Kim

'I see,' said Father Victor gravely. 'But he can't go on in that old

man's company. It would be different, Kim, if you were not a soldier's

son. Tell him that the Regiment will take care of you and make you as

good a man as your--as good a man as can be. Tell him that if he

believes in miracles he must believe that--'

'There is no need to play on his credulity,' Bennett interrupted.

'I'm doing no such thing. He must believe that the boy's coming

here--to his own Regiment--in search of his Red Bull is in the nature

of a miracle. Consider the chances against it, Bennett. This one boy

in all India, and our Regiment of all others on the line o' march for

him to meet with! It's predestined on the face of it. Yes, tell him

it's Kismet. Kismet, mallum? [Do you understand?]'

He turned towards the lama, to whom he might as well have talked of

Mesopotamia.

'They say,'--the old man's eye lighted at Kim's speech 'they say that

the meaning of my horoscope is now accomplished, and that being led

back--though as thou knowest I went out of curiosity--to these people

and their Red Bull I must needs go to a madrissah and be turned into a

Sahib. Now I make pretence of agreement, for at the worst it will be

but a few meals eaten away from thee. Then I will slip away and follow

down the road to Saharunpore. Therefore, Holy One, keep with that Kulu

woman--on no account stray far from her cart till I come again. Past

question, my sign is of War and of armed men. See how they have given

me wine to drink and set me upon a bed of honour! My father must have

been some great person. So if they raise me to honour among them,

good. If not, good again. However it goes, I will run back to thee

when I am tired. But stay with the Rajputni, or I shall miss thy feet

... Oah yess,' said the boy, 'I have told him everything you tell me to

say.'

'And I cannot see any need why he should wait,' said Bennett, feeling

in his trouser-pocket. 'We can investigate the details later--and I

will give him a ru--'

'Give him time. Maybe he's fond of the lad,' said Father Victor, half

arresting the clergyman's motion.

The lama dragged forth his rosary and pulled his huge hat-brim over his

eyes.

'What can he want now?'

'He says'--Kim put up one hand. 'He says: "Be quiet." He wants to

speak to me by himself. You see, you do not know one little word of

what he says, and I think if you talk he will perhaps give you very bad

curses. When he takes those beads like that, you see, he always wants

to be quiet.'

The two Englishmen sat overwhelmed, but there was a look in Bennett's

eye that promised ill for Kim when he should be relaxed to the

religious arm.

'A Sahib and the son of a Sahib--' The lama's voice was harsh with

pain. 'But no white man knows the land and the customs of the land as

thou knowest. How comes it this is true?'

'What matter, Holy One?--but remember it is only for a night or two.

Remember, I can change swiftly. It will all be as it was when I first

spoke to thee under Zam-Zammah the great gun--'

'As a boy in the dress of white men--when I first went to the Wonder

House. And a second time thou wast a Hindu. What shall the third

incarnation be?' He chuckled drearily. 'Ah, chela, thou has done a

wrong to an old man because my heart went out to thee.'

'And mine to thee. But how could I know that the Red Bull would bring

me to this business?'

The lama covered his face afresh, and nervously rattled the rosary. Kim

squatted beside him and laid hold upon a fold of his clothing.

'Now it is understood that the boy is a Sahib?' he went on in a

muffled tone. 'Such a Sahib as was he who kept the images in the

Wonder House.' The lama's experience of white men was limited. He

seemed to be repeating a lesson. 'So then it is not seemly that he

should do other than as the Sahibs do. He must go back to his own

people.'

'For a day and a night and a day,' Kim pleaded.

'No, ye don't!' Father Victor saw Kim edging towards the door, and

interposed a strong leg.

'I do not understand the customs of white men. The Priest of the

Images in the Wonder House in Lahore was more courteous than the thin

one here. This boy will be taken from me. They will make a Sahib of

my disciple? Woe to me! How shall I find my River? Have they no

disciples? Ask.'

'He says he is very sorree that he cannot find the River now any more.

He says, Why have you no disciples, and stop bothering him? He wants to

be washed of his sins.'

Neither Bennett nor Father Victor found any answer ready.

Said Kim in English, distressed for the lama's agony: 'I think if you

will let me go now we will walk away quietly and not steal. We will

look for that River like before I was caught. I wish I did not come

here to find the Red Bull and all that sort of thing. I do not want

it.'

'It's the very best day's work you ever did for yourself, young man,'

said Bennett.

'Good heavens, I don't know how to console him,' said Father Victor,

watching the lama intently. 'He can't take the boy away with him, and

yet he's a good man--I'm sure he's a good man. Bennett, if you give him

that rupee he'll curse you root and branch!'

They listened to each other's breathing--three--five full minutes.

Then the lama raised his head, and looked forth across them into space

and emptiness.

'And I am a Follower of the Way,' he said bitterly. 'The sin is mine

and the punishment is mine. I made believe to myself for now I see it

was but make-belief--that thou wast sent to me to aid in the Search.

So my heart went out to thee for thy charity and thy courtesy and the

wisdom of thy little years. But those who follow the Way must permit

not the fire of any desire or attachment, for that is all Illusion. As

says ...' He quoted an old, old Chinese text, backed it with another,

and reinforced these with a third. 'I stepped aside from the Way, my

chela. It was no fault of thine. I delighted in the sight of life,

the new people upon the roads, and in thy joy at seeing these things.

I was pleased with thee who should have considered my Search and my

Search alone. Now I am sorrowful because thou art taken away and my

River is far from me. It is the Law which I have broken!'

'Powers of Darkness below!' said Father Victor, who, wise in the

confessional, heard the pain in every sentence.

'I see now that the sign of the Red Bull was a sign for me as well as

for thee. All Desire is red--and evil. I will do penance and find my

River alone.'

'At least go back to the Kulu woman,' said Kim, 'otherwise thou wilt be

lost upon the roads. She will feed thee till I run back to thee.'

The lama waved a hand to show that the matter was finally settled in

his mind.

'Now,'--his tone altered as he turned to Kim,--'what will they do with

thee? At least I may, acquiring merit, wipe out past ill.'

'Make me a Sahib--so they think. The day after tomorrow I return. Do

not grieve.'

'Of what sort? Such an one as this or that man?' He pointed to Father

Victor. 'Such an one as those I saw this evening, men wearing swords

and stamping heavily?'

'Maybe.'

'That is not well. These men follow desire and come to emptiness. Thou

must not be of their sort.'

'The Umballa priest said that my Star was War,' Kim interjected. 'I

will ask these fools--but there is truly no need. I will run away this

night, for all I wanted to see the new things.'

Kim put two or three questions in English to Father Victor, translating

the replies to the lama.

Then: 'He says, "You take him from me and you cannot say what you will

make him." He says, "Tell me before I go, for it is not a small thing

to make a child."'

'You will be sent to a school. Later on, we shall see. Kimball, I

suppose you'd like to be a soldier?'

'Gorah-log [white-folk]. No-ah! No-ah!' Kim shook his head

violently. There was nothing in his composition to which drill and

routine appealed. 'I will not be a soldier.'

'You will be what you're told to be,' said Bennett; 'and you should be

grateful that we're going to help you.'

Kim smiled compassionately. If these men lay under the delusion that

he would do anything that he did not fancy, so much the better.

Another long silence followed. Bennett fidgeted with impatience, and

suggested calling a sentry to evict the fakir.

'Do they give or sell learning among the Sahibs? Ask them,' said the

lama, and Kim interpreted.

'They say that money is paid to the teacher--but that money the

Regiment will give ... What need? It is only for a night.'

'And--the more money is paid the better learning is given?' The lama

disregarded Kim's plans for an early flight. 'It is no wrong to pay

for learning. To help the ignorant to wisdom is always a merit.' The

rosary clicked furiously as an abacus. Then he faced his oppressors.

'Ask them for how much money do they give a wise and suitable teaching?

And in what city is that teaching given?'

'Well,' said Father Victor in English, when Kim had translated, 'that

depends. The Regiment would pay for you all the time you are at the

Military Orphanage; or you might go on the Punjab Masonic Orphanage's

list (not that he or you 'ud understand what that means); but the best

schooling a boy can get in India is, of course, at St Xavier's in

Partibus at Lucknow.' This took some time to interpret, for Bennett

wished to cut it short.

'He wants to know how much?' said Kim placidly.

'Two or three hundred rupees a year.' Father Victor was long past any

sense of amazement. Bennett, impatient, did not understand.

'He says: "Write that name and the money upon a paper and give it

him." And he says you must write your name below, because he is going

to write a letter in some days to you. He says you are a good man. He

says the other man is a fool. He is going away.'

The lama rose suddenly. 'I follow my Search,' he cried, and was gone.

'He'll run slap into the sentries,' cried Father Victor, jumping up as

the lama stalked out; 'but I can't leave the boy.' Kim made swift

motion to follow, but checked himself. There was no sound of challenge

outside. The lama had disappeared.

Kim settled himself composedly on the Chaplain's cot. At least the

lama had promised that he would stay with the Raiput woman from Kulu,

and the rest was of the smallest importance. It pleased him that the

two padres were so evidently excited. They talked long in undertones,

Father Victor urging some scheme on Mr Bennett, who seemed incredulous.

All this was very new and fascinating, but Kim felt sleepy. They

called men into the tent--one of them certainly was the Colonel, as his

father had prophesied--and they asked him an infinity of questions,

chiefly about the woman who looked after him, all of which Kim answered

truthfully. They did not seem to think the woman a good guardian.

After all, this was the newest of his experiences. Sooner or later, if

he chose, he could escape into great, grey, formless India, beyond

tents and padres and colonels. Meantime, if the Sahibs were to be

impressed, he would do his best to impress them. He too was a white

man.

After much talk that he could not comprehend, they handed him over to a

sergeant, who had strict instructions not to let him escape. The

Regiment would go on to Umballa, and Kim would be sent up, partly at

the expense of the Lodge and in part by subscription, to a place called

Sanawar.

'It's miraculous past all whooping, Colonel,' said Father Victor, when

he had talked without a break for ten minutes. 'His Buddhist friend

has levanted after taking my name and address. I can't quite make out

whether he'll pay for the boy's education or whether he is preparing

some sort of witchcraft on his own account.' Then to Kim: 'You'll live

to be grateful to your friend the Red Bull yet. We'll make a man of

you at Sanawar--even at the price o' making you a Protestant.'

'Certainly--most certainly,' said Bennett.

'But you will not go to Sanawar,' said Kim.

'But we will go to Sanawar, little man. That's the order of the

Commander-in-Chief, who's a trifle more important than O'Hara's son.'

'You will not go to Sanawar. You will go to thee War.'

There was a shout of laughter from the full tent.

'When you know your own Regiment a trifle better you won't confuse the

line of march with line of battle, Kim. We hope to go to "thee War"

sometime.'

'Oah, I know all thatt.' Kim drew his bow again at a venture. If they

were not going to the war, at least they did not know what he knew of

the talk in the veranda at Umballa.

'I know you are not at thee war now; but I tell you that as soon as you

get to Umballa you will be sent to the war--the new war. It is a war

of eight thousand men, besides the guns.'

'That's explicit. D'you add prophecy to your other gifts? Take him

along, sergeant. Take up a suit for him from the Drums, an' take care

he doesn't slip through your fingers. Who says the age of miracles is

gone by? I think I'll go to bed. My poor mind's weakening.'

At the far end of the camp, silent as a wild animal, an hour later sat

Kim, newly washed all over, in a horrible stiff suit that rasped his

arms and legs.

'A most amazin' young bird,' said the sergeant. 'He turns up in charge

of a yellow-headed buck-Brahmin priest, with his father's Lodge

certificates round his neck, talkin' God knows what all of a red bull.

The buck-Brahmin evaporates without explanations, an' the bhoy sets

cross-legged on the Chaplain's bed prophesyin' bloody war to the men at

large. Injia's a wild land for a God-fearin' man. I'll just tie his

leg to the tent-pole in case he'll go through the roof. What did ye

say about the war?'

'Eight thousand men, besides guns,' said Kim. 'Very soon you will see.'

'You're a consolin' little imp. Lie down between the Drums an' go to

bye-bye. Those two boys will watch your slumbers.'

Chapter 6

Now I remember comrades--

Old playmates on new seas--

Whenas we traded orpiment

Among the savages.

Ten thousand leagues to southward,

And thirty years removed--

They knew not noble Valdez,

But me they knew and loved.

Song of Diego Valdez.

Very early in the morning the white tents came down and disappeared as

the Mavericks took a side-road to Umballa. It did not skirt the

resting-place, and Kim, trudging beside a baggage-cart under fire of

comments from soldiers' wives, was not so confident as overnight. He

discovered that he was closely watched--Father Victor on the one side,

and Mr Bennett on the other.

In the forenoon the column checked. A camel-orderly handed the Colonel

a letter. He read it, and spoke to a Major. Half a mile in the rear,

Kim heard a hoarse and joyful clamour rolling down on him through the

thick dust. Then someone beat him on the back, crying: 'Tell us how ye

knew, ye little limb of Satan? Father dear, see if ye can make him

tell.'

A pony ranged alongside, and he was hauled on to the priest's saddlebow.

'Now, my son, your prophecy of last night has come true. Our orders

are to entrain at Umballa for the Front tomorrow.'

'What is thatt?' said Kim, for 'front' and 'entrain' were newish words

to him.

'We are going to "thee War," as you called it.'

'Of course you are going to thee War. I said last night.'

'Ye did; but, Powers o' Darkness, how did ye know?'

Kim's eyes sparkled. He shut his lips, nodded his head, and looked

unspeakable things. The Chaplain moved on through the dust, and

privates, sergeants, and subalterns called one another's attention to

the boy. The Colonel, at the head of the column, stared at him

curiously. 'It was probably some bazar rumour.' he said; 'but even

then--' He referred to the paper in his hand. 'Hang it all, the thing

was only decided within the last forty-eight hours.'

'Are there many more like you in India?' said Father Victor, 'or are

you by way o' being a lusus naturae?'

'Now I have told you,' said the boy, 'will you let me go back to my old

man? If he has not stayed with that woman from Kulu, I am afraid he

will die.'

'By what I saw of him he's as well able to take care of himself as you.

No. Ye've brought us luck, an' we're goin' to make a man of you. I'll

take ye back to your baggage-cart and ye'll come to me this evening.'

For the rest of the day Kim found himself an object of distinguished

consideration among a few hundred white men. The story of his

appearance in camp, the discovery of his parentage, and his prophecy,

had lost nothing in the telling. A big, shapeless white woman on a

pile of bedding asked him mysteriously whether he thought her husband

would come back from the war. Kim reflected gravely, and said that he

would, and the woman gave him food. In many respects, this big

procession that played music at intervals--this crowd that talked and

laughed so easily--resembled a festival in Lahore city. So far, there

was no sign of hard work, and he resolved to lend the spectacle his

patronage. At evening there came out to meet them bands of music, and

played the Mavericks into camp near Umballa railway station. That was

an interesting night. Men of other regiments came to visit the

Mavericks. The Mavericks went visiting on their own account. Their

pickets hurried forth to bring them back, met pickets of strange

regiments on the same duty; and, after a while, the bugles blew madly

for more pickets with officers to control the tumult. The Mavericks

had a reputation for liveliness to live up to. But they fell in on the

platform next morning in perfect shape and condition; and Kim, left

behind with the sick, women, and boys, found himself shouting farewells

excitedly as the trains drew away. Life as a Sahib was amusing so far;

but he touched it with a cautious hand. Then they marched him back in

charge of a drummer-boy to empty, lime-washed barracks, whose floors

were covered with rubbish and string and paper, and whose ceilings gave

back his lonely footfall. Native-fashion, he curled himself up on a

stripped cot and went to sleep. An angry man stumped down the veranda,

woke him up, and said he was a schoolmaster. This was enough for Kim,

and he retired into his shell. He could just puzzle out the various

English Police notices in Lahore city, because they affected his

comfort; and among the many guests of the woman who looked after him

had been a queer German who painted scenery for the Parsee travelling

theatre. He told Kim that he had been 'on the barricades in

'Forty-eight,' and therefore--at least that was how it struck Kim--he

would teach the boy to write in return for food. Kim had been kicked

as far as single letters, but did not think well of them.

'I do not know anything. Go away!' said Kim, scenting evil. Hereupon

the man caught him by the ear, dragged him to a room in a far-off wing

where a dozen drummer-boys were sitting on forms, and told him to be

still if he could do nothing else. This he managed very successfully.

The man explained something or other with white lines on a black board

for at least half an hour, and Kim continued his interrupted nap. He

much disapproved of the present aspect of affairs, for this was the

very school and discipline he had spent two-thirds of his young life in

avoiding. Suddenly a beautiful idea occurred to him, and he wondered

that he had not thought of it before.

The man dismissed them, and first to spring through the veranda into

the open sunshine was Kim.

''Ere, you! 'Alt! Stop!' said a high voice at his heels. 'I've got

to look after you. My orders are not to let you out of my sight. Where

are you goin'?'

It was the drummer-boy who had been hanging round him all the

forenoon--a fat and freckled person of about fourteen, and Kim loathed

him from the soles of his boots to his cap-ribbons.

'To the bazar--to get sweets--for you,' said Kim, after thought.

'Well, the bazar's out o' bounds. If we go there we'll get a

dressing-down. You come back.'

'How near can we go?' Kim did not know what bounds meant, but he

wished to be polite--for the present.

''Ow near? 'Ow far, you mean! We can go as far as that tree down the

road.'

'Then I will go there.'

'All right. I ain't goin'. It's too 'ot. I can watch you from 'ere.

It's no good your runnin' away. If you did, they'd spot you by your

clothes. That's regimental stuff you're wearin'. There ain't a picket

in Umballa wouldn't 'ead you back quicker than you started out.'

This did not impress Kim as much as the knowledge that his raiment

would tire him out if he tried to run. He slouched to the tree at the

corner of a bare road leading towards the bazar, and eyed the natives

passing. Most of them were barrack-servants of the lowest caste. Kim

hailed a sweeper, who promptly retorted with a piece of unnecessary

insolence, in the natural belief that the European boy could not follow

it. The low, quick answer undeceived him. Kim put his fettered soul

into it, thankful for the late chance to abuse somebody in the tongue

he knew best. 'And now, go to the nearest letter-writer in the bazar

and tell him to come here. I would write a letter.'

'But--but what manner of white man's son art thou to need a bazar

letter-writer? Is there not a schoolmaster in the barracks?'

'Ay; and Hell is full of the same sort. Do my order, you--you Od! Thy

mother was married under a basket! Servant of Lal Beg' (Kim knew the

God of the sweepers), 'run on my business or we will talk again.'

The sweeper shuffled off in haste. 'There is a white boy by the

barracks waiting under a tree who is not a white boy,' he stammered to

the first bazar letter-writer he came across. 'He needs thee.'

'Will he pay?' said the spruce scribe, gathering up his desk and pens

and sealing-wax all in order.

'I do not know. He is not like other boys. Go and see. It is well

worth.'

Kim danced with impatience when the slim young Kayeth hove in sight.

As soon as his voice could carry he cursed him volubly.

'First I will take my pay,' the letter-writer said. 'Bad words have

made the price higher. But who art thou, dressed in that fashion, to

speak in this fashion?'

'Aha! That is in the letter which thou shalt write. Never was such a

tale. But I am in no haste. Another writer will serve me. Umballa

city is as full of them as is Lahore.'

'Four annas,' said the writer, sitting down and spreading his cloth in

the shade of a deserted barrack-wing.

Mechanically Kim squatted beside him--squatted as only the natives

can--in spite of the abominable clinging trousers.

The writer regarded him sideways.

'That is the price to ask of Sahibs,' said Kim. 'Now fix me a true

one.'

'An anna and a half. How do I know, having written the letter, that

thou wilt not run away?'

I must not go beyond this tree, and there is also the stamp to be

considered.'

'I get no commission on the price of the stamp. Once more, what manner

of white boy art thou?'

'That shall be said in the letter, which is to Mahbub Ali, the

horse-dealer in the Kashmir Serai, at Lahore. He is my friend.'

'Wonder on wonder!' murmured the letter-writer, dipping a reed in the

inkstand. 'To be written in Hindi?'

'Assuredly. To Mahbub Ali then. Begin! I have come down with the old

man as far as Umballa in the train. At Umballa I carried the news of

the bay mare's pedigree.' After what he had seen in the garden, he was

not going to write of white stallions.

'Slower a little. What has a bay mare to do ... Is it Mahbub Ali, the

great dealer?'

'Who else? I have been in his service. Take more ink. Again. As the

order was, so I did it. We then went on foot towards Benares, but on

the third day we found a certain regiment. Is that down?'

'Ay, pulton,' murmured the writer, all ears.

'I went into their camp and was caught, and by means of the charm about

my neck, which thou knowest, it was established that I was the son of

some man in the regiment: according to the prophecy of the Red Bull,

which thou knowest was common talk of our bazar.' Kim waited for this

shaft to sink into the letter-writer's heart, cleared his throat, and

continued: 'A priest clothed me and gave me a new name ... One

priest, however, was a fool. The clothes are very heavy, but I am a

Sahib and my heart is heavy too. They send me to a school and beat me.

I do not like the air and water here. Come then and help me, Mahbub

Ali, or send me some money, for I have not sufficient to pay the writer

who writes this.'

'"Who writes this." It is my own fault that I was tricked. Thou art

as clever as Husain Bux that forged the Treasury stamps at Nucklao.

But what a tale! What a tale! Is it true by any chance?'

'It does not profit to tell lies to Mahbub Ali. It is better to help

his friends by lending them a stamp. When the money comes I will

repay.'

The writer grunted doubtfully, but took a stamp out of his desk, sealed

the letter, handed it over to Kim, and departed. Mahbub Ali's was a

name of power in Umballa.

'That is the way to win a good account with the Gods,' Kim shouted

after him.

'Pay me twice over when the money comes,' the man cried over his

shoulder.

'What was you bukkin' to that nigger about?' said the drummer-boy when

Kim returned to the veranda. 'I was watch-in' you.'

'I was only talkin' to him.'

'You talk the same as a nigger, don't you?'

'No-ah! No-ah! I onlee speak a little. What shall we do now?'

'The bugles'll go for dinner in arf a minute. My Gawd! I wish I'd

gone up to the Front with the Regiment. It's awful doin' nothin' but

school down 'ere. Don't you 'ate it?'

'Oah yess!'

I'd run away if I knew where to go to, but, as the men say, in this

bloomin' Injia you're only a prisoner at large. You can't desert

without bein' took back at once. I'm fair sick of it.'

'You have been in Be--England?'

'W'y, I only come out last troopin' season with my mother. I should

think I 'ave been in England. What a ignorant little beggar you are!

You was brought up in the gutter, wasn't you?'

'Oah yess. Tell me something about England. My father he came from

there.'

Though he would not say so, Kim of course disbelieved every word the

drummer-boy spoke about the Liverpool suburb which was his England. It

passed the heavy time till dinner--a most unappetizing meal served to

the boys and a few invalids in a corner of a barrack-room. But that he

had written to Mahbub Ali, Kim would have been almost depressed. The

indifference of native crowds he was used to; but this strong

loneliness among white men preyed on him. He was grateful when, in the

course of the afternoon, a big soldier took him over to Father Victor,

who lived in another wing across another dusty parade-ground. The

priest was reading an English letter written in purple ink. He looked

at Kim more curiously than ever.

'An' how do you like it, my son, as far as you've gone? Not much, eh?

It must be hard--very hard on a wild animal. Listen now. I've an

amazin' epistle from your friend.'

'Where is he? Is he well? Oah! If he knows to write me letters, it

is all right.'

'You're fond of him then?'

'Of course I am fond of him. He was fond of me.'

'It seems so by the look of this. He can't write English, can he?'

'Oah no. Not that I know, but of course he found a letter-writer who

can write English verree well, and so he wrote. I do hope you

understand.'

'That accounts for it. D'you know anything about his money affairs?'

Kim's face showed that he did not.

'How can I tell?'

'That's what I'm askin'. Now listen if you can make head or tail o'

this. We'll skip the first part ... It's written from Jagadhir Road

... "Sitting on wayside in grave meditation, trusting to be favoured

with your Honour's applause of present step, which recommend your

Honour to execute for Almighty God's sake. Education is greatest

blessing if of best sorts. Otherwise no earthly use." Faith, the old

man's hit the bull's-eye that time! "If your Honour condescending

giving my boy best educations Xavier" (I suppose that's St Xavier's in

Partibus) "in terms of our conversation dated in your tent 15th

instant" (a business-like touch there!) "then Almighty God blessing

your Honour's succeedings to third an' fourth generation and"--now

listen!--"confide in your Honour's humble servant for adequate

remuneration per hoondi per annum three hundred rupees a year to one

expensive education St Xavier, Lucknow, and allow small time to forward

same per hoondi sent to any part of India as your Honour shall address

yourself. This servant of your Honour has presently no place to lay

crown of his head, but going to Benares by train on account of

persecution of old woman talking so much and unanxious residing

Saharunpore in any domestic capacity." Now what in the world does that

mean?'

'She has asked him to be her puro--her clergyman--at Saharunpore, I

think. He would not do that on account of his River. She did talk.'

'It's clear to you, is it? It beats me altogether. "So going to

Benares, where will find address and forward rupees for boy who is

apple of eye, and for Almighty God's sake execute this education, and

your petitioner as in duty bound shall ever awfully pray. Written by

Sobrao Satai, Failed Entrance Allahabad University, for Venerable

Teshoo Lama the priest of Such-zen looking for a River, address care of

Tirthankars' Temple, Benares. P. M.--Please note boy is apple of eye,

and rupees shall be sent per hoondi three hundred per annum. For God

Almighty's sake." Now, is that ravin' lunacy or a business

proposition? I ask you, because I'm fairly at my wits' end.'

'He says he will give me three hundred rupees a year? So he will give

me them.'

'Oh, that's the way you look at it, is it?'

'Of course. If he says so!'

The priest whistled; then he addressed Kim as an equal. 'I don't

believe it; but we'll see. You were goin' off today to the Military

Orphanage at Sanawar, where the Regiment would keep you till you were

old enough to enlist. Ye'd be brought up to the Church of England.

Bennett arranged for that. On the other hand, if ye go to St Xavier's

ye'll get a better education an--an can have the religion. D'ye see my

dilemma? Kim saw nothing save a vision of the lama going south in a

train with none to beg for him.

'Like most people, I'm going to temporize. If your friend sends the

money from Benares--Powers of Darkness below, where's a street-beggar

to raise three hundred rupees?--ye'll go down to Lucknow and I'll pay

your fare, because I can't touch the subscription-money if I intend, as

I do, to make ye a Catholic. If he doesn't, ye'll go to the Military

Orphanage at the Regiment's expense. I'll allow him three days' grace,

though I don't believe it at all. Even then, if he fails in his

payments later on ... but it's beyond me. We can only walk one step

at a time in this world, praise God! An' they sent Bennett to the Front

an' left me behind. Bennett can't expect everything.'

'Oah yess,' said Kim vaguely.

The priest leaned forward. 'I'd give a month's pay to find what's

goin' on inside that little round head of yours.'

'There is nothing,' said Kim, and scratched it. He was wondering

whether Mahbub Ali would send him as much as a whole rupee. Then he

could pay the letter-writer and write letters to the lama at Benares.

Perhaps Mahbub Ali would visit him next time he came south with horses.

Surely he must know that Kim's delivery of the letter to the officer at

Umballa had caused the great war which the men and boys had discussed

so loudly over the barrack dinner-tables. But if Mahbub Ali did not

know this, it would be very unsafe to tell him so. Mahbub Ali was hard

upon boys who knew, or thought they knew, too much.

'Well, till I get further news'--Father Victor's voice interrupted the

reverie. 'Ye can run along now and play with the other boys. They'll

teach ye something--but I don't think ye'll like it.'

The day dragged to its weary end. When he wished to sleep he was

instructed how to fold up his clothes and set out his boots; the other

boys deriding. Bugles waked him in the dawn; the schoolmaster caught

him after breakfast, thrust a page of meaningless characters under his

nose, gave them senseless names and whacked him without reason. Kim

meditated poisoning him with opium borrowed from a barrack-sweeper, but

reflected that, as they all ate at one table in public (this was

peculiarly revolting to Kim, who preferred to turn his back on the

world at meals), the stroke might be dangerous. Then he attempted

running off to the village where the priest had tried to drug the

lama--the village where the old soldier lived. But far-seeing sentries

at every exit headed back the little scarlet figure. Trousers and

jacket crippled body and mind alike so he abandoned the project and

fell back, Oriental-fashion, on time and chance. Three days of torment

passed in the big, echoing white rooms. He walked out of afternoons

under escort of the drummer-boy, and all he heard from his companions

were the few useless words which seemed to make two-thirds of the white

man's abuse. Kim knew and despised them all long ago. The boy

resented his silence and lack of interest by beating him, as was only

natural. He did not care for any of the bazars which were in bounds.

He styled all natives 'niggers'; yet servants and sweepers called him

abominable names to his face, and, misled by their deferential

attitude, he never understood. This somewhat consoled Kim for the

beatings.

On the morning of the fourth day a judgement overtook that drummer.

They had gone out together towards Umballa racecourse. He returned

alone, weeping, with news that young O'Hara, to whom he had been doing

nothing in particular, had hailed a scarlet-bearded nigger on

horseback; that the nigger had then and there laid into him with a

peculiarly adhesive quirt, picked up young O'Hara, and borne him off at

full gallop. These tidings came to Father Victor, and he drew down his

long upper lip. He was already sufficiently startled by a letter from

the Temple of the Tirthankars at Benares, enclosing a native banker's

note of hand for three hundred rupees, and an amazing prayer to

'Almighty God'. The lama would have been more annoyed than the priest

had he known how the bazar letter-writer had translated his phrase 'to

acquire merit.'

'Powers of Darkness below!' Father Victor fumbled with the note. 'An'

now he's off with another of his peep-o'-day friends. I don't know

whether it will be a greater relief to me to get him back or to have

him lost. He's beyond my comprehension. How the Divil--yes, he's the

man I mean--can a street-beggar raise money to educate white boys?'

Three miles off, on Umballa racecourse, Mahbub Ali, reining a grey

Kabuli stallion with Kim in front of him, was saying:

'But, Little Friend of all the World, there is my honour and reputation

to be considered. All the officer-Sahibs in all the regiments, and all

Umballa, know Mahbub Ali. Men saw me pick thee up and chastise that

boy. We are seen now from far across this plain. How can I take thee

away, or account for thy disappearing if I set thee down and let thee

run off into the crops? They would put me in jail. Be patient. Once

a Sahib, always a Sahib. When thou art a man--who knows?--thou wilt be

grateful to Mahbub Ali.'

'Take me beyond their sentries where I can change this red. Give me

money and I will go to Benares and be with my lama again. I do not

want to be a Sahib, and remember I did deliver that message.'

The stallion bounded wildly. Mahbub Ali had incautiously driven home

the sharp-edged stirrup. (He was not the new sort of fluent

horse-dealer who wears English boots and spurs.) Kim drew his own

conclusions from that betrayal.

'That was a small matter. It lay on the straight road to Benares. I

and the Sahib have by this time forgotten it. I send so many letters

and messages to men who ask questions about horses, I cannot well

remember one from the other. Was it some matter of a bay mare that

Peters Sahib wished the pedigree of?'

Kim saw the trap at once. If he had said 'bay mare' Mahbub would have

known by his very readiness to fall in with the amendment that the boy

suspected something. Kim replied therefore:

'Bay mare. No. I do not forget my messages thus. It was a white

stallion.'

'Ay, so it was. A white Arab stallion. But thou didst write "bay

mare" to me.'

'Who cares to tell truth to a letter-writer?' Kim answered, feeling

Mahbub's palm on his heart.

'Hi! Mahbub, you old villain, pull up!' cried a voice, and an

Englishman raced alongside on a little polo-pony. 'I've been chasing

you half over the country. That Kabuli of yours can go. For sale, I

suppose?'

'I have some young stuff coming on made by Heaven for the delicate and

difficult polo-game. He has no equal. He--'

'Plays polo and waits at table. Yes. We know all that. What the

deuce have you got there?'

'A. boy,' said Mahbub gravely. 'He was being beaten by another boy.

His father was once a white soldier in the big war. The boy was a

child in Lahore city. He played with my horses when he was a babe. Now

I think they will make him a soldier. He has been newly caught by his

father's Regiment that went up to the war last week. But I do not

think he wants to be a soldier. I take him for a ride. Tell me where

thy barracks are and I will set thee there.'

'Let me go. I can find the barracks alone.'

'And if thou runnest away who will say it is not my fault?'

'He'll run back to his dinner. Where has he to run to?' the

Englishman asked.

'He was born in the land. He has friends. He goes where he chooses.

He is a chabuk sawai [a sharp chap]. It needs only to change his

clothing, and in a twinkling he would be a low-caste Hindu boy.'

'The deuce he would!' The Englishman looked critically at the boy as

Mahbub headed towards the barracks. Kim ground his teeth. Mahbub was

mocking him, as faithless Afghans will; for he went on:

'They will send him to a school and put heavy boots on his feet and

swaddle him in these clothes. Then he will forget all he knows. Now,

which of the barracks is thine?'

Kim pointed--he could not speak--to Father Victor's wing, all staring

white near by.

'Perhaps he will make a good soldier,' said Mahbub reflectively.

'He will make a good orderly at least. I sent him to deliver a message

once from Lahore. A message concerning the pedigree of a white

stallion.'

Here was deadly insult on deadlier injury--and the Sahib to whom he had

so craftily given that war-waking letter heard it all. Kim beheld

Mahbub Ali frying in flame for his treachery, but for himself he saw

one long grey vista of barracks, schools, and barracks again. He gazed

imploringly at the clear-cut face in which there was no glimmer of

recognition; but even at this extremity it never occurred to him to

throw himself on the white man's mercy or to denounce the Afghan. And

Mahbub stared deliberately at the Englishman, who stared as

deliberately at Kim, quivering and tongue-tied.

'My horse is well trained,' said the dealer. 'Others would have

kicked, Sahib.'

'Ah,' said the Englishman at last, rubbing his pony's damp withers with

his whip-butt. 'Who makes the boy a soldier?'

'He says the Regiment that found him, and especially the Padre-sahib of

that regiment.

'There is the Padre!' Kim choked as bare-headed Father Victor sailed

down upon them from the veranda.

'Powers O' Darkness below, O'Hara! How many more mixed friends do you

keep in Asia?' he cried, as Kim slid down and stood helplessly before

him.

'Good morning, Padre,' the Englishman said cheerily. 'I know you by

reputation well enough. Meant to have come over and called before

this. I'm Creighton.'

'Of the Ethnological Survey?' said Father Victor. The Englishman

nodded. 'Faith, I'm glad to meet ye then; an' I owe you some thanks

for bringing back the boy.'

'No thanks to me, Padre. Besides, the boy wasn't going away. You

don't know old Mahbub Ali.' The horse-dealer sat impassive in the

sunlight. 'You will when you have been in the station a month. He

sells us all our crocks. That boy is rather a curiosity. Can you tell

me anything about him?'

'Can I tell you?' puffed Father Victor. 'You'll be the one man that

could help me in my quandaries. Tell you! Powers o' Darkness, I'm

bursting to tell someone who knows something o' the native!'

A groom came round the corner. Colonel Creighton raised his voice,

speaking in Urdu. 'Very good, Mahbub Ali, but what is the use of

telling me all those stories about the pony? Not one pice more than

three hundred and fifty rupees will I give.'

'The Sahib is a little hot and angry after riding,' the horse-dealer

returned, with the leer of a privileged jester. 'Presently, he will

see my horse's points more clearly. I will wait till he has finished

his talk with the Padre. I will wait under that tree.'

'Confound you!' The Colonel laughed. 'That comes of looking at one of

Mahbub's horses. He's a regular old leech, Padre. Wait, then, if thou

hast so much time to spare, Mahbub. Now I'm at your service, Padre.

Where is the boy? Oh, he's gone off to collogue with Mahbub. Queer

sort of boy. Might I ask you to send my mare round under cover?'

He dropped into a chair which commanded a clear view of Kim and Mahbub

Ali in conference beneath the tree. The Padre went indoors for

cheroots.

Creighton heard Kim say bitterly: 'Trust a Brahmin before a snake, and

a snake before an harlot, and an harlot before a Pathan, Mahbub Ali.'

'That is all one.' The great red beard wagged solemnly. 'Children

should not see a carpet on the loom till the pattern is made plain.

Believe me, Friend of all the World, I do thee great service. They

will not make a soldier of thee.'

'You crafty old sinner!' thought Creighton. 'But you're not far

wrong. That boy mustn't be wasted if he is as advertised.'

'Excuse me half a minute,' cried the Padre from within, 'but I'm

gettin' the documents in the case.'

'If through me the favour of this bold and wise Colonel Sahib comes to

thee, and thou art raised to honour, what thanks wilt thou give Mahbub

Ali when thou art a man?'

'Nay, nay! I begged thee to let me take the Road again, where I should

have been safe; and thou hast sold me back to the English. What will

they give thee for blood-money?'

'A cheerful young demon!' The Colonel bit his cigar, and turned

politely to Father Victor.

'What are the letters that the fat priest is waving before the Colonel?

Stand behind the stallion as though looking at my bridle!' said Mahbub

Ali.

'A letter from my lama which he wrote from Jagadhir Road, saying that

he will pay three hundred rupees by the year for my schooling.'

'Oho! Is old Red Hat of that sort? At which school?'

'God knows. I think in Nucklao.'

'Yes. There is a big school there for the sons of Sahibs--and

half-Sahibs. I have seen it when I sell horses there. So the lama

also loved the Friend of all the World?'

'Ay; and he did not tell lies, or return me to captivity.'

'Small wonder the Padre does not know how to unravel the thread. How

fast he talks to the Colonel Sahib!' Mahbub Ali chuckled. 'By Allah!'

the keen eyes swept the veranda for an Instant--'thy lama has sent what

to me looks like a note of hand. I have had some few dealings in

hoondis. The Colonel Sahib is looking at it.'

'What good is all this to me?' said Kim wearily. 'Thou wilt go away,

and they will return me to those empty rooms where there is no good

place to sleep and where the boys beat me.'

'I do not think that. Have patience, child. All Pathans are not

faithless--except in horseflesh.'

Five--ten--fifteen minutes passed, Father Victor talking energetically

or asking questions which the Colonel answered.

'Now I've told you everything that I know about the boy from beginnin

to end; and it's a blessed relief to me. Did ye ever hear the like?'

'At any rate, the old man has sent the money. Gobind Sahai's notes of

hand are good from here to China,' said the Colonel. 'The more one

knows about natives the less can one say what they will or won't do.'

'That's consolin'--from the head of the Ethnological Survey. It's this

mixture of Red Bulls and Rivers of Healing (poor heathen, God help

him!) an' notes of hand and Masonic certificates. Are you a Mason, by

any chance?'

'By Jove, I am, now I come to think of it. That's an additional

reason,' said the Colonel absently.

'I'm glad ye see a reason in it. But as I said, it's the mixture o'

things that's beyond me. An' his prophesyin' to our Colonel, sitting

on my bed with his little shimmy torn open showing his white skin; an'

the prophecy comin' true! They'll cure all that nonsense at St

Xavier's, eh?'

'Sprinkle him with holy water,' the Colonel laughed.

'On my word, I fancy I ought to sometimes. But I'm hoping he'll be

brought up as a good Catholic. All that troubles me is what'll happen

if the old beggar-man--'

'Lama, lama, my dear sir; and some of them are gentlemen in their own

country.'

'The lama, then, fails to pay next year. He's a fine business head to

plan on the spur of the moment, but he's bound to die some day. An'

takin' a heathen's money to give a child a Christian education--'

'But he said explicitly what he wanted. As soon as he knew the boy was

white he seems to have made his arrangements accordingly. I'd give a

month's pay to hear how he explained it all at the Tirthankars' Temple

at Benares. Look here, Padre, I don't pretend to know much about

natives, but if he says he'll pay, he'll pay--dead or alive. I mean,

his heirs will assume the debt. My advice to you is, send the boy down

to Lucknow. If your Anglican Chaplain thinks you've stolen a march on

him--'

'Bad luck to Bennett! He was sent to the Front instead o' me. Doughty

certified me medically unfit. I'll excommunicate Doughty if he comes

back alive! Surely Bennett ought to be content with--'

'Glory, leaving you the religion. Quite so! As a matter of fact I

don't think Bennett will mind. Put the blame on me. I--er--strongly

recommend sending the boy to St Xavier's. He can go down on pass as a

soldier's orphan, so the railway fare will be saved. You can buy him an

outfit from the Regimental subscription. The Lodge will be saved the

expense of his education, and that will put the Lodge in a good temper.

It's perfectly easy. I've got to go down to Lucknow next week. I'll

look after the boy on the way--give him in charge of my servants, and

so on.'

'You're a good man.'

'Not in the least. Don't make that mistake. The lama has sent us

money for a definite end. We can't very well return it. We shall have

to do as he says. Well, that's settled, isn't it? Shall we say that,

Tuesday next, you'll hand him over to me at the night train south?

That's only three days. He can't do much harm in three days.'

'It's a weight off my mind, but--this thing here?'--he waved the note

of hand--'I don't know Gobind Sahai: or his bank, which may be a hole

in a wall.'

'You've never been a subaltern in debt. I'll cash it if you like, and

send you the vouchers in proper order.'

'But with all your own work too! It's askin'--'

'It's not the least trouble indeed. You see, as an ethnologist, the

thing's very interesting to me. I'd like to make a note of it for some

Government work that I'm doing. The transformation of a regimental

badge like your Red Bull into a sort of fetish that the boy follows is

very interesting.'

'But I can't thank you enough.'

'There's one thing you can do. All we Ethnological men are as jealous

as jackdaws of one another's discoveries. They're of no interest to

anyone but ourselves, of course, but you know what book-collectors are

like. Well, don't say a word, directly or indirectly, about the

Asiatic side of the boy's character--his adventures and his prophecy,

and so on. I'll worm them out of the boy later on and--you see?'

'I do. Ye'll make a wonderful account of it. Never a word will I say

to anyone till I see it in print.'

'Thank you. That goes straight to an ethnologist's heart. Well, I

must be getting back to my breakfast. Good Heavens! Old Mahbub here

still?' He raised his voice, and the horse-dealer came out from under

the shadow of the tree, 'Well, what is it?'

'As regards that young horse,' said Mahbub, 'I say that when a colt is

born to be a polo-pony, closely following the ball without

teaching--when such a colt knows the game by divination--then I say it

is a great wrong to break that colt to a heavy cart, Sahib!'

'So say I also, Mahbub. The colt will be entered for polo only. (These

fellows think of nothing in the world but horses, Padre.) I'll see you

tomorrow, Mahbub, if you've anything likely for sale.'

The dealer saluted, horseman-fashion, with a sweep of the off hand. 'Be

patient a little, Friend of all the World,' he whispered to the

agonized Kim. 'Thy fortune is made. In a little while thou goest to

Nucklao, and--here is something to pay the letter-writer. I shall see

thee again, I think, many times,' and he cantered off down the road.

'Listen to me,' said the Colonel from the veranda, speaking in the

vernacular. 'In three days thou wilt go with me to Lucknow, seeing and

hearing new things all the while. Therefore sit still for three days

and do not run away. Thou wilt go to school at Lucknow.'

'Shall I meet my Holy One there?' Kim whimpered.

'At least Lucknow is nearer to Benares than Umballa. It may be thou

wilt go under my protection. Mahbub Ali knows this, and he will be

angry if thou returnest to the Road now. Remember--much has been told

me which I do not forget.'

'I will wait,' said Kim, 'but the boys will beat me.'

Then the bugles blew for dinner.

Chapter 7

Unto whose use the pregnant suns are poised

With idiot moons and stars retracing stars?

Creep thou betweene--thy coming's all unnoised.

Heaven hath her high, as Earth her baser, wars.

Heir to these tumults, this affright, that fraye

(By Adam's, fathers', own, sin bound alway);

Peer up, draw out thy horoscope and say

Which planet mends thy threadbare fate or mars?

Sir John Christie.

In the afternoon the red-faced schoolmaster told Kim that he had been

'struck off the strength', which conveyed no meaning to him till he was

ordered to go away and play. Then he ran to the bazar, and found the

young letter-writer to whom he owed a stamp.

'Now I pay,' said Kim royally, 'and now I need another letter to be

written.'

'Mahbub Ali is in Umballa,' said the writer jauntily. He was, by

virtue of his office, a bureau of general misinformation.

'This is not to Mahbub, but to a priest. Take thy pen and write

quickly. To Teshoo Lama, the Holy One from Bhotiyal seeking for a

River, who is now in the Temple of the Tirthankars at Benares. Take

more ink! In three days I am to go down to Nucklao to the school at

Nucklao. The name of the school is Xavier. I do not know where that

school is, but it is at Nucklao.'

'But I know Nucklao,' the writer interrupted. 'I know the school.'

'Tell him where it is, and I give half an anna.'

The reed pen scratched busily. 'He cannot mistake.' The man lifted

his head. 'Who watches us across the street?'

Kim looked up hurriedly and saw Colonel Creighton in tennis-flannels.

'Oh, that is some Sahib who knows the fat priest in the barracks. He is

beckoning me.'

'What dost thou?' said the Colonel, when Kim trotted up.

'I--I am not running away. I send a letter to my Holy One at Benares.'

'I had not thought of that. Hast thou said that I take thee to

Lucknow?'

'Nay, I have not. Read the letter, if there be a doubt.'

'Then why hast thou left out my name in writing to that Holy One?' The

Colonel smiled a queer smile. Kim took his courage in both hands.

'It was said once to me that it is inexpedient to write the names of

strangers concerned in any matter, because by the naming of names many

good plans are brought to confusion.'

'Thou hast been well taught,' the Colonel replied, and Kim flushed. 'I

have left my cheroot-case in the Padre's veranda. Bring it to my house

this even.'

'Where is the house?' said Kim. His quick wit told him that he was

being tested in some fashion or another, and he stood on guard.

'Ask anyone in the big bazar.' The Colonel walked on.

'He has forgotten his cheroot-case,' said Kim, returning. 'I must

bring it to him this evening. That is all my letter except, thrice

over, Come to me! Come to me! Come to me! Now I will pay for a stamp

and put it in the post. He rose to go, and as an afterthought asked:

'Who is that angry-faced Sahib who lost the cheroot-case?'

'Oh, he is only Creighton Sahib--a very foolish Sahib, who is a Colonel

Sahib without a regiment.'

'What is his business?'

'God knows. He is always buying horses which he cannot ride, and

asking riddles about the works of God--such as plants and stones and

the customs of people. The dealers call him the father of fools,

because he is so easily cheated about a horse. Mahbub Ali says he is

madder than most other Sahibs.'

'Oh!' said Kim, and departed. His training had given him some small

knowledge of character, and he argued that fools are not given

information which leads to calling out eight thousand men besides guns.

The Commander-in-Chief of all India does not talk, as Kim had heard him

talk, to fools. Nor would Mahbub Ali's tone have changed, as it did

every time he mentioned the Colonel's name, if the Colonel had been a

fool. Consequently--and this set Kim to skipping--there was a mystery

somewhere, and Mahbub Ali probably spied for the Colonel much as Kim

had spied for Mahbub. And, like the horse-dealer, the Colonel

evidently respected people who did not show themselves to be too clever.

He rejoiced that he had not betrayed his knowledge of the Colonel's

house; and when, on his return to barracks, he discovered that no

cheroot-case had been left behind, he beamed with delight. Here was a

man after his own heart--a tortuous and indirect person playing a

hidden game. Well, if he could be a fool, so could Kim.

He showed nothing of his mind when Father Victor, for three long

mornings, discoursed to him of an entirely new set of Gods and

Godlings--notably of a Goddess called Mary, who, he gathered, was one

with Bibi Miriam of Mahbub Ali's theology. He betrayed no emotion

when, after the lecture, Father Victor dragged him from shop to shop

buying articles of outfit, nor when envious drummer-boys kicked him

because he was going to a superior school did he complain, but awaited

the play of circumstances with an interested soul. Father Victor, good

man, took him to the station, put him into an empty second-class next

to Colonel Creighton's first, and bade him farewell with genuine

feeling.

'They'll make a man o' you, O'Hara, at St Xavier's--a white man, an', I

hope, a good man. They know all about your comin', an' the Colonel

will see that ye're not lost or mislaid anywhere on the road. I've

given you a notion of religious matters,--at least I hope so,--and

you'll remember, when they ask you your religion, that you're a

Cath'lic. Better say Roman Cath'lic, tho' I'm not fond of the word.'

Kim lit a rank cigarette--he had been careful to buy a stock in the

bazar--and lay down to think. This solitary passage was very different

from that joyful down-journey in the third-class with the lama.

'Sahibs get little pleasure of travel,' he reflected.

'Hai mai! I go from one place to another as it might be a kickball. It

is my Kismet. No man can escape his Kismet. But I am to pray to Bibi

Miriam, and I am a Sahib.' He looked at his boots ruefully. 'No; I am

Kim. This is the great world, and I am only Kim. Who is Kim?' He

considered his own identity, a thing he had never done before, till his

head swam. He was one insignificant person in all this roaring whirl

of India, going southward to he knew not what fate.

Presently the Colonel sent for him, and talked for a long time. So far

as Kim could gather, he was to be diligent and enter the Survey of

India as a chain-man. If he were very good, and passed the proper

examinations, he would be earning thirty rupees a month at seventeen

years old, and Colonel Creighton would see that he found suitable

employment.

Kim pretended at first to understand perhaps one word in three of this

talk. Then the Colonel, seeing his mistake, turned to fluent and

picturesque Urdu and Kim was contented. No man could be a fool who

knew the language so intimately, who moved so gently and silently, and

whose eyes were so different from the dull fat eyes of other Sahibs.

'Yes, and thou must learn how to make pictures of roads and mountains

and rivers, to carry these pictures in thine eye till a suitable time

comes to set them upon paper. Perhaps some day, when thou art a

chain-man, I may say to thee when we are working together: "Go across

those hills and see what lies beyond." Then one will say: "There are

bad people living in those hills who will slay the chain-man if he be

seen to look like a Sahib." What then?'

Kim thought. Would it be safe to return the Colonel's lead?

'I would tell what that other man had said.'

'But if I answered: "I will give thee a hundred rupees for knowledge

of what is behind those hills--for a picture of a river and a little

news of what the people say in the villages there"?'

'How can I tell? I am only a boy. Wait till I am a man.' Then,

seeing the Colonel's brow clouded, he went on: 'But I think I should

in a few days earn the hundred rupees.'

'By what road?'

Kim shook his head resolutely. 'If I said how I would earn them,

another man might hear and forestall me. It is not good to sell

knowledge for nothing.'

'Tell now.' The Colonel held up a rupee. Kim's hand half reached

towards it, and dropped.

'Nay, Sahib; nay. I know the price that will be paid for the answer,

but I do not know why the question is asked.'

'Take it for a gift, then,' said Creighton, tossing it over. 'There is

a good spirit in thee. Do not let it be blunted at St Xavier's. There

are many boys there who despise the black men.'

'Their mothers were bazar-women,' said Kim. He knew well there is no

hatred like that of the half-caste for his brother-in-law.

'True; but thou art a Sahib and the son of a Sahib. Therefore, do not

at any time be led to contemn the black men. I have known boys newly

entered into the service of the Government who feigned not to

understand the talk or the customs of black men. Their pay was cut for

ignorance. There is no sin so great as ignorance. Remember this.'

Several times in the course of the long twenty-four hours' run south

did the Colonel send for Kim, always developing this latter text.

'We be all on one lead-rope, then,' said Kim at last, 'the Colonel,

Mahbub Ali, and I--when I become a chain-man. He will use me as Mahbub

Ali employed me, I think. That is good, if it allows me to return to

the Road again. This clothing grows no easier by wear.'

When they came to the crowded Lucknow station there was no sign of the

lama. He swallowed his disappointment, while the Colonel bundled him

into a ticca-gharri with his neat belongings and despatched him alone

to St Xavier's.

'I do not say farewell, because we shall meet again,' he cried. 'Again,

and many times, if thou art one of good spirit. But thou art not yet

tried.'

'Not when I brought thee'--Kim actually dared to use the turn of

equals--'a white stallion's pedigree that night?'

'Much is gained by forgetting, little brother,' said the Colonel, with

a look that pierced through Kim's shoulder-blades as he scuttled into

the carriage.

It took him nearly five minutes to recover. Then he sniffed the new

air appreciatively. 'A rich city,' he said. 'Richer than Lahore. How

good the bazars must be! Coachman, drive me a little through the

bazars here.'

'My order is to take thee to the school.' The driver used the 'thou',

which is rudeness when applied to a white man. In the clearest and

most fluent vernacular Kim pointed out his error, climbed on to the

box-seat, and, perfect understanding established, drove for a couple of

hours up and down, estimating, comparing, and enjoying. There is no

city--except Bombay, the queen of all--more beautiful in her garish

style than Lucknow, whether you see her from the bridge over the river,

or from the top of the Imambara looking down on the gilt umbrellas of

the Chutter Munzil, and the trees in which the town is bedded. Kings

have adorned her with fantastic buildings, endowed her with charities,

crammed her with pensioners, and drenched her with blood. She is the

centre of all idleness, intrigue, and luxury, and shares with Delhi the

claim to talk the only pure Urdu.

'A fair city--a beautiful city.' The driver, as a Lucknow man, was

pleased with the compliment, and told Kim many astounding things where

an English guide would have talked of the Mutiny.

'Now we will go to the school,' said Kim at last. The great old school

of St Xavier's in Partibus, block on block of low white buildings,

stands in vast grounds over against the Gumti River, at some distance

from the city.

'What like of folk are they within?' said Kim.

'Young Sahibs--all devils. But to speak truth, and I drive many of

them to and fro from the railway station, I have never seen one that

had in him the making of a more perfect devil than thou--this young

Sahib whom I am now driving.'

Naturally, for he was never trained to consider them in any way

improper, Kim had passed the time of day with one or two frivolous

ladies at upper windows in a certain street, and naturally, in the

exchange of compliments, had acquitted himself well. He was about to

acknowledge the driver's last insolence, when his eye--it was growing

dusk--caught a figure sitting by one of the white plaster gate-pillars

in the long sweep of wall.

'Stop!' he cried. 'Stay here. I do not go to the school at once.'

'But what is to pay me for this coming and re-coming?' said the driver

petulantly. 'Is the boy mad? Last time it was a dancing-girl. This

time it is a priest.'

Kim was in the road headlong, patting the dusty feet beneath the dirty

yellow robe.

'I have waited here a day and a half,' the lama's level voice began.

'Nay, I had a disciple with me. He that was my friend at the Temple of

the Tirthankars gave me a guide for this journey. I came from Benares

in the te-rain, when thy letter was given me. Yes, I am well fed. I

need nothing.'

'But why didst thou not stay with the Kulu woman, O Holy One? In what

way didst thou get to Benares? My heart has been heavy since we

parted.'

'The woman wearied me by constant flux of talk and requiring charms for

children. I separated myself from that company, permitting her to

acquire merit by gifts. She is at least a woman of open hands, and I

made a promise to return to her house if need arose. Then, perceiving

myself alone in this great and terrible world, I bethought me of the

te-rain to Benares, where I knew one abode in the Tirthankars' Temple

who was a Seeker, even as I.'

'Ah! Thy River,' said Kim. 'I had forgotten the River.'

'So soon, my chela? I have never forgotten it. But when I had left

thee it seemed better that I should go to the Temple and take counsel,

for, look you, India is very large, and it may be that wise men before

us, some two or three, have left a record of the place of our River.

There is debate in the Temple of the Tirthankars on this matter; some

saying one thing, and some another. They are courteous folk.'

'So be it; but what dost thou do now?'

'I acquire merit in that I help thee, my chela, to wisdom. The priest

of that body of men who serve the Red Bull wrote me that all should be

as I desired for thee. I sent the money to suffice for one year, and

then I came, as thou seest me, to watch for thee going up into the

Gates of Learning. A day and a half have I waited, not because I was

led by any affection towards thee--that is no part of the Way--but, as

they said at the Tirthankars' Temple, because, money having been paid

for learning, it was right that I should oversee the end of the matter.

They resolved my doubts most clearly. I had a fear that, perhaps, I

came because I wished to see thee--misguided by the Red Mist of

affection. It is not so ... Moreover, I am troubled by a dream.'

'But surely, Holy One, thou hast not forgotten the Road and all that

befell on it. Surely it was a little to see me that thou didst come?'

'The horses are cold, and it is past their feeding-time,' whined the

driver.

'Go to Jehannum and abide there with thy reputationless aunt!' Kim

snarled over his shoulder. 'I am all alone in this land; I know not

where I go nor what shall befall me. My heart was in that letter I

sent thee. Except for Mahbub Ali, and he is a Pathan, I have no friend

save thee, Holy One. Do not altogether go away.'

'I have considered that also,' the lama replied, in a shaking voice.

'It is manifest that from time to time I shall acquire merit if before

that I have not found my River--by assuring myself that thy feet are

set on wisdom. What they will teach thee I do not know, but the priest

wrote me that no son of a Sahib in all India will be better taught than

thou. So from time to time, therefore, I will come again. Maybe thou

wilt be such a Sahib as he who gave me these spectacles'--the lama

wiped them elaborately--'in the Wonder House at Lahore. That is my

hope, for he was a Fountain of Wisdom--wiser than many abbots ....

Again, maybe thou wilt forget me and our meetings.'

'If I eat thy bread,' cried Kim passionately, 'how shall I ever forget

thee?'

'No--no.' He put the boy aside. 'I must go back to Benares. From

time to time, now that I know the customs of letter-writers in this

land, I will send thee a letter, and from time to time I will come and

see thee.'

'But whither shall I send my letters?' wailed Kim, clutching at the

robe, all forgetful that he was a Sahib.

'To the Temple of the Tirthankars at Benares. That is the place I have

chosen till I find my River. Do not weep; for, look you, all Desire is

Illusion and a new binding upon the Wheel. Go up to the Gates of

Learning. Let me see thee go ... Dost thou love me? Then go, or my

heart cracks ... I will come again. Surely I will come again.

The lama watched the ticca-gharri rumble into the compound, and strode

off, snuffing between each long stride.

'The Gates of Learning' shut with a clang.

The country born and bred boy has his own manners and customs, which do

not resemble those of any other land; and his teachers approach him by

roads which an English master would not understand. Therefore, you

would scarcely be interested in Kim's experiences as a St Xavier's boy

among two or three hundred precocious youths, most of whom had never

seen the sea. He suffered the usual penalties for breaking out of

bounds when there was cholera in the city. This was before he had

learned to write fair English, and so was obliged to find a bazar

letter-writer. He was, of course, indicted for smoking and for the use

of abuse more full-flavoured than even St Xavier's had ever heard. He

learned to wash himself with the Levitical scrupulosity of the

native-born, who in his heart considers the Englishman rather dirty.

He played the usual tricks on the patient coolies pulling the punkahs

in the sleeping-rooms where the boys threshed through the hot nights

telling tales till the dawn; and quietly he measured himself against

his self-reliant mates.

They were sons of subordinate officials in the Railway, Telegraph, and

Canal Services; of warrant-officers, sometimes retired and sometimes

acting as commanders-in-chief to a feudatory Rajah's army; of captains

of the Indian Marine Government pensioners, planters, Presidency

shopkeepers, and missionaries. A few were cadets of the old Eurasian

houses that have taken strong root in Dhurrumtollah--Pereiras, De

Souzas, and D'Silvas. Their parents could well have educated them in

England, but they loved the school that had served their own youth, and

generation followed sallow-hued generation at St Xavier's. Their homes

ranged from Howrah of the railway people to abandoned cantonments like

Monghyr and Chunar; lost tea-gardens Shillong-way; villages where their

fathers were large landholders in Oudh or the Deccan; Mission-stations

a week from the nearest railway line; seaports a thousand miles south,

facing the brazen Indian surf; and cinchona-plantations south of all.

The mere story of their adventures, which to them were no adventures,

on their road to and from school would have crisped a Western boy's

hair. They were used to jogging off alone through a hundred miles of

jungle, where there was always the delightful chance of being delayed

by tigers; but they would no more have bathed in the English Channel in

an English August than their brothers across the world would have lain

still while a leopard snuffed at their palanquin. There were boys of

fifteen who had spent a day and a half on an islet in the middle of a

flooded river, taking charge, as by right, of a camp of frantic

pilgrims returning from a shrine. There were seniors who had

requisitioned a chance-met Rajah's elephant, in the name of St Francis

Xavier, when the Rains once blotted out the cart-track that led to

their father's estate, and had all but lost the huge beast in a

quicksand. There was a boy who, he said, and none doubted, had helped

his father to beat off with rifles from the veranda a rush of Akas in

the days when those head-hunters were bold against lonely plantations.

And every tale was told in the even, passionless voice of the

native-born, mixed with quaint reflections, borrowed unconsciously from

native foster-mothers, and turns of speech that showed they had been

that instant translated from the vernacular. Kim watched, listened,

and approved. This was not insipid, single-word talk of drummer-boys.

It dealt with a life he knew and in part understood. The atmosphere

suited him, and he throve by inches. They gave him a white drill suit

as the weather warmed, and he rejoiced in the new-found bodily comforts

as he rejoiced to use his sharpened mind over the tasks they set him.

His quickness would have delighted an English master; but at St

Xavier's they know the first rush of minds developed by sun and

surroundings, as they know the half-collapse that sets in at twenty-two

or twenty-three.

None the less he remembered to hold himself lowly. When tales were

told of hot nights, Kim did not sweep the board with his reminiscences;

for St Xavier's looks down on boys who 'go native all-together.' One

must never forget that one is a Sahib, and that some day, when

examinations are passed, one will command natives. Kim made a note of

this, for he began to understand where examinations led.

Then came the holidays from August to October--the long holidays

imposed by the heat and the Rains. Kim was informed that he would go

north to some station in the hills behind Umballa, where Father Victor

would arrange for him.

'A barrack-school?' said Kim, who had asked many questions and thought

more.

'Yes, I suppose so,' said the master. 'It will not do you any harm to

keep you out of mischief. You can go up with young De Castro as far as

Delhi.'

Kim considered it in every possible light. He had been diligent, even

as the Colonel advised. A boy's holiday was his own property--of so

much the talk of his companions had advised him,--and a barrack-school

would be torment after St Xavier's. Moreover--this was magic worth

anything else--he could write. In three months he had discovered how

men can speak to each other without a third party, at the cost of half

an anna and a little knowledge. No word had come from the lama, but

there remained the Road. Kim yearned for the caress of soft mud

squishing up between the toes, as his mouth watered for mutton stewed

with butter and cabbages, for rice speckled with strong scented

cardamoms, for the saffron-tinted rice, garlic and onions, and the

forbidden greasy sweetmeats of the bazars. They would feed him raw

beef on a platter at the barrack-school, and he must smoke by stealth.

But again, he was a Sahib and was at St Xavier's, and that pig Mahbub

Ali ... No, he would not test Mahbub's hospitality--and yet ... He

thought it out alone in the dormitory, and came to the conclusion he

had been unjust to Mahbub.

The school was empty; nearly all the masters had gone away; Colonel

Creighton's railway pass lay in his hand, and Kim puffed himself that

he had not spent Colonel Creighton's or Mahbub's money in riotous

living. He was still lord of two rupees seven annas. His new

bullock-trunk, marked 'K. O'H.', and bedding-roll lay in the empty

sleeping-room.

'Sahibs are always tied to their baggage,' said Kim, nodding at them.

'You will stay here' He went out into the warm rain, smiling sinfully,

and sought a certain house whose outside he had noted down some time

before...

'Arre'! Dost thou know what manner of women we be in this quarter? Oh,

shame!'

'Was I born yesterday?' Kim squatted native-fashion on the cushions of

that upper room. 'A little dyestuff and three yards of cloth to help

out a jest. Is it much to ask?'

'Who is she? Thou art full young, as Sahibs go, for this devilry.'

'Oh, she? She is the daughter of a certain schoolmaster of a regiment

in the cantonments. He has beaten me twice because I went over their

wall in these clothes. Now I would go as a gardener's boy. Old men

are very jealous.'

'That is true. Hold thy face still while I dab on the juice.'

'Not too black, Naikan. I would not appear to her as a hubshi

(nigger).'

'Oh, love makes nought of these things. And how old is she?'

'Twelve years, I think,' said the shameless Kim. 'Spread it also on

the breast. It may be her father will tear my clothes off me, and if I

am piebald--' he laughed.

The girl worked busily, dabbing a twist of cloth into a little saucer

of brown dye that holds longer than any walnut-juice.

'Now send out and get me a cloth for the turban. Woe is me, my head is

all unshaved! And he will surely knock off my turban.'

'I am not a barber, but I will make shift. Thou wast born to be a

breaker of hearts! All this disguise for one evening? Remember, the

stuff does not wash away.' She shook with laughter till her bracelets

and anklets jingled. 'But who is to pay me for this? Huneefa herself

could not have given thee better stuff.'

'Trust in the Gods, my sister,' said Kim gravely, screwing his face

round as the stain dried. 'Besides, hast thou ever helped to paint a

Sahib thus before?'

'Never indeed. But a jest is not money.'

'It is worth much more.'

'Child, thou art beyond all dispute the most shameless son of Shaitan

that I have ever known to take up a poor girl's time with this play,

and then to say: "Is not the jest enough?" Thou wilt go very far in

this world.' She gave the dancing-girls' salutation in mockery.

'All one. Make haste and rough-cut my head.' Kim shifted from foot to

foot, his eyes ablaze with mirth as he thought of the fat days before

him. He gave the girl four annas, and ran down the stairs in the

likeness of a low-caste Hindu boy--perfect in every detail. A cookshop

was his next point of call, where he feasted in extravagance and greasy

luxury.

On Lucknow station platform he watched young De Castro, all covered

with prickly-heat, get into a second-class compartment. Kim patronized

a third, and was the life and soul of it. He explained to the company

that he was assistant to a juggler who had left him behind sick with

fever, and that he would pick up his master at Umballa. As the

occupants of the carriage changed, he varied this tale, or adorned it

with all the shoots of a budding fancy, the more rampant for being held

off native speech so long. In all India that night was no human being

so joyful as Kim. At Umballa he got out and headed eastward, plashing

over the sodden fields to the village where the old soldier lived.

About this time Colonel Creighton at Simla was advised from Lucknow by

wire that young O'Hara had disappeared. Mahbub Ali was in town selling

horses, and to him the Colonel confided the affair one morning

cantering round Annandale racecourse.

'Oh, that is nothing,' said the horse-dealer. 'Men are like horses. At

certain times they need salt, and if that salt is not in the mangers

they will lick it up from the earth. He has gone back to the Road

again for a while. The madrissak wearied him. I knew it would.

Another time, I will take him upon the Road myself. Do not be

troubled, Creighton Sahib. It is as though a polo-pony, breaking

loose, ran out to learn the game alone.'

'Then he is not dead, think you?'

'Fever might kill him. I do not fear for the boy otherwise. A monkey

does not fall among trees.'

Next morning, on the same course, Mahbub's stallion ranged alongside

the Colonel.

'It is as I had thought,' said the horse-dealer. 'He has come through

Umballa at least, and there he has written a letter to me, having

learned in the bazar that I was here.'

'Read,' said the Colonel, with a sigh of relief. It was absurd that a

man of his position should take an interest in a little country-bred

vagabond; but the Colonel remembered the conversation in the train, and

often in the past few months had caught himself thinking of the queer,

silent, self-possessed boy. His evasion, of course, was the height of

insolence, but it argued some resource and nerve.

Mahbub's eyes twinkled as he reined out into the centre of the cramped

little plain, where none could come near unseen.

'"The Friend of the Stars, who is the Friend of all the World--"'

'What is this?'

'A name we give him in Lahore city. "The Friend of all the World takes

leave to go to his own places. He will come back upon the appointed

day. Let the box and the bedding-roll be sent for; and if there has

been a fault, let the Hand of Friendship turn aside the Whip of

Calamity." There is yet a little more, but--'

'No matter, read.'

'"Certain things are not known to those who eat with forks. It is

better to eat with both hands for a while. Speak soft words to those

who do not understand this that the return may be propitious." Now the

manner in which that was cast is, of course, the work of the

letter-writer, but see how wisely the boy has devised the matter of it

so that no hint is given except to those who know!'

'Is this the Hand of Friendship to avert the Whip of Calamity?' laughed

the Colonel.

'See how wise is the boy. He would go back to the Road again, as I

said. Not knowing yet thy trade--'

'I am not at all sure of that,' the Colonel muttered.

'He turns to me to make a peace between you. Is he not wise? He says

he will return. He is but perfecting his knowledge. Think, Sahib! He

has been three months at the school. And he is not mouthed to that

bit. For my part, I rejoice. The pony learns the game.'

'Ay, but another time he must not go alone.'

'Why? He went alone before he came under the Colonel Sahib's

protection. When he comes to the Great Game he must go alone--alone,

and at peril of his head. Then, if he spits, or sneezes, or sits down

other than as the people do whom he watches, he may be slain. Why

hinder him now? Remember how the Persians say: The jackal that lives

in the wilds of Mazanderan can only be caught by the hounds of

Mazanderan.'

'True. It is true, Mahbub Ali. And if he comes to no harm, I do not

desire anything better. But it is great insolence on his part.'

'He does not tell me, even, whither he goes,' said Mahbub. 'He is no

fool. When his time is accomplished he will come to me. It is time

the healer of pearls took him in hand. He ripens too quickly--as

Sahibs reckon.'

This prophecy was fulfilled to the letter a month later. Mahbub had

gone down to Umballa to bring up a fresh consignment of horses, and Kim

met him on the Kalka road at dusk riding alone, begged an alms of him,

was sworn at, and replied in English. There was nobody within earshot

to hear Mahbub's gasp of amazement.

'Oho! And where hast thou been?'

'Up and down--down and up.'

'Come under a tree, out of the wet, and tell.'

'I stayed for a while with an old man near Umballa; anon with a

household of my acquaintance in Umballa. With one of these I went as

far as Delhi to the southward. That is a wondrous city. Then I drove

a bullock for a teli [an oilman] coming north; but I heard of a great

feast forward in Patiala, and thither went I in the company of a

firework-maker. It was a great feast' (Kim rubbed his stomach). 'I

saw Rajahs, and elephants with gold and silver trappings; and they lit

all the fireworks at once, whereby eleven men were killed, my

fire-work-maker among them, and I was blown across a tent but took no

harm. Then I came back to the rel with a Sikh horseman, to whom I was

groom for my bread; and so here.'

'Shabash!' said Mahbub Ali.

'But what does the Colonel Sahib say? I do not wish to be beaten.'

'The Hand of Friendship has averted the Whip of Calamity; but another

time, when thou takest the Road it will be with me. This is too early.'

'Late enough for me. I have learned to read and to write English a

little at the madrissah. I shall soon be altogether a Sahib.'

'Hear him!' laughed Mahbub, looking at the little drenched figure

dancing in the wet. 'Salaam--Sahib,' and he saluted ironically.

'Well, art tired of the Road, or wilt thou come on to Umballa with me

and work back with the horses?'

'I come with thee, Mahbub Ali.'

Chapter 8

Something I owe to the soil that grew--

More to the life that fed--

But most to Allah Who gave me two

Separate sides to my head.

I would go without shirts or shoes,

Friends, tobacco or bread

Sooner than for an instant lose

Either side of my head.'

The Two-Sided Man.

'Then in God's name take blue for red,' said Mahbub, alluding to the

Hindu colour of Kim's disreputable turban.

Kim countered with the old proverb, 'I will change my faith and my

bedding, but thou must pay for it.'

The dealer laughed till he nearly fell from his horse. At a shop on

the outskirts of the city the change was made, and Kim stood up,

externally at least, a Mohammedan.

Mahbub hired a room over against the railway station, sent for a cooked

meal of the finest with the almond-curd sweet-meats [balushai we call

it] and fine-chopped Lucknow tobacco.

'This is better than some other meat that I ate with the Sikh,' said

Kim, grinning as he squatted, 'and assuredly they give no such victuals

at my madrissah.'

'I have a desire to hear of that same madrissah.' Mahbub stuffed

himself with great boluses of spiced mutton fried in fat with cabbage

and golden-brown onions. 'But tell me first, altogether and

truthfully, the manner of thy escape. For, O Friend of all the

World,'--he loosed his cracking belt--'I do not think it is often that

a Sahib and the son of a Sahib runs away from there.'

'How should they? They do not know the land. It was nothing,' said

Kim, and began his tale. When he came to the disguisement and the

interview with the girl in the bazar, Mahbub Ali's gravity went from

him. He laughed aloud and beat his hand on his thigh.

'Shabash! Shabash! Oh, well done, little one! What will the healer

of turquoises say to this? Now, slowly, let us hear what befell

afterwards--step by step, omitting nothing.'

Step by step then, Kim told his adventures between coughs as the

full-flavoured tobacco caught his lungs.

'I said,' growled Mahbub Ali to himself, 'I said it was the pony

breaking out to play polo. The fruit is ripe already--except that he

must learn his distances and his pacings, and his rods and his

compasses. Listen now. I have turned aside the Colonel's whip from

thy skin, and that is no small service.'

'True.' Kim pulled serenely. 'That is true.'

'But it is not to be thought that this running out and in is any way

good.'

'It was my holiday, Hajji. I was a slave for many weeks. Why should I

not run away when the school was shut? Look, too, how I, living upon

my friends or working for my bread, as I did with the Sikh, have saved

the Colonel Sahib a great expense.'

Mahbub's lips twitched under his well-pruned Mohammedan moustache.

'What are a few rupees'--the Pathan threw out his open hand

carelessly--'to the Colonel Sahib? He spends them for a purpose, not

in any way for love of thee.'

'That,' said Kim slowly, 'I knew a very long time ago.'

'Who told?'

'The Colonel Sahib himself. Not in those many words, but plainly

enough for one who is not altogether a mud-head. Yea, he told me in

the te-rain when we went down to Lucknow.'

'Be it so. Then I will tell thee more, Friend of all the World, though

in the telling I lend thee my head.'

'It was forfeit to me,' said Kim, with deep relish, 'in Umballa, when

thou didst pick me up on the horse after the drummer-boy beat me.'

'Speak a little plainer. All the world may tell lies save thou and I.

For equally is thy life forfeit to me if I chose to raise my finger

here.'

'And this is known to me also,' said Kim, readjusting the live

charcoal-ball on the weed. 'It is a very sure tie between us. Indeed,

thy hold is surer even than mine; for who would miss a boy beaten to

death, or, it may be, thrown into a well by the roadside? Most people

here and in Simla and across the passes behind the Hills would, on the

other hand, say: "What has come to Mahbub Ali?" if he were found dead

among his horses. Surely, too, the Colonel Sahib would make inquiries.

But again,'--Kim's face puckered with cunning,--'he would not make

overlong inquiry, lest people should ask: "What has this Colonel Sahib

to do with that horse-dealer?" But I--if I lived--'

'As thou wouldst surely die--'

'Maybe; but I say, if I lived, I, and I alone, would know that one had

come by night, as a common thief perhaps, to Mahbub Ali's bulkhead in

the serai, and there had slain him, either before or after that thief

had made a full search into his saddlebags and between the soles of his

slippers. Is that news to tell to the Colonel, or would he say to

me--(I have not forgotten when he sent me back for a cigar-case that he

had not left behind him)--"What is Mahbub Ali to me?"?'

Up went a gout of heavy smoke. There was a long pause: then Mahbub

Ali spoke in admiration: 'And with these things on thy mind, dost thou

lie down and rise again among all the Sahibs' little sons at the

madrissah and meekly take instruction from thy teachers?'

'It is an order,' said Kim blandly. 'Who am I to dispute an order?'

'A most finished Son of Eblis,' said Mahbub Ali. 'But what is this

tale of the thief and the search?'

'That which I saw,' said Kim, 'the night that my lama and I lay next

thy place in the Kashmir Seral. The door was left unlocked, which I

think is not thy custom, Mahbub. He came in as one assured that thou

wouldst not soon return. My eye was against a knot-hole in the plank.

He searched as it were for something--not a rug, not stirrups, nor a

bridle, nor brass pots--something little and most carefully hid. Else

why did he prick with an iron between the soles of thy slippers?'

'Ha!' Mahbub Ali smiled gently. 'And seeing these things, what tale

didst thou fashion to thyself, Well of the Truth?'

'None. I put my hand upon my amulet, which lies always next to my

skin, and, remembering the pedigree of a white stallion that I had

bitten out of a piece of Mussalmani bread, I went away to Umballa

perceiving that a heavy trust was laid upon me. At that hour, had I

chosen, thy head was forfeit. It needed only to say to that man, "I

have here a paper concerning a horse which I cannot read." And then?'

Kim peered at Mahbub under his eyebrows.

'Then thou wouldst have drunk water twice--perhaps thrice, afterwards.

I do not think more than thrice,' said Mahbub simply.

'It is true. I thought of that a little, but most I thought that I

loved thee, Mahbub. Therefore I went to Umballa, as thou knowest, but

(and this thou dost not know) I lay hid in the garden-grass to see what

Colonel Creighton Sahib might do upon reading the white stallion's

pedigree.'

'And what did he?' for Kim had bitten off the conversation.

'Dost thou give news for love, or dost thou sell it?' Kim asked.

'I sell and--I buy.' Mahbub took a four-anna piece out of his belt and

held it up.

'Eight!' said Kim, mechanically following the huckster instinct of the

East.

Mahbub laughed, and put away the coin. 'It is too easy to deal in that

market, Friend of all the World. Tell me for love. Our lives lie in

each other's hand.'

'Very good. I saw the Jang-i-Lat Sahib [the Commander-in-Chief] come

to a big dinner. I saw him in Creighton Sahib's office. I saw the two

read the white stallion's pedigree. I heard the very orders given for

the opening of a great war.'

'Hah!' Mahbub nodded with deepest eyes afire. 'The game is well

played. That war is done now, and the evil, we hope, nipped before the

flower--thanks to me--and thee. What didst thou later?'

'I made the news as it were a hook to catch me victual and honour among

the villagers in a village whose priest drugged my lama. But I bore

away the old man's purse, and the Brahmin found nothing. So next

morning he was angry. Ho! Ho! And I also used the news when I fell

into the hands of that white Regiment with their Bull!'

'That was foolishness.' Mahbub scowled. 'News is not meant to be

thrown about like dung-cakes, but used sparingly--like bhang.'

'So I think now, and moreover, it did me no sort of good. But that was

very long ago,' he made as to brush it all away with a thin brown

hand--'and since then, and especially in the nights under the punkah at

the madrissah, I have thought very greatly.'

'Is it permitted to ask whither the Heaven-born's thought might have

led?' said Mahbub, with an elaborate sarcasm, smoothing his scarlet

beard.

'It is permitted,' said Kim, and threw back the very tone. 'They say

at Nucklao that no Sahib must tell a black man that he has made a

fault.'

Mahbub's hand shot into his bosom, for to call a Pathan a 'black man'

[kala admi] is a blood-insult. Then he remembered and laughed. 'Speak,

Sahib. Thy black man hears.'

'But,' said Kim, 'I am not a Sahib, and I say I made a fault to curse

thee, Mahbub Ali, on that day at Umballa when I thought I was betrayed

by a Pathan. I was senseless; for I was but newly caught, and I wished

to kill that low-caste drummer-boy. I say now, Hajji, that it was well

done; and I see my road all clear before me to a good service. I will

stay in the madrissah till I am ripe.'

'Well said. Especially are distances and numbers and the manner of

using compasses to be learned in that game. One waits in the Hills

above to show thee.'

'I will learn their teaching upon a condition--that my time is given to

me without question when the madrissah is shut. Ask that for me of the

Colonel.'

'But why not ask the Colonel in the Sahibs' tongue?'

'The Colonel is the servant of the Government. He is sent hither and

yon at a word, and must consider his own advancement. (See how much I

have already learned at Nucklao!) Moreover, the Colonel I know since

three months only. I have known one Mahbub Ali for six years. So! To

the madrissah I will go. At the madrissah I will learn. In the

madrissah I will be a Sahib. But when the madrissah is shut, then must

I be free and go among my people. Otherwise I die!'

'And who are thy people, Friend of all the World?'

'This great and beautiful land,' said Kim, waving his paw round the

little clay-walled room where the oil-lamp in its niche burned heavily

through the tobacco-smoke. 'And, further, I would see my lama again.

And, further, I need money.'

'That is the need of everyone,' said Mahbub ruefully. 'I will give

thee eight annas, for much money is not picked out of horses' hooves,

and it must suffice for many days. As to all the rest, I am well

pleased, and no further talk is needed. Make haste to learn, and in

three years, or it may be less, thou wilt be an aid--even to me.'

'Have I been such a hindrance till now?' said Kim, with a boy's giggle.

'Do not give answers,' Mahbub grunted. 'Thou art my new horse-boy. Go

and bed among my men. They are near the north end of the station, with

the horses.'

'They will beat me to the south end of the station if I come without

authority.'

Mahbub felt in his belt, wetted his thumb on a cake of Chinese ink, and

dabbed the impression on a piece of soft native paper. From Balkh to

Bombay men know that rough-ridged print with the old scar running

diagonally across it.

'That is enough to show my headman. I come in the morning.'

'By which road?' said Kim.

'By the road from the city. There is but one, and then we return to

Creighton Sahib. I have saved thee a beating.'

'Allah! What is a beating when the very head is loose on the

shoulders?'

Kim slid out quietly into the night, walked half round the house,

keeping close to the walls, and headed away from the station for a mile

or so. Then, fetching a wide compass, he worked back at leisure, for

he needed time to invent a story if any of Mahbub's retainers asked

questions.

They were camped on a piece of waste ground beside the railway, and,

being natives, had not, of course, unloaded the two trucks in which

Mahbub's animals stood among a consignment of country-breds bought by

the Bombay tram-company. The headman, a broken-down,

consumptive-looking Mohammedan, promptly challenged Kim, but was

pacified at sight of Mahbub's sign-manual.

'The Hajji has of his favour given me service,' said Kim testily. 'If

this be doubted, wait till he comes in the morning. Meantime, a place

by the fire.'

Followed the usual aimless babble that every low-caste native must

raise on every occasion. It died down, and Kim lay out behind the

little knot of Mahbub's followers, almost under the wheels of a

horse-truck, a borrowed blanket for covering. Now a bed among

brickbats and ballast-refuse on a damp night, between overcrowded

horses and unwashed Baltis, would not appeal to many white boys; but

Kim was utterly happy. Change of scene, service, and surroundings were

the breath of his little nostrils, and thinking of the neat white cots

of St Xavier's all arow under the punkah gave him joy as keen as the

repetition of the multiplication-table in English.

'I am very old,' he thought sleepily. 'Every month I become a year

more old. I was very young, and a fool to boot, when I took Mahbub's

message to Umballa. Even when I was with that white Regiment I was

very young and small and had no wisdom. But now I learn every day, and

in three years the Colonel will take me out of the madrissah and let me

go upon the Road with Mahbub hunting for horses' pedigrees, or maybe I

shall go by myself; or maybe I shall find the lama and go with him.

Yes; that is best. To walk again as a chela with my lama when he comes

back to Benares.'

The thoughts came more slowly and disconnectedly. He was plunging into

a beautiful dreamland when his ears caught a whisper, thin and sharp,

above the monotonous babble round the fire. It came from behind the

iron-skinned horse-truck.

'He is not here, then?'

'Where should he be but roystering in the city. Who looks for a rat in

a frog-pond? Come away. He is not our man.'

'He must not go back beyond the Passes a second time. It is the order.'

'Hire some woman to drug him. It is a few rupees only, and there is no

evidence.'

'Except the woman. It must be more certain; and remember the price

upon his head.'

'Ay, but the police have a long arm, and we are far from the Border.

If it were in Peshawur, now!'

'Yes--in Peshawur,' the second voice sneered. 'Peshawur, full of his

blood-kin--full of bolt-holes and women behind whose clothes he will

hide. Yes, Peshawur or Jehannum would suit us equally well.'

'Then what is the plan?'

'O fool, have I not told it a hundred times? Wait till he comes to lie

down, and then one sure shot. The trucks are between us and pursuit.

We have but to run back over the lines and go our way. They will not

see whence the shot came. Wait here at least till the dawn. What

manner of fakir art thou, to shiver at a little watching?'

'Oho!' thought Kim, behind close-shut eyes. 'Once again it is Mahbub.

Indeed a white stallion's pedigree is not a good thing to peddle to

Sahibs! Or maybe Mahbub has been selling other news. Now what is to

do, Kim? I know not where Mahbub houses, and if he comes here before

the dawn they will shoot him. That would be no profit for thee, Kim.

And this is not a matter for the police. That would be no profit for

Mahbub; and'--he giggled almost aloud--'I do not remember any lesson at

Nucklao which will help me. Allah! Here is Kim and yonder are they.

First, then, Kim must wake and go away, so that they shall not suspect.

A bad dream wakes a man--thus--'

He threw the blanket off his face, and raised himself suddenly with the

terrible, bubbling, meaningless yell of the Asiatic roused by nightmare.

'Urr-urr-urr-urr! Ya-la-la-la-la! Narain! The churel! The churel!'

A churel is the peculiarly malignant ghost of a woman who has died in

child-bed. She haunts lonely roads, her feet are turned backwards on

the ankles, and she leads men to torment.

Louder rose Kim's quavering howl, till at last he leaped to his feet

and staggered off sleepily, while the camp cursed him for waking them.

Some twenty yards farther up the line he lay down again, taking care

that the whisperers should hear his grunts and groans as he recomposed

himself. After a few minutes he rolled towards the road and stole away

into the thick darkness.

He paddled along swiftly till he came to a culvert, and dropped behind

it, his chin on a level with the coping-stone. Here he could command

all the night-traffic, himself unseen.

Two or three carts passed, jingling out to the suburbs; a coughing

policeman and a hurrying foot-passenger or two who sang to keep off

evil spirits. Then rapped the shod feet of a horse.

'Ah! This is more like Mahbub,' thought Kim, as the beast shied at the

little head above the culvert.

'Ohe', Mahbub Ali,' he whispered, 'have a care!'

The horse was reined back almost on its haunches, and forced towards

the culvert.

'Never again,' said Mahbub, 'will I take a shod horse for night-work.

They pick up all the bones and nails in the city.' He stooped to lift

its forefoot, and that brought his head within a foot of Kim's.

'Down--keep down,' he muttered. 'The night is full of eyes.'

'Two men wait thy coming behind the horse-trucks. They will shoot thee

at thy lying down, because there is a price on thy head. I heard,

sleeping near the horses.'

'Didst thou see them? ... Hold still, Sire of Devils!' This

furiously to the horse.

'No.'

'Was one dressed belike as a fakir?'

'One said to the other, "What manner of fakir art thou, to shiver at a

little watching?"'

'Good. Go back to the camp and lie down. I do not die tonight.'

Mahbub wheeled his horse and vanished. Kim tore back down the ditch

till he reached a point opposite his second resting-place, slipped

across the road like a weasel, and re-coiled himself in the blanket.

'At least Mahbub knows,' he thought contentedly. 'And certainly he

spoke as one expecting it. I do not think those two men will profit by

tonight's watch.'

An hour passed, and, with the best will in the world to keep awake all

night, he slept deeply. Now and again a night train roared along the

metals within twenty feet of him; but he had all the Oriental's

indifference to mere noise, and it did not even weave a dream through

his slumber.

Mahbub was anything but asleep. It annoyed him vehemently that people

outside his tribe and unaffected by his casual amours should pursue him

for the life. His first and natural impulse was to cross the line

lower down, work up again, and, catching his well-wishers from behind,

summarily slay them. Here, he reflected with sorrow, another branch of

the Government, totally unconnected with Colonel Creighton, might

demand explanations which would be hard to supply; and he knew that

south of the Border a perfectly ridiculous fuss is made about a corpse

or so. He had not been troubled in this way since he sent Kim to

Umballa with the message, and hoped that suspicion had been finally

diverted.

Then a most brilliant notion struck him.

'The English do eternally tell the truth,' he said, 'therefore we of

this country are eternally made foolish. By Allah, I will tell the

truth to an Englishman! Of what use is the Government police if a poor

Kabuli be robbed of his horses in their very trucks. This is as bad as

Peshawur! I should lay a complaint at the station. Better still, some

young Sahib on the Railway! They are zealous, and if they catch

thieves it is remembered to their honour.'

He tied up his horse outside the station, and strode on to the platform.

'Hullo, Mahbub Ali' said a young Assistant District Traffic

Superintendent who was waiting to go down the line--a tall, tow-haired,

horsey youth in dingy white linen. 'What are you doing here? Selling

weeds--eh?'

'No; I am not troubled for my horses. I come to look for Lutuf Ullah.

I have a truck-load up the line. Could anyone take them out without

the Railway's knowledge?'

'Shouldn't think so, Mahbub. You can claim against us if they do.'

'I have seen two men crouching under the wheels of one of the trucks

nearly all night. Fakirs do not steal horses, so I gave them no more

thought. I would find Lutuf Ullah, my partner.'

'The deuce you did? And you didn't bother your head about it? 'Pon my

word, it's just almost as well that I met you. What were they like,

eh?'

'They were only fakirs. They will no more than take a little grain,

perhaps, from one of the trucks. There are many up the line. The

State will never miss the dole. I came here seeking for my partner,

Lutuf Ullah.'

'Never mind your partner. Where are your horse-trucks?'

'A little to this side of the farthest place where they make lamps for

the trains.'--

'The signal-box! Yes.'

'And upon the rail nearest to the road upon the right-hand

side--looking up the line thus. But as regards Lutuf Ullah--a tall man

with a broken nose, and a Persian greyhound Aie!'

The boy had hurried off to wake up a young and enthusiastic policeman;

for, as he said, the Railway had suffered much from depredations in the

goods-yard. Mahbub Ali chuckled in his dyed beard.

'They will walk in their boots, making a noise, and then they will

wonder why there are no fakirs. They are very clever boys--Barton

Sahib and Young Sahib.'

He waited idly for a few minutes, expecting to see them hurry up the

line girt for action. A light engine slid through the station, and he

caught a glimpse of young Barton in the cab.

'I did that child an injustice. He is not altogether a fool,' said

Mahbub Ali. 'To take a fire-carriage for a thief is a new game!'

When Mahbub Ali came to his camp in the dawn, no one thought it worth

while to tell him any news of the night. No one, at least, but one

small horseboy, newly advanced to the great man's service, whom Mahbub

called to his tiny tent to assist in some packing.

'It is all known to me,' whispered Kim, bending above saddlebags. 'Two

Sahibs came up on a te-train. I was running to and fro in the dark on

this side of the trucks as the te-train moved up and down slowly. They

fell upon two men sitting under this truck--Hajji, what shall I do with

this lump of tobacco? Wrap it in paper and put it under the salt-bag?

Yes--and struck them down. But one man struck at a Sahib with a

fakir's buck's horn' (Kim meant the conjoined black-buck horns, which

are a fakir's sole temporal weapon)--'the blood came. So the other

Sahib, first smiting his own man senseless, smote the stabber with a

short gun which had rolled from the first man's hand. They all raged

as though mad together.'

Mahbub smiled with heavenly resignation. 'No! That is not so much

dewanee [madness, or a case for the civil court--the word can be punned

upon both ways] as nizamut [a criminal case]. A gun, sayest thou? Ten

good years in jail.'

'Then they both lay still, but I think they were nearly dead when they

were put on the te-train. Their heads moved thus. And there is much

blood on the line. Come and see?'

'I have seen blood before. Jail is the sure place--and assuredly they

will give false names, and assuredly no man will find them for a long

time. They were unfriends of mine. Thy fate and mine seem on one

string. What a tale for the healer of pearls! Now swiftly with the

saddle-bags and the cooking-platter. We will take out the horses and

away to Simla.'

Swiftly--as Orientals understand speed--with long explanations, with

abuse and windy talk, carelessly, amid a hundred checks for little

things forgotten, the untidy camp broke up and led the half-dozen stiff

and fretful horses along the Kalka road in the fresh of the rain-swept

dawn. Kim, regarded as Mahbub Ali's favourite by all who wished to

stand well with the Pathan, was not called upon to work. They strolled

on by the easiest of stages, halting every few hours at a wayside

shelter. Very many Sahibs travel along the Kalka road; and, as Mahbub

Ali says, every young Sahib must needs esteem himself a judge of a

horse, and, though he be over head in debt to the money-lender, must

make as if to buy. That was the reason that Sahib after Sahib, rolling

along in a stage-carriage, would stop and open talk. Some would even

descend from their vehicles and feel the horses' legs; asking inane

questions, or, through sheer ignorance of the vernacular, grossly

insulting the imperturbable trader.

'When first I dealt with Sahibs, and that was when Colonel Soady Sahib

was Governor of Fort Abazai and flooded the Commissioner's

camping-ground for spite,' Mahbub confided to Kim as the boy filled his

pipe under a tree, 'I did not know how greatly they were fools, and

this made me wroth. As thus--,' and he told Kim a tale of an

expression, misused in all innocence, that doubled Kim up with mirth.

'Now I see, however,'--he exhaled smoke slowly--'that it is with them

as with all men--in certain matters they are wise, and in others most

foolish. Very foolish it is to use the wrong word to a stranger; for

though the heart may be clean of offence, how is the stranger to know

that? He is more like to search truth with a dagger.'

'True. True talk,' said Kim solemnly. 'Fools speak of a cat when a

woman is brought to bed, for instance. I have heard them.'

'Therefore, in one situate as thou art, it particularly behoves thee to

remember this with both kinds of faces. Among Sahibs, never forgetting

thou art a Sahib; among the folk of Hind, always remembering thou

art--' He paused, with a puzzled smile.

'What am I? Mussalman, Hindu, Jain, or Buddhist? That is a hard knot.'

'Thou art beyond question an unbeliever, and therefore thou wilt be

damned. So says my Law--or I think it does. But thou art also my

Little Friend of all the World, and I love thee. So says my heart.

This matter of creeds is like horseflesh. The wise man knows horses

are good--that there is a profit to be made from all; and for

myself--but that I am a good Sunni and hate the men of Tirah--I could

believe the same of all the Faiths. Now manifestly a Kathiawar mare

taken from the sands of her birthplace and removed to the west of

Bengal founders--nor is even a Balkh stallion (and there are no better

horses than those of Balkh, were they not so heavy in the shoulder) of

any account in the great Northern deserts beside the snow-camels I have

seen. Therefore I say in my heart the Faiths are like the horses.

Each has merit in its own country.'

'But my lama said altogether a different thing.'

'Oh, he is an old dreamer of dreams from Bhotiyal. My heart is a

little angry, Friend of all the World, that thou shouldst see such

worth in a man so little known.'

'It is true, Hajji; but that worth do I see, and to him my heart is

drawn.'

'And his to thine, I hear. Hearts are like horses. They come and they

go against bit or spur. Shout Gul Sher Khan yonder to drive in that

bay stallion's pickets more firmly. We do not want a horse-fight at

every resting-stage, and the dun and the black will be locked in a

little ... Now hear me. Is it necessary to the comfort of thy heart

to see that lama?'

'It is one part of my bond,' said Kim. 'If I do not see him, and if he

is taken from me, I will go out of that madrissah in Nucklao and,

and--once gone, who is to find me again?'

'It is true. Never was colt held on a lighter heel-rope than thou.'

Mahbub nodded his head.

'Do not be afraid.' Kim spoke as though he could have vanished on the

moment. 'My lama has said that he will come to see me at the

madrissah--'

'A beggar and his bowl in the presence of those young Sa--'

'Not all!' Kim cut in with a snort. 'Their eyes are blued and their

nails are blackened with low-caste blood, many of them. Sons of

mehteranees--brothers-in-law to the bhungi [sweeper].'

We need not follow the rest of the pedigree; but Kim made his little

point clearly and without heat, chewing a piece of sugar-cane the while.

'Friend of all the World,' said Mahbub, pushing over the pipe for the

boy to clean, 'I have met many men, women, and boys, and not a few

Sahibs. I have never in all my days met such an imp as thou art.'

'And why? When I always tell thee the truth.'

'Perhaps the very reason, for this is a world of danger to honest men.'

Mahbub Ali hauled himself off the ground, girt in his belt, and went

over to the horses.

'Or sell it?'

There was that in the tone that made Mahbub halt and turn. 'What new

devilry?'

'Eight annas, and I will tell,' said Kim, grinning. 'It touches thy

peace.'

'O Shaitan!' Mahbub gave the money.

'Rememberest thou the little business of the thieves in the dark, down

yonder at Umballa?'

'Seeing they sought my life, I have not altogether forgotten. Why?'

'Rememberest thou the Kashmir Serai?'

'I will twist thy ears in a moment--Sahib.'

'No need--Pathan. Only, the second fakir, whom the Sahibs beat

senseless, was the man who came to search thy bulkhead at Lahore. I

saw his face as they helped him on the engine. The very same man.'

'Why didst thou not tell before?'

'Oh, he will go to jail, and be safe for some years. There is no need

to tell more than is necessary at any one time. Besides, I did not

then need money for sweetmeats.'

'Allah kerim!' said Mahbub Ah. 'Wilt thou some day sell my head for a

few sweetmeats if the fit takes thee?'

Kim will remember till he dies that long, lazy journey from Umballa,

through Kalka and the Pinjore Gardens near by, up to Simla. A sudden

spate in the Gugger River swept down one horse (the most valuable, be

sure), and nearly drowned Kim among the dancing boulders. Farther up

the road the horses were stampeded by a Government elephant, and being

in high condition of grass food, it cost a day and a half to get them

together again. Then they met Sikandar Khan coming down with a few

unsaleable screws--remnants of his string--and Mahbub, who has more of

horse-coping in his little fingernail than Sikandar Khan in all his

tents, must needs buy two of the worst, and that meant eight hours'

laborious diplomacy and untold tobacco. But it was all pure

delight--the wandering road, climbing, dipping, and sweeping about the

growing spurs; the flush of the morning laid along the distant snows;

the branched cacti, tier upon tier on the stony hillsides; the voices

of a thousand water-channels; the chatter of the monkeys; the solemn

deodars, climbing one after another with down-drooped branches; the

vista of the Plains rolled out far beneath them; the incessant twanging

of the tonga-horns and the wild rush of the led horses when a tonga

swung round a curve; the halts for prayers (Mahbub was very religious

in dry-washings and bellowings when time did not press); the evening

conferences by the halting-places, when camels and bullocks chewed

solemnly together and the stolid drivers told the news of the Road--all

these things lifted Kim's heart to song within him.

'But, when the singing and dancing is done,' said Mahbub Ali, 'comes

the Colonel Sahib's, and that is not so sweet.'

'A fair land--a most beautiful land is this of Hind--and the land of

the Five Rivers is fairer than all,' Kim half chanted. 'Into it I will

go again if Mahbub Ali or the Colonel lift hand or foot against me.

Once gone, who shall find me? Look, Hajji, is yonder the city of

Simla? Allah, what a city!'

'My father's brother, and he was an old man when Mackerson Sahib's well

was new at Peshawur, could recall when there were but two houses in it.'

He led the horses below the main road into the lower Simla bazar--the

crowded rabbit-warren that climbs up from the valley to the Town Hall

at an angle of forty-five. A man who knows his way there can defy all

the police of India's summer capital, so cunningly does veranda

communicate with veranda, alley-way with alley-way, and bolt-hole with

bolt-hole. Here live those who minister to the wants of the glad

city--jhampanis who pull the pretty ladies' 'rickshaws by night and

gamble till the dawn; grocers, oil-sellers, curio-vendors,

firewood-dealers, priests, pickpockets, and native employees of the

Government. Here are discussed by courtesans the things which are

supposed to be profoundest secrets of the India Council; and here

gather all the sub-sub-agents of half the Native States. Here, too,

Mahbub Ali rented a room, much more securely locked than his bulkhead

at Lahore, in the house of a Mohammedan cattle-dealer. It was a place

of miracles, too, for there went in at twilight a Mohammedan horseboy,

and there came out an hour later a Eurasian lad--the Lucknow girl's dye

was of the best--in badly-fitting shop-clothes.

'I have spoken with Creighton Sahib,' quoth Mahbub Ali, 'and a second

time has the Hand of Friendship averted the Whip of Calamity. He says

that thou hast altogether wasted sixty days upon the Road, and it is

too late, therefore, to send thee to any Hill-school.'

'I have said that my holidays are my own. I do not go to school twice

over. That is one part of my bond.'

'The Colonel Sahib is not yet aware of that contract. Thou art to

lodge in Lurgan Sahib's house till it is time to go again to Nucklao.'

'I had sooner lodge with thee, Mahbub.'

'Thou dost not know the honour. Lurgan Sahib himself asked for thee.

Thou wilt go up the hill and along the road atop, and there thou must

forget for a while that thou hast ever seen or spoken to me, Mahbub

Ali, who sells horses to Creighton Sahib, whom thou dost not know.

Remember this order.'

Kim nodded. 'Good,' said he, 'and who is Lurgan Sahib? Nay'--he

caught Mahbub's sword-keen glance--'indeed I have never heard his name.

Is he by chance--he lowered his voice--'one of us?'

'What talk is this of us, Sahib?' Mahbub Ali returned, in the tone he

used towards Europeans. 'I am a Pathan; thou art a Sahib and the son

of a Sahib. Lurgan Sahib has a shop among the European shops. All

Simla knows it. Ask there ... and, Friend of all the World, he is one

to be obeyed to the last wink of his eyelashes. Men say he does magic,

but that should not touch thee. Go up the hill and ask. Here begins

the Great Game.'

Chapter 9

S' doaks was son of Yelth the wise--

Chief of the Raven clan.

Itswoot the Bear had him in care

To make him a medicine-man.

He was quick and quicker to learn--

Bold and bolder to dare:

He danced the dread Kloo-Kwallie Dance

To tickle Itswoot the Bear!

Oregon Legend

Kim flung himself whole-heartedly upon the next turn of the wheel. He

would be a Sahib again for a while. In that idea, so soon as he had

reached the broad road under Simla Town Hall, he cast about for one to

impress. A Hindu child, some ten years old, squatted under a lamp-post.

'Where is Mr Lurgan's house?' demanded Kim.

'I do not understand English,' was the answer, and Kim shifted his

speech accordingly.

'I will show.'

Together they set off through the mysterious dusk, full of the noises

of a city below the hillside, and the breath of a cool wind in

deodar-crowned Jakko, shouldering the stars. The house-lights,

scattered on every level, made, as it were, a double firmament. Some

were fixed, others belonged to the 'rickshaws of the careless,

open-spoken English folk, going out to dinner.

'It is here,' said Kim's guide, and halted in a veranda flush with the

main road. No door stayed them, but a curtain of beaded reeds that

split up the lamplight beyond.

'He is come,' said the boy, in a voice little louder than a sigh, and

vanished. Kim felt sure that the boy had been posted to guide him from

the first, but, putting a bold face on it, parted the curtain. A

black-bearded man, with a green shade over his eyes, sat at a table,

and, one by one, with short, white hands, picked up globules of light

from a tray before him, threaded them on a glancing silken string, and

hummed to himself the while. Kim was conscious that beyond the circle

of light the room was full of things that smelt like all the temples of

all the East. A whiff of musk, a puff of sandal-wood, and a breath of

sickly jessamine-oil caught his opened nostrils.

'I am here,' said Kim at last, speaking in the vernacular: the smells

made him forget that he was to be a Sahib.

'Seventy-nine, eighty, eighty-one,' the man counted to himself,

stringing pearl after pearl so quickly that Kim could scarcely follow

his fingers. He slid off the green shade and looked fixedly at Kim for

a full half-minute. The pupils of the eye dilated and closed to

pin-pricks, as if at will. There was a fakir by the Taksali Gate who

had just this gift and made money by it, especially when cursing silly

women. Kim stared with interest. His disreputable friend could

further twitch his ears, almost like a goat, and Kim was disappointed

that this new man could not imitate him.

'Do not be afraid,' said Lurgan Sahib suddenly.

'Why should I fear?'

'Thou wilt sleep here tonight, and stay with me till it is time to go

again to Nucklao. It is an order.'

'It is an order,' Kim repeated. 'But where shall I sleep?'

'Here, in this room.' Lurgan Sahib waved his hand towards the darkness

behind him.

'So be it,' said Kim composedly. 'Now?'

He nodded and held the lamp above his head. As the light swept them,

there leaped out from the walls a collection of Tibetan devil-dance

masks, hanging above the fiend-embroidered draperies of those ghastly

functions--horned masks, scowling masks, and masks of idiotic terror.

In a corner, a Japanese warrior, mailed and plumed, menaced him with a

halberd, and a score of lances and khandas and kuttars gave back the

unsteady gleam. But what interested Kim more than all these things--he

had seen devil-dance masks at the Lahore Museum--was a glimpse of the

soft-eyed Hindu child who had left him in the doorway, sitting

cross-legged under the table of pearls with a little smile on his

scarlet lips.

'I think that Lurgan Sahib wishes to make me afraid. And I am sure

that that devil's brat below the table wishes to see me afraid.

'This place,' he said aloud, 'is like a Wonder House. Where is my bed?'

Lurgan Sahib pointed to a native quilt in a corner by the loathsome

masks, picked up the lamp, and left the room black.

'Was that Lurgan Sahib?' Kim asked as he cuddled down. No answer. He

could hear the Hindu boy breathing, however, and, guided by the sound,

crawled across the floor, and cuffed into the darkness, crying: 'Give

answer, devil! Is this the way to lie to a Sahib?'

From the darkness he fancied he could hear the echo of a chuckle. It

could not be his soft-fleshed companion, because he was weeping. So Kim

lifted up his voice and called aloud:

'Lurgan Sahib! O Lurgan Sahib! Is it an order that thy servant does

not speak to me?'

'It is an order.' The voice came from behind him and he started.

'Very good. But remember,' he muttered, as he resought the quilt, 'I

will beat thee in the morning. I do not love Hindus.'

That was no cheerful night; the room being overfull of voices and

music. Kim was waked twice by someone calling his name. The second

time he set out in search, and ended by bruising his nose against a box

that certainly spoke with a human tongue, but in no sort of human

accent. It seemed to end in a tin trumpet and to be joined by wires to

a smaller box on the floor--so far, at least, as he could judge by

touch. And the voice, very hard and whirring, came out of the trumpet.

Kim rubbed his nose and grew furious, thinking, as usual, in Hindi.

'This with a beggar from the bazar might be good, but--I am a Sahib and

the son of a Sahib and, which is twice as much more beside, a student

of Nucklao. Yess' (here he turned to English), 'a boy of St Xavier's.

Damn Mr Lurgan's eyes!--It is some sort of machinery like a

sewing-machine. Oh, it is a great cheek of him--we are not frightened

that way at Lucknow--No!' Then in Hindi: 'But what does he gain? He

is only a trader--I am in his shop. But Creighton Sahib is a

Colonel--and I think Creighton Sahib gave orders that it should be

done. How I will beat that Hindu in the morning! What is this?'

The trumpet-box was pouring out a string of the most elaborate abuse

that even Kim had ever heard, in a high uninterested voice, that for a

moment lifted the short hairs of his neck. When the vile thing drew

breath, Kim was reassured by the soft, sewing-machine-like whirr.

'Chup! [Be still]' he cried, and again he heard a chuckle that decided

him. 'Chup--or I break your head.'

The box took no heed. Kim wrenched at the tin trumpet and something

lifted with a click. He had evidently raised a lid. If there were a

devil inside, now was its time, for--he sniffed--thus did the

sewing-machines of the bazar smell. He would clean that shaitan. He

slipped off his jacket, and plunged it into the box's mouth. Something

long and round bent under the pressure, there was a whirr and the voice

stopped--as voices must if you ram a thrice-doubled coat on to the wax

cylinder and into the works of an expensive phonograph. Kim finished

his slumbers with a serene mind.

In the morning he was aware of Lurgan Sahib looking down on him.

'Oah!' said Kim, firmly resolved to cling to his Sahib-dom. 'There

was a box in the night that gave me bad talk. So I stopped it. Was it

your box?'

The man held out his hand.

'Shake hands, O'Hara,' he said. 'Yes, it was my box. I keep such

things because my friends the Rajahs like them. That one is broken,

but it was cheap at the price. Yes, my friends, the Kings, are very

fond of toys--and so am I sometimes.'

Kim looked him over out of the corners of his eyes. He was a Sahib in

that he wore Sahib's clothes; the accent of his Urdu, the intonation of

his English, showed that he was anything but a Sahib. He seemed to

understand what moved in Kim's mind ere the boy opened his mouth, and

he took no pains to explain himself as did Father Victor or the Lucknow

masters. Sweetest of all--he treated Kim as an equal on the Asiatic

side.

'I am sorry you cannot beat my boy this morning. He says he will kill

you with a knife or poison. He is jealous, so I have put him in the

corner and I shall not speak to him today. He has just tried to kill

me. You must help me with the breakfast. He is almost too jealous to

trust, just now.'

Now a genuine imported Sahib from England would have made a great to-do

over this tale. Lurgan Sahib stated it as simply as Mahbub Ali was

used to record his little affairs in the North.

The back veranda of the shop was built out over the sheer hillside, and

they looked down into their neighbours' chimney-pots, as is the custom

of Simla. But even more than the purely Persian meal cooked by Lurgan

Sahib with his own hands, the shop fascinated Kim. The Lahore Museum

was larger, but here were more wonders--ghost-daggers and prayer-wheels

from Tibet; turquoise and raw amber necklaces; green jade bangles;

curiously packed incense-sticks in jars crusted over with raw garnets;

the devil-masks of overnight and a wall full of peacock-blue draperies;

gilt figures of Buddha, and little portable lacquer altars; Russian

samovars with turquoises on the lid; egg-shell china sets in quaint

octagonal cane boxes; yellow ivory crucifixes--from Japan of all places

in the world, so Lurgan Sahib said; carpets in dusty bales, smelling

atrociously, pushed back behind torn and rotten screens of geometrical

work; Persian water-jugs for the hands after meals; dull copper

incense-burners neither Chinese nor Persian, with friezes of fantastic

devils running round them; tarnished silver belts that knotted like raw

hide; hairpins of jade, ivory, and plasma; arms of all sorts and kinds,

and a thousand other oddments were cased, or piled, or merely thrown

into the room, leaving a clear space only round the rickety deal table,

where Lurgan Sahib worked.

'Those things are nothing,' said his host, following Kim's glance. 'I

buy them because they are pretty, and sometimes I sell--if I like the

buyer's look. My work is on the table--some of it.'

It blazed in the morning light--all red and blue and green flashes,

picked out with the vicious blue-white spurt of a diamond here and

there. Kim opened his eyes.

'Oh, they are quite well, those stones. It will not hurt them to take

the sun. Besides, they are cheap. But with sick stones it is very

different.' He piled Kim's plate anew. 'There is no one but me can

doctor a sick pearl and re-blue turquoises. I grant you opals--any

fool can cure an opal--but for a sick pearl there is only me. Suppose I

were to die! Then there would be no one ... Oh no! You cannot do

anything with jewels. It will be quite enough if you understand a

little about the Turquoise--some day.'

He moved to the end of the veranda to refill the heavy, porous clay

water-jug from the filter.

'Do you want drink?'

Kim nodded. Lurgan Sahib, fifteen feet off, laid one hand on the jar.

Next instant, it stood at Kim's elbow, full to within half an inch of

the brim--the white cloth only showing, by a small wrinkle, where it

had slid into place.

'Wah!' said Kim in most utter amazement. 'That is magic.' Lurgan

Sahib's smile showed that the compliment had gone home.

'Throw it back.'

'It will break.'

'I say, throw it back.'

Kim pitched it at random. It fell short and crashed into fifty pieces,

while the water dripped through the rough veranda boarding.

'I said it would break.'

'All one. Look at it. Look at the largest piece.'

That lay with a sparkle of water in its curve, as it were a star on the

floor. Kim looked intently. Lurgan Sahib laid one hand gently on the

nape of his neck, stroked it twice or thrice, and whispered: 'Look! It

shall come to life again, piece by piece. First the big piece shall

join itself to two others on the right and the left--on the right and

the left. Look!'

To save his life, Kim could not have turned his head. The light touch

held him as in a vice, and his blood tingled pleasantly through him.

There was one large piece of the jar where there had been three, and

above them the shadowy outline of the entire vessel. He could see the

veranda through it, but it was thickening and darkening with each beat

of his pulse. Yet the jar--how slowly the thoughts came!--the jar had

been smashed before his eyes. Another wave of prickling fire raced down

his neck, as Lurgan Sahib moved his hand.

'Look! It is coming into shape,' said Lurgan Sahib.

So far Kim had been thinking in Hindi, but a tremor came on him, and

with an effort like that of a swimmer before sharks, who hurls himself

half out of the water, his mind leaped up from a darkness that was

swallowing it and took refuge in--the multiplication-table in English!

'Look! It is coming into shape,' whispered Lurgan Sahib.

The jar had been smashed--yess, smashed--not the native word, he would

not think of that--but smashed--into fifty pieces, and twice three was

six, and thrice three was nine, and four times three was twelve. He

clung desperately to the repetition. The shadow-outline of the jar

cleared like a mist after rubbing eyes. There were the broken shards;

there was the spilt water drying in the sun, and through the cracks of

the veranda showed, all ribbed, the white house-wall below--and thrice

twelve was thirty-six!

'Look! Is it coming into shape?' asked Lurgan Sahib.

'But it is smashed--smashed,' he gasped--Lurgan Sahib had been

muttering softly for the last half-minute. Kim wrenched his head

aside. 'Look! Dekho! It is there as it was there.'

'It is there as it was there,' said Lurgan, watching Kim closely while

the boy rubbed his neck. 'But you are the first of many who has ever

seen it so.' He wiped his broad forehead.

'Was that more magic?' Kim asked suspiciously. The tingle had gone

from his veins; he felt unusually wide awake.

'No, that was not magic. It was only to see if there was--a flaw in a

jewel. Sometimes very fine jewels will fly all to pieces if a man

holds them in his hand, and knows the proper way. That is why one must

be careful before one sets them. Tell me, did you see the shape of the

pot?'

'For a little time. It began to grow like a flower from the ground.'

'And then what did you do? I mean, how did you think?'

'Oah! I knew it was broken, and so, I think, that was what I

thought--and it was broken.'

'Hm! Has anyone ever done that same sort of magic to you before?'

'If it was,' said Kim 'do you think I should let it again? I should

run away.'

'And now you are not afraid--eh?'

'Not now.'

Lurgan Sahib looked at him more closely than ever. 'I shall ask Mahbub

Ali--not now, but some day later,' he muttered. 'I am pleased with

you--yes; and I am pleased with you--no. You are the first that ever

saved himself. I wish I knew what it was that ... But you are right.

You should not tell that--not even to me.'

He turned into the dusky gloom of the shop, and sat down at the table,

rubbing his hands softly. A small, husky sob came from behind a pile

of carpets. It was the Hindu child obediently facing towards the wall.

His thin shoulders worked with grief.

'Ah! He is jealous, so jealous. I wonder if he will try to poison me

again in my breakfast, and make me cook it twice.

'Kubbee--kubbee nahin [Never--never. No!]', came the broken answer.

'And whether he will kill this other boy?'

'Kubbee--kubbee nahin.'

'What do you think he will do?' He turned suddenly on Kim.

'Oah! I do not know. Let him go, perhaps. Why did he want to poison

you?'

'Because he is so fond of me. Suppose you were fond of someone, and

you saw someone come, and the man you were fond of was more pleased

with him than he was with you, what would you do?'

Kim thought. Lurgan repeated the sentence slowly in the vernacular. 'I

should not poison that man,' said Kim reflectively, 'but I should beat

that boy--if that boy was fond of my man. But first, I would ask that

boy if it were true.'

'Ah! He thinks everyone must be fond of me.'

'Then I think he is a fool.'

'Hearest thou?' said Lurgan Sahib to the shaking shoulders. 'The

Sahib's son thinks thou art a little fool. Come out, and next time thy

heart is troubled, do not try white arsenic quite so openly. Surely the

Devil Dasim was lord of our table-cloth that day! It might have made

me ill, child, and then a stranger would have guarded the jewels.

Come!'

The child, heavy-eyed with much weeping, crept out from behind the bale

and flung himself passionately at Lurgan Sahib's feet, with an

extravagance of remorse that impressed even Kim.

'I will look into the ink-pools--I will faithfully guard the jewels!

Oh, my Father and my Mother, send him away!' He indicated Kim with a

backward jerk of his bare heel.

'Not yet--not yet. In a little while he will go away again. But now

he is at school--at a new madrissah--and thou shalt be his teacher.

Play the Play of the Jewels against him. I will keep tally.'

The child dried his tears at once, and dashed to the back of the shop,

whence he returned with a copper tray.

'Give me!' he said to Lurgan Sahib. 'Let them come from thy hand, for

he may say that I knew them before.'

'Gently--gently,' the man replied, and from a drawer under the table

dealt a half-handful of clattering trifles into the tray.

'Now,' said the child, waving an old newspaper. 'Look on them as long

as thou wilt, stranger. Count and, if need be, handle. One look is

enough for me.' He turned his back proudly.

'But what is the game?'

'When thou hast counted and handled and art sure that thou canst

remember them all, I cover them with this paper, and thou must tell

over the tally to Lurgan Sahib. I will write mine.'

'Oah!' The instinct of competition waked in his breast. He bent over

the tray. There were but fifteen stones on it. 'That is easy,' he

said after a minute. The child slipped the paper over the winking

jewels and scribbled in a native account-book.

'There are under that paper five blue stones--one big, one smaller, and

three small,' said Kim, all in haste. 'There are four green stones,

and one with a hole in it; there is one yellow stone that I can see

through, and one like a pipe-stem. There are two red stones,

and--and--I made the count fifteen, but two I have forgotten. No!

Give me time. One was of ivory, little and brownish; and--and--give me

time...'

'One--two'--Lurgan Sahib counted him out up to ten. Kim shook his head.

'Hear my count!' the child burst in, trilling with laughter. 'First,

are two flawed sapphires--one of two ruttees and one of four as I

should judge. The four-ruttee sapphire is chipped at the edge. There

is one Turkestan turquoise, plain with black veins, and there are two

inscribed--one with a Name of God in gilt, and the other being cracked

across, for it came out of an old ring, I cannot read. We have now all

five blue stones. Four flawed emeralds there are, but one is drilled

in two places, and one is a little carven-'

'Their weights?' said Lurgan Sahib impassively.

'Three--five--five--and four ruttees as I judge it. There is one piece

of old greenish pipe amber, and a cut topaz from Europe. There is one

ruby of Burma, of two ruttees, without a flaw, and there is a

balas-ruby, flawed, of two ruttees. There is a carved ivory from China

representing a rat sucking an egg; and there is last--ah ha!--a ball of

crystal as big as a bean set on a gold leaf.'

He clapped his hands at the close.

'He is thy master,' said Lurgan Sahib, smiling.

'Huh! He knew the names of the stones,' said Kim, flushing. 'Try

again! With common things such as he and I both know.'

They heaped the tray again with odds and ends gathered from the shop,

and even the kitchen, and every time the child won, till Kim marvelled.

'Bind my eyes--let me feel once with my fingers, and even then I will

leave thee opened-eyed behind,' he challenged.

Kim stamped with vexation when the lad made his boast good.

'If it were men--or horses,' he said, 'I could do better. This playing

with tweezers and knives and scissors is too little.'

'Learn first--teach later,' said Lurgan Sahib. 'Is he thy master?'

'Truly. But how is it done?'

'By doing it many times over till it is done perfectly--for it is worth

doing.'

The Hindu boy, in highest feather, actually patted Kim on the back.

'Do not despair,' he said. 'I myself will teach thee.'

'And I will see that thou art well taught,' said Lurgan Sahib, still

speaking in the vernacular, 'for except my boy here--it was foolish of

him to buy so much white arsenic when, if he had asked, I could have

given it--except my boy here I have not in a long time met with one

better worth teaching. And there are ten days more ere thou canst

return to Lucknao where they teach nothing--at the long price. We

shall, I think, be friends.'

They were a most mad ten days, but Kim enjoyed himself too much to

reflect on their craziness. In the morning they played the Jewel

Game--sometimes with veritable stones, sometimes with piles of swords

and daggers, sometimes with photo-graphs of natives. Through the

afternoons he and the Hindu boy would mount guard in the shop, sitting

dumb behind a carpet-bale or a screen and watching Mr Lurgan's many and

very curious visitors. There were small Rajahs, escorts coughing in

the veranda, who came to buy curiosities--such as phonographs and

mechanical toys. There were ladies in search of necklaces, and men, it

seemed to Kim--but his mind may have been vitiated by early

training--in search of the ladies; natives from independent and

feudatory Courts whose ostensible business was the repair of broken

necklaces--rivers of light poured out upon the table--but whose true

end seemed to be to raise money for angry Maharanees or young Rajahs.

There were Babus to whom Lurgan Sahib talked with austerity and

authority, but at the end of each interview he gave them money in

coined silver and currency notes. There were occasional gatherings of

long-coated theatrical natives who discussed metaphysics in English and

Bengali, to Mr Lurgan's great edification. He was always interested in

religions. At the end of the day, Kim and the Hindu boy--whose name

varied at Lurgan's pleasure--were expected to give a detailed account

of all that they had seen and heard--their view of each man's

character, as shown in his face, talk, and manner, and their notions of

his real errand. After dinner, Lurgan Sahib's fancy turned more to

what might be called dressing-up, in which game he took a most

informing interest. He could paint faces to a marvel; with a brush-dab

here and a line there changing them past recognition. The shop was

full of all manner of dresses and turbans, and Kim was apparelled

variously as a young Mohammedan of good family, an oilman, and

once--which was a joyous evening--as the son of an Oudh landholder in

the fullest of full dress. Lurgan Sahib had a hawk's eye to detect the

least flaw in the make-up; and lying on a worn teak-wood couch, would

explain by the half-hour together how such and such a caste talked, or

walked, or coughed, or spat, or sneezed, and, since 'hows' matter

little in this world, the 'why' of everything. The Hindu child played

this game clumsily. That little mind, keen as an icicle where tally of

jewels was concerned, could not temper itself to enter another's soul;

but a demon in Kim woke up and sang with joy as he put on the changing

dresses, and changed speech and gesture therewith.

Carried away by enthusiasm, he volunteered to show Lurgan Sahib one

evening how the disciples of a certain caste of fakir, old Lahore

acquaintances, begged doles by the roadside; and what sort of language

he would use to an Englishman, to a Punjabi farmer going to a fair, and

to a woman without a veil. Lurgan Sahib laughed immensely, and begged

Kim to stay as he was, immobile for half an hour--cross-legged,

ash-smeared, and wild-eyed, in the back room. At the end of that time

entered a hulking, obese Babu whose stockinged legs shook with fat, and

Kim opened on him with a shower of wayside chaff. Lurgan Sahib--this

annoyed Kim--watched the Babu and not the play.

'I think,' said the Babu heavily, lighting a cigarette, 'I am of

opeenion that it is most extraordinary and effeecient performance.

Except that you had told me I should have opined that--that--that you

were pulling my legs. How soon can he become approximately effeecient

chain-man? Because then I shall indent for him.'

'That is what he must learn at Lucknow.'

'Then order him to be jolly-dam'-quick. Good-night, Lurgan.' The Babu

swung out with the gait of a bogged cow.

When they were telling over the day's list of visitors, Lurgan Sahib

asked Kim who he thought the man might be.

'God knows!' said Kim cheerily. The tone might almost have deceived

Mahbub Ali, but it failed entirely with the healer of sick pearls.

'That is true. God, He knows; but I wish to know what you think.'

Kim glanced sideways at his companion, whose eye had a way of

compelling truth.

'I--I think he will want me when I come from the school,

but'--confidentially, as Lurgan Sahib nodded approval--'I do not

understand how he can wear many dresses and talk many tongues.'

'Thou wilt understand many things later. He is a writer of tales for a

certain Colonel. His honour is great only in Simla, and it is

noticeable that he has no name, but only a number and a letter--that is

a custom among us.'

'And is there a price upon his head too--as upon Mah--all the others?'

'Not yet; but if a boy rose up who is now sitting here and went--look,

the door is open!--as far as a certain house with a red-painted

veranda, behind that which was the old theatre in the Lower Bazar, and

whispered through the shutters: "Hurree Chunder Mookerjee bore the bad

news of last month", that boy might take away a belt full of rupees.'

'How many?' said Kim promptly.

'Five hundred--a thousand--as many as he might ask for.'

'Good. And for how long might such a boy live after the news was

told?' He smiled merrily at Lurgan's Sahib's very beard.

'Ah! That is to be well thought of. Perhaps if he were very clever,

he might live out the day--but not the night. By no means the night.'

'Then what is the Babu's pay if so much is put upon his head?'

'Eighty--perhaps a hundred--perhaps a hundred and fifty rupees; but the

pay is the least part of the work. From time to time, God causes men

to be born--and thou art one of them--who have a lust to go abroad at

the risk of their lives and discover news--today it may be of far-off

things, tomorrow of some hidden mountain, and the next day of some

near-by men who have done a foolishness against the State. These souls

are very few; and of these few, not more than ten are of the best.

Among these ten I count the Babu, and that is curious. How great,

therefore, and desirable must be a business that brazens the heart of a

Bengali!'

'True. But the days go slowly for me. I am yet a boy, and it is only

within two months I learned to write Angrezi. Even now I cannot read

it well. And there are yet years and years and long years before I can

be even a chain-man.'

'Have patience, Friend of all the World'--Kim started at the title.

'Would I had a few of the years that so irk thee. I have proved thee

in several small ways. This will not be forgotten when I make my

report to the Colonel Sahib.' Then, changing suddenly into English

with a deep laugh:

'By Jove! O'Hara, I think there is a great deal in you; but you must

not become proud and you must not talk. You must go back to Lucknow

and be a good little boy and mind your book, as the English say, and

perhaps, next holidays if you care, you can come back to me!' Kim's

face fell. 'Oh, I mean if you like. I know where you want to go.'

Four days later a seat was booked for Kim and his small trunk at the

rear of a Kalka tonga. His companion was the whale-like Babu, who,

with a fringed shawl wrapped round his head, and his fat

openwork-stockinged left leg tucked under him, shivered and grunted in

the morning chill.

'How comes it that this man is one of us?' thought Kim considering the

jelly back as they jolted down the road; and the reflection threw him

into most pleasant day-dreams. Lurgan Sahib had given him five

rupees--a splendid sum--as well as the assurance of his protection if

he worked. Unlike Mahbub, Lurgan Sahib had spoken most explicitly of

the reward that would follow obedience, and Kim was content. If only,

like the Babu, he could enjoy the dignity of a letter and a number--and

a price upon his head! Some day he would be all that and more. Some

day he might be almost as great as Mahbub Ali! The housetops of his

search should be half India; he would follow Kings and Ministers, as in

the old days he had followed vakils and lawyers' touts across Lahore

city for Mahbub Ali's sake. Meantime, there was the present, and not at

all unpleasant, fact of St Xavier's immediately before him. There

would be new boys to condescend to, and there would be tales of holiday

adventures to hear. Young Martin, son of the tea-planter at Manipur,

had boasted that he would go to war, with a rifle, against the

head-hunters.

That might be, but it was certain young Martin had not been blown half

across the forecourt of a Patiala palace by an explosion of fireworks;

nor had he... Kim fell to telling himself the story of his own

adventures through the last three months. He could paralyse St

Xavier's--even the biggest boys who shaved--with the recital, were that

permitted. But it was, of course, out of the question. There would be

a price upon his head in good time, as Lurgan Sahib had assured him;

and if he talked foolishly now, not only would that price never be set,

but Colonel Creighton would cast him off--and he would be left to the

wrath of Lurgan Sahib and Mahbub Ali--for the short space of life that

would remain to him.

'So I should lose Delhi for the sake of a fish,' was his proverbial

philosophy. It behoved him to forget his holidays (there would always

remain the fun of inventing imaginary adventures) and, as Lurgan Sahib

had said, to work. Of all the boys hurrying back to St Xavier's, from

Sukkur in the sands to Galle beneath the palms, none was so filled with

virtue as Kimball O'Hara, jiggeting down to Umballa behind Hurree

Chunder Mookerjee, whose name on the books of one section of the

Ethnological Survey was R.17.

And if additional spur were needed, the Babu supplied it. After a huge

meal at Kalka, he spoke uninterruptedly. Was Kim going to school?

Then he, an M A of Calcutta University, would explain the advantages of

education. There were marks to be gained by due attention to Latin and

Wordsworth's Excursion (all this was Greek to Kim). French, too was

vital, and the best was to be picked up in Chandernagore a few miles

from Calcutta. Also a man might go far, as he himself had done, by

strict attention to plays called Lear and Julius Caesar, both much in

demand by examiners. Lear was not so full of historical allusions as

Julius Caesar; the book cost four annas, but could be bought

second-hand in Bow Bazar for two. Still more important than

Wordsworth, or the eminent authors, Burke and Hare, was the art and

science of mensuration. A boy who had passed his examination in these

branches--for which, by the way, there were no cram-books--could, by

merely marching over a country with a compass and a level and a

straight eye, carry away a picture of that country which might be sold

for large sums in coined silver. But as it was occasionally

inexpedient to carry about measuring-chains a boy would do well to know

the precise length of his own foot-pace, so that when he was deprived

of what Hurree Chunder called adventitious aids' he might still tread

his distances. To keep count of thousands of paces, Hurree Chunder's

experience had shown him nothing more valuable than a rosary of

eighty-one or a hundred and eight beads, for 'it was divisible and

sub-divisible into many multiples and sub-multiples'. Through the

volleying drifts of English, Kim caught the general trend of the talk,

and it interested him very much. Here was a new craft that a man could

tuck away in his head and by the look of the large wide world unfolding

itself before him, it seemed that the more a man knew the better for

him.

Said the Babu when he had talked for an hour and a half 'I hope some

day to enjoy your offeecial acquaintance. Ad interim, if I may be

pardoned that expression, I shall give you this betel-box, which is

highly valuable article and cost me two rupees only four years ago.' It

was a cheap, heart-shaped brass thing with three compartments for

carrying the eternal betel-nut, lime and pan-leaf; but it was filled

with little tabloid-bottles.

'That is reward of merit for your performance in character of that holy

man. You see, you are so young you think you will last for ever and

not take care of your body. It is great nuisance to go sick in the

middle of business. I am fond of drugs myself, and they are handy to

cure poor people too. These are good Departmental drugs--quinine and

so on. I give it you for souvenir. Now good-bye. I have urgent

private business here by the roadside.'

He slipped out noiselessly as a cat, on the Umballa road, hailed a

passing cart and jingled away, while Kim, tongue-tied, twiddled the

brass betel-box in his hands.

The record of a boy's education interests few save his parents, and, as

you know, Kim was an orphan. It is written in the books of St Xavier's

in Partibus that a report of Kim's progress was forwarded at the end of

each term to Colonel Creighton and to Father Victor, from whose hands

duly came the money for his schooling. It is further recorded in the

same books that he showed a great aptitude for mathematical studies as

well as map-making, and carried away a prize (The Life of Lord

Lawrence, tree-calf, two vols., nine rupees, eight annas) for

proficiency therein; and the same term played in St Xavier's eleven

against the Alighur Mohammedan College, his age being fourteen years

and ten months. He was also re-vaccinated (from which we may assume

that there had been another epidemic of smallpox at Lucknow) about the

same time. Pencil notes on the edge of an old muster-roll record that

he was punished several times for 'conversing with improper persons',

and it seems that he was once sentenced to heavy pains for 'absenting

himself for a day in the company of a street beggar'. That was when he

got over the gate and pleaded with the lama through a whole day down

the banks of the Gumti to accompany him on the Road next holidays--for

one month--for a little week; and the lama set his face as a flint

against it, averring that the time had not yet come. Kim's business,

said the old man as they ate cakes together, was to get all the wisdom

of the Sahibs and then he would see. The Hand of Friendship must in

some way have averted the Whip of Calamity, for six weeks later Kim

seems to have passed an examination in elementary surveying 'with great

credit', his age being fifteen years and eight months. From this date

the record is silent. His name does not appear in the year's batch of

those who entered for the subordinate Survey of India, but against it

stand the words 'removed on appointment.'

Several times in those three years, cast up at the Temple of the

Tirthankars in Benares the lama, a little thinner and a shade yellower,

if that were possible, but gentle and untainted as ever. Sometimes it

was from the South that he came--from south of Tuticorin, whence the

wonderful fire-boats go to Ceylon where are priests who know Pali;

sometimes it was from the wet green West and the thousand

cotton-factory chimneys that ring Bombay; and once from the North,

where he had doubled back eight hundred miles to talk for a day with

the Keeper of the Images in the Wonder House. He would stride to his

cell in the cool, cut marble--the priests of the Temple were good to

the old man,--wash off the dust of travel, make prayer, and depart for

Lucknow, well accustomed now to the way of the rail, in a third-class

carriage. Returning, it was noticeable, as his friend the Seeker

pointed out to the head-priest, that he ceased for a while to mourn the

loss of his River, or to draw wondrous pictures of the Wheel of Life,

but preferred to talk of the beauty and wisdom of a certain mysterious

chela whom no man of the Temple had ever seen. Yes, he had followed

the traces of the Blessed Feet throughout all India. (The Curator has

still in his possession a most marvellous account of his wanderings and

meditations.) There remained nothing more in life but to find the River

of the Arrow. Yet it was shown to him in dreams that it was a matter

not to be undertaken with any hope of success unless that seeker had

with him the one chela appointed to bring the event to a happy issue,

and versed in great wisdom--such wisdom as white-haired Keepers of

Images possess. For example (here came out the snuff-gourd, and the

kindly Jain priests made haste to be silent):

'Long and long ago, when Devadatta was King of Benares--let all listen

to the Tataka!--an elephant was captured for a time by the king's

hunters and ere he broke free, beringed with a grievous legiron. This

he strove to remove with hate and frenzy in his heart, and hurrying up

and down the forests, besought his brother-elephants to wrench it

asunder. One by one, with their strong trunks, they tried and failed.

At the last they gave it as their opinion that the ring was not to be

broken by any bestial power. And in a thicket, new-born, wet with

moisture of birth, lay a day-old calf of the herd whose mother had

died. The fettered elephant, forgetting his own agony, said: "If I do

not help this suckling it will perish under our feet." So he stood

above the young thing, making his legs buttresses against the uneasily

moving herd; and he begged milk of a virtuous cow, and the calf throve,

and the ringed elephant was the calf's guide and defence. Now the days

of an elephant--let all listen to the Tataka!--are thirty-five years to

his full strength, and through thirty-five Rains the ringed elephant

befriended the younger, and all the while the fetter ate into the flesh.

'Then one day the young elephant saw the half-buried iron, and turning

to the elder said: "What is this?" "It is even my sorrow," said he

who had befriended him. Then that other put out his trunk and in the

twinkling of an eyelash abolished the ring, saying: "The appointed

time has come." So the virtuous elephant who had waited temperately

and done kind acts was relieved, at the appointed time, by the very

calf whom he had turned aside to cherish--let all listen to the Tataka!

for the Elephant was Ananda, and the Calf that broke the ring was none

other than The Lord Himself...'

Then he would shake his head benignly, and over the ever-clicking

rosary point out how free that elephant-calf was from the sin of pride.

He was as humble as a chela who, seeing his master sitting in the dust

outside the Gates of Learning, over-leapt the gates (though they were

locked) and took his master to his heart in the presence of the

proud-stomached city. Rich would be the reward of such a master and

such a chela when the time came for them to seek freedom together!

So did the lama speak, coming and going across India as softly as a

bat. A sharp-tongued old woman in a house among the fruit-trees behind

Saharunpore honoured him as the woman honoured the prophet, but his

chamber was by no means upon the wall. In an apartment of the

forecourt overlooked by cooing doves he would sit, while she laid aside

her useless veil and chattered of spirits and fiends of Kulu, of

grandchildren unborn, and of the free-tongued brat who had talked to

her in the resting-place. Once, too, he strayed alone from the Grand

Trunk Road below Umballa to the very village whose priest had tried to

drug him; but the kind Heaven that guards lamas sent him at twilight

through the crops, absorbed and unsuspicious, to the Rissaldar's door.

Here was like to have been a grave misunderstanding, for the old

soldier asked him why the Friend of the Stars had gone that way only

six days before.

'That may not be,' said the lama. 'He has gone back to his own people.'

'He sat in that corner telling a hundred merry tales five nights ago,'

his host insisted. 'True, he vanished somewhat suddenly in the dawn

after foolish talk with my granddaughter. He grows apace, but he is

the same Friend of the Stars as brought me true word of the war. Have

ye parted?'

'Yes--and no,' the lama replied. 'We--we have not altogether parted,

but the time is not ripe that we should take the Road together. He

acquires wisdom in another place. We must wait.'

'All one--but if it were not the boy how did he come to speak so

continually of thee?'

'And what said he?' asked the lama eagerly.

'Sweet words--an hundred thousand--that thou art his father and mother

and such all. Pity that he does not take the Qpeen's service. He is

fearless.'

This news amazed the lama, who did not then know how religiously Kim

kept to the contract made with Mahbub Ali, and perforce ratified by

Colonel Creighton...

'There is no holding the young pony from the game,' said the

horse-dealer when the Colonel pointed out that vagabonding over India

in holiday time was absurd. 'If permission be refused to go and come

as he chooses, he will make light of the refusal. Then who is to catch

him? Colonel Sahib, only once in a thousand years is a horse born so

well fitted for the game as this our colt. And we need men.'

Chapter 10

Your tiercel's too long at hack, Sire. He's no eyass

But a passage-hawk that footed ere we caught him,

Dangerously free o' the air. Faith! were he mine

(As mine's the glove he binds to for his tirings)

I'd fly him with a make-hawk. He's in yarak

Plumed to the very point--so manned, so weathered...

Give him the firmament God made him for,

And what shall take the air of him?

Gow's Watch

Lurgan Sahib did not use as direct speech, but his advice tallied with

Mahbub's; and the upshot was good for Kim. He knew better now than to

leave Lucknow city in native garb, and if Mahbub were anywhere within

reach of a letter, it was to Mahbub's camp he headed, and made his

change under the Pathan's wary eye. Could the little Survey paint-box

that he used for map-tinting in term-time have found a tongue to tell

of holiday doings, he might have been expelled. Once Mahbub and he

went together as far as the beautiful city of Bombay, with three

truckloads of tram-horses, and Mahbub nearly melted when Kim proposed a

sail in a dhow across the Indian Ocean to buy Gulf Arabs, which, he

understood from a hanger-on of the dealer Abdul Rahman, fetched better

prices than mere Kabulis.

He dipped his hand into the dish with that great trader when Mahbub and

a few co-religionists were invited to a big Haj dinner. They came back

by way of Karachi by sea, when Kim took his first experience of

sea-sickness sitting on the fore-hatch of a coasting-steamer, well

persuaded he had been poisoned. The Babu's famous drug-box proved

useless, though Kim had restocked it at Bombay. Mahbub had business at

Quetta, and there Kim, as Mahbub admitted, earned his keep, and perhaps

a little over, by spending four curious days as scullion in the house

of a fat Commissariat sergeant, from whose office-box, in an auspicious

moment, he removed a little vellum ledger which he copied out--it

seemed to deal entirely with cattle and camel sales--by moonlight,

lying behind an outhouse, all through one hot night. Then he returned

the ledger to its place, and, at Mahbub's word, left that service

unpaid, rejoining him six miles down the road, the clean copy in his

bosom.

'That soldier is a small fish,' Mahbub Ali explained, 'but in time we

shall catch the larger one. He only sells oxen at two prices--one for

himself and one for the Government--which I do not think is a sin.'

'Why could not I take away the little book and be done with it?'

'Then he would have been frightened, and he would have told his master.

Then we should miss, perhaps, a great number of new rifles which seek

their way up from Quetta to the North. The Game is so large that one

sees but a little at a time.'

'Oho!' said Kim, and held his tongue. That was in the monsoon

holidays, after he had taken the prize for mathematics. The Christmas

holidays he spent--deducting ten days for private amusements--with

Lurgan Sahib, where he sat for the most part in front of a roaring

wood-fire--Jakko road was four feet deep in snow that year--and--the

small Hindu had gone away to be married--helped Lurgan to thread

pearls. He made Kim learn whole chapters of the Koran by heart, till

he could deliver them with the very roll and cadence of a mullah.

Moreover, he told Kim the names and properties of many native drugs, as

well as the runes proper to recite when you administer them. And in

the evenings he wrote charms on parchment--elaborate pentagrams crowned

with the names of devils--Murra, and Awan the Companion of Kings--all

fantastically written in the corners. More to the point, he advised

Kim as to the care of his own body, the cure of fever-fits, and simple

remedies of the Road. A week before it was time to go down, Colonel

Creighton Sahib--this was unfair--sent Kim a written examination paper

that concerned itself solely with rods and chains and links and angles.

Next holidays he was out with Mahbub, and here, by the way, he nearly

died of thirst, plodding through the sand on a camel to the mysterious

city of Bikanir, where the wells are four hundred feet deep, and lined

throughout with camel-bone. It was not an amusing trip from Kim's

point of view, because--in defiance of the contract--the Colonel

ordered him to make a map of that wild, walled city; and since

Mohammedan horse-boys and pipe-tenders are not expected to drag

Survey-chains round the capital of an independent Native State, Kim was

forced to pace all his distances by means of a bead rosary. He used the

compass for bearings as occasion served--after dark chiefly, when the

camels had been fed--and by the help of his little Survey paint-box of

six colour-cakes and three brushes, he achieved something not remotely

unlike the city of Jeysulmir. Mahbub laughed a great deal, and advised

him to make up a written report as well; and in the back of the big

account-book that lay under the flap of Mahbub's pet saddle Kim fell to

work..

'It must hold everything that thou hast seen or touched or considered.

Write as though the Jung-i-Lat Sahib himself had come by stealth with a

vast army outsetting to war.'

'How great an army?'

'Oh, half a lakh of men.'

'Folly! Remember how few and bad were the wells in the sand. Not a

thousand thirsty men could come near by here.'

'Then write that down--also all the old breaches in the walls and

whence the firewood is cut--and what is the temper and disposition of

the King. I stay here till all my horses are sold. I will hire a room

by the gateway, and thou shalt be my accountant. There is a good lock

to the door.'

The report in its unmistakable St Xavier's running script, and the

brown, yellow, and lake-daubed map, was on hand a few years ago (a

careless clerk filed it with the rough notes of E's second Seistan

survey), but by now the pencil characters must be almost illegible. Kim

translated it, sweating under the light of an oil-lamp, to Mahbub, the

second day of their return-journey.

The Pathan rose and stooped over his dappled saddle-bags.

'I knew it would be worthy a dress of honour, and so I made one ready,'

he said, smiling. 'Were I Amir of Afghanistan (and some day we may see

him), I would fill thy mouth with gold.' He laid the garments formally

at Kim's feet. There was a gold-embroidered Peshawur turban-cap,

rising to a cone, and a big turban-cloth ending in a broad fringe of

gold. There was a Delhi embroidered waistcoat to slip over a milky

white shirt, fastening to the right, ample and flowing; green pyjamas

with twisted silk waist-string; and that nothing might be lacking,

russia-leather slippers, smelling divinely, with arrogantly curled tips.

'Upon a Wednesday, and in the morning, to put on new clothes is

auspicious,' said Mahbub solemnly. 'But we must not forget the wicked

folk in the world. So!'

He capped all the splendour, that was taking Kim's delighted breath

away, with a mother-of-pearl, nickel-plated, self-extracting .450

revolver.

'I had thought of a smaller bore, but reflected that this takes

Government bullets. A man can always come by those--especially across

the Border. Stand up and let me look.' He clapped Kim on the

shoulder. 'May you never be tired, Pathan! Oh, the hearts to be

broken! Oh, the eyes under the eyelashes, looking sideways!'

Kim turned about, pointed his toes, stretched, and felt mechanically

for the moustache that was just beginning. Then he stooped towards

Mahbub's feet to make proper acknowledgment with fluttering,

quick-patting hands; his heart too full for words. Mahbub forestalled

and embraced him.

'My son, said he, 'what need of words between us? But is not the

little gun a delight? All six cartridges come out at one twist. It is

borne in the bosom next the skin, which, as it were, keeps it oiled.

Never put it elsewhere, and please God, thou shalt some day kill a man

with it.'

'Hai mai!' said Kim ruefully. 'If a Sahib kills a man he is hanged in

the jail.'

'True: but one pace beyond the Border, men are wiser. Put it away;

but fill it first. Of what use is a gun unfed?'

'When I go back to the madrissah I must return it. They do not allow

little guns. Thou wilt keep it for me?'

'Son, I am wearied of that madrissah, where they take the best years of

a man to teach him what he can only learn upon the Road. The folly of

the Sahibs has neither top nor bottom. No matter. Maybe thy written

report shall save thee further bondage; and God He knows we need men

more and more in the Game.'

They marched, jaw-bound against blowing sand, across the salt desert to

Jodhpur, where Mahbub and his handsome nephew Habib Ullah did much

trading; and then sorrowfully, in European clothes, which he was fast

outgrowing, Kim went second-class to St Xavier's. Three weeks later,

Colonel Creighton, pricing Tibetan ghost-daggers at Lurgan's shop,

faced Mahbub Ali openly mutinous. Lurgan Sahib operated as support in

reserve.

'The pony is made--finished--mouthed and paced, Sahib! From now on,

day by day, he will lose his manners if he is kept at tricks. Drop the

rein on his back and let go,' said the horse-dealer. 'We need him.'

'But he is so young, Mahbub--not more than sixteen--is he?'

'When I was fifteen, I had shot my man and begot my man, Sahib.'

'You impenitent old heathen!' Creighton turned to Lurgan. The black

beard nodded assent to the wisdom of the Afghan's dyed scarlet.

'I should have used him long ago,' said Lurgan. 'The younger the

better. That is why I always have my really valuable jewels watched by

a child. You sent him to me to try. I tried him in every way: he is

the only boy I could not make to see things.'

'In the crystal--in the ink-pool?' demanded Mahbub.

'No. Under my hand, as I told you. That has never happened before. It

means that he is strong enough--but you think it skittles, Colonel

Creighton--to make anyone do anything he wants. And that is three

years ago. I have taught him a good deal since, Colonel Creighton. I

think you waste him now.'

'Hmm! Maybe you're right. But, as you know, there is no Survey work

for him at present.'

'Let him out let him go,' Mahbub interrupted. 'Who expects any colt to

carry heavy weight at first? Let him run with the caravans--like our

white camel-colts--for luck. I would take him myself, but--'

'There is a little business where he would be most useful--in the

South,' said Lurgan, with peculiar suavity, dropping his heavy blued

eyelids.

'E.23 has that in hand,' said Creighton quickly. 'He must not go down

there. Besides, he knows no Turki.'

'Only tell him the shape and the smell of the letters we want and he

will bring them back,' Lurgan insisted.

'No. That is a man's job,' said Creighton.

It was a wry-necked matter of unauthorized and incendiary

correspondence between a person who claimed to be the ultimate

authority in all matters of the Mohammedan religion throughout the

world, and a younger member of a royal house who had been brought to

book for kidnapping women within British territory. The Moslem

Archbishop had been emphatic and over-arrogant; the young prince was

merely sulky at the curtailment of his privileges, but there was no

need he should continue a correspondence which might some day

compromise him. One letter indeed had been procured, but the finder

was later found dead by the roadside in the habit of an Arab trader, as

E.23, taking up the work, duly reported.

These facts, and a few others not to be published, made both Mahbub and

Creighton shake their heads.

'Let him go out with his Red Lama,' said the horse-dealer with visible

effort. 'He is fond of the old man. He can learn his paces by the

rosary at least.'

'I have had some dealings with the old man--by letter,' said Colonel

Creighton, smiling to himself. 'Whither goes he?'

'Up and down the land, as he has these three years. He seeks a River

of Healing. God's curse upon all--' Mahbub checked himself. 'He beds

down at the Temple of the Tirthankars or at Buddh Gaya when he is in

from the Road. Then he goes to see the boy at the madrissah, as we

know for the boy was punished for it twice or thrice. He is quite mad,

but a peaceful man. I have met him. The Babu also has had dealings

with him. We have watched him for three years. Red Lamas are not so

common in Hind that one loses track.'

'Babus are very curious,' said Lurgan meditatively. 'Do you know what

Hurree Babu really wants? He wants to be made a member of the Royal

Society by taking ethnological notes. I tell you, I tell him about the

lama everything which Mahbub and the boy have told me. Hurree Babu goes

down to Benares--at his own expense, I think.'

'I don't,' said Creighton briefly. He had paid Hurree's travelling

expenses, out of a most lively curiosity to learn what the lama might

be.

'And he applies to the lama for information on lamaism, and

devil-dances, and spells and charms, several times in these few years.

Holy Virgin! I could have told him all that yeears ago. I think

Hurree Babu is getting too old for the Road. He likes better to

collect manners and customs information. Yes, he wants to be an FRS.

'Hurree thinks well of the boy, doesn't he?'

'Oh, very indeed--we have had some pleasant evenings at my little

place--but I think it would be waste to throw him away with Hurree on

the Ethnological side.'

'Not for a first experience. How does that strike you, Mahbub? Let

the boy run with the lama for six months. After that we can see. He

will get experience.'

'He has it already, Sahib--as a fish controls the water he swims in.

But for every reason it will be well to loose him from the school.'

'Very good, then,' said Creighton, half to himself. 'He can go with

the lama, and if Hurree Babu cares to keep an eye on them so much the

better. He won't lead the boy into any danger as Mahbub would.

Curious--his wish to be an F R S. Very human, too. He is best on the

Ethnological side--Hurree.'

No money and no preferment would have drawn Creighton from his work on

the Indian Survey, but deep in his heart also lay the ambition to write

'F R S' after his name. Honours of a sort he knew could be obtained by

ingenuity and the help of friends, but, to the best of his belief,

nothing save work--papers representing a life of it--took a man into

the Society which he had bombarded for years with monographs on strange

Asiatic cults and unknown customs. Nine men out of ten would flee from

a Royal Society soiree in extremity of boredom; but Creighton was the

tenth, and at times his soul yearned for the crowded rooms in easy

London where silver-haired, bald-headed gentlemen who know nothing of

the Army move among spectroscopic experiments, the lesser plants of the

frozen tundras, electric flight-measuring machines, and apparatus for

slicing into fractional millimetres the left eye of the female

mosquito. By all right and reason, it was the Royal Geographical that

should have appealed to him, but men are as chancy as children in their

choice of playthings. So Creighton smiled, and thought the better of

Hurree Babu, moved by like desire.

He dropped the ghost-dagger and looked up at Mahbub.

'How soon can we get the colt from the stable?' said the horse-dealer,

reading his eyes.

'Hmm! If I withdraw him by order now--what will he do, think you? I

have never before assisted at the teaching of such an one.'

'He will come to me,' said Mahbub promptly. 'Lurgan Sahib and I will

prepare him for the Road.'

'So be it, then. For six months he shall run at his choice. But who

will be his sponsor?'

Lurgan slightly inclined his head. 'He will not tell anything, if that

is what you are afraid of, Colonel Creighton.'

'It's only a boy, after all.'

'Ye-es; but first, he has nothing to tell; and secondly, he knows what

would happen. Also, he is very fond of Mahbub, and of me a little.'

'Will he draw pay?' demanded the practical horse-dealer.

'Food and water allowance only. Twenty rupees a month.'

One advantage of the Secret Service is that it has no worrying audit.

That Service is ludicrously starved, of course, but the funds are

administered by a few men who do not call for vouchers or present

itemized accounts. Mahbub's eyes lighted with almost a Sikh's love of

money. Even Lurgan's impassive face changed. He considered the years

to come when Kim would have been entered and made to the Great Game

that never ceases day and night, throughout India. He foresaw honour

and credit in the mouths of a chosen few, coming to him from his pupil.

Lurgan Sahib had made E.23 what E.23 was, out of a bewildered,

impertinent, lying, little North-West Province man.

But the joy of these masters was pale and smoky beside the joy of Kim

when St Xavier's Head called him aside, with word that Colonel

Creighton had sent for him.

'I understand, O'Hara, that he has found you a place as an assistant

chain-man in the Canal Department: that comes of taking up

mathematics. It is great luck for you, for you are only sixteen; but

of course you understand that you do not become pukka [permanent] till

you have passed the autumn examination. So you must not think you are

going out into the world to enjoy yourself, or that your fortune is

made. There is a great deal of hard work before you. Only, if you

succeed in becoming pukka, you can rise, you know, to four hundred and

fifty a month.' Whereat the Principal gave him much good advice as to

his conduct, and his manners, and his morals; and others, his elders,

who had not been wafted into billets, talked as only Anglo-Indian lads

can, of favouritism and corruption. Indeed, young Cazalet, whose

father was a pensioner at Chunar, hinted very broadly that Colonel

Creighton's interest in Kim was directly paternal; and Kim, instead of

retaliating, did not even use language. He was thinking of the immense

fun to come, of Mahbub's letter of the day before, all neatly written

in English, making appointment for that afternoon in a house the very

name of which would have crisped the Principal's hair with horror...

Said Kim to Mahbub in Lucknow railway station that evening, above the

luggage-scales: 'I feared lest at the last, the roof would fall upon

me and cheat me. It is indeed all finished, O my father?'

Mahbub snapped his fingers to show the utterness of that end, and his

eyes blazed like red coals.

'Then where is the pistol that I may wear it?'

'Softly! A half-year, to run without heel-ropes. I begged that much

from Colonel Creighton Sahib. At twenty rupees a month. Old Red Hat

knows that thou art coming.'

'I will pay thee dustoorie [commission] on my pay for three months,'

said Kim gravely. 'Yea, two rupees a month. But first we must get rid

of these.' He plucked his thin linen trousers and dragged at his

collar. 'I have brought with me all that I need on the Road. My trunk

has gone up to Lurgan Sahib's.'

'Who sends his salaams to thee--Sahib.'

'Lurgan Sahib is a very clever man. But what dost thou do?'

'I go North again, upon the Great Game. What else? Is thy mind still

set on following old Red Hat?'

'Do not forget he made me that I am--though he did not know it. Year by

year, he sent the money that taught me.'

'I would have done as much--had it struck my thick head,' Mahbub

growled. 'Come away. The lamps are lit now, and none will mark thee

in the bazar. We go to Huneefa's house.'

On the way thither, Mahbub gave him much the same sort of advice as his

mother gave to Lemuel, and curiously enough, Mahbub was exact to point

out how Huneefa and her likes destroyed kings.

'And I remember,' he quoted maliciously, 'one who said, "Trust a snake

before an harlot, and an harlot before a Pathan, Mahbub Ali." Now,

excepting as to Pathans, of whom I am one, all that is true. Most true

is it in the Great Game, for it is by means of women that all plans

come to ruin and we lie out in the dawning with our throats cut. So it

happened to such a one.' He gave the reddest particulars.

'Then why--?' Kim paused before a filthy staircase that climbed to the

warm darkness of an upper chamber, in the ward that is behind Azim

Ullah's tobacco-shop. Those who know it call it The Birdcage--it is so

full of whisperings and whistlings and chirrupings.