came only to wash dishes in return

for a bellyful.'

'All Umballa is on the same errand. Get hence. They go in now with

the soup. Think you that we who serve Creighton Sahib need strange

scullions to help us through a big dinner?'

'It is a very big dinner,' said Kim, looking at the plates.

'Small wonder. The guest of honour is none other than the Jang-i-Lat

Sahib [the Commander-in-Chief].'

'Ho!' said Kim, with the correct guttural note of wonder. He had

learned what he wanted, and when the scullion turned he was gone.

'And all that trouble,' said he to himself, thinking as usual in

Hindustani, 'for a horse's pedigree! Mahbub Ali should have come to me

to learn a little lying. Every time before that I have borne a message

it concerned a woman. Now it is men. Better. The tall man said that

they will loose a great army to punish someone--somewhere--the news

goes to Pindi and Peshawur. There are also guns. Would I had crept

nearer. It is big news!'

He returned to find the cultivator's cousin's younger brother

discussing the family law-suit in all its bearings with the cultivator

and his wife and a few friends, while the lama dozed. After the evening

meal some one passed him a water-pipe; and Kim felt very much of a man

as he pulled at the smooth coconut-shell, his legs spread abroad in the

moonlight, his tongue clicking in remarks from time to time. His hosts

were most polite; for the cultivator's wife had told them of his vision

of the Red Bull, and of his probable descent from another world.

Moreover, the lama was a great and venerable curiosity.

The family priest, an old, tolerant Sarsut Brahmin, dropped in later,

and naturally started a theological argument to impress the family. By

creed, of course, they were all on their priest's side, but the lama

was the guest and the novelty. His gentle kindliness, and his

impressive Chinese quotations, that sounded like spells, delighted them

hugely; and in this sympathetic, simple air, he expanded like the

Bodhisat's own lotus, speaking of his life in the great hills of

Such-zen, before, as he said, 'I rose up to seek enlightenment.'

Then it came out that in those worldly days he had been a master-hand

at casting horoscopes and nativities; and the family priest led him on

to describe his methods; each giving the planets names that the other

could not understand, and pointing upwards as the big stars sailed

across the dark. The children of the house tugged unrebuked at his

rosary; and he clean forgot the Rule which forbids looking at women as

he talked of enduring snows, landslips, blocked passes, the remote

cliffs where men find sapphires and turquoise, and that wonderful

upland road that leads at last into Great China itself.

'How thinkest thou of this one?' said the cultivator aside to the

priest.

'A holy man--a holy man indeed. His Gods are not the Gods, but his

feet are upon the Way,' was the answer. 'And his methods of

nativities, though that is beyond thee, are wise and sure.'

'Tell me,' said Kim lazily, 'whether I find my Red Bull on a green

field, as was promised me.'

'What knowledge hast thou of thy birth-hour?' the priest asked,

swelling with importance.

'Between first and second cockcrow of the first night in May.'

'Of what year?'

'I do not know; but upon the hour that I cried first fell the great

earthquake in Srinagar which is in Kashmir.' This Kim had from the

woman who took care of him, and she again from Kimball O'Hara. The

earthquake had been felt in India, and for long stood a leading date in

the Punjab.

'Ai!' said a woman excitedly. This seemed to make Kim's supernatural

origin more certain. 'Was not such an one's daughter born then--'

'And her mother bore her husband four sons in four years all likely

boys,' cried the cultivator's wife, sitting outside the circle in the

shadow.

'None reared in the knowledge,' said the family priest, 'forget how the

planets stood in their Houses upon that night.' He began to draw in

the dust of the courtyard. 'At least thou hast good claim to a half of

the House of the Bull. How runs thy prophecy?'

'Upon a day,' said Kim, delighted at the sensation he was creating, 'I

shall be made great by means of a Red Bull on a green field, but first

there will enter two men making all things ready.'

'Yes: thus ever at the opening of a vision. A thick darkness that

clears slowly; anon one enters with a broom making ready the place.

Then begins the Sight. Two men--thou sayest? Ay, ay. The Sun,

leaving the House of the Bull, enters that of the Twins. Hence the two

men of the prophecy. Let us now consider. Fetch me a twig, little

one.'

He knitted his brows, scratched, smoothed out, and scratched again in

the dust mysterious signs--to the wonder of all save the lama, who,

with fine instinct, forbore to interfere.

At the end of half an hour, he tossed the twig from him with a grunt.

'Hm! Thus say the stars. Within three days come the two men to make

all things ready. After them follows the Bull; but the sign over

against him is the sign of War and armed men.'

'There was indeed a man of the Ludhiana Sikhs in the carriage from

Lahore,' said the cultivator's wife hopefully.

'Tck! Armed men--many hundreds. What concern hast thou with war?'

said the priest to Kim. 'Thine is a red and an angry sign of War to be

loosed very soon.'

'None--none.' said the lama earnestly. 'We seek only peace and our

River.'

Kim smiled, remembering what he had overheard in the dressing-room.

Decidedly he was a favourite of the stars.

The priest brushed his foot over the rude horoscope. 'More than this I

cannot see. In three days comes the Bull to thee, boy.'

'And my River, my River,' pleaded the lama. 'I had hoped his Bull

would lead us both to the River.'

'Alas, for that wondrous River, my brother,' the priest replied. 'Such

things are not common.'

Next morning, though they were pressed to stay, the lama insisted on

departure. They gave Kim a large bundle of good food and nearly three

annas in copper money for the needs of the road, and with many

blessings watched the two go southward in the dawn.

'Pity it is that these and such as these could not be freed from--'

'Nay, then would only evil people be left on the earth, and who would

give us meat and shelter?' quoth Kim, stepping merrily under his

burden.

'Yonder is a small stream. Let us look,' said the lama, and he led

from the white road across the fields; walking into a very hornets'

nest of pariah dogs.

Chapter 3

Yea, voice of every Soul that clung

To life that strove from rung to rung

When Devadatta's rule was young,

The warm wind brings Kamakura.

Buddha at Kamakura.

Behind them an angry farmer brandished a bamboo pole. He was a

market-gardener, Arain by caste, growing vegetables and flowers for

Umballa city, and well Kim knew the breed.

'Such an one,' said the lama, disregarding the dogs, 'is impolite to

strangers, intemperate of speech and uncharitable. Be warned by his

demeanour, my disciple.'

'Ho, shameless beggars!' shouted the farmer. 'Begone! Get hence!'

'We go,' the lama returned, with quiet dignity. 'We go from these

unblessed fields.'

'Ah,' said Kim, sucking in his breath. 'If the next crops fail, thou

canst only blame thine own tongue.'

The man shuffled uneasily in his slippers. 'The land is full of

beggars,' he began, half apologetically.

'And by what sign didst thou know that we would beg from thee, O Mali?'

said Kim tartly, using the name that a market-gardener least likes.

'All we sought was to look at that river beyond the field there.'

'River, forsooth!' the man snorted. 'What city do ye hail from not to

know a canal-cut? It runs as straight as an arrow, and I pay for the

water as though it were molten silver. There is a branch of a river

beyond. But if ye need water I can give that--and milk.'

'Nay, we will go to the river,' said the lama, striding out.

'Milk and a meal.' the man stammered, as he looked at the strange tall

figure. 'I--I would not draw evil upon myself--or my crops. But

beggars are so many in these hard days.'

'Take notice.' The lama turned to Kim. 'He was led to speak harshly

by the Red Mist of anger. That clearing from his eyes, he becomes

courteous and of an affable heart. May his fields be blessed! Beware

not to judge men too hastily, O farmer.'

'I have met holy ones who would have cursed thee from hearthstone to

byre,' said Kim to the abashed man. 'Is he not wise and holy? I am his

disciple.'

He cocked his nose in the air loftily and stepped across the narrow

field-borders with great dignity.

'There is no pride,' said the lama, after a pause, 'there is no pride

among such as follow the Middle Way.'

'But thou hast said he was low-caste and discourteous.'

'Low-caste I did not say, for how can that be which is not? Afterwards

he amended his discourtesy, and I forgot the offence. Moreover, he is

as we are, bound upon the Wheel of Things; but he does not tread the

way of deliverance.' He halted at a little runlet among the fields,

and considered the hoof-pitted bank.

'Now, how wilt thou know thy River?' said Kim, squatting in the shade

of some tall sugar-cane.

'When I find it, an enlightenment will surely be given. This, I feel,

is not the place. O littlest among the waters, if only thou couldst

tell me where runs my River! But be thou blessed to make the fields

bear!'

'Look! Look!' Kim sprang to his side and dragged him back. A

yellow-and-brown streak glided from the purple rustling stems to the

bank, stretched its neck to the water, drank, and lay still--a big

cobra with fixed, lidless eyes.

'I have no stick--I have no stick,' said Kim. 'I will get me one and

break his back.'

'Why? He is upon the Wheel as we are--a life ascending or

descending--very far from deliverance. Great evil must the soul have

done that is cast into this shape.'

'I hate all snakes,' said Kim. No native training can quench the white

man's horror of the Serpent.

'Let him live out his life.' The coiled thing hissed and half opened

its hood. 'May thy release come soon, brother!' the lama continued

placidly. 'Hast thou knowledge, by chance, of my River?'

'Never have I seen such a man as thou art,' Kim whispered, overwhelmed.

'Do the very snakes understand thy talk?'

'Who knows?' He passed within a foot of the cobra's poised head. It

flattened itself among the dusty coils.

'Come, thou!' he called over his shoulder.

'Not I,' said Kim'. 'I go round.'

'Come. He does no hurt.'

Kim hesitated for a moment. The lama backed his order by some droned

Chinese quotation which Kim took for a charm. He obeyed and bounded

across the rivulet, and the snake, indeed, made no sign.

'Never have I seen such a man.' Kim wiped the sweat from his forehead.

'And now, whither go we?'

'That is for thee to say. I am old, and a stranger--far from my own

place. But that the rail-carriage fills my head with noises of

devil-drums I would go in it to Benares now ... Yet by so going we may

miss the River. Let us find another river.'

Where the hard-worked soil gives three and even four crops a year

through patches of sugar-cane, tobacco, long white radishes, and

nol-kol, all that day they strolled on, turning aside to every glimpse

of water; rousing village dogs and sleeping villages at noonday; the

lama replying to the volleyed questions with an unswerving simplicity.

They sought a River: a River of miraculous healing. Had any one

knowledge of such a stream?

Sometimes men laughed, but more often heard the story out to the end

and offered them a place in the shade, a drink of milk, and a meal.

The women were always kind, and the little children as children are the

world over, alternately shy and venturesome.

Evening found them at rest under the village tree of a mud-walled,

mud-roofed hamlet, talking to the headman as the cattle came in from

the grazing-grounds and the women prepared the day's last meal. They

had passed beyond the belt of market-gardens round hungry Umballa, and

were among the mile-wide green of the staple crops.

He was a white-bearded and affable elder, used to entertaining

strangers. He dragged out a string bedstead for the lama, set warm

cooked food before him, prepared him a pipe, and, the evening

ceremonies being finished in the village temple, sent for the village

priest.

Kim told the older children tales of the size and beauty of Lahore, of

railway travel, and such-like city things, while the men talked, slowly

as their cattle chew the cud.

'I cannot fathom it,' said the headman at last to the priest. 'How

readest thou this talk?' The lama, his tale told, was silently telling

his beads.

'He is a Seeker.' the priest answered. 'The land is full of such.

Remember him who came only last, month--the fakir with the tortoise?'

'Ay, but that man had right and reason, for Krishna Himself appeared in

a vision promising him Paradise without the burning-pyre if he

journeyed to Prayag. This man seeks no God who is within my knowledge.'

'Peace, he is old: he comes from far off, and he is mad,' the

smooth-shaven priest replied. 'Hear me.' He turned to the lama.

'Three koss [six miles] to the westward runs the great road to

Calcutta.'

'But I would go to Benares--to Benares.'

'And to Benares also. It crosses all streams on this side of Hind.

Now my word to thee, Holy One, is rest here till tomorrow. Then take

the road' (it was the Grand Trunk Road he meant) 'and test each stream

that it overpasses; for, as I understand, the virtue of thy River lies

neither in one pool nor place, but throughout its length. Then, if thy

Gods will, be assured that thou wilt come upon thy freedom.'

'That is well said.' The lama was much impressed by the plan. 'We

will begin tomorrow, and a blessing on thee for showing old feet such a

near road.' A deep, sing-song Chinese half-chant closed the sentence.

Even the priest was impressed, and the headman feared an evil spell:

but none could look at the lama's simple, eager face and doubt him long.

'Seest thou my chela?' he said, diving into his snuff-gourd with an

important sniff. It was his duty to repay courtesy with courtesy.

'I see--and hear.' The headman rolled his eye where Kim was chatting

to a girl in blue as she laid crackling thorns on a fire.

'He also has a Search of his own. No river, but a Bull. Yea, a Red

Bull on a green field will some day raise him to honour. He is, I

think, not altogether of this world. He was sent of a sudden to aid me

in this search, and his name is Friend of all the World.'

The priest smiled. 'Ho, there, Friend of all the World,' he cried

across the sharp-smelling smoke, 'what art thou?'

'This Holy One's disciple,' said Kim.

'He says thou are a but [a spirit].'

'Can buts eat?' said Kim, with a twinkle. 'For I am hungry.'

'It is no jest,' cried the lama. 'A certain astrologer of that city

whose name I have forgotten--'

'That is no more than the city of Umballa where we slept last night,'

Kim whispered to the priest.

'Ay, Umballa was it? He cast a horoscope and declared that my chela

should find his desire within two days. But what said he of the

meaning of the stars, Friend of all the World?'

Kim cleared his throat and looked around at the village greybeards.

'The meaning of my Star is War,' he replied pompously.

Somebody laughed at the little tattered figure strutting on the

brickwork plinth under the great tree. Where a native would have lain

down, Kim's white blood set him upon his feet.

'Ay, War,' he answered.

'That is a sure prophecy,' rumbled a deep voice. 'For there is always

war along the Border--as I know.'

It was an old, withered man, who had served the Government in the days

of the Mutiny as a native officer in a newly raised cavalry regiment.

The Government had given him a good holding in the village, and though

the demands of his sons, now grey-bearded officers on their own

account, had impoverished him, he was still a person of consequence.

English officials--Deputy Commissioners even--turned aside from the

main road to visit him, and on those occasions he dressed himself in

the uniform of ancient days, and stood up like a ramrod.

'But this shall be a great war--a war of eight thousand.' Kim's voice

shrilled across the quick-gathering crowd, astonishing himself.

'Redcoats or our own regiments?' the old man snapped, as though he

were asking an equal. His tone made men respect Kim.

'Redcoats,' said Kim at a venture. 'Redcoats and guns.'

'But--but the astrologer said no word of this,' cried the lama,

snuffing prodigiously in his excitement.

'But I know. The word has come to me, who am this Holy One's disciple.

There will rise a war--a war of eight thousand redcoats. From Pindi and

Peshawur they will be drawn. This is sure.'

'The boy has heard bazar-talk,' said the priest.

'But he was always by my side,' said the lama. 'How should he know? I

did not know.'

'He will make a clever juggler when the old man is dead,' muttered the

priest to the headman. 'What new trick is this?'

'A sign. Give me a sign,' thundered the old soldier suddenly. 'If

there were war my sons would have told me.'

'When all is ready, thy sons, doubt not, will be told. But it is a

long road from thy sons to the man in whose hands these things lie.'

Kim warmed to the game, for it reminded him of experiences in the

letter-carrying line, when, for the sake of a few pice, he pretended to

know more than he knew. But now he was playing for larger things--the

sheer excitement and the sense of power. He drew a new breath and went

on.

'Old man, give me a sign. Do underlings order the goings of eight

thousand redcoats--with guns?'

'No.' Still the old man answered as though Kim were an equal.

'Dost thou know who He is, then, that gives the order?'

'I have seen Him.'

'To know again?'

'I have known Him since he was a lieutenant in the topkhana (the

Artillery).'

'A tall man. A tall man with black hair, walking thus?' Kim took a

few paces in a stiff, wooden style.

'Ay. But that anyone may have seen.' The crowd were breathless--still

through all this talk.

'That is true,' said Kim. 'But I will say more. Look now. First the

great man walks thus. Then He thinks thus.' (Kim drew a forefinger

over his forehead and downwards till it came to rest by the angle of

the jaw.) 'Anon He twitches his fingers thus. Anon He thrusts his hat

under his left armpit.' Kim illustrated the motion and stood like a

stork.

The old man groaned, inarticulate with amazement; and the crowd

shivered.

'So--so--so. But what does He when He is about to give an order?'

'He rubs the skin at the back of his neck--thus. Then falls one finger

on the table and He makes a small sniffing noise through his nose.

Then He speaks, saying: "Loose such and such a regiment. Call out such

guns."'

The old man rose stiffly and saluted.

'"For"'--Kim translated into the vernacular the clinching sentences he

had heard in the dressing-room at Umballa--'"For," says He, "we should

have done this long ago. It is not war--it is a chastisement. Snff!"'

'Enough. I believe. I have seen Him thus in the smoke of battles.

Seen and heard. It is He!'

'I saw no smoke'--Kim's voice shifted to the rapt sing-song of the

wayside fortune-teller. 'I saw this in darkness. First came a man to

make things clear. Then came horsemen. Then came He standing in a

ring of light. The rest followed as I have said. Old man, have I

spoken truth?'

'It is He. Past all doubt it is He.'

The crowd drew a long, quavering breath, staring alternately at the old

man, still at attention, and ragged Kim against the purple twilight.

'Said I not--said I not he was from the other world?' cried the lama

proudly. 'He is the Friend of all the World. He is the Friend of the

Stars!'

'At least it does not concern us,' a man cried. 'O thou young

soothsayer, if the gift abides with thee at all seasons, I have a

red-spotted cow. She may be sister to thy Bull for aught I know--'

'Or I care,' said Kim. 'My Stars do not concern themselves with thy

cattle.'

'Nay, but she is very sick,' a woman struck in. 'My man is a buffalo,

or he would have chosen his words better. Tell me if she recover?'

Had Kim been at all an ordinary boy, he would have carried on the play;

but one does not know Lahore city, and least of all the fakirs by the

Taksali Gate, for thirteen years without also knowing human nature.

The priest looked at him sideways, something bitterly--a dry and

blighting smile.

'Is there no priest, then, in the village? I thought I had seen a

great one even now,' cried Kim.

'Ay--but--' the woman began.

'But thou and thy husband hoped to get the cow cured for a handful of

thanks.' The shot told: they were notoriously the closest-fisted

couple in the village. 'It is not well to cheat the temples. Give a

young calf to thine own priest, and, unless thy Gods are angry past

recall, she will give milk within a month.'

'A master-beggar art thou,' purred the priest approvingly. 'Not the

cunning of forty years could have done better. Surely thou hast made

the old man rich?'

'A little flour, a little butter and a mouthful of cardamoms,' Kim

retorted, flushed with the praise, but still cautious--'Does one grow

rich on that? And, as thou canst see, he is mad. But it serves me

while I learn the road at least.'

He knew what the fakirs of the Taksali Gate were like when they talked

among themselves, and copied the very inflection of their lewd

disciples.

'Is his Search, then, truth or a cloak to other ends? It may be

treasure.'

'He is mad--many times mad. There is nothing else.'

Here the old soldier bobbled up and asked if Kim would accept his

hospitality for the night. The priest recommended him to do so, but

insisted that the honour of entertaining the lama belonged to the

temple--at which the lama smiled guilelessly. Kim glanced from one

face to the other, and drew his own conclusions.

'Where is the money?' he whispered, beckoning the old man off into the

darkness.

'In my bosom. Where else?'

'Give it me. Quietly and swiftly give it me.'

'But why? Here is no ticket to buy.'

'Am I thy chela, or am I not? Do I not safeguard thy old feet about

the ways? Give me the money and at dawn I will return it.' He slipped

his hand above the lama's girdle and brought away the purse.

'Be it so--be it so.' The old man nodded his head. 'This is a great

and terrible world. I never knew there were so many men alive in it.'

Next morning the priest was in a very bad temper, but the lama was

quite happy; and Kim had enjoyed a most interesting evening with the

old man, who brought out his cavalry sabre and, balancing it on his dry

knees, told tales of the Mutiny and young captains thirty years in

their graves, till Kim dropped off to sleep.

'Certainly the air of this country is good,' said the lama. 'I sleep

lightly, as do all old men; but last night I slept unwaking till broad

day. Even now I am heavy.'

'Drink a draught of hot milk,' said Kim, who had carried not a few such

remedies to opium-smokers of his acquaintance. 'It is time to take the

Road again.'

'The long Road that overpasses all the rivers of Hind,' said the lama

gaily. 'Let us go. But how thinkest thou, chela, to recompense these

people, and especially the priest, for their great kindness? Truly they

are but parast, but in other lives, maybe, they will receive

enlightenment. A rupee to the temple? The thing within is no more

than stone and red paint, but the heart of man we must acknowledge when

and where it is good.'

'Holy One, hast thou ever taken the Road alone?' Kim looked up

sharply, like the Indian crows so busy about the fields.

'Surely, child: from Kulu to Pathankot--from Kulu, where my first

chela died. When men were kind to us we made offerings, and all men

were well-disposed throughout all the Hills.'

'It is otherwise in Hind,' said Kim drily. 'Their Gods are many-armed

and malignant. Let them alone.'

'I would set thee on thy road for a little, Friend of all the World,

thou and thy yellow man.' The old soldier ambled up the village

street, all shadowy in the dawn, on a punt, scissor-hocked pony. 'Last

night broke up the fountains of remembrance in my so-dried heart, and

it was as a blessing to me. Truly there is war abroad in the air. I

smell it. See! I have brought my sword.'

He sat long-legged on the little beast, with the big sword at his

side--hand dropped on the pommel--staring fiercely over the flat lands

towards the North. 'Tell me again how He showed in thy vision. Come

up and sit behind me. The beast will carry two.'

'I am this Holy One's disciple,' said Kim, as they cleared the

village-gate. The villagers seemed almost sorry to be rid of them, but

the priest's farewell was cold and distant. He had wasted some opium

on a man who carried no money.

'That is well spoken. I am not much used to holy men, but respect is

always good. There is no respect in these days--not even when a

Commissioner Sahib comes to see me. But why should one whose Star

leads him to war follow a holy man?'

'But he is a holy man,' said Kim earnestly. 'In truth, and in talk and

in act, holy. He is not like the others. I have never seen such an

one. We be not fortune-tellers, or jugglers, or beggars.'

'Thou art not. That I can see. But I do not know that other. He

marches well, though.'

The first freshness of the day carried the lama forward with long,

easy, camel-like strides. He was deep in meditation, mechanically

clicking his rosary.

They followed the rutted and worn country road that wound across the

flat between the great dark-green mango-groves, the line of the

snowcapped Himalayas faint to the eastward. All India was at work in

the fields, to the creaking of well-wheels, the shouting of ploughmen

behind their cattle, and the clamour of the crows. Even the pony felt

the good influence and almost broke into a trot as Kim laid a hand on

the stirrup-leather.

'It repents me that I did not give a rupee to the shrine,' said the

lama on the last bead of his eighty-one.

The old soldier growled in his beard, so that the lama for the first

time was aware of him.

'Seekest thou the River also?' said he, turning.

'The day is new,' was the reply. 'What need of a river save to water

at before sundown? I come to show thee a short lane to the Big Road.'

'That is a courtesy to be remembered, O man of good will. But why the

sword?'

The old soldier looked as abashed as a child interrupted in his game of

make-believe.

'The sword,' he said, fumbling it. 'Oh, that was a fancy of mine an

old man's fancy. Truly the police orders are that no man must bear

weapons throughout Hind, but'--he cheered up and slapped the hilt--'all

the constabeels hereabout know me.'

'It is not a good fancy,' said the lama. 'What profit to kill men?'

'Very little--as I know; but if evil men were not now and then slain it

would not be a good world for weaponless dreamers. I do not speak

without knowledge who have seen the land from Delhi south awash with

blood.'

'What madness was that, then?'

'The Gods, who sent it for a plague, alone know. A madness ate into

all the Army, and they turned against their officers. That was the

first evil, but not past remedy if they had then held their hands. But

they chose to kill the Sahibs' wives and children. Then came the

Sahibs from over the sea and called them to most strict account.'

'Some such rumour, I believe, reached me once long ago. They called it

the Black Year, as I remember.'

'What manner of life hast thou led, not to know The Year? A rumour

indeed! All earth knew, and trembled!'

'Our earth never shook but once--upon the day that the Excellent One

received Enlightenment.'

'Umph! I saw Delhi shake at least--and Delhi is the navel of the

world.'

'So they turned against women and children? That was a bad deed, for

which the punishment cannot be avoided.'

'Many strove to do so, but with very small profit. I was then in a

regiment of cavalry. It broke. Of six hundred and eighty sabres stood

fast to their salt--how many, think you? Three. Of whom I was one.'

'The greater merit.'

'Merit! We did not consider it merit in those days. My people, my

friends, my brothers fell from me. They said: "The time of the

English is accomplished. Let each strike out a little holding for

himself." But I had talked with the men of Sobraon, of Chilianwallah,

of Moodkee and Ferozeshah. I said: "Abide a little and the wind

turns. There is no blessing in this work." In those days I rode

seventy miles with an English Memsahib and her babe on my saddle-bow.

(Wow! That was a horse fit for a man!) I placed them in safety, and

back came I to my officer--the one that was not killed of our five.

"Give me work," said I, "for I am an outcast among my own kind, and my

cousin's blood is wet on my sabre." "Be content," said he. "There is

great work forward. When this madness is over there is a recompense."'

'Ay, there is a recompense when the madness is over, surely?' the lama

muttered half to himself.

'They did not hang medals in those days on all who by accident had

heard a gun fired. No! In nineteen pitched battles was I; in

six-and-forty skirmishes of horse; and in small affairs without number.

Nine wounds I bear; a medal and four clasps and the medal of an Order,

for my captains, who are now generals, remembered me when the

Kaisar-i-Hind had accomplished fifty years of her reign, and all the

land rejoiced. They said: "Give him the Order of Berittish India." I

carry it upon my neck now. I have also my jaghir [holding] from the

hands of the State--a free gift to me and mine. The men of the old

days--they are now Commissioners--come riding to me through the

crops--high upon horses so that all the village sees--and we talk out

the old skirmishes, one dead man's name leading to another.'

'And after?' said the lama.

'Oh, afterwards they go away, but not before my village has seen.'

'And at the last what wilt thou do?'

'At the last I shall die.'

'And after?'

'Let the Gods order it. I have never pestered Them with prayers. I do

not think They will pester me. Look you, I have noticed in my long

life that those who eternally break in upon Those Above with complaints

and reports and bellowings and weepings are presently sent for in

haste, as our Colonel used to send for slack-jawed down-country men who

talked too much. No, I have never wearied the Gods. They will

remember this, and give me a quiet place where I can drive my lance in

the shade, and wait to welcome my sons: I have no less than three

Rissaldar--majors all--in the regiments.'

'And they likewise, bound upon the Wheel, go forth from life to

life--from despair to despair,' said the lama below his breath, 'hot,

uneasy, snatching.'

'Ay,' the old soldier chuckled. 'Three Rissaldar--majors in three

regiments. Gamblers a little, but so am I. They must be well mounted;

and one cannot take the horses as in the old days one took women.

Well, well, my holding can pay for all. How thinkest thou? It is a

well-watered strip, but my men cheat me. I do not know how to ask save

at the lance's point. Ugh! I grow angry and I curse them, and they

feign penitence, but behind my back I know they call me a toothless old

ape.'

'Hast thou never desired any other thing?'

'Yes--yes--a thousand times! A straight back and a close-clinging knee

once more; a quick wrist and a keen eye; and the marrow that makes a

man. Oh, the old days--the good days of my strength!'

'That strength is weakness.'

'It has turned so; but fifty years since I could have proved it

otherwise,' the old soldier retorted, driving his stirrup-edge into the

pony's lean flank.

'But I know a River of great healing.'

'I have drank Gunga-water to the edge of dropsy. All she gave me was a

flux, and no sort of strength.'

'It is not Gunga. The River that I know washes from all taint of sin.

Ascending the far bank one is assured of Freedom. I do not know thy

life, but thy face is the face of the honourable and courteous. Thou

hast clung to thy Way, rendering fidelity when it was hard to give, in

that Black Year of which I now remember other tales. Enter now upon

the Middle Way which is the path to Freedom. Hear the Most Excellent

Law, and do not follow dreams.'

'Speak, then, old man,' the soldier smiled, half saluting. 'We be all

babblers at our age.'

The lama squatted under the shade of a mango, whose shadow played

checkerwise over his face; the soldier sat stiffly on the pony; and

Kim, making sure that there were no snakes, lay down in the crotch of

the twisted roots.

There was a drowsy buzz of small life in hot sunshine, a cooing of

doves, and a sleepy drone of well-wheels across the fields. Slowly and

impressively the lama began. At the end of ten minutes the old soldier

slid from his pony, to hear better as he said, and sat with the reins

round his wrist. The lama's voice faltered, the periods lengthened.

Kim was busy watching a grey squirrel. When the little scolding bunch

of fur, close pressed to the branch, disappeared, preacher and audience

were fast asleep, the old officer's strong-cut head pillowed on his

arm, the lama's thrown back against the tree-bole, where it showed like

yellow ivory. A naked child toddled up, stared, and, moved by some

quick impulse of reverence, made a solemn little obeisance before the

lama--only the child was so short and fat that it toppled over

sideways, and Kim laughed at the sprawling, chubby legs. The child,

scared and indignant, yelled aloud.

'Hai! Hai!' said the soldier, leaping to his feet. 'What is it? What

orders? ... It is ... a child! I dreamed it was an alarm. Little

one--little one--do not cry. Have I slept? That was discourteous

indeed!'

'I fear! I am afraid!' roared the child.

'What is it to fear? Two old men and a boy? How wilt thou ever make a

soldier, Princeling?'

The lama had waked too, but, taking no direct notice of the child,

clicked his rosary.

'What is that?' said the child, stopping a yell midway. 'I have never

seen such things. Give them me.'

'Aha.' said the lama, smiling, and trailing a loop of it on the grass:

This is a handful of cardamoms, This is a lump of ghi: This is millet

and chillies and rice, A supper for thee and me!

The child shrieked with joy, and snatched at the dark, glancing beads.

'Oho!' said the old soldier. 'Whence hadst thou that song, despiser

of this world?'

'I learned it in Pathankot--sitting on a doorstep,' said the lama

shyly. 'It is good to be kind to babes.'

'As I remember, before the sleep came on us, thou hadst told me that

marriage and bearing were darkeners of the true light, stumbling-blocks

upon the Way. Do children drop from Heaven in thy country? Is it the

Way to sing them songs?'

'No man is all perfect,' said the lama gravely, recoiling the rosary.

'Run now to thy mother, little one.'

'Hear him!' said the soldier to Kim. 'He is ashamed for that he has

made a child happy. There was a very good householder lost in thee, my

brother. Hai, child!' He threw it a pice. 'Sweetmeats are always

sweet.' And as the little figure capered away into the sunshine: 'They

grow up and become men. Holy One, I grieve that I slept in the midst

of thy preaching. Forgive me.'

'We be two old men,' said the lama. 'The fault is mine. I listened to

thy talk of the world and its madness, and one fault led to the next.'

'Hear him! What harm do thy Gods suffer from play with a babe? And

that song was very well sung. Let us go on and I will sing thee the

song of Nikal Seyn before Delhi--the old song.'

And they fared out from the gloom of the mango tope, the old man's

high, shrill voice ringing across the field, as wail by long-drawn wail

he unfolded the story of Nikal Seyn [Nicholson]--the song that men sing

in the Punjab to this day. Kim was delighted, and the lama listened

with deep interest.

'Ahi! Nikal Seyn is dead--he died before Delhi! Lances of the North,

take vengeance for Nikal Seyn.' He quavered it out to the end, marking

the trills with the flat of his sword on the pony's rump.

'And now we come to the Big Road,' said he, after receiving the

compliments of Kim; for the lama was markedly silent. 'It is long

since I have ridden this way, but thy boy's talk stirred me. See, Holy

One--the Great Road which is the backbone of all Hind. For the most

part it is shaded, as here, with four lines of trees; the middle

road--all hard--takes the quick traffic. In the days before

rail-carriages the Sahibs travelled up and down here in hundreds. Now

there are only country-carts and such like. Left and right is the

rougher road for the heavy carts--grain and cotton and timber, fodder,

lime and hides. A man goes in safety here for at every few koss is a

police-station. The police are thieves and extortioners (I myself

would patrol it with cavalry--young recruits under a strong captain),

but at least they do not suffer any rivals. All castes and kinds of

men move here.

'Look! Brahmins and chumars, bankers and tinkers, barbers and bunnias,

pilgrims and potters--all the world going and coming. It is to me as a

river from which I am withdrawn like a log after a flood.'

And truly the Grand Trunk Road is a wonderful spectacle. It runs

straight, bearing without crowding India's traffic for fifteen hundred

miles--such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world. They

looked at the green-arched, shade-flecked length of it, the white

breadth speckled with slow-pacing folk; and the two-roomed

police-station opposite.

'Who bears arms against the law?' a constable called out laughingly,

as he caught sight of the soldier's sword. 'Are not the police enough

to destroy evil-doers?'

'It was because of the police I bought it,' was the answer. 'Does all

go well in Hind?'

'Rissaldar Sahib, all goes well.'

'I am like an old tortoise, look you, who puts his head out from the

bank and draws it in again. Ay, this is the Road of Hindustan. All men

come by this way...'

'Son of a swine, is the soft part of the road meant for thee to scratch

thy back upon? Father of all the daughters of shame and husband of ten

thousand virtueless ones, thy mother was devoted to a devil, being led

thereto by her mother. Thy aunts have never had a nose for seven

generations! Thy sister--What Owl's folly told thee to draw thy carts

across the road? A broken wheel? Then take a broken head and put the

two together at leisure!'

The voice and a venomous whip-cracking came out of a pillar of dust

fifty yards away, where a cart had broken down. A thin, high Kathiawar

mare, with eyes and nostrils aflame, rocketed out of the jam, snorting

and wincing as her rider bent her across the road in chase of a

shouting man. He was tall and grey-bearded, sitting the almost mad

beast as a piece of her, and scientifically lashing his victim between

plunges.

The old man's face lit with pride. 'My child!' said he briefly, and

strove to rein the pony's neck to a fitting arch.

'Am I to be beaten before the police?' cried the carter. 'Justice! I

will have Justice--'

'Am I to be blocked by a shouting ape who upsets ten thousand sacks

under a young horse's nose? That is the way to ruin a mare.'

'He speaks truth. He speaks truth. But she follows her man close,'

said the old man. The carter ran under the wheels of his cart and

thence threatened all sorts of vengeance.

'They are strong men, thy sons,' said the policeman serenely, picking

his teeth.

The horseman delivered one last vicious cut with his whip and came on

at a canter.

'My father!' He reigned back ten yards and dismounted.

The old man was off his pony in an instant, and they embraced as do

father and son in the East.

Chapter 4

Good Luck, she is never a lady,

But the cursedest quean alive,

Tricksy, wincing, and jady--

Kittle to lead or drive.

Greet her--she's hailing a stranger!

Meet her--she's busking to leave!

Let her alone for a shrew to the bone

And the hussy comes plucking your sleeve!

Largesse! Largesse, O Fortune!

Give or hold at your will.

If I've no care for Fortune,

Fortune must follow me still!

The Wishing-Caps.

Then, lowering their voices, they spoke together. Kim came to rest

under a tree, but the lama tugged impatiently at his elbow.

'Let us go on. The River is not here.'

'Hai mai! Have we not walked enough for a little? Our River will not

run away. Patience, and he will give us a dole.'

'This.' said the old soldier suddenly, 'is the Friend of the Stars. He

brought me the news yesterday. Having seen the very man Himself, in a

vision, giving orders for the war.'

'Hm!' said his son, all deep in his broad chest. 'He came by a

bazar-rumour and made profit of it.'

His father laughed. 'At least he did not ride to me begging for a new

charger, and the Gods know how many rupees. Are thy brothers'

regiments also under orders?'

'I do not know. I took leave and came swiftly to thee in case--'

'In case they ran before thee to beg. O gamblers and spendthrifts all!

But thou hast never yet ridden in a charge. A good horse is needed

there, truly. A good follower and a good pony also for the marching.

Let us see--let us see.' He thrummed on the pommel.

'This is no place to cast accounts in, my father. Let us go to thy

house.'

'At least pay the boy, then: I have no pice with me, and he brought

auspicious news. Ho! Friend of all the World, a war is toward as thou

hast said.'

'Nay, as I know, the war,' returned Kim composedly.

'Eh?' said the lama, fingering his beads, all eager for the road.

'My master does not trouble the Stars for hire. We brought the news

bear witness, we brought the news, and now we go.' Kim half-crooked

his hand at his side.

The son tossed a silver coin through the sunlight, grumbling something

about beggars and jugglers. It was a four-anna piece, and would feed

them well for days. The lama, seeing the flash of the metal, droned a

blessing.

'Go thy way, Friend of all the World,' piped the old soldier, wheeling

his scrawny mount. 'For once in all my days I have met a true

prophet--who was not in the Army.'

Father and son swung round together: the old man sitting as erect as

the younger.

A Punjabi constable in yellow linen trousers slouched across the road.

He had seen the money pass.

'Halt!' he cried in impressive English. 'Know ye not that there is a

takkus of two annas a head, which is four annas, on those who enter the

Road from this side-road? It is the order of the Sirkar, and the money

is spent for the planting of trees and the beautification of the ways.'

'And the bellies of the police,' said Kim, slipping out of arm's reach.

'Consider for a while, man with a mud head. Think you we came from the

nearest pond like the frog, thy father-in-law? Hast thou ever heard

the name of thy brother?'

'And who was he? Leave the boy alone,' cried a senior constable,

immensely delighted, as he squatted down to smoke his pipe in the

veranda.

'He took a label from a bottle of belaitee-pani [soda-water], and,

affixing it to a bridge, collected taxes for a month from those who

passed, saying that it was the Sirkar's order. Then came an Englishman

and broke his head. Ah, brother, I am a town-crow, not a village-crow!'

The policeman drew back abashed, and Kim hooted at him all down the

road.

'Was there ever such a disciple as I?' he cried merrily to the lama.

'All earth would have picked thy bones within ten mile of Lahore city

if I had not guarded thee.'

'I consider in my own mind whether thou art a spirit, sometimes, or

sometimes an evil imp,' said the lama, smiling slowly.

'I am thy chela.' Kim dropped into step at his side--that

indescribable gait of the long-distance tramp all the world over.

'Now let us walk,' muttered the lama, and to the click of his rosary

they walked in silence mile upon mile. The lama as usual, was deep in

meditation, but Kim's bright eyes were open wide. This broad, smiling

river of life, he considered, was a vast improvement on the cramped and

crowded Lahore streets. There were new people and new sights at every

stride--castes he knew and castes that were altogether out of his

experience.

They met a troop of long-haired, strong-scented Sansis with baskets of

lizards and other unclean food on their backs, their lean dogs sniffing

at their heels. These people kept their own side of the road', moving

at a quick, furtive jog-trot, and all other castes gave them ample

room; for the Sansi is deep pollution. Behind them, walking wide and

stiffly across the strong shadows, the memory of his leg-irons still on

him, strode one newly released from the jail; his full stomach and

shiny skin to prove that the Government fed its prisoners better than

most honest men could feed themselves. Kim knew that walk well, and

made broad jest of it as they passed. Then an Akali, a wild-eyed,

wild-haired Sikh devotee in the blue-checked clothes of his faith, with

polished-steel quoits glistening on the cone of his tall blue turban,

stalked past, returning from a visit to one of the independent Sikh

States, where he had been singing the ancient glories of the Khalsa to

College-trained princelings in top-boots and white-cord breeches. Kim

was careful not to irritate that man; for the Akali's temper is short

and his arm quick. Here and there they met or were overtaken by the

gaily dressed crowds of whole villages turning out to some local fair;

the women, with their babes on their hips, walking behind the men, the

older boys prancing on sticks of sugar-cane, dragging rude brass models

of locomotives such as they sell for a halfpenny, or flashing the sun

into the eyes of their betters from cheap toy mirrors. One could see

at a glance what each had bought; and if there were any doubt it needed

only to watch the wives comparing, brown arm against brown arm, the

newly purchased dull glass bracelets that come from the North-West.

These merry-makers stepped slowly, calling one to the other and

stopping to haggle with sweetmeat-sellers, or to make a prayer before

one of the wayside shrines--sometimes Hindu, sometimes Mussalman--which

the low-caste of both creeds share with beautiful impartiality. A

solid line of blue, rising and falling like the back of a caterpillar

in haste, would swing up through the quivering dust and trot past to a

chorus of quick cackling. That was a gang of changars--the women who

have taken all the embankments of all the Northern railways under their

charge--a flat-footed, big-bosomed, strong-limbed, blue-petticoated

clan of earth-carriers, hurrying north on news of a job, and wasting no

time by the road. They belong to the caste whose men do not count, and

they walked with squared elbows, swinging hips, and heads on high, as

suits women who carry heavy weights. A little later a marriage

procession would strike into the Grand Trunk with music and shoutings,

and a smell of marigold and jasmine stronger even than the reek of the

dust. One could see the bride's litter, a blur of red and tinsel,

staggering through the haze, while the bridegroom's bewreathed pony

turned aside to snatch a mouthful from a passing fodder-cart. Then Kim

would join the Kentish-fire of good wishes and bad jokes, wishing the

couple a hundred sons and no daughters, as the saying is. Still more

interesting and more to be shouted over it was when a strolling juggler

with some half-trained monkeys, or a panting, feeble bear, or a woman

who tied goats' horns to her feet, and with these danced on a

slack-rope, set the horses to shying and the women to shrill,

long-drawn quavers of amazement.

The lama never raised his eyes. He did not note the money-lender on

his goose-rumped pony, hastening along to collect the cruel interest;

or the long-shouting, deep-voiced little mob--still in military

formation--of native soldiers on leave, rejoicing to be rid of their

breeches and puttees, and saying the most outrageous things to the most

respectable women in sight. Even the seller of Ganges-water he did not

see, and Kim expected that he would at least buy a bottle of that

precious stuff. He looked steadily at the ground, and strode as

steadily hour after hour, his soul busied elsewhere. But Kim was in

the seventh heaven of joy. The Grand Trunk at this point was built on

an embankment to guard against winter floods from the foothills, so

that one walked, as it were, a little above the country, along a

stately corridor, seeing all India spread out to left and right. It

was beautiful to behold the many-yoked grain and cotton wagons crawling

over the country roads: one could hear their axles, complaining a mile

away, coming nearer, till with shouts and yells and bad words they

climbed up the steep incline and plunged on to the hard main road,

carter reviling carter. It was equally beautiful to watch the people,

little clumps of red and blue and pink and white and saffron, turning

aside to go to their own villages, dispersing and growing small by twos

and threes across the level plain. Kim felt these things, though he

could not give tongue to his feelings, and so contented himself with

buying peeled sugar-cane and spitting the pith generously about his

path. From time to time the lama took snuff, and at last Kim could

endure the silence no longer.

'This is a good land--the land of the South!' said he. 'The air is

good; the water is good. Eh?'

'And they are all bound upon the Wheel,' said the lama. 'Bound from

life after life. To none of these has the Way been shown.' He shook

himself back to this world.

'And now we have walked a weary way,' said Kim. 'Surely we shall soon

come to a parao [a resting-place]. Shall we stay there? Look, the sun

is sloping.'

'Who will receive us this evening?'

'That is all one. This country is full of good folk. Besides' he sunk

his voice beneath a whisper--'we have money.'

The crowd thickened as they neared the resting-place which marked the

end of their day's journey. A line of stalls selling very simple food

and tobacco, a stack of firewood, a police-station, a well, a

horse-trough, a few trees, and, under them, some trampled ground dotted

with the black ashes of old fires, are all that mark a parao on the

Grand Trunk; if you except the beggars and the crows--both hungry.

By this time the sun was driving broad golden spokes through the lower

branches of the mango-trees; the parakeets and doves were coming home

in their hundreds; the chattering, grey-backed Seven Sisters, talking

over the day's adventures, walked back and forth in twos and threes

almost under the feet of the travellers; and shufflings and scufflings

in the branches showed that the bats were ready to go out on the

night-picket. Swiftly the light gathered itself together, painted for

an instant the faces and the cartwheels and the bullocks' horns as red

as blood. Then the night fell, changing the touch of the air, drawing

a low, even haze, like a gossamer veil of blue, across the face of the

country, and bringing out, keen and distinct, the smell of wood-smoke

and cattle and the good scent of wheaten cakes cooked on ashes. The

evening patrol hurried out of the police-station with important

coughings and reiterated orders; and a live charcoal ball in the cup of

a wayside carter's hookah glowed red while Kim's eye mechanically

watched the last flicker of the sun on the brass tweezers.

The life of the parao was very like that of the Kashmir Serai on a

small scale. Kim dived into the happy Asiatic disorder which, if you

only allow time, will bring you everything that a simple man needs.

His wants were few, because, since the lama had no caste scruples,

cooked food from the nearest stall would serve; but, for luxury's sake,

Kim bought a handful of dung-cakes to build a fire. All about, coming

and going round the little flames, men cried for oil, or grain, or

sweetmeats, or tobacco, jostling one another while they waited their

turn at the well; and under the men's voices you heard from halted,

shuttered carts the high squeals and giggles of women whose faces

should not be seen in public.

Nowadays, well-educated natives are of opinion that when their

womenfolk travel--and they visit a good deal--it is better to take them

quickly by rail in a properly screened compartment; and that custom is

spreading. But there are always those of the old rock who hold by the

use of their forefathers; and, above all, there are always the old

women--more conservative than the men--who toward the end of their days

go on a pilgrimage. They, being withered and undesirable, do not,

under certain circumstances, object to unveiling. After their long

seclusion, during which they have always been in business touch with a

thousand outside interests, they love the bustle and stir of the open

road, the gatherings at the shrines, and the infinite possibilities of

gossip with like-minded dowagers. Very often it suits a longsuffering

family that a strong-tongued, iron-willed old lady should disport

herself about India in this fashion; for certainly pilgrimage is

grateful to the Gods. So all about India, in the most remote places,

as in the most public, you find some knot of grizzled servitors in

nominal charge of an old lady who is more or less curtained and hid

away in a bullock-cart. Such men are staid and discreet, and when a

European or a high-caste native is near will net their charge with most

elaborate precautions; but in the ordinary haphazard chances of

pilgrimage the precautions are not taken. The old lady is, after all,

intensely human, and lives to look upon life.

Kim marked down a gaily ornamented ruth or family bullock-cart, with a

broidered canopy of two domes, like a double-humped camel, which had

just been drawn into the par. Eight men made its retinue, and two of

the eight were armed with rusty sabres--sure signs that they followed a

person of distinction, for the common folk do not bear arms. An

increasing cackle of complaints, orders, and jests, and what to a

European would have been bad language, came from behind the curtains.

Here was evidently a woman used to command.

Kim looked over the retinue critically. Half of them were thin-legged,

grey-bearded Ooryas from down country. The other half were

duffle-clad, felt-hatted hillmen of the North; and that mixture told

its own tale, even if he had not overheard the incessant sparring

between the two divisions. The old lady was going south on a

visit--probably to a rich relative, most probably to a son-in-law, who

had sent up an escort as a mark of respect. The hillmen would be of

her own people--Kulu or Kangra folk. It was quite clear that she was

not taking her daughter down to be wedded, or the curtains would have

been laced home and the guard would have allowed no one near the car.

A merry and a high-spirited dame, thought Kim, balancing the dung-cake

in one hand, the cooked food in the other, and piloting the lama with a

nudging shoulder. Something might be made out of the meeting. The lama

would give him no help, but, as a conscientious chela, Kim was

delighted to beg for two.

He built his fire as close to the cart as he dared, waiting for one of

the escort to order him away. The lama dropped wearily to the ground,

much as a heavy fruit-eating bat cowers, and returned to his rosary.

'Stand farther off, beggar!' The order was shouted in broken

Hindustani by one of the hillmen.

'Huh! It is only a pahari [a hillman]', said Kim over his shoulder.

'Since when have the hill-asses owned all Hindustan?'

The retort was a swift and brilliant sketch of Kim's pedigree for three

generations.

'Ah!' Kim's voice was sweeter than ever, as he broke the dung-cake

into fit pieces. 'In my country we call that the beginning of

love-talk.'

A harsh, thin cackle behind the curtains put the hillman on his mettle

for a second shot.

'Not so bad--not so bad,' said Kim with calm. 'But have a care, my

brother, lest we--we, I say--be minded to give a curse or so in return.

And our curses have the knack of biting home.'

The Ooryas laughed; the hillman sprang forward threateningly. The lama

suddenly raised his head, bringing his huge tam-o'-shanter hat into the

full light of Kim's new-started fire.

'What is it?' said he.

The man halted as though struck to stone. 'I--I--am saved from a great

sin,' he stammered.

'The foreigner has found him a priest at last,' whispered one of the

Ooryas.

'Hai! Why is that beggar-brat not well beaten?' the old woman cried.

The hillman drew back to the cart and whispered something to the

curtain. There was dead silence, then a muttering.

'This goes well,' thought Kim, pretending neither to see nor hear.

'When--when--he has eaten'--the hillman fawned on Kim--'it--it is

requested that the Holy One will do the honour to talk to one who would

speak to him.'

'After he has eaten he will sleep,' Kim returned loftily. He could not

quite see what new turn the game had taken, but stood resolute to

profit by it. 'Now I will get him his food.' The last sentence,

spoken loudly, ended with a sigh as of faintness.

'I--I myself and the others of my people will look to that--if it is

permitted.'

'It is permitted,' said Kim, more loftily than ever. 'Holy One, these

people will bring us food.'

'The land is good. All the country of the South is good--a great and a

terrible world,' mumbled the lama drowsily.

'Let him sleep,' said Kim, 'but look to it that we are well fed when he

wakes. He is a very holy man.'

Again one of the Ooryas said something contemptuously.

'He is not a fakir. He is not a down-country beggar,' Kim went on

severely, addressing the stars. 'He is the most holy of holy men. He

is above all castes. I am his chela.'

'Come here!' said the flat thin voice behind the curtain; and Kim

came, conscious that eyes he could not see were staring at him. One

skinny brown finger heavy with rings lay on the edge of the cart, and

the talk went this way:

'Who is that one?'

'An exceedingly holy one. He comes from far off. He comes from Tibet.'

'Where in Tibet?'

'From behind the snows--from a very far place. He knows the stars; he

makes horoscopes; he reads nativities. But he does not do this for

money. He does it for kindness and great charity. I am his disciple.

I am called also the Friend of the Stars.'

'Thou art no hillman.'

'Ask him. He will tell thee I was sent to him from the Stars to show

him an end to his pilgrimage.'

'Humph! Consider, brat, that I am an old woman and not altogether a

fool. Lamas I know, and to these I give reverence, but thou art no

more a lawful chela than this my finger is the pole of this wagon. Thou

art a casteless Hindu--a bold and unblushing beggar, attached, belike,

to the Holy One for the sake of gain.'

'Do we not all work for gain?' Kim changed his tone promptly to match

that altered voice. 'I have heard'--this was a bow drawn at a

venture--'I have heard--'

'What hast thou heard?' she snapped, rapping with the finger.

'Nothing that I well remember, but some talk in the bazars, which is

doubtless a lie, that even Rajahs--small Hill Rajahs--'

'But none the less of good Rajput blood.'

'Assuredly of good blood. That these even sell the more comely of

their womenfolk for gain. Down south they sell them--to zemindars and

such--all of Oudh.'

If there be one thing in the world that the small Hill Rajahs deny it

is just this charge; but it happens to be one thing that the bazars

believe, when they discuss the mysterious slave-traffics of India. The

old lady explained to Kim, in a tense, indignant whisper, precisely

what manner and fashion of malignant liar he was. Had Kim hinted this

when she was a girl, he would have been pommelled to death that same

evening by an elephant. This was perfectly true.

'Ahai! I am only a beggar's brat, as the Eye of Beauty has said,' he

wailed in extravagant terror.

'Eye of Beauty, forsooth! Who am I that thou shouldst fling

beggar-endearments at me?' And yet she laughed at the long-forgotten

word. 'Forty years ago that might have been said, and not without

truth. Ay. thirty years ago. But it is the fault of this gadding up

and down Hind that a king's widow must jostle all the scum of the land,

and be made a mock by beggars.'

'Great Queen,' said Kim promptly, for he heard her shaking with

indignation, 'I am even what the Great Queen says I am; but none the

less is my master holy. He has not yet heard the Great Queen's order

that--'

'Order? I order a Holy One--a Teacher of the Law--to come and speak to

a woman? Never!'

'Pity my stupidity. I thought it was given as an order--'

'It was not. It was a petition. Does this make all clear?'

A silver coin clicked on the edge of the cart. Kim took it and

salaamed profoundly. The old lady recognized that, as the eyes and the

ears of the lama, he was to be propitiated.

'I am but the Holy One's disciple. When he has eaten perhaps he will

come.'

'Oh, villain and shameless rogue!' The jewelled forefinger shook

itself at him reprovingly; but he could hear the old lady's chuckle.

'Nay, what is it?' he said, dropping into his most caressing and

confidential tone--the one, he well knew, that few could resist.

'Is--is there any need of a son in thy family? Speak freely, for we

priests--' That last was a direct plagiarism from a fakir by the

Taksali Gate.

'We priests! Thou art not yet old enough to--' She checked the joke

with another laugh. 'Believe me, now and again, we women, O priest,

think of other matters than sons. Moreover, my daughter has borne her

man-child.'

'Two arrows in the quiver are better than one; and three are better

still.' Kim quoted the proverb with a meditative cough, looking

discreetly earthward.

'True--oh, true. But perhaps that will come. Certainly those

down-country Brahmins are utterly useless. I sent gifts and monies and

gifts again to them, and they prophesied.'

'Ah,' drawled Kim, with infinite contempt, 'they prophesied!' A

professional could have done no better.

'And it was not till I remembered my own Gods that my prayers were

heard. I chose an auspicious hour, and--perhaps thy Holy One has heard

of the Abbot of the Lung-Cho lamassery. It was to him I put the

matter, and behold in the due time all came about as I desired. The

Brahmin in the house of the father of my daughter's son has since said

that it was through his prayers--which is a little error that I will

explain to him when we reach our journey's end. And so afterwards I go

to Buddh Gaya, to make shraddha for the father of my children.'

'Thither go we.'

'Doubly auspicious,' chirruped the old lady. 'A second son at least!'

'O Friend of all the World!' The lama had waked, and, simply as a

child bewildered in a strange bed, called for Kim.

'I come! I come, Holy One!' He dashed to the fire, where he found the

lama already surrounded by dishes of food, the hillmen visibly adoring

him and the Southerners looking sourly.

'Go back! Withdraw!' Kim cried. 'Do we eat publicly like dogs?' They

finished the meal in silence, each turned a little from the other, and

Kim topped it with a native-made cigarette.

'Have I not said an hundred times that the South is a good land? Here

is a virtuous and high-born widow of a Hill Rajah on pilgrimage, she

says, to Buddha Gay. She it is sends us those dishes; and when thou

art well rested she would speak to thee.'

'Is this also thy work?' The lama dipped deep into his snuff-gourd.

'Who else watched over thee since our wonderful journey began?' Kim's

eyes danced in his head as he blew the rank smoke through his nostrils

and stretched him on the dusty ground. 'Have I failed to oversee thy

comforts, Holy One?'

'A blessing on thee.' The lama inclined his solemn head. 'I have

known many men in my so long life, and disciples not a few. But to

none among men, if so be thou art woman-born, has my heart gone out as

it has to thee--thoughtful, wise, and courteous; but something of a

small imp.'

'And I have never seen such a priest as thou.' Kim considered the

benevolent yellow face wrinkle by wrinkle. 'It is less than three days

since we took the road together, and it is as though it were a hundred

years.'

'Perhaps in a former life it was permitted that I should have rendered

thee some service. Maybe'--he smiled--'I freed thee from a trap; or,

having caught thee on a hook in the days when I was not enlightened,

cast thee back into the river.'

'Maybe,' said Kim quietly. He had heard this sort of speculation again

and again, from the mouths of many whom the English would not consider

imaginative. 'Now, as regards that woman in the bullock-cart. I think

she needs a second son for her daughter.'

'That is no part of the Way,' sighed the lama. 'But at least she is

from the Hills. Ah, the Hills, and the snow of the Hills!'

He rose and stalked to the cart. Kim would have given his ears to come

too, but the lama did not invite him; and the few words he caught were

in an unknown tongue, for they spoke some common speech of the

mountains. The woman seemed to ask questions which the lama turned

over in his mind before answering. Now and again he heard the singsong

cadence of a Chinese quotation. It was a strange picture that Kim

watched between drooped eyelids. The lama, very straight and erect,

the deep folds of his yellow clothing slashed with black in the light

of the parao fires precisely as a knotted tree-trunk is slashed with

the shadows of the low sun, addressed a tinsel and lacquered ruth which

burned like a many-coloured jewel in the same uncertain light. The

patterns on the gold-worked curtains ran up and down, melting and

reforming as the folds shook and quivered to the night wind; and when

the talk grew more earnest the jewelled forefinger snapped out little

sparks of light between the embroideries. Behind the cart was a wall

of uncertain darkness speckled with little flames and alive with

half-caught forms and faces and shadows. The voices of early evening

had settled down to one soothing hum whose deepest note was the steady

chumping of the bullocks above their chopped straw, and whose highest

was the tinkle of a Bengali dancing-girl's sitar. Most men had eaten

and pulled deep at their gurgling, grunting hookahs, which in full

blast sound like bull-frogs.

At last the lama returned. A hillman walked behind him with a wadded

cotton-quilt and spread it carefully by the fire.

'She deserves ten thousand grandchildren,' thought Kim. 'None the

less, but for me, those gifts would not have come.'

'A virtuous woman--and a wise one.' The lama slackened off, joint by

joint, like a slow camel. 'The world is full of charity to those who

follow the Way.' He flung a fair half of the quilt over Kim.

'And what said she?' Kim rolled up in his share of it.

'She asked me many questions and propounded many problems--the most of

which were idle tales which she had heard from devil-serving priests

who pretend to follow the Way. Some I answered, and some I said were

foolish. Many wear the Robe, but few keep the Way.'

'True. That is true.' Kim used the thoughtful, conciliatory tone of

those who wish to draw confidences.

'But by her lights she is most right-minded. She desires greatly that

we should go with her to Buddh Gaya; her road being ours, as I

understand, for many days' journey to the southward.'

'And?'

'Patience a little. To this I said that my Search came before all

things. She had heard many foolish legends, but this great truth of my

River she had never heard. Such are the priests of the lower hills!

She knew the Abbot of Lung-Cho, but she did not know of my River--nor

the tale of the Arrow.'

'And?'

'I spoke therefore of the Search, and of the Way, and of matters that

were profitable; she desiring only that I should accompany her and make

prayer for a second son.'

'Aha! "We women" do not think of anything save children,' said Kim

sleepily.

'Now, since our roads run together for a while, I do not see that we in

any way depart from our Search if so be we accompany her--at least as

far as--I have forgotten the name of the city.'

'Ohe!' said Kim, turning and speaking in a sharp whisper to one of the

Ooryas a few yards away. 'Where is your master's house?'

'A little behind Saharunpore, among the fruit gardens.' He named the

village.

'That was the place,' said the lama. 'So far, at least, we can go with

her.'

'Flies go to carrion,' said the Oorya, in an abstracted voice.

'For the sick cow a crow; for the sick man a Brahmin.' Kim breathed

the proverb impersonally to the shadow-tops of the trees overhead.

The Oorya grunted and held his peace.

'So then we go with her, Holy One?'

'Is there any reason against? I can still step aside and try all the

rivers that the road overpasses. She desires that I should come. She

very greatly desires it.'

Kim stifled a laugh in the quilt. When once that imperious old lady

had recovered from her natural awe of a lama he thought it probable

that she would be worth listening to.

He was nearly asleep when the lama suddenly quoted a proverb: 'The

husbands of the talkative have a great reward hereafter.' Then Kim

heard him snuff thrice, and dozed off, still laughing.

The diamond-bright dawn woke men and crows and bullocks together. Kim

sat up and yawned, shook himself, and thrilled with delight. This was

seeing the world in real truth; this was life as he would have

it--bustling and shouting, the buckling of belts, and beating of

bullocks and creaking of wheels, lighting of fires and cooking of food,

and new sights at every turn of the approving eye. The morning mist

swept off in a whorl of silver, the parrots shot away to some distant

river in shrieking green hosts: all the well-wheels within ear-shot

went to work. India was awake, and Kim was in the middle of it, more

awake and more excited than anyone, chewing on a twig that he would

presently use as a toothbrush; for he borrowed right- and left-handedly

from all the customs of the country he knew and loved. There was no

need to worry about food--no need to spend a cowrie at the crowded

stalls. He was the disciple of a holy man annexed by a strong-willed

old lady. All things would be prepared for them, and when they were

respectfully invited so to do they would sit and eat. For the

rest--Kim giggled here as he cleaned his teeth--his hostess would

rather heighten the enjoyment of the road. He inspected her bullocks

critically, as they came up grunting and blowing under the yokes. If

they went too fast--it was not likely--there would be a pleasant seat

for himself along the pole; the lama would sit beside the driver. The

escort, of course, would walk. The old lady, equally of course, would

talk a great deal, and by what he had heard that conversation would not

lack salt. She was already ordering, haranguing, rebuking, and, it

must be said, cursing her servants for delays.

'Get her her pipe. In the name of the Gods, get her her pipe and stop

her ill-omened mouth,' cried an Oorya, tying up his shapeless bundles

of bedding. 'She and the parrots are alike. They screech in the dawn.'

'The lead-bullocks! Hai! Look to the lead-bullocks!' They were

backing and wheeling as a grain-cart's axle caught them by the horns.

'Son of an owl, where dost thou go?' This to the grinning carter.

'Ai! Yai! Yai! That within there is the Queen of Delhi going to pray

for a son,' the man called back over his high load. 'Room for the

Queen of Delhi and her Prime Minister the grey monkey climbing up his

own sword!' Another cart loaded with bark for a down-country tannery

followed close behind, and its driver added a few compliments as the

ruth-bullocks backed and backed again.

From behind the shaking curtains came one volley of invective. It did

not last long, but in kind and quality, in blistering, biting

appropriateness, it was beyond anything that even Kim had heard. He

could see the carter's bare chest collapse with amazement, as the man

salaamed reverently to the voice, leaped from the pole, and helped the

escort haul their volcano on to the main road. Here the voice told him

truthfully what sort of wife he had wedded, and what she was doing in

his absence.

'Oh, shabash!' murmured Kim, unable to contain himself, as the man

slunk away.

'Well done, indeed? It is a shame and a scandal that a poor woman may

not go to make prayer to her Gods except she be jostled and insulted by

all the refuse of Hindustan--that she must eat gali [abuse] as men eat

ghi. But I have yet a wag left to my tongue--a word or two well spoken

that serves the occasion. And still am I without my tobacco! Who is

the one-eyed and luckless son of shame that has not yet prepared my

pipe?'

It was hastily thrust in by a hillman, and a trickle of thick smoke

from each corner of the curtains showed that peace was restored.

If Kim had walked proudly the day before, disciple of a holy man, today

he paced with tenfold pride in the train of a semi-royal procession,

with a recognized place under the patronage of an old lady of charming

manners and infinite resource. The escort, their heads tied up

native-fashion, fell in on either side the cart, shuffling enormous

clouds of dust.

The lama and Kim walked a little to one side; Kim chewing his stick of

sugarcane, and making way for no one under the status of a priest.

They could hear the old lady's tongue clack as steadily as a

rice-husker. She bade the escort tell her what was going on on the

road; and so soon as they were clear of the parao she flung back the

curtains and peered out, her veil a third across her face. Her men did

not eye her directly when she addressed them, and thus the proprieties

were more or less observed.

A dark, sallowish District Superintendent of Police, faultlessly

uniformed, an Englishman, trotted by on a tired horse, and, seeing from

her retinue what manner of person she was, chaffed her.

'O mother,' he cried, 'do they do this in the zenanas? Suppose an

Englishman came by and saw that thou hast no nose?'

'What?' she shrilled back. 'Thine own mother has no nose? Why say

so, then, on the open road?'

It was a fair counter. The Englishman threw up his hand with the

gesture of a man hit at sword-play. She laughed and nodded.

'Is this a face to tempt virtue aside?' She withdrew all her veil and

stared at him.

It was by no means lovely, but as the man gathered up his reins he

called it a Moon of Paradise, a Disturber of Integrity, and a few other

fantastic epithets which doubled her up with mirth.

'That is a nut-cut [rogue],' she said. 'All police-constables are

nut-cuts; but the police-wallahs are the worst. Hai, my son, thou hast

never learned all that since thou camest from Belait [Europe]. Who

suckled thee?'

'A pahareen--a hillwoman of Dalhousie, my mother. Keep thy beauty

under a shade--O Dispenser of Delights,' and he was gone.

'These be the sort'--she took a fine judicial tone, and stuffed her

mouth with pan--'These be the sort to oversee justice. They know the

land and the customs of the land. The others, all new from Europe,

suckled by white women and learning our tongues from books, are worse

than the pestilence. They do harm to Kings.' Then she told a long,

long tale to the world at large, of an ignorant young policeman who had

disturbed some small Hill Rajah, a ninth cousin of her own, in the

matter of a trivial land-case, winding up with a quotation from a work

by no means devotional.

Then her mood changed, and she bade one of the escort ask whether the

lama would walk alongside and discuss matters of religion. So Kim

dropped back into the dust and returned to his sugar-cane. For an hour

or more the lama's tam-o'shanter showed like a moon through the haze;

and, from all he heard, Kim gathered that the old woman wept. One of

the Ooryas half apologized for his rudeness overnight, saying that he

had never known his mistress of so bland a temper, and he ascribed it

to the presence of the strange priest. Personally, he believed in

Brahmins, though, like all natives, he was acutely aware of their

cunning and their greed. Still, when Brahmins but irritated with

begging demands the mother of his master's wife, and when she sent them

away so angry that they cursed the whole retinue (which was the real

reason of the second off-side bullock going lame, and of the pole

breaking the night before), he was prepared to accept any priest of any

other denomination in or out of India. To this Kim assented with wise

nods, and bade the Oorya observe that the lama took no money, and that

the cost of his and Kim's food would be repaid a hundred times in the

good luck that would attend the caravan henceforward. He also told

stories of Lahore city, and sang a song or two which made the escort

laugh. As a town-mouse well acquainted with the latest songs by the

most fashionable composers--they are women for the most part--Kim had a

distinct advantage over men from a little fruit-village behind

Saharunpore, but he let that advantage be inferred.

At noon they turned aside to eat, and the meal was good, plentiful, and

well-served on plates of clean leaves, in decency, out of drift of the

dust. They gave the scraps to certain beggars, that all requirements

might be fulfilled, and sat down to a long, luxurious smoke. The old

lady had retreated behind her curtains, but mixed most freely in the

talk, her servants arguing with and contradicting her as servants do

throughout the East. She compared the cool and the pines of the Kangra

and Kulu hills with the dust and the mangoes of the South; she told a

tale of some old local Gods at the edge of her husband's territory; she

roundly abused the tobacco which she was then smoking, reviled all

Brahmins, and speculated without reserve on the coming of many

grandsons.

Chapter 5

Here come I to my own again

Fed, forgiven, and known again

Claimed by bone of my bone again,

And sib to flesh of my flesh!

The fatted calf is dressed for me,

But the husks have greater zest for me ...

I think my pigs will be best for me,

So I'm off to the styes afresh.

The Prodigal Son.

Once more the lazy, string-tied, shuffling procession got under way,

and she slept till they reached the next halting-stage. It was a very

short march, and time lacked an hour to sundown, so Kim cast about for

means of amusement.

'But why not sit and rest?' said one of the escort. 'Only the devils

and the English walk to and fro without reason.'

'Never make friends with the Devil, a Monkey, or a Boy. No man knows

what they will do next,' said his fellow.

Kim turned a scornful back--he did not want to hear the old story how

the Devil played with the boys and repented of it and walked idly

across country.

The lama strode after him. All that day, whenever they passed a

stream, he had turned aside to look at it, but in no case had he

received any warning that he had found his River. Insensibly, too, the

comfort of speaking to someone in a reasonable tongue, and of being

properly considered and respected as her spiritual adviser by a

well-born woman, had weaned his thoughts a little from the Search. And

further, he was prepared to spend serene years in his quest; having

nothing of the white man's impatience, but a great faith.

'Where goest thou?' he called after Kim.

'Nowhither--it was a small march, and all this'--Kim waved his hands

abroad--'is new to me.'

'She is beyond question a wise and a discerning woman. But it is hard

to meditate when--'

'All women are thus.' Kim spoke as might have Solomon.

'Before the lamassery was a broad platform,' the lama muttered, looping

up the well-worn rosary, 'of stone. On that I have left the marks of

my feet--pacing to and fro with these.'

He clicked the beads, and began the 'Om mane pudme hum's of his

devotion; grateful for the cool, the quiet, and the absence of dust.

One thing after another drew Kim's idle eye across the plain. There

was no purpose in his wanderings, except that the build of the huts

near by seemed new, and he wished to investigate.

They came out on a broad tract of grazing-ground, brown and purple in

the afternoon light, with a heavy clump of mangoes in the centre. It

struck Kim as curious that no shrine stood in so eligible a spot: the

boy was observing as any priest for these things. Far across the plain

walked side by side four men, made small by the distance. He looked

intently under his curved palms and caught the sheen of brass.

'Soldiers. White soldiers!' said he. 'Let us see.'

'It is always soldiers when thou and I go out alone together. But I

have never seen the white soldiers.'

'They do no harm except when they are drunk. Keep behind this tree.'

They stepped behind the thick trunks in the cool dark of the

mango-tope. Two little figures halted; the other two came forward

uncertainly. They were the advance-party of a regiment on the march,

sent out, as usual, to mark the camp. They bore five-foot sticks with

fluttering flags, and called to each other as they spread over the flat

earth.

At last they entered the mango-grove, walking heavily.

'It's here or hereabouts--officers' tents under the trees, I take it,

an' the rest of us can stay outside. Have they marked out for the

baggage-wagons behind?'

They cried again to their comrades in the distance, and the rough

answer came back faint and mellowed.

'Shove the flag in here, then,' said one.

'What do they prepare?' said the lama, wonderstruck. 'This is a great

and terrible world. What is the device on the flag?'

A soldier thrust a stave within a few feet of them, grunted

discontentedly, pulled it up again, conferred with his companion, who

looked up and down the shaded cave of greenery, and returned it.

Kim stared with all his eyes, his breath coming short and sharp between

his teeth. The soldiers stamped off into the sunshine.

'O Holy One!' he gasped. 'My horoscope! The drawing in the dust by

the priest at Umballa! Remember what he said. First come

two--ferashes--to make all things ready--in a dark place, as it is

always at the beginning of a vision.'

'But this is not vision,' said the lama. 'It is the world's Illusion,

and no more.'

'And after them comes the Bull--the Red Bull on the green field. Look!

It is he!'

He pointed to the flag that was snap snapping in the evening breeze not

ten feet away. It was no more than an ordinary camp marking-flag; but

the regiment, always punctilious in matters of millinery, had charged

it with the regimental device, the Red Bull, which is the crest of the

Mavericks--the great Red Bull on a background of Irish green.

'I see, and now I remember.' said the lama. 'Certainly it is thy

Bull. Certainly, also, the two men came to make all ready.'

'They are soldiers--white soldiers. What said the priest? "The sign

over against the Bull is the sign of War and armed men." Holy One,

this thing touches my Search.'

'True. It is true.' The lama stared fixedly at the device that flamed

like a ruby in the dusk. 'The priest at Umballa said that thine was

the sign of War.'

'What is to do now?'

'Wait. Let us wait.'

'Even now the darkness clears,' said Kim. It was only natural that the

descending sun should at last strike through the tree-trunks, across

the grove, filling it with mealy gold light for a few minutes; but to

Kim it was the crown of the Umballa Brahmin's prophecy.

'Hark!' said the lama. 'One beats a drum--far off!'

At first the sound, carrying diluted through the still air, resembled

the beating of an artery in the head. Soon a sharpness was added.

'Ah! The music,' Kim explained. He knew the sound of a regimental

band, but it amazed the lama.

At the far end of the plain a heavy, dusty column crawled in sight.

Then the wind brought the tune:

We crave your condescension

To tell you what we know

Of marching in the Mulligan Guards

To Sligo Port below!

Here broke in the shrill-tongued fifes:

We shouldered arms,

We marched--we marched away.

From Phoenix Park

We marched to Dublin Bay.

The drums and the fifes,

Oh, sweetly they did play,

As we marched--marched--marched--with the

Mulligan Guards!

It was the band of the Mavericks playing the regiment to camp; for the

men were route-marching with their baggage. The rippling column swung

into the level--carts behind it divided left and right, ran about like

an ant-hill, and ...

'But this is sorcery!' said the lama.

The plain dotted itself with tents that seemed to rise, all spread,

from the carts. Another rush of men invaded the grove, pitched a huge

tent in silence, ran up yet eight or nine more by the side of it,

unearthed cooking-pots, pans, and bundles, which were taken possession

of by a crowd of native servants; and behold the mango-tope turned into

an orderly town as they watched!

'Let us go,' said the lama, sinking back afraid, as the fires twinkled

and white officers with jingling swords stalked into the Mess-tent.

'Stand back in the shadow. No one can see beyond the light of a fire,'

said Kim, his eyes still on the flag. He had never before watched the

routine of a seasoned regiment pitching camp in thirty minutes.

'Look! look! look!' clucked the lama. 'Yonder comes a priest.' It

was Bennett, the Church of England Chaplain of the regiment, limping in

dusty black. One of his flock had made some rude remarks about the

Chaplain's mettle; and to abash him Bennett had marched step by step

with the men that day. The black dress, gold cross on the watch-chain,

the hairless face, and the soft, black wideawake hat would have marked

him as a holy man anywhere in all India. He dropped into a camp-chair

by the door of the Mess-tent and slid off his boots. Three or four

officers gathered round him, laughing and joking over his exploit.

'The talk of white men is wholly lacking in dignity,' said the lama,

who judged only by tone. 'But I considered the countenance of that

priest and I think he is learned. Is it likely that he will understand

our talk? I would talk to him of my Search.'

'Never speak to a white man till he is fed,' said Kim, quoting a

well-known proverb. 'They will eat now, and--and I do not think they

are good to beg from. Let us go back to the resting-place. After we

have eaten we will come again. It certainly was a Red Bull--my Red

Bull.'

They were both noticeably absent-minded when the old lady's retinue set

their meal before them; so none broke their reserve, for it is not

lucky to annoy guests.

'Now,' said Kim, picking his teeth, 'we will return to that place; but

thou, O Holy One, must wait a little way off, because thy feet are

heavier than mine and I am anxious to see more of that Red Bull.'

'But how canst thou understand the talk? Walk slowly. The road is

dark,' the lama replied uneasily.

Kim put the question aside. 'I marked a place near to the trees,' said

he, 'where thou canst sit till I call. Nay,' as the lama made some

sort of protest, 'remember this is my Search--the Search for my Red

Bull. The sign in the Stars was not for thee. I know a little of the

customs of white soldiers, and I always desire to see some new things.'

'What dost thou not know of this world?' The lama squatted obediently

in a little hollow of the ground not a hundred yards from the hump of

the mango-trees dark against the star-powdered sky.

'Stay till I call.' Kim flitted into the dusk. He knew that in all

probability there would be sentries round the camp, and smiled to

himself as he heard the thick boots of one. A boy who can dodge over

the roofs of Lahore city on a moonlight night, using every little patch

and corner of darkness to discomfit his pursuer, is not likely to be

checked by a line of well-trained soldiers. He paid them the

compliment of crawling between a couple, and, running and halting,

crouching and dropping flat, worked his way toward the lighted

Mess-tent where, close pressed behind the mango-tree, he waited till

some chance word should give him a returnable lead.

The one thing now in his mind was further information as to the Red

Bull. For aught he knew, and Kim's limitations were as curious and

sudden as his expansions, the men, the nine hundred thorough devils of

his father's prophecy, might pray to the beast after dark, as Hindus

pray to the Holy Cow. That at least would be entirely right and

logical, and the padre with the gold cross would be therefore the man

to consult in the matter. On the other hand, remembering sober-faced

padres whom he had avoided in Lahore city, the priest might be an

inquisitive nuisance who would bid him learn. But had it not been

proven at Umballa that his sign in the high heavens portended War and

armed men? Was he not the Friend of the Stars as well as of all the

World, crammed to the teeth with dreadful secrets? Lastly--and firstly

as the undercurrent of all his quick thoughts--this adventure, though

he did not know the English word, was a stupendous lark--a delightful

continuation of his old flights across the housetops, as well as the

fulfilment of sublime prophecy. He lay belly-flat and wriggled towards

the Mess-tent door, a hand on the amulet round his neck.

It was as he suspected. The Sahibs prayed to their God; for in the

centre of the Mess-table--its sole ornament when they were on the line

of march--stood a golden bull fashioned from old-time loot of the

Summer Palace at Pekin--a red-gold bull with lowered head, ramping upon

a field of Irish green. To him the Sahibs held out their glasses and

cried aloud confusedly.

Now the Reverend Arthur Bennett always left Mess after that toast, and

being rather tired by his march his movements were more abrupt than

usual. Kim, with slightly raised head, was still staring at his totem

on the table, when the Chaplain stepped on his right shoulder-blade.

Kim flinched under the leather, and, rolling sideways, brought down the

Chaplain, who, ever a man of action, caught him by the throat and

nearly choked the life out of him. Kim then kicked him desperately in

the stomach. Mr Bennett gasped and doubled up, but without relaxing

his grip, rolled over again, and silently hauled Kim to his own tent.

The Mavericks were incurable practical jokers; and it occurred to the

Englishman that silence was best till he had made complete inquiry.

'Why, it's a boy!' he said, as he drew his prize under the light of

the tent-pole lantern, then shaking him severely cried: 'What were you

doing? You're a thief. Choor? Mallum?' His Hindustani was very

limited, and the ruffled and disgusted Kim intended to keep to the

character laid down for him. As he recovered his breath he was

inventing a beautifully plausible tale of his relations to some

scullion, and at the same time keeping a keen eye on and a little under

the Chaplain's left arm-pit. The chance came; he ducked for the

doorway, but a long arm shot out and clutched at his neck, snapping the

amulet-string and closing on the amulet.

'Give it me. O, give it me. Is it lost? Give me the papers.'

The words were in English--the tinny, saw-cut English of the

native-bred, and the Chaplain jumped.

'A scapular,' said he, opening his hand. 'No, some sort of heathen

charm. Why--why, do you speak English? Little boys who steal are

beaten. You know that?'

'I do not--I did not steal.' Kim danced in agony like a terrier at a

lifted stick. 'Oh, give it me. It is my charm. Do not thieve it from

me.'

The Chaplain took no heed, but, going to the tent door, called aloud.

A fattish, clean-shaven man appeared.

'I want your advice, Father Victor,' said Bennett. 'I found this boy

in the dark outside the Mess-tent. Ordinarily, I should have chastised

him and let him go, because I believe him to be a thief. But it seems

he talks English, and he attaches some sort of value to a charm round

his neck. I thought perhaps you might help me.'

Between himself and the Roman Catholic Chaplain of the Irish contingent

lay, as Bennett believed, an unbridgeable gulf, but it was noticeable

that whenever the Church of England dealt with a human problem she was

very likely to call in the Church of Rome. Bennett's official

abhorrence of the Scarlet Woman and all her ways was only equalled by

his private respect for Father Victor.

'A thief talking English, is it? Let's look at his charm. No, it's

not a scapular, Bennett.' He held out his hand.

'But have we any right to open it? A sound whipping--'

'I did not thieve,' protested Kim. 'You have hit me kicks all over my

body. Now give me my charm and I will go away.'

'Not quite so fast. We'll look first,' said Father Victor, leisurely

rolling out poor Kimball O'Hara's 'ne varietur' parchment, his

clearance-certificate, and Kim's baptismal certificate. On this last

O'Hara--with some confused idea that he was doing wonders for his

son--had scrawled scores of times: 'Look after the boy. Please look

after the boy'--signing his name and regimental number in full.

'Powers of Darkness below!' said Father Victor, passing all over to Mr

Bennett. 'Do you know what these things are?'

'Yes.' said Kim. 'They are mine, and I want to go away.'

'I do not quite understand,' said Mr Bennett. 'He probably brought

them on purpose. It may be a begging trick of some kind.'

'I never saw a beggar less anxious to stay with his company, then.

There's the makings of a gay mystery here. Ye believe in Providence,

Bennett?'

'I hope so.'

'Well, I believe in miracles, so it comes to the same thing. Powers of

Darkness! Kimball O'Hara! And his son! But then he's a native, and I

saw Kimball married myself to Annie Shott. How long have you had these

things, boy?'

'Ever since I was a little baby.'

Father Victor stepped forward quickly and opened the front of Kim's

upper garment. 'You see, Bennett, he's not very black. What's your

name?'

'Kim.'

'Or Kimball?'

'Perhaps. Will you let me go away?'

'What else?'

'They call me Kim Rishti ke. That is Kim of the Rishti.'

'What is that--"Rishti"?'

'Eye-rishti--that was the Regiment--my father's.'

'Irish--oh, I see.'

'Yess. That was how my father told me. My father, he has lived.'

'Has lived where?'

'Has lived. Of course he is dead--gone-out.'

'Oh! That's your abrupt way of putting it, is it?'

Bennett interrupted. 'It is possible I have done the boy an injustice.

He is certainly white, though evidently neglected. I am sure I must

have bruised him. I do not think spirits--'

'Get him a glass of sherry, then, and let him squat on the cot. Now,

Kim,' continued Father Victor, 'no one is going to hurt you. Drink that

down and tell us about yourself. The truth, if you've no objection.'

Kim coughed a little as he put down the empty glass, and considered.

This seemed a time for caution and fancy. Small boys who prowl about

camps are generally turned out after a whipping. But he had received no

stripes; the amulet was evidently working in his favour, and it looked

as though the Umballa horoscope and the few words that he could

remember of his father's maunderings fitted in most miraculously. Else

why did the fat padre seem so impressed, and why the glass of hot

yellow drink from the lean one?

'My father, he is dead in Lahore city since I was very little. The

woman, she kept kabarri shop near where the hire-carriages are.' Kim

began with a plunge, not quite sure how far the truth would serve him.

'Your mother?'

'No!'--with a gesture of disgust. 'She went out when I was born. My

father, he got these papers from the Jadoo-Gher what do you call that?'

(Bennett nodded) 'because he was in good-standing. What do you call

that?' (again Bennett nodded). 'My father told me that. He said,

too, and also the Brahmin who made the drawing in the dust at Umballa

two days ago, he said, that I shall find a Red Bull on a green field

and that the Bull shall help me.'

'A phenomenal little liar,' muttered Bennett.

'Powers of Darkness below, what a country!' murmured Father Victor.

'Go on, Kim.'

'I did not thieve. Besides, I am just now disciple of a very holy man.

He is sitting outside. We saw two men come with flags, making the

place ready. That is always so in a dream, or on account of

a--a--prophecy. So I knew it was come true. I saw the Red Bull on the

green field, and my father he said: "Nine hundred pukka devils and the

Colonel riding on a horse will look after you when you find the Red

Bull!" I did not know what to do when I saw the Bull, but I went away

and I came again when it was dark. I wanted to see the Bull again, and

I saw the Bull again with the--the Sahibs praying to it. I think the

Bull shall help me. The holy man said so too. He is sitting outside.

Will you hurt him, if I call him a shout now? He is very holy. He can

witness to all the things I say, and he knows I am not a thief.'

'"Sahibs praying to a bull!" What in the world do you make of that?'

said Bennett. "'Disciple of a holy man!" Is the boy mad?'

'It's O'Hara's boy, sure enough. O'Hara's boy leagued with all the

Powers of Darkness. It's very much what his father would have done if

he was drunk. We'd better invite the holy man. He may know something.'

'He does not know anything,' said Kim. 'I will show you him if you

come. He is my master. Then afterwards we can go.'

'Powers of Darkness!' was all that Father Victor could say, as Bennett

marched off, with a firm hand on Kim's shoulder.

They found the lama where he had dropped.

'The Search is at an end for me,' shouted Kim in the vernacular. 'I

have found the Bull, but God knows what comes next. They will not hurt

you. Come to the fat priest's tent with this thin man and see the end.

It is all new, and they cannot talk Hindi. They are only uncurried

donkeys.'

'Then it is not well to make a jest of their ignorance,' the lama

returned. 'I am glad if thou art rejoiced, chela.'

Dignified and unsuspicious, he strode into the little tent, saluted the

Churches as a Churchman, and sat down by the open charcoal brazier.

The yellow lining of the tent reflected in the lamplight made his face

red-gold.

Bennett looked at him with the triple-ringed uninterest of the creed

that lumps nine-tenths of the world under the title of 'heathen'.

'And what was the end of the Search? What gift has the Red Bull

brought?' The lama addressed himself to Kim.

'He says, "What are you going to do?"' Bennett was staring uneasily at

Father Victor, and Kim, for his own ends, took upon himself the office

of interpreter.

'I do not see what concern this fakir has with the boy, who is probably

his dupe or his confederate,' Bennett began. 'We cannot allow an

English boy--Assuming that he is the son of a Mason, the sooner he goes

to the Masonic Orphanage the better.'

'Ah! That's your opinion as Secretary to the Regimental Lodge,' said

Father Victor; 'but we might as well tell the old man what we are going

to do. He doesn't look like a villain.'

'My experience is that one can never fathom the Oriental mind. Now,

Kimball, I wish you to tell this man what I say word for word.'

Kim gathered the import of the next few sentences and began thus:

'Holy One, the thin fool who looks like a camel says that I am the son

of a Sahib.'

'But how?'

'Oh, it is true. I knew it since my birth, but he could only find it

out by rending the amulet from my neck and reading all the papers. He

thinks that once a Sahib is always a Sahib, and between the two of them

they purpose to keep me in this Regiment or to send me to a madrissah

[a school]. It has happened before. I have always avoided it. The

fat fool is of one mind and the camel-like one of another. But that is

no odds. I may spend one night here and perhaps the next. It has

happened before. Then I will run away and return to thee.'

'But tell them that thou art my chela. Tell them how thou didst come

to me when I was faint and bewildered. Tell them of our Search, and

they will surely let thee go now.'

'I have already told them. They laugh, and they talk of the police.'

'What are you saying?' asked Mr Bennett.

'Oah. He only says that if you do not let me go it will stop him in

his business--his ur-gent private af-fairs.' This last was a

reminiscence of some talk with a Eurasian clerk in the Canal

Department, but it only drew a smile, which nettled him. 'And if you

did know what his business was you would not be in such a beastly hurry

to interfere.'

'What is it then?' said Father Victor, not without feeling, as he

watched the lama's face.

'There is a River in this country which he wishes to find so verree

much. It was put out by an Arrow which--' Kim tapped his foot

impatiently as he translated in his own mind from the vernacular to his

clumsy English. 'Oah, it was made by our Lord God Buddha, you know,

and if you wash there you are washed away from all your sins and made

as white as cotton-wool.' (Kim had heard mission-talk in his time.) 'I

am his disciple, and we must find that River. It is so verree valuable

to us.'

'Say that again,' said Bennett. Kim obeyed, with amplifications.

'But this is gross blasphemy!' cried the Church of England.

'Tck! Tck!' said Father Victor sympathetically. 'I'd give a good

deal to be able to talk the vernacular. A river that washes away sin!

And how long have you two been looking for it?'

'Oh, many days. Now we wish to go away and look for it again. It is

not here, you see.'