Kim

The room, with its dirty cushions and half-smoked hookahs, smelt

abominably of stale tobacco. In one corner lay a huge and shapeless

woman clad in greenish gauzes, and decked, brow, nose, ear, neck,

wrist, arm, waist, and ankle with heavy native jewellery. When she

turned it was like the clashing of copper pots. A lean cat in the

balcony outside the window mewed hungrily. Kim checked, bewildered, at

the door-curtain.

'Is that the new stuff, Mahbub?' said Huneefa lazily, scarce troubling

to remove the mouthpiece from her lips. 'O Buktanoos!'--like most of

her kind, she swore by the Djinns--'O Buktanoos! He is very good to

look upon.'

'That is part of the selling of the horse,' Mahbub explained to Kim,

who laughed.

'I have heard that talk since my Sixth Day,' he replied, squatting by

the light. 'Whither does it lead?'

'To protection. Tonight we change thy colour. This sleeping under

roofs has blanched thee like an almond. But Huneefa has the secret of

a colour that catches. No painting of a day or two. Also, we fortify

thee against the chances of the Road. That is my gift to thee, my son.

Take out all metals on thee and lay them here. Make ready, Huneefa.'

Kim dragged forth his compass, Survey paint-box, and the new-filled

medicine-box. They had all accompanied his travels, and boylike he

valued them immensely.

The woman rose slowly and moved with her hands a little spread before

her. Then Kim saw that she was blind. 'No, no,' she muttered, 'the

Pathan speaks truth--my colour does not go in a week or a month, and

those whom I protect are under strong guard.'

'When one is far off and alone, it would not be well to grow blotched

and leprous of a sudden,' said Mahbub. 'When thou wast with me I could

oversee the matter. Besides, a Pathan is a fair-skin. Strip to the

waist now and look how thou art whitened.' Huneefa felt her way back

from an inner room. 'It is no matter, she cannot see.' He took a

pewter bowl from her ringed hand.

The dye-stuff showed blue and gummy. Kim experimented on the back of

his wrist, with a dab of cotton-wool; but Huneefa heard him.

'No, no,' she cried, 'the thing is not done thus, but with the proper

ceremonies. The colouring is the least part. I give thee the full

protection of the Road.'

'Tadoo? [magic],'said Kim, with a half start. He did not like the

white, sightless eyes. Mahbub's hand on his neck bowed him to the

floor, nose within an inch of the boards.

'Be still. No harm comes to thee, my son. I am thy sacrifice!'

He could not see what the woman was about, but heard the dish-clash of

her jewellery for many minutes. A match lit up the darkness; he caught

the well-known purr and fizzle of grains of incense. Then the room

filled with smoke--heavy aromatic, and stupefying. Through growing

drowse he heard the names of devils--of Zulbazan, Son of Eblis, who

lives in bazars and paraos, making all the sudden lewd wickedness of

wayside halts; of Dulhan, invisible about mosques, the dweller among

the slippers of the faithful, who hinders folk from their prayers; and

Musboot, Lord of lies and panic. Huneefa, now whispering in his ear,

now talking as from an immense distance, touched him with horrible soft

fingers, but Mahbub's grip never shifted from his neck till, relaxing

with a sigh, the boy lost his senses.

'Allah! How he fought! We should never have done it but for the

drugs. That was his white blood, I take it,' said Mahbub testily. 'Go

on with the dawut [invocation]. Give him full Protection.'

'O Hearer! Thou that hearest with ears, be present. Listen, O

Hearer!' Huneefa moaned, her dead eyes turned to the west. The dark

room filled with moanings and snortings.

From the outer balcony, a ponderous figure raised a round bullet head

and coughed nervously.

'Do not interrupt this ventriloquial necromanciss, my friend,' it said

in English. 'I opine that it is very disturbing to you, but no

enlightened observer is jolly-well upset.'

'..........I will lay a plot for their ruin! O Prophet, bear with the

unbelievers. Let them alone awhile!' Huneefa's face, turned to the

northward, worked horribly, and it was as though voices from the

ceiling answered her.

Hurree Babu returned to his note-book, balanced on the window-sill, but

his hand shook. Huneefa, in some sort of drugged ecstasy, wrenched

herself to and fro as she sat cross-legged by Kim's still head, and

called upon devil after devil, in the ancient order of the ritual,

binding them to avoid the boy's every action.

'With Him are the keys of the Secret Things! None knoweth them besides

Himself He knoweth that which is in the dry land and in the sea!'

Again broke out the unearthly whistling responses.

'I--I apprehend it is not at all malignant in its operation?' said the

Babu, watching the throat-muscles quiver and jerk as Huneefa spoke with

tongues. 'It--it is not likely that she has killed the boy? If so, I

decline to be witness at the trial .....What was the last hypothetical

devil mentioned?'

'Babuji,' said Mahbub in the vernacular. 'I have no regard for the

devils of Hind, but the Sons of Eblis are far otherwise, and whether

they be jumalee [well-affected] or jullalee [terrible] they love not

Kafirs.'

'Then you think I had better go?' said Hurree Babu, half rising. 'They

are, of course, dematerialized phenomena. Spencer says.'

Huneefa's crisis passed, as these things must, in a paroxysm of

howling, with a touch of froth at the lips. She lay spent and

motionless beside Kim, and the crazy voices ceased.

'Wah! That work is done. May the boy be better for it; and Huneefa is

surely a mistress of dawut. Help haul her aside, Babu. Do not be

afraid.'

'How am I to fear the absolutely non-existent?' said Hurree Babu,

talking English to reassure himself. It is an awful thing still to

dread the magic that you contemptuously investigate--to collect

folk-lore for the Royal Society with a lively belief in all Powers of

Darkness.

Mahbub chuckled. He had been out with Hurree on the Road ere now. 'Let

us finish the colouring,' said he. 'The boy is well protected if--if

the Lords of the Air have ears to hear. I am a Sufi [free-thinker],

but when one can get blind-sides of a woman, a stallion, or a devil,

why go round to invite a kick? Set him upon the way, Babu, and see

that old Red Hat does not lead him beyond our reach. I must get back

to my horses.'

'All raight,' said Hurree Babu. 'He is at present curious spectacle.'

About third cockcrow, Kim woke after a sleep of thousands of years.

Huneefa, in her corner, snored heavily, but Mahbub was gone.

'I hope you were not frightened,' said an oily voice at his elbow. 'I

superintended entire operation, which was most interesting from

ethnological point of view. It was high-class dawut.'

'Huh!' said Kim, recognizing Hurree Babu, who smiled ingratiatingly.

'And also I had honour to bring down from Lurgan your present costume.

I am not in the habit offeecially of carrying such gauds to

subordinates, but'--he giggled--'your case is noted as exceptional on

the books. I hope Mr Lurgan will note my action.'

Kim yawned and stretched himself. It was good to turn and twist within

loose clothes once again.

'What is this?' He looked curiously at the heavy duffle-stuff loaded

with the scents of the far North.

'Oho! That is inconspicuous dress of chela attached to service of

lamaistic lama. Complete in every particular,' said Hurree Babu,

rolling into the balcony to clean his teeth at a goglet. 'I am of

opeenion it is not your old gentleman's precise releegion, but rather

sub-variant of same. I have contributed rejected notes To Whom It May

Concern: Asiatic Quarterly Review on these subjects. Now it is

curious that the old gentleman himself is totally devoid of

releegiosity. He is not a dam' particular.'

'Do you know him?'

Hurree Babu held up his hand to show he was engaged in the prescribed

rites that accompany tooth-cleaning and such things among decently bred

Bengalis. Then he recited in English an Arya-Somaj prayer of a

theistical nature, and stuffed his mouth with pan and betel.

'Oah yes. I have met him several times at Benares, and also at Buddh

Gaya, to interrogate him on releegious points and devil-worship. He is

pure agnostic--same as me.'

Huneefa stirred in her sleep, and Hurree Babu jumped nervously to the

copper incense-burner, all black and discoloured in morning-light,

rubbed a finger in the accumulated lamp-black, and drew it diagonally

across his face.

'Who has died in thy house?' asked Kim in the vernacular.

'None. But she may have the Evil Eye--that sorceress,' the Babu

replied.

'What dost thou do now, then?'

'I will set thee on thy way to Benares, if thou goest thither, and tell

thee what must be known by Us.'

'I go. At what hour runs the te-rain?' He rose to his feet, looked

round the desolate chamber and at the yellow-wax face of Huneefa as the

low sun stole across the floor. 'Is there money to be paid that witch?'

'No. She has charmed thee against all devils and all dangers in the

name of her devils. It was Mahbub's desire.' In English: 'He is

highly obsolete, I think, to indulge in such supersteetion. Why, it is

all ventriloquy. Belly-speak--eh?'

Kim snapped his fingers mechanically to avert whatever evil--Mahbub, he

knew, meditated none--might have crept in through Huneefa's

ministrations; and Hurree giggled once more. But as he crossed the

room he was careful not to step in Huneefa's blotched, squat shadow on

the boards. Witches--when their time is on them--can lay hold of the

heels of a man's soul if he does that.

'Now you must well listen,' said the Babu when they were in the fresh

air. 'Part of these ceremonies which we witnessed they include supply

of effeecient amulet to those of our Department. If you feel in your

neck you will find one small silver amulet, verree cheap. That is ours.

Do you understand?'

'Oah yes, hawa-dilli [a heart-lifter],' said Kim, feeling at his neck.

'Huneefa she makes them for two rupees twelve annas with--oh, all sorts

of exorcisms. They are quite common, except they are partially black

enamel, and there is a paper inside each one full of names of local

saints and such things. Thatt is Huneefa's look-out, you see? Huneefa

makes them onlee for us, but in case she does not, when we get them we

put in, before issue, one small piece of turquoise. Mr Lurgan he gives

them. There is no other source of supply; but it was me invented all

this. It is strictly unoffeecial of course, but convenient for

subordinates. Colonel Creighton he does not know. He is European.

The turquoise is wrapped in the paper ... Yes, that is road to railway

station ... Now suppose you go with the lama, or with me, I hope, some

day, or with Mahbub. Suppose we get into a dam'-tight place. I am a

fearful man--most fearful--but I tell you I have been in dam'-tight

places more than hairs on my head. You say: "I am Son of the Charm."

Verree good.'

'I do not understand quite. We must not be heard talking English here.'

'That is all raight. I am only Babu showing off my English to you. All

we Babus talk English to show off;' said Hurree, flinging his

shoulder-cloth jauntily. 'As I was about to say, "Son of the Charm"

means that you may be member of the Sat Bhai--the Seven Brothers, which

is Hindi and Tantric. It is popularly supposed to be extinct Society,

but I have written notes to show it is still extant. You see, it is

all my invention. Verree good. Sat Bhai has many members, and perhaps

before they jolly-well-cut-your-throat they may give you just a chance

of life. That is useful, anyhow. And moreover, these foolish

natives--if they are not too excited--they always stop to think before

they kill a man who says he belongs to any speecific organization. You

see? You say then when you are in tight place, "I am Son of the

Charm", and you get--perhaps--ah--your second wind. That is only in

extreme instances, or to open negotiations with a stranger. Can you

quite see? Verree good. But suppose now, I, or any one of the

Department, come to you dressed quite different. You would not know me

at all unless I choose, I bet you. Some day I will prove it. I come

as Ladakhi trader--oh, anything--and I say to you: "You want to buy

precious stones?" You say: "Do I look like a man who buys precious

stones?" Then I say: "Even verree poor man can buy a turquoise or

tarkeean."'

'That is kichree--vegetable curry,' said Kim.

'Of course it is. You say: "Let me see the tarkeean." Then I say:

"It was cooked by a woman, and perhaps it is bad for your caste." Then

you say: "There is no caste when men go to--look for tarkeean." You

stop a little between those words, "to--look". That is thee whole

secret. The little stop before the words.'

Kim repeated the test-sentence.

'That is all right. Then I will show you my turquoise if there is

time, and then you know who I am, and then we exchange views and

documents and those-all things. And so it is with any other man of us.

We talk sometimes about turquoises and sometimes about tarkeean, but

always with that little stop in the words. It is verree easy. First,

"Son of the Charm", if you are in a tight place. Perhaps that may help

you--perhaps not. Then what I have told you about the tarkeean, if you

want to transact offeecial business with a strange man. Of course, at

present, you have no offeecial business. You are--ah

ha!--supernumerary on probation. Quite unique specimen. If you were

Asiatic of birth you might be employed right off; but this half-year of

leave is to make you de-Englishized, you see? The lama he expects you,

because I have demi-offeecially informed him you have passed all your

examinations, and will soon obtain Government appointment. Oh ho! You

are on acting-allowance, you see: so if you are called upon to help

Sons of the Charm mind you jolly-well try. Now I shall say good-bye, my

dear fellow, and I hope you--ah--will come out top-side all raight.'

Hurree Babu stepped back a pace or two into the crowd at the entrance

of Lucknow station and--was gone. Kim drew a deep breath and hugged

himself all over. The nickel-plated revolver he could feel in the

bosom of his sad-coloured robe, the amulet was on his neck;

begging-gourd, rosary, and ghost-dagger (Mr Lurgan had forgotten

nothing) were all to hand, with medicine, paint-box, and compass, and

in a worn old purse-belt embroidered with porcupine-quill patterns lay

a month's pay. Kings could be no richer. He bought sweetmeats in a

leaf-cup from a Hindu trader, and ate them with glad rapture till a

policeman ordered him off the steps.

Chapter 11

Give the man who is not made

To his trade

Swords to fling and catch again,

Coins to ring and snatch again,

Men to harm and cure again,

Snakes to charm and lure again--

He'll be hurt by his own blade,

By his serpents disobeyed,

By his clumsiness bewrayed,'

By the people mocked to scorn--

So 'tis not with juggler born!

Pinch of dust or withered flower,

Chance-flung fruit or borrowed staff,

Serve his need and shore his power,

Bind the spell, or loose the laugh!

But a man who, etc.

The Juggler's Song, op. 15

Followed a sudden natural reaction.

'Now am I alone--all alone,' he thought. 'In all India is no one so

alone as I! If I die today, who shall bring the news--and to whom? If I

live and God is good, there will be a price upon my head, for I am a

Son of the Charm--I, Kim.'

A very few white people, but many Asiatics, can throw themselves into a

mazement as it were by repeating their own names over and over again to

themselves, letting the mind go free upon speculation as to what is

called personal identity. When one grows older, the power, usually,

departs, but while it lasts it may descend upon a man at any moment.

'Who is Kim--Kim--Kim?'

He squatted in a corner of the clanging waiting-room, rapt from all

other thoughts; hands folded in lap, and pupils contracted to

pin-points. In a minute--in another half-second--he felt he would

arrive at the solution of the tremendous puzzle; but here, as always

happens, his mind dropped away from those heights with a rush of a

wounded bird, and passing his hand before his eyes, he shook his head.

A long-haired Hindu bairagi [holy man], who had just bought a ticket,

halted before him at that moment and stared intently.

'I also have lost it,' he said sadly. 'It is one of the Gates to the

Way, but for me it has been shut many years.'

'What is the talk?' said Kim, abashed.

'Thou wast wondering there in thy spirit what manner of thing thy soul

might be. The seizure came of a sudden. I know. Who should know but

I? Whither goest thou?'

'Toward Kashi [Benares].'

'There are no Gods there. I have proved them. I go to Prayag

[Allahabad] for the fifth time--seeking the Road to Enlightenment. Of

what faith art thou?'

'I too am a Seeker,' said Kim, using one of the lama's pet words.

'Though'--he forgot his Northern dress for the moment--'though Allah

alone knoweth what I seek.'

The old fellow slipped the bairagi's crutch under his armpit and sat

down on a patch of ruddy leopard's skin as Kim rose at the call for the

Benares train.

'Go in hope, little brother,' he said. 'It is a long road to the feet

of the One; but thither do we all travel.'

Kim did not feel so lonely after this, and ere he had sat out twenty

miles in the crowded compartment, was cheering his neighbours with a

string of most wonderful yarns about his own and his master's magical

gifts.

Benares struck him as a peculiarly filthy city, though it was pleasant

to find how his cloth was respected. At least one-third of the

population prays eternally to some group or other of the many million

deities, and so reveres every sort of holy man. Kim was guided to the

Temple of the Tirthankars, about a mile outside the city, near Sarnath,

by a chance-met Punjabi farmer--a Kamboh from Jullundur-way who had

appealed in vain to every God of his homestead to cure his small son,

and was trying Benares as a last resort.

'Thou art from the North?' he asked, shouldering through the press of

the narrow, stinking streets much like his own pet bull at home.

'Ay, I know the Punjab. My mother was a pahareen, but my father came

from Amritzar--by Jandiala,' said Kim, oiling his ready tongue for the

needs of the Road.

'Jandiala--Jullundur? Oho! Then we be neighbours in some sort, as it

were.' He nodded tenderly to the wailing child in his arms. 'Whom

dost thou serve?'

'A most holy man at the Temple of the Tirthankers.'

'They are all most holy and--most greedy,' said the Jat with

bitterness. 'I have walked the pillars and trodden the temples till my

feet are flayed, and the child is no whit better. And the mother being

sick too ... Hush, then, little one ... We changed his name when the

fever came. We put him into girl's clothes. There was nothing we did

not do, except--I said to his mother when she bundled me off to

Benares--she should have come with me--I said Sakhi Sarwar Sultan would

serve us best. We know His generosity, but these down-country Gods are

strangers.'

The child turned on the cushion of the huge corded arms and looked at

Kim through heavy eyelids.

'And was it all worthless?' Kim asked, with easy interest.

'All worthless--all worthless,' said the child, lips cracking with

fever.

'The Gods have given him a good mind, at least' said the father

proudly. 'To think he should have listened so cleverly. Yonder is thy

Temple. Now I am a poor man--many priests have dealt with me--but my

son is my son, and if a gift to thy master can cure him--I am at my

very wits' end.'

Kim considered for a while, tingling with pride. Three years ago he

would have made prompt profit on the situation and gone his way without

a thought; but now, the very respect the Jat paid him proved that he

was a man. Moreover, he had tasted fever once or twice already, and

knew enough to recognize starvation when he saw it.

'Call him forth and I will give him a bond on my best yoke, so that the

child is cured.'

Kim halted at the carved outer door of the temple. A white-clad Oswal

banker from Ajmir, his sins of usury new wiped out, asked him what he

did.

'I am chela to Teshoo Lama, an Holy One from Bhotiyal--within there. He

bade me come. I wait. Tell him.'

'Do not forget the child,' cried the importunate Jat over his shoulder,

and then bellowed in Punjabi; 'O Holy One--O disciple of the Holy

One--O Gods above all the Worlds--behold affliction sitting at the

gate!' That cry is so common in Benares that the passers never turned

their heads.

The Oswal, at peace with mankind, carried the message into the darkness

behind him, and the easy, uncounted Eastern minutes slid by; for the

lama was asleep in his cell, and no priest would wake him. When the

click of his rosary again broke the hush of the inner court where the

calm images of the Arhats stand, a novice whispered, 'Thy chela is

here,' and the old man strode forth, forgetting the end of that prayer.

Hardly had the tall figure shown in the doorway than the Jat ran before

him, and, lifting up the child, cried: 'Look upon this, Holy One; and

if the Gods will, he lives--he lives!'

He fumbled in his waist-belt and drew out a small silver coin.

'What is now?' The lama's eyes turned to Kim. It was noticeable he

spoke far clearer Urdu than long ago, under ZamZammah; but father would

allow no private talk.

'It is no more than a fever,' said Kim. 'The child is not well fed.'

'He sickens at everything, and his mother is not here.'

'If it be permitted, I may cure, Holy One.'

'What! Have they made thee a healer? Wait here,' said the lama, and

he sat down by the Jat upon the lowest step of the temple, while Kim,

looking out of the corner of his eyes, slowly opened the little

betel-box. He had dreamed dreams at school of returning to the lama as

a Sahib--of chaffing the old man before he revealed himself--boy's

dreams all. There was more drama in this abstracted, brow-puckered

search through the tabloid-bottles, with a pause here and there for

thought and a muttered invocation between whiles. Quinine he had in

tablets, and dark brown meat-lozenges--beef most probably, but that was

not his business. The little thing would not eat, but it sucked at a

lozenge greedily, and said it liked the salt taste.

'Take then these six.' Kim handed them to the man. 'Praise the Gods,

and boil three in milk; other three in water. After he has drunk the

milk give him this' (it was the half of a quinine pill), 'and wrap him

warm. Give him the water of the other three, and the other half of

this white pill when he wakes. Meantime, here is another brown

medicine that he may suck at on the way home.'

'Gods, what wisdom!' said the Kamboh, snatching.

It was as much as Kim could remember of his own treatment in a bout of

autumn malaria--if you except the patter that he added to impress the

lama.

'Now go! Come again in the morning.'

'But the price--the price,' said the Jat, and threw back his sturdy

shoulders. 'My son is my son. Now that he will be whole again, how

shall I go back to his mother and say I took help by the wayside and

did not even give a bowl of curds in return?'

'They are alike, these Jats,' said Kim softly. 'The Jat stood on his

dunghill and the King's elephants went by. "O driver," said he, "what

will you sell those little donkeys for?"'

The Jat burst into a roar of laughter, stifled with apologies to the

lama. 'It is the saying of my own country the very talk of it. So are

we Jats all. I will come tomorrow with the child; and the blessing of

the Gods of the Homesteads--who are good little Gods--be on you both

... Now, son, we grow strong again. Do not spit it out, little

Princeling! King of my Heart, do not spit it out, and we shall be

strong men, wrestlers and club-wielders, by morning.'

He moved away, crooning and mumbling. The lama turned to Kim, and all

the loving old soul of him looked out through his narrow eyes.

'To heal the sick is to acquire merit; but first one gets knowledge.

That was wisely done, O Friend of all the World.'

'I was made wise by thee, Holy One,' said Kim, forgetting the little

play just ended; forgetting St Xavier's; forgetting his white blood;

forgetting even the Great Game as he stooped, Mohammedan-fashion, to

touch his master's feet in the dust of the Jain temple. 'My teaching I

owe to thee. I have eaten thy bread three years. My time is finished.

I am loosed from the schools. I come to thee.'

'Herein is my reward. Enter! Enter! And is all well?' They passed

to the inner court, where the afternoon sun sloped golden across.

'Stand that I may see. So!' He peered critically. 'It is no longer a

child, but a man, ripened in wisdom, walking as a physician. I did

well--I did well when I gave thee up to the armed men on that black

night. Dost thou remember our first day under Zam-Zammah?'

'Ay,' said Kim. 'Dost thou remember when I leapt off the carriage the

first day I went to--'

'The Gates of Learning? Truly. And the day that we ate the cakes

together at the back of the river by Nucklao. Aha! Many times hast

thou begged for me, but that day I begged for thee.'

'Good reason,' quoth Kim. 'I was then a scholar in the Gates of

Learning, and attired as a Sahib. Do not forget, Holy One,' he went on

playfully. 'I am still a Sahib--by thy favour.'

'True. And a Sahib in most high esteem. Come to my cell, chela.'

'How is that known to thee?'

The lama smiled. 'First by means of letters from the kindly priest

whom we met in the camp of armed men; but he is now gone to his own

country, and I sent the money to his brother.' Colonel Creighton, who

had succeeded to the trusteeship when Father Victor went to England

with the Mavericks, was hardly the Chaplain's brother. 'But I do not

well understand Sahibs' letters. They must be interpreted to me. I

chose a surer way. Many times when I returned from my Search to this

Temple, which has always been a nest to me, there came one seeking

Enlightenment--a man from Leh--that had been, he said, a Hindu, but

wearied of all those Gods.' The lama pointed to the Arhats.

'A fat man?' said Kim, a twinkle in his eye.

'Very fat; but I perceived in a little his mind was wholly given up to

useless things--such as devils and charms and the form and fashion of

our tea-drinkings in the monasteries, and by what road we initiated the

novices. A man abounding in questions; but he was a friend of thine,

chela. He told me that thou wast on the road to much honour as a

scribe. And I see thou art a physician.'

'Yes, that am I--a scribe, when I am a Sahib, but it is set aside when

I come as thy disciple. I have accomplished the years appointed for a

Sahib.'

'As it were a novice?' said the lama, nodding his head. 'Art thou

freed from the schools? I would not have thee unripe.'

'I am all free. In due time I take service under the Government as a

scribe--'

'Not as a warrior. That is well.'

'But first I come to wander with thee. Therefore I am here. Who begs

for thee, these days?' he went on quickly. The ice was thin.

'Very often I beg myself; but, as thou knowest, I am seldom here,

except when I come to look again at my disciple. From one end to

another of Hind have I travelled afoot and in the te-rain. A great and

a wonderful land! But here, when I put in, is as though I were in my

own Bhotiyal.'

He looked round the little clean cell complacently. A low cushion gave

him a seat, on which he had disposed himself in the cross-legged

attitude of the Bodhisat emerging from meditation; a black teak-wood

table, not twenty inches high, set with copper tea-cups, was before

him. In one corner stood a tiny altar, also of heavily carved teak,

bearing a copper-gilt image of the seated Buddha and fronted by a lamp,

an incense-holder, and a pair of copper flower-pots.

'The Keeper of the Images in the Wonder House acquired merit by giving

me these a year since,' he said, following Kim's eye. 'When one is far

from one's own land such things carry remembrance; and we must

reverence the Lord for that He showed the Way. See!' He pointed to a

curiously-built mound of coloured rice crowned with a fantastic metal

ornament. 'When I was Abbot in my own place--before I came to better

knowledge I made that offering daily. It is the Sacrifice of the

Universe to the Lord. Thus do we of Bhotiyal offer all the world daily

to the Excellent Law. And I do it even now, though I know that the

Excellent One is beyond all pinchings and pattings.' He snuffed from

his gourd.

'It is well done, Holy One,' Kim murmured, sinking at ease on the

cushions, very happy and rather tired.

'And also,' the old man chuckled, 'I write pictures of the Wheel of

Life. Three days to a picture. I was busied on it--or it may be I

shut my eyes a little--when they brought word of thee. It is good to

have thee here: I will show thee my art--not for pride's sake, but

because thou must learn. The Sahibs have not all this world's wisdom.'

He drew from under the table a sheet of strangely scented yellow

Chinese paper, the brushes, and slab of Indian ink. In cleanest,

severest outline he had traced the Great Wheel with its six spokes,

whose centre is the conjoined Hog, Snake, and Dove (Ignorance, Anger,

and Lust), and whose compartments are all the Heavens and Hells, and

all the chances of human life. Men say that the Bodhisat Himself first

drew it with grains of rice upon dust, to teach His disciples the cause

of things. Many ages have crystallized it into a most wonderful

convention crowded with hundreds of little figures whose every line

carries a meaning. Few can translate the picture-parable; there are

not twenty in all the world who can draw it surely without a copy: of

those who can both draw and expound are but three.

'I have a little learned to draw,' said Kim. 'But this is a marvel

beyond marvels.'

'I have written it for many years,' said the lama. 'Time was when I

could write it all between one lamp-lighting and the next. I will

teach thee the art--after due preparation; and I will show thee the

meaning of the Wheel.'

'We take the Road, then?'

'The Road and our Search. I was but waiting for thee. It was made

plain to me in a hundred dreams--notably one that came upon the night

of the day that the Gates of Learning first shut that without thee I

should never find my River. Again and again, as thou knowest, I put

this from me, fearing an illusion. Therefore I would not take thee

with me that day at Lucknow, when we ate the cakes. I would not take

thee till the time was ripe and auspicious. From the Hills to the Sea,

from the Sea to the Hills have I gone, but it was vain. Then I

remembered the Tataka.'

He told Kim the story of the elephant with the leg-iron, as he had told

it so often to the Jam priests.

'Further testimony is not needed,' he ended serenely. 'Thou wast sent

for an aid. That aid removed, my Search came to naught. Therefore we

will go out again together, and our Search sure.'

'Whither go we?'

'What matters, Friend of all the World? The Search, I say, is sure. If

need be, the River will break from the ground before us. I acquired

merit when I sent thee to the Gates of Learning, and gave thee the

jewel that is Wisdom. Thou didst return, I saw even now, a follower of

Sakyamuni, the Physician, whose altars are many in Bhotiyal. It is

sufficient. We are together, and all things are as they were--Friend

of all the World--Friend of the Stars--my chela!'

Then they talked of matters secular; but it was noticeable that the

lama never demanded any details of life at St Xavier's, nor showed the

faintest curiosity as to the manners and customs of Sahibs. His mind

moved all in the past, and he revived every step of their wonderful

first journey together, rubbing his hands and chuckling, till it

pleased him to curl himself up into the sudden sleep of old age.

Kim watched the last dusty sunshine fade out of the court, and played

with his ghost-dagger and rosary. The clamour of Benares, oldest of

all earth's cities awake before the Gods, day and night, beat round the

walls as the sea's roar round a breakwater. Now and again, a Jain

priest crossed the court, with some small offering to the images, and

swept the path about him lest by chance he should take the life of a

living thing. A lamp twinkled, and there followed the sound of a

prayer. Kim watched the stars as they rose one after another in the

still, sticky dark, till he fell asleep at the foot of the altar. That

night he dreamed in Hindustani, with never an English word...

'Holy One, there is the child to whom we gave the medicine,' he said,

about three o'clock in the morning, when the lama, also waking from

dreams, would have fared forth on pilgrimage. 'The Jat will be here at

the light.'

'I am well answered. In my haste I would have done a wrong.' He sat

down on the cushions and returned to his rosary. 'Surely old folk are

as children,' he said pathetically. 'They desire a matter--behold, it

must be done at once, or they fret and weep! Many times when I was

upon the Road I have been ready to stamp with my feet at the hindrance

of an ox-cart in the way, or a mere cloud of dust. It was not so when I

was a man--a long time ago. None the less it is wrongful--'

'But thou art indeed old, Holy One.'

'The thing was done. A Cause was put out into the world, and, old or

young, sick or sound, knowing or unknowing, who can rein in the effect

of that Cause? Does the Wheel hang still if a child spin it--or a

drunkard? Chela, this is a great and a terrible world.'

'I think it good,' Kim yawned. 'What is there to eat? I have not

eaten since yesterday even.'

'I had forgotten thy need. Yonder is good Bhotiyal tea and cold rice.'

'We cannot walk far on such stuff.' Kim felt all the European's lust

for flesh-meat, which is not accessible in a Jain temple. Yet, instead

of going out at once with the begging-bowl, he stayed his stomach on

slabs of cold rice till the full dawn. It brought the farmer, voluble,

stuttering with gratitude.

'In the night the fever broke and the sweat came,' he cried. 'Feel

here--his skin is fresh and new! He esteemed the salt lozenges, and

took milk with greed.' He drew the cloth from the child's face, and it

smiled sleepily at Kim. A little knot of Jain priests, silent but

all-observant, gathered by the temple door. They knew, and Kim knew

that they knew, how the old lama had met his disciple. Being courteous

folk, they had not obtruded themselves overnight by presence, word, or

gesture. Wherefore Kim repaid them as the sun rose.

'Thank the Gods of the Jains, brother,' he said, not knowing how those

Gods were named. 'The fever is indeed broken.'

'Look! See!' The lama beamed in the background upon his hosts of

three years. 'Was there ever such a chela? He follows our Lord the

Healer.'

Now the Jains officially recognize all the Gods of the Hindu creed, as

well as the Lingam and the Snake. They wear the Brahminical thread;

they adhere to every claim of Hindu caste-law. But, because they knew

and loved the lama, because he was an old man, because he sought the

Way, because he was their guest, and because he collogued long of

nights with the head-priest--as free-thinking a metaphysician as ever

split one hair into seventy--they murmured assent.

'Remember,'--Kim bent over the child--. 'this trouble may come again.'

'Not if thou hast the proper spell,' said the father.

'But in a little while we go away.'

'True,' said the lama to all the Jains. 'We go now together upon the

Search whereof I have often spoken. I waited till my chela was ripe.

Behold him! We go North. Never again shall I look upon this place of

my rest, O people of good will.'

'But I am not a beggar.' The cultivator rose to his feet, clutching

the child.

'Be still. Do not trouble the Holy One,' a priest cried.

'Go,' Kim whispered. 'Meet us again under the big railway bridge, and

for the sake of all the Gods of our Punjab, bring food--curry, pulse,

cakes fried in fat, and sweetmeats. Specially sweetmeats. Be swift!'

The pallor of hunger suited Kim very well as he stood, tall and slim,

in his sand-coloured, sweeping robes, one hand on his rosary and the

other in the attitude of benediction, faithfully copied from the lama.

An English observer might have said that he looked rather like the

young saint of a stained-glass window, whereas he was but a growing lad

faint with emptiness.

Long and formal were the farewells, thrice ended and thrice renewed.

The Seeker--he who had invited the lama to that haven from far-away

Tibet, a silver-faced, hairless ascetic--took no part in it, but

meditated, as always, alone among the images. The others were very

human; pressing small comforts upon the old man--a betel-box, a fine

new iron pencase, a food-bag, and such-like--warning him against the

dangers of the world without, and prophesying a happy end to the

Search. Meantime Kim, lonelier than ever, squatted on the steps, and

swore to himself in the language of St Xavier's.

'But it is my own fault,' he concluded. 'With Mahbub, I ate Mahbub's

bread, or Lurgan Sahib's. At St Xavier's, three meals a day. Here I

must jolly-well look out for myself. Besides, I am not in good

training. How I could eat a plate of beef now! ... Is it finished,

Holy One?'

The lama, both hands raised, intoned a final blessing in ornate

Chinese. 'I must lean on thy shoulder,' said he, as the temple gates

closed. 'We grow stiff, I think.'

The weight of a six-foot man is not light to steady through miles of

crowded streets, and Kim, loaded down with bundles and packages for the

way, was glad to reach the shadow of the railway bridge.

'Here we eat,' he said resolutely, as the Kamboh, blue-robed and

smiling, hove in sight, a basket in one hand and the child in the other.

'Fall to, Holy Ones!' he cried from fifty yards. (They were by the

shoal under the first bridge-span, out of sight of hungry priests.)

'Rice and good curry, cakes all warm and well scented with hing

[asafoetida], curds and sugar. King of my fields,'--this to the small

son--'let us show these holy men that we Jats of Jullundur can pay a

service ... I had heard the Jains would eat nothing that they had not

cooked, but truly'--he looked away politely over the broad

river--'where there is no eye there is no caste.'

'And we,' said Kim, turning his back and heaping a leafplatter for the

lama, 'are beyond all castes.'

They gorged themselves on the good food in silence. Nor till he had

licked the last of the sticky sweetstuff from his little finger did Kim

note that the Kamboh too was girt for travel.

'If our roads lie together,' he said roughly, 'I go with thee. One

does not often find a worker of miracles, and the child is still weak.

But I am not altogether a reed.' He picked up his lathi--a five-foot

male-bamboo ringed with bands of polished iron--and flourished it in

the air. 'The Jats are called quarrel-some, but that is not true.

Except when we are crossed, we are like our own buffaloes.'

'So be it,' said Kim. 'A good stick is a good reason.'

The lama gazed placidly up-stream, where in long, smudged perspective

the ceaseless columns of smoke go up from the burning-ghats by the

river. Now and again, despite all municipal regulations, the fragment

of a half-burned body bobbed by on the full current.

'But for thee,' said the Kamboh to Kim, drawing the child into his

hairy breast, 'I might today have gone thither--with this one. The

priests tell us that Benares is holy--which none doubt--and desirable

to die in. But I do not know their Gods, and they ask for money; and

when one has done one worship a shaved-head vows it is of none effect

except one do another. Wash here! Wash there! Pour, drink, lave, and

scatter flowers--but always pay the priests. No, the Punjab for me,

and the soil of the Jullundur-doab for the best soil in it.'

'I have said many times--in the Temple, I think--that if need be, the

River will open at our feet. We will therefore go North,' said the

lama, rising. 'I remember a pleasant place, set about with

fruit-trees, where one can walk in meditation--and the air is cooler

there. It comes from the Hills and the snow of the Hills.'

'What is the name?' said Kim.

'How should I know? Didst thou not--no, that was after the Army rose

out of the earth and took thee away. I abode there in meditation in a

room against the dovecot--except when she talked eternally.'

'Oho! the woman from Kulu. That is by Saharunpore.' Kim laughed.

'How does the spirit move thy master? Does he go afoot, for the sake

of past sins?' the Jat demanded cautiously. 'It is a far cry to

Delhi.'

'No,' said Kim. 'I will beg a tikkut for the te-rain.' One does not

own to the possession of money in India.

'Then, in the name of the Gods, let us take the fire-carriage. My son

is best in his mother's arms. The Government has brought on us many

taxes, but it gives us one good thing--the te-rain that joins friends

and unites the anxious. A wonderful matter is the te-rain.'

They all piled into it a couple of hours later, and slept through the

heat of the day. The Kamboh plied Kim with ten thousand questions as

to the lama's walk and work in life, and received some curious answers.

Kim was content to be where he was, to look out upon the flat

North-Western landscape, and to talk to the changing mob of

fellow-passengers. Even today, tickets and ticket-clipping are dark

oppression to Indian rustics. They do not understand why, when they

have paid for a magic piece of paper, strangers should punch great

pieces out of the charm. So, long and furious are the debates between

travellers and Eurasian ticket-collectors. Kim assisted at two or

three with grave advice, meant to darken counsel and to show off his

wisdom before the lama and the admiring Kamboh. But at Somna Road the

Fates sent him a matter to think upon. There tumbled into the

compartment, as the train was moving off, a mean, lean little person--a

Mahratta, so far as Kim could judge by the cock of the tight turban.

His face was cut, his muslin upper-garment was badly torn, and one leg

was bandaged. He told them that a country-cart had upset and nearly

slain him: he was going to Delhi, where his son lived. Kim watched

him closely. If, as he asserted, he had been rolled over and over on

the earth, there should have been signs of gravel-rash on the skin.

But all his injuries seemed clean cuts, and a mere fall from a cart

could not cast a man into such extremity of terror. As, with shaking

fingers, he knotted up the torn cloth about his neck he laid bare an

amulet of the kind called a keeper-up of the heart. Now, amulets are

common enough, but they are not generally strung on square-plaited

copper wire, and still fewer amulets bear black enamel on silver.

There were none except the Kamboh and the lama in the compartment,

which, luckily, was of an old type with solid ends. Kim made as to

scratch in his bosom, and thereby lifted his own amulet. The

Mahratta's face changed altogether at the sight, and he disposed the

amulet fairly on his breast.

'Yes,' he went on to the Kamboh, 'I was in haste, and the cart, driven

by a bastard, bound its wheel in a water-cut, and besides the harm done

to me there was lost a full dish of tarkeean. I was not a Son of the

Charm [a lucky man] that day.'

'That was a great loss,' said the Kamboh, withdrawing interest. His

experience of Benares had made him suspicious.

'Who cooked it?' said Kim.

'A woman.' The Mahratta raised his eyes.

'But all women can cook tarkeean,' said the Kamboh. 'It is a good

curry, as I know.'

'Oh yes, it is a good curry,' said the Mahratta.

'And cheap,' said Kim. 'But what about caste?'

'Oh, there is no caste where men go to--look for tarkeean,' the

Mahratta replied, in the prescribed cadence. 'Of whose service art

thou?'

'Of the service of this Holy One.' Kim pointed to the happy, drowsy

lama, who woke with a jerk at the well-loved word.

'Ah, he was sent from Heaven to aid me. He is called the Friend of all

the World. He is also called the Friend of the Stars. He walks as a

physician--his time being ripe. Great is his wisdom.'

'And a Son of the Charm,' said Kim under his breath, as the Kamboh made

haste to prepare a pipe lest the Mahratta should beg.

'And who is that?' the Mahratta asked, glancing sideways nervously.

'One whose child I--we have cured, who lies under great debt to us. Sit

by the window, man from Jullundur. Here is a sick one.'

'Humph! I have no desire to mix with chance-met wastrels. My ears are

not long. I am not a woman wishing to overhear secrets.' The Jat slid

himself heavily into a far corner.

'Art thou anything of a healer? I am ten leagues deep in calamity,'

cried the Mahratta, picking up the cue.

'This man is cut and bruised all over. I go about to cure him,' Kim

retorted. 'None interfered between thy babe and me.'

'I am rebuked,' said the Kamboh meekly. 'I am thy debtor for the life

of my son. Thou art a miracle-worker--I know it.'

'Show me the cuts.' Kim bent over the Mahratta's neck, his heart

nearly choking him; for this was the Great Game with a vengeance. 'Now,

tell thy tale swiftly, brother, while I say a charm.'

'I come from the South, where my work lay. One of us they slew by the

roadside. Hast thou heard?' Kim shook his head. He, of course, knew

nothing of E's predecessor, slain down South in the habit of an Arab

trader. 'Having found a certain letter which I was sent to seek, I

came away. I escaped from the city and ran to Mhow. So sure was I

that none knew, I did not change my face. At Mhow a woman brought

charge against me of theft of jewellery in that city which I had left.

Then I saw the cry was out against me. I ran from Mhow by night,

bribing the police, who had been bribed to hand me over without

question to my enemies in the South. Then I lay in old Chitor city a

week, a penitent in a temple, but I could not get rid of the letter

which was my charge. I buried it under the Queen's Stone, at Chitor,

in the place known to us all.'

Kim did not know, but not for worlds would he have broken the thread.

'At Chitor, look you, I was all in Kings' country; for Kotah to the

east is beyond the Queen's law, and east again lie Jaipur and Gwalior.

Neither love spies, and there is no justice. I was hunted like a wet

jackal; but I broke through at Bandakui, where I heard there was a

charge against me of murder in the city I had left--of the murder of a

boy. They have both the corpse and the witnesses waiting.'

'But cannot the Government protect?'

'We of the Game are beyond protection. If we die, we die. Our names

are blotted from the book. That is all. At Bandakui, where lives one

of Us, I thought to slip the scent by changing my face, and so made me

a Mahratta. Then I came to Agra, and would have turned back to Chitor

to recover the letter. So sure I was I had slipped them. Therefore I

did not send a tar [telegram] to any one saying where the letter lay.

I wished the credit of it all.'

Kim nodded. He understood that feeling well.

'But at Agra, walking in the streets, a man cried a debt against me,

and approaching with many witnesses, would hale me to the courts then

and there. Oh, they are clever in the South! He recognized me as his

agent for cotton. May he burn in Hell for it!'

'And wast thou?'

'O fool! I was the man they sought for the matter of the letter! I

ran into the Fleshers' Ward and came out by the House of the Jew, who

feared a riot and pushed me forth. I came afoot to Somna Road--I had

only money for my tikkut to Delhi--and there, while I lay in a ditch

with a fever, one sprang out of the bushes and beat me and cut me and

searched me from head to foot. Within earshot of the terain it was!'

'Why did he not slay thee out of hand?'

'They are not so foolish. If I am taken in Delhi at the instance of

lawyers, upon a proven charge of murder, my body is handed over to the

State that desires it. I go back guarded, and then--I die slowly for

an example to the rest of Us. The South is not my country. I run in

circles--like a goat with one eye. I have not eaten for two days. I

am marked'--he touched the filthy bandage on his leg--'so that they

will know me at Delhi.'

'Thou art safe in the te-rain, at least.'

'Live a year at the Great Game and tell me that again! The wires will

be out against me at Delhi, describing every tear and rag upon me.

Twenty--a hundred, if need be--will have seen me slay that boy. And

thou art useless!'

Kim knew enough of native methods of attack not to doubt that the case

would be deadly complete--even to the corpse. The Mahratta twitched

his fingers with pain from time to time. The Kamboh in his corner

glared sullenly; the lama was busy over his beads; and Kim, fumbling

doctor-fashion at the man's neck, thought out his plan between

invocations.

'Hast thou a charm to change my shape? Else I am dead. Five--ten

minutes alone, if I had not been so pressed, and I might--'

'Is he cured yet, miracle-worker?' said the Kamboh jealously. 'Thou

hast chanted long enough.'

'Nay. There is no cure for his hurts, as I see, except he sit for

three days in the habit of a bairagi.' This is a common penance, often

imposed on a fat trader by his spiritual teacher.

'One priest always goes about to make another priest,' was the retort.

Like most grossly superstitious folk, the Kamboh could not keep his

tongue from deriding his Church.

'Will thy son be a priest, then? It is time he took more of my

quinine.'

'We Jats are all buffaloes,' said the Kamboh, softening anew.

Kim rubbed a finger-tip of bitterness on the child's trusting little

lips. 'I have asked for nothing,' he said sternly to the father,

'except food. Dost thou grudge me that? I go to heal another man.

Have I thy leave--Prince?'

Up flew the man's huge paws in supplication. 'Nay--nay. Do not mock

me thus.'

'It pleases me to cure this sick one. Thou shalt acquire merit by

aiding. What colour ash is there in thy pipe-bowl? White. That is

auspicious. Was there raw turmeric among thy foodstuffs?'

'I--I--'

'Open thy bundle!'

It was the usual collection of small oddments: bits of cloth, quack

medicines, cheap fairings, a clothful of atta--greyish, rough-ground

native flour--twists of down-country tobacco, tawdry pipe-stems, and a

packet of curry-stuff, all wrapped in a quilt. Kim turned it over with

the air of a wise warlock, muttering a Mohammedan invocation.

'This is wisdom I learned from the Sahibs,' he whispered to the lama;

and here, when one thinks of his training at Lurgan's, he spoke no more

than the truth. 'There is a great evil in this man's fortune, as shown

by the Stars, which--which troubles him. Shall I take it away?'

'Friend of the Stars, thou hast done well in all things. Let it be at

thy pleasure. Is it another healing?'

'Quick! Be quick!' gasped the Mahratta. 'The train may stop.'

'A healing against the shadow of death,' said Kim, mixing the Kamboh's

flour with the mingled charcoal and tobacco ash in the red-earth bowl

of the pipe. E, without a word, slipped off his turban and shook down

his long black hair.

'That is my food--priest,' the jat growled.

'A buffalo in the temple! Hast thou dared to look even thus far?' said

Kim. 'I must do mysteries before fools; but have a care for thine

eyes. Is there a film before them already? I save the babe, and for

return thou--oh, shameless!' The man flinched at the direct gaze, for

Kim was wholly in earnest.

'Shall I curse thee, or shall I--' He picked up the outer cloth of the

bundle and threw it over the bowed head. 'Dare so much as to think a

wish to see, and--and--even I cannot save thee. Sit! Be dumb!'

'I am blind--dumb. Forbear to curse! Co--come, child; we will play a

game of hiding. Do not, for my sake, look from under the cloth.'

'I see hope,' said E23. 'What is thy scheme?'

'This comes next,' said Kim, plucking the thin body-shirt. E23

hesitated, with all a North-West man's dislike of baring his body.

'What is caste to a cut throat?' said Kim, rending it to the waist.

'We must make thee a yellow Saddhu all over. Strip--strip swiftly, and

shake thy hair over thine eyes while I scatter the ash. Now, a

caste-mark on thy forehead.' He drew from his bosom the little Survey

paint-box and a cake of crimson lake.

'Art thou only a beginner?' said E23, labouring literally for the dear

life, as he slid out of his body-wrappings and stood clear in the

loin-cloth while Kim splashed in a noble caste-mark on the ash-smeared

brow.

'But two days entered to the Game, brother,' Kim replied. 'Smear more

ash on the bosom.'

'Hast thou met--a physician of sick pearls?' He switched out his long,

tight-rolled turban-cloth and, with swiftest hands, rolled it over and

under about his loins into the intricate devices of a Saddhu's cincture.

'Hah! Dost thou know his touch, then? He was my teacher for a while.

We must bar thy legs. Ash cures wounds. Smear it again.'

'I was his pride once, but thou art almost better. The Gods are kind

to us! Give me that.'

It was a tin box of opium pills among the rubbish of the Jat's bundle.

E23 gulped down a half handful. 'They are good against hunger, fear,

and chill. And they make the eyes red too,' he explained. 'Now I

shall have heart to play the Game. We lack only a Saddhu's tongs.

What of the old clothes?'

Kim rolled them small, and stuffed them into the slack folds of his

tunic. With a yellow-ochre paint cake he smeared the legs and the

breast, great streaks against the background of flour, ash, and

turmeric.

'The blood on them is enough to hang thee, brother.'

'Maybe; but no need to throw them out of the window ... It is

finished.' His voice thrilled with a boy's pure delight in the Game.

'Turn and look, O Jat!'

'The Gods protect us,' said the hooded Kamboh, emerging like a buffalo

from the reeds. 'But--whither went the Mahratta? What hast thou done?'

Kim had been trained by Lurgan Sahib; E23, by virtue of his business,

was no bad actor. In place of the tremulous, shrinking trader there

lolled against the corner an all but naked, ash-smeared, ochre-barred,

dusty-haired Saddhu, his swollen eyes--opium takes quick effect on an

empty stomach--luminous with insolence and bestial lust, his legs

crossed under him, Kim's brown rosary round his neck, and a scant yard

of worn, flowered chintz on his shoulders. The child buried his face

in his amazed father's arms.

'Look up, Princeling! We travel with warlocks, but they will not hurt

thee. Oh, do not cry ... What is the sense of curing a child one day

and killing him with fright the next?'

'The child will be fortunate all his life. He has seen a great

healing. When I was a child I made clay men and horses.'

'I have made them too. Sir Banas, he comes in the night and makes them

all alive at the back of our kitchen-midden,' piped the child.

'And so thou art not frightened at anything. Eh, Prince?'

'I was frightened because my father was frightened. I felt his arms

shake.'

'Oh, chicken-man!' said Kim, and even the abashed Jat laughed. 'I

have done a healing on this poor trader. He must forsake his gains and

his account-books, and sit by the wayside three nights to overcome the

malignity of his enemies. The Stars are against him.'

'The fewer money-lenders the better, say I; but, Saddhu or no Saddhu,

he should pay for my stuff on his shoulders.'

'So? But that is thy child on thy shoulder--given over to the

burning-ghat not two days ago. There remains one thing more. I did

this charm in thy presence because need was great. I changed his shape

and his soul. None the less, if, by any chance, O man from Jullundur,

thou rememberest what thou hast seen, either among the elders sitting

under the village tree, or in thine own house, or in company of thy

priest when he blesses thy cattle, a murrain will come among the

buffaloes, and a fire in thy thatch, and rats in the corn-bins, and the

curse of our Gods upon thy fields that they may be barren before thy

feet and after thy ploughshare.' This was part of an old curse picked

up from a fakir by the Taksali Gate in the days of Kim's innocence. It

lost nothing by repetition.

'Cease, Holy One! In mercy, cease!' cried the Jat. 'Do not curse the

household. I saw nothing! I heard nothing! I am thy cow!' and he

made to grab at Kim's bare foot beating rhythmically on the carriage

floor. 'But since thou hast been permitted to aid me in the matter of

a pinch of flour and a little opium and such trifles as I have honoured

by using in my art, so will the Gods return a blessing,' and he gave it

at length, to the man's immense relief. It was one that he had learned

from Lurgan Sahib.

The lama stared through his spectacles as he had not stared at the

business of disguisement. 'Friend of the Stars,' he said at last,

'thou hast acquired great wisdom. Beware that it do not give birth to

pride. No man having the Law before his eyes speaks hastily of any

matter which he has seen or encountered.'

'No--no--no, indeed,' cried the farmer, fearful lest the master should

be minded to improve on the pupil. E23, with relaxed mouth, gave

himself up to the opium that is meat, tobacco, and medicine to the

spent Asiatic.

So, in a silence of awe and great miscomprehension, they slid into

Delhi about lamp-lighting time.

Chapter 12

Who hath desired the Sea--the sight of salt-water unbounded?

The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber

wind-hounded?

The sleek-barrelled swell before storm--grey, foamless, enormous,

and growing?

Stark calm on the lap of the Line--or the crazy-eyed hurricane

blowing?

His Sea in no showing the same--his Sea and the same 'neath all

showing--

His Sea that his being fulfils?

So and no otherwise--so and no otherwise hill-men desire their Hills!

The Sea and the Hills.

'I have found my heart again,' said E23, under cover of the platform's

tumult. 'Hunger and fear make men dazed, or I might have thought of

this escape before. I was right. They come to hunt for me. Thou hast

saved my head.'

A group of yellow-trousered Punjab policemen, headed by a hot and

perspiring young Englishman, parted the crowd about the carriages.

Behind them, inconspicuous as a cat, ambled a small fat person who

looked like a lawyer's tout.

'See the young Sahib reading from a paper. My description is in his

hand,' said E23. 'Thev go carriage by carriage, like fisher-folk

netting a pool.'

When the procession reached their compartment, E23 was counting his

beads with a steady jerk of the wrist; while Kim jeered at him for

being so drugged as to have lost the ringed fire-tongs which are the

Saddhu's distinguishing mark. The lama, deep in meditation, stared

straight before him; and the farmer, glancing furtively, gathered up

his belongings.

'Nothing here but a parcel of holy-bolies,' said the Englishman aloud,

and passed on amid a ripple of uneasiness; for native police mean

extortion to the native all India over.

'The trouble now,' whispered E23, 'lies in sending a wire as to the

place where I hid that letter I was sent to find. I cannot go to the

tar-office in this guise.'

'Is it not enough I have saved thy neck?'

'Not if the work be left unfinished. Did never the healer of sick

pearls tell thee so? Comes another Sahib! Ah!'

This was a tallish, sallowish District Superintendent of Police--belt,

helmet, polished spurs and all--strutting and twirling his dark

moustache.

'What fools are these Police Sahibs!' said Kim genially.

E23 glanced up under his eyelids. 'It is well said,' he muttered in a

changed voice. 'I go to drink water. Keep my place.'

He blundered out almost into the Englishman's arms, and was bad-worded

in clumsy Urdu.

'Tum mut? You drunk? You mustn't bang about as though Delhi station

belonged to you, my friend.'

E23, not moving a muscle of his countenance, answered with a stream of

the filthiest abuse, at which Kim naturally rejoiced. It reminded him

of the drummer-boys and the barrack-sweepers at Umballa in the terrible

time of his first schooling.

'My good fool,' the Englishman drawled. 'Nickle-jao! Go back to your

carriage.'

Step by step, withdrawing deferentially and dropping his voice, the

yellow Saddhu clomb back to the carriage, cursing the D.S.P. to

remotest posterity, by--here Kim almost jumped--by the curse of the

Queen's Stone, by the writing under the Queen's Stone, and by an

assortment of Gods with wholly, new names.

'I don't know what you're saying,'--the Englishman flushed

angrily--'but it's some piece of blasted impertinence. Come out of

that!'

E23, affecting to misunderstand, gravely produced his ticket, which the

Englishman wrenched angrily from his hand.

'Oh, zoolum! What oppression!' growled the Jat from his corner. 'All

for the sake of a jest too.' He had been grinning at the freedom of

the Saddhu's tongue. 'Thy charms do not work well today, Holy One!'

The Saddhu followed the policeman, fawning and supplicating. The ruck

of passengers, busy, with their babies and their bundles, had not

noticed the affair. Kim slipped out behind him; for it flashed through

his head that he had heard this angry, stupid Sahib discoursing loud

personalities to an old lady near Umballa three years ago.

'It is well', the Saddhu whispered, jammed in the calling, shouting,

bewildered press--a Persian greyhound between his feet and a cageful of

yelling hawks under charge of a Rajput falconer in the small of his

back. 'He has gone now to send word of the letter which I hid. They

told me he was in Peshawur. I might have known that he is like the

crocodile--always at the other ford. He has saved me from present

calamity, but I owe my life to thee.'

'Is he also one of Us?' Kim ducked under a Mewar camel-driver's greasy

armpit and cannoned off a covey of jabbering Sikh matrons.

'Not less than the greatest. We are both fortunate! I will make

report to him of what thou hast done. I am safe under his protection.'

He bored through the edge of the crowd besieging the carriages, and

squatted by the bench near the telegraph-office.

'Return, or they take thy place! Have no fear for the work,

brother--or my life. Thou hast given me breathing-space, and

Strickland Sahib has pulled me to land. We may work together at the

Game yet. Farewell!'

Kim hurried to his carriage: elated, bewildered, but a little nettled

in that he had no key to the secrets about him.

'I am only a beginner at the Game, that is sure. I could not have

leaped into safety as did the Saddhu. He knew it was darkest under the

lamp. I could not have thought to tell news under pretence of cursing

... and how clever was the Sahib! No matter, I saved the life of one

... Where is the Kamboh gone, Holy One?' he whispered, as he took his

seat in the now crowded compartment.

'A fear gripped him,' the lama replied, with a touch of tender malice.

'He saw thee change the Mahratta to a Saddhu in the twinkling of an

eye, as a protection against evil. That shook him. Then he saw the

Saddhu fall sheer into the hands of the polis--all the effect of thy

art. Then he gathered up his son and fled; for he said that thou didst

change a quiet trader into an impudent bandier of words with the

Sahibs, and he feared a like fate. Where is the Saddhu?'

'With the polis,' said Kim ... 'Yet I saved the Kamboh's child.'

The lama snuffed blandly.

'Ah, chela, see how thou art overtaken! Thou didst cure the Kamboh's

child solely to acquire merit. But thou didst put a spell on the

Mahratta with prideful workings--I watched thee--and with sidelong

glances to bewilder an old old man and a foolish farmer: whence

calamity and suspicion.'

Kim controlled himself with an effort beyond his years. Not more than

any other youngster did he like to eat dirt or to be misjudged, but he

saw himself in a cleft stick. The train rolled out of Delhi into the

night.

'It is true,' he murmured. 'Where I have offended thee I have done

wrong.'

'It is more, chela. Thou hast loosed an Act upon the world, and as a

stone thrown into a pool so spread the consequences thou canst not tell

how far.'

This ignorance was well both for Kim's vanity and for the lama's peace

of mind, when we think that there was then being handed in at Simla a

code-wire reporting the arrival of E23 at Delhi, and, more important,

the whereabouts of a letter he had been commissioned to--abstract.

Incidentally, an over-zealous policeman had arrested, on charge of

murder done in a far southern State, a horribly indignant Ajmir

cotton-broker, who was explaining himself to a Mr Strickland on Delhi

platform, while E23 was paddling through byways into the locked heart

of Delhi city. In two hours several telegrams had reached the angry

minister of a southern State reporting that all trace of a somewhat

bruised Mahratta had been lost; and by the time the leisurely train

halted at Saharunpore the last ripple of the stone Kim had helped to

heave was lapping against the steps of a mosque in far-away Roum--where

it disturbed a pious man at prayers.

The lama made his in ample form near the dewy bougainvillea-trellis

near the platform, cheered by the clear sunshine and the presence of

his disciple. 'We will put these things behind us,' he said,

indicating the brazen engine and the gleaming track. 'The jolting of

the te-rain--though a wonderful thing--has turned my bones to water.

We will use clean air henceforward.'

'Let us go to the Kulu woman's house' said Kim, and stepped forth

cheerily under the bundles. Early morning Saharunpore-way is clean and

well scented. He thought of the other mornings at St Xavier's, and it

topped his already thrice-heaped contentment.

'Where is this new haste born from? Wise men do not run about like

chickens in the sun. We have come hundreds upon hundreds of koss

already, and, till now, I have scarcely been alone with thee an

instant. How canst thou receive instruction all jostled of crowds? How

can I, whelmed by a flux of talk, meditate upon the Way?'

'Her tongue grows no shorter with the years, then?' the disciple

smiled.

'Nor her desire for charms. I remember once when I spoke of the Wheel

of Life'--the lama fumbled in his bosom for his latest copy--'she was

only curious about the devils that besiege children. She shall acquire

merit by entertaining us--in a little while--at an

after-occasion--softly, softly. Now we will wander loose-foot, waiting

upon the Chain of Things. The Search is sure.'

So they travelled very easily across and among the broad bloomful

fruit-gardens--by way of Aminabad, Sahaigunge, Akrola of the Ford, and

little Phulesa--the line of the Siwaliks always to the north, and

behind them again the snows. After long, sweet sleep under the dry

stars came the lordly, leisurely passage through a waking

village--begging-bowl held forth in silence, but eyes roving in

defiance of the Law from sky's edge to sky's edge. Then would Kim

return soft-footed through the soft dust to his master under the shadow

of a mango-tree or the thinner shade of a white Doon siris, to eat and

drink at ease. At mid-day, after talk and a little wayfaring, they

slept; meeting the world refreshed when the air was cooler. Night

found them adventuring into new territory--some chosen village spied

three hours before across the fat land, and much discussed upon the

road.

There they told their tale--a new one each evening so far as Kim was

concerned--and there were they made welcome, either by priest or

headman, after the custom of the kindly East.

When the shadows shortened and the lama leaned more heavily upon Kim,

there was always the Wheel of Life to draw forth, to hold flat under

wiped stones, and with a long straw to expound cycle by cycle. Here sat

the Gods on high--and they were dreams of dreams. Here was our Heaven

and the world of the demi-Gods--horsemen fighting among the hills.

Here were the agonies done upon the beasts, souls ascending or

descending the ladder and therefore not to be interfered with. Here

were the Hells, hot and cold, and the abodes of tormented ghosts. Let

the chela study the troubles that come from over-eating--bloated

stomach and burning bowels. Obediently, then, with bowed head and

brown finger alert to follow the pointer, did the chela study; but when

they came to the Human World, busy and profitless, that is just above

the Hells, his mind was distracted; for by the roadside trundled the

very Wheel itself, eating, drinking, trading, marrying, and

quarrelling--all warmly alive. Often the lama made the living pictures

the matter of his text, bidding Kim--too ready--note how the flesh

takes a thousand shapes, desirable or detestable as men reckon, but in

truth of no account either way; and how the stupid spirit, bond-slave

to the Hog, the Dove, and the Serpent--lusting after betel-nut, a new

yoke of oxen, women, or the favour of kings--is bound to follow the

body through all the Heavens and all the Hells, and strictly round

again. Sometimes a woman or a poor man, watching the ritual--it was

nothing less--when the great yellow chart was unfolded, would throw a

few flowers or a handful of cowries upon its edge. It sufficed these

humble ones that they had met a Holy One who might be moved to remember

them in his prayers.

'Cure them if they are sick,' said the lama, when Kim's sporting

instincts woke. 'Cure them if they have fever, but by no means work

charms. Remember what befell the Mahratta.'

'Then all Doing is evil?' Kim replied, lying out under a big tree at

the fork of the Doon road, watching the little ants run over his hand.

'To abstain from action is well--except to acquire merit.'

'At the Gates of Learning we were taught that to abstain from action

was unbefitting a Sahib. And I am a Sahib.'

'Friend of all the World,'--the lama looked directly at Kim--'I am an

old man--pleased with shows as are children. To those who follow the

Way there is neither black nor white, Hind nor Bhotiyal. We be all

souls seeking escape. No matter what thy wisdom learned among Sahibs,

when we come to my River thou wilt be freed from all illusion--at my

side. Hai! My bones ache for that River, as they ached in the

te-rain; but my spirit sits above my bones, waiting. The Search is

sure!'

'I am answered. Is it permitted to ask a question?'

The lama inclined his stately head.

'I ate thy bread for three years--as thou knowest. Holy One, whence

came--?'

'There is much wealth, as men count it, in Bhotiyal,' the lama returned

with composure. 'In my own place I have the illusion of honour. I ask

for that I need. I am not concerned with the account. That is for my

monastery. Ai! The black high seats in the monastery, and novices all

in order!'

And he told stories, tracing with a finger in the dust, of the immense

and sumptuous ritual of avalanche-guarded cathedrals; of processions

and devil-dances; of the changing of monks and nuns into swine; of holy

cities fifteen thousand feet in the air; of intrigue between monastery

and monastery; of voices among the hills, and of that mysterious mirage

that dances on dry snow. He spoke even of Lhassa and of the Dalai

Lama, whom he had seen and adored.

Each long, perfect day rose behind Kim for a barrier to cut him off

from his race and his mother-tongue. He slipped back to thinking and

dreaming in the vernacular, and mechanically followed the lama's

ceremonial observances at eating, drinking, and the like. The old

man's mind turned more and more to his monastery as his eyes turned to

the steadfast snows. His River troubled him nothing. Now and again,

indeed, he would gaze long and long at a tuft or a twig, expecting, he

said, the earth to cleave and deliver its blessing; but he was content

to be with his disciple, at ease in the temperate wind that comes down

from the Doon. This was not Ceylon, nor Buddh Gaya, nor Bombay, nor

some grass-tangled ruins that he seemed to have stumbled upon two years

ago. He spoke of those places as a scholar removed from vanity, as a

Seeker walking in humility, as an old man, wise and temperate,

illumining knowledge with brilliant insight. Bit by bit,

disconnectedly, each tale called up by some wayside thing, he spoke of

all his wanderings up and down Hind; till Kim, who had loved him

without reason, now loved him for fifty good reasons. So they enjoyed

themselves in high felicity, abstaining, as the Rule demands, from evil

words, covetous desires; not over-eating, not lying on high beds, nor

wearing rich clothes. Their stomachs told them the time, and the

people brought them their food, as the saying is. They were lords of

the villages of Aminabad, Sahaigunge, Akrola of the Ford, and little

Phulesa, where Kim gave the soulless woman a blessing.

But news travels fast in India, and too soon shuffled across the

crop-land, bearing a basket of fruits with a box of Kabul grapes and

gilt oranges, a white-whiskered servitor--a lean, dry Oorya--begging

them to bring the honour of their presence to his mistress, distressed

in her mind that the lama had neglected her so long.

'Now do I remember'--the lama spoke as though it were a wholly new

proposition. 'She is virtuous, but an inordinate talker.'

Kim was sitting on the edge of a cow's manger, telling stories to a

village smith's children.

'She will only ask for another son for her daughter. I have not

forgotten her,' he said. 'Let her acquire merit. Send word that we

will come.'

They covered eleven miles through the fields in two days, and were

overwhelmed with attentions at the end; for the old lady held a fine

tradition of hospitality, to which she forced her son-in-law, who was

under the thumb of his women-folk and bought peace by borrowing of the

money-lender. Age had not weakened her tongue or her memory, and from

a discreetly barred upper window, in the hearing of not less than a

dozen servants, she paid Kim compliments that would have flung European

audiences into unclean dismay.

'But thou art still the shameless beggar-brat of the parao,' she

shrilled. 'I have not forgotten thee. Wash ye and eat. The father of

my daughter's son is gone away awhile. So we poor women are dumb and

useless.'

For proof, she harangued the entire household unsparingly till food and

drink were brought; and in the evening--the smoke-scented evening,

copper-dun and turquoise across the fields--it pleased her to order her

palanquin to be set down in the untidy forecourt by smoky torchlight;

and there, behind not too closely drawn curtains, she gossiped.

'Had the Holy One come alone, I should have received him otherwise; but

with this rogue, who can be too careful?'

'Maharanee,' said Kim, choosing as always the amplest title, 'is it my

fault that none other than a Sahib--a polis-Sahib--called the Maharanee

whose face he--' 'Chutt! That was on the pilgrimage. When we

travel--thou knowest the proverb.'

'Called the Maharanee a Breaker of Hearts and a Dispenser of Delights?'

'To remember that! It was true. So he did. That was in the time of

the bloom of my beauty.' She chuckled like a contented parrot above

the sugar lump. 'Now tell me of thy goings and comings--as much as may

be without shame. How many maids, and whose wives, hang upon thine

eyelashes? Ye hail from Benares? I would have gone there again this

year, but my daughter--we have only two sons. Phaii! Such is the

effect of these low plains. Now in Kulu men are elephants. But I

would ask thy Holy One--stand aside, rogue--a charm against most

lamentable windy colics that in mango-time overtake my daughter's

eldest. Two years back he gave me a powerful spell.'

'Oh, Holy One!' said Kim, bubbling with mirth at the lama's rueful

face.

'It is true. I gave her one against wind.'

'Teeth--teeth--teeth,' snapped the old woman.

"'Cure them if they are sick,"' Kim quoted relishingly, "'but by no

means work charms. Remember what befell the Mahratta."'

'That was two Rains ago; she wearied me with her continual

importunity.' The lama groaned as the Unjust Judge had groaned before

him. 'Thus it comes--take note, my chela--that even those who would

follow the Way are thrust aside by idle women. Three days through,

when the child was sick, she talked to me.'

'Arre! and to whom else should I talk? The boy's mother knew nothing,

and the father--in the nights of the cold weather it was--"Pray to the

Gods," said he, forsooth, and turning over, snored!'

'I gave her the charm. What is an old man to do?'

"'To abstain from action is well--except to acquire merit."'

'Ah chela, if thou desertest me, I am all alone.'

'He found his milk-teeth easily at any rate,' said the old lady. 'But

all priests are alike.'

Kim coughed severely. Being young, he did not approve of her

flippancy. 'To importune the wise out of season is to invite calamity.'

'There is a talking mynah'--the thrust came back with the

well-remembered snap of the jewelled fore-finger--'over the stables

which has picked up the very tone of the family priest. Maybe I forget

honour to my guests, but if ye had seen him double his fists into his

belly, which was like a half-grown gourd, and cry: "Here is the pain!"

ye would forgive. I am half minded to take the hakim's medicine. He

sells it cheap, and certainly it makes him fat as Shiv's own bull. He

does not deny remedies, but I doubted for the child because of the

in-auspicious colour of the bottles.'

The lama, under cover of the monologue, had faded out into the darkness

towards the room prepared.

'Thou hast angered him, belike,' said Kim.

'Not he. He is wearied, and I forgot, being a grandmother. (None but

a grandmother should ever oversee a child. Mothers are only fit for

bearing.) Tomorrow, when he sees how my daughter's son is grown, he

will write the charm. Then, too, he can judge of the new hakim's

drugs.'

'Who is the hakim, Maharanee?'

'A wanderer, as thou art, but a most sober Bengali from Dacca--a master

of medicine. He relieved me of an oppression after meat by means of a

small pill that wrought like a devil unchained. He travels about now,

vending preparations of great value. He has even papers, printed in

Angrezi, telling what things he has done for weak-backed men and slack

women. He has been here four days; but hearing ye were coming (hakims

and priests are snake and tiger the world over) he has, as I take it,

gone to cover.'

While she drew breath after this volley, the ancient servant, sitting

unrebuked on the edge of the torchlight, muttered: 'This house is a

cattle-pound, as it were, for all charlatans and--priests. Let the boy

stop eating mangoes ... but who can argue with a grandmother?' He

raised his voice respectfully: 'Sahiba, the hakim sleeps after his

meat. He is in the quarters behind the dovecote.'

Kim bristled like an expectant terrier. To outface and down-talk a

Calcutta-taught Bengali, a voluble Dacca drug-vendor, would be a good

game. It was not seemly that the lama, and incidentally himself,

should be thrown aside for such an one. He knew those curious bastard

English advertisements at the backs of native newspapers. St Xavier's

boys sometimes brought them in by stealth to snigger over among their

mates; for the language of the grateful patient recounting his symptoms

is most simple and revealing. The Oorya, not unanxious to play off one

parasite against the other, slunk away towards the dovecote.

'Yes,' said Kim, with measured scorn. 'Their stock-in-trade is a

little coloured water and a very great shamelessness. Their prey are

broken-down kings and overfed Bengalis. Their profit is in

children--who are not born.' The old lady chuckled. 'Do not be

envious. Charms are better, eh? I never gainsaid it. See that thy

Holy One writes me a good amulet by the morning.'

'None but the ignorant deny'--a thick, heavy voice boomed through the

darkness, as a figure came to rest squatting--'None but the ignorant

deny the value of charms. None but the ignorant deny the value of

medicines.'

'A rat found a piece of turmeric. Said he: "I will open a grocer's

shop,"' Kim retorted.

Battle was fairly joined now, and they heard the old lady stiffen to

attention.

'The priest's son knows the names of his nurse and three Gods. Says

he: "Hear me, or I will curse you by the three million Great Ones."'

Decidedly this invisible had an arrow or two in his quiver. He went

on: 'I am but a teacher of the alphabet. I have learned all the

wisdom of the Sahibs.'

'The Sahibs never grow old. They dance and they play like children

when they are grandfathers. A strong-backed breed,' piped the voice

inside the palanquin.

'I have, too, our drugs which loosen humours of the head in hot and

angry men. Sina well compounded when the moon stands in the proper

House; yellow earths I have--arplan from China that makes a man renew

his youth and astonish his household; saffron from Kashmir, and the

best salep of Kabul. Many people have died before--'

'That I surely believe,' said Kim.

'They knew the value of my drugs. I do not give my sick the mere ink

in which a charm is written, but hot and rending drugs which descend

and wrestle with the evil.'

'Very mightily they do so,' sighed the old lady.

The voice launched into an immense tale of misfortune and bankruptcy,

studded with plentiful petitions to the Government. 'But for my fate,

which overrules all, I had been now in Government employ. I bear a

degree from the great school at Calcutta--whither, maybe, the son of

this House shall go.'

'He shall indeed. If our neighbour's brat can in a few years be made

an F A' (First Arts--she used the English word, of which she had heard

so often), 'how much more shall children clever as some that I know

bear away prizes at rich Calcutta.'

'Never,' said the voice, 'have I seen such a child! Born in an

auspicious hour, and--but for that colic which, alas! turning into

black cholers, may carry him off like a pigeon--destined to many years,

he is enviable.'

'Hai mai!' said the old lady. 'To praise children is inauspicious, or

I could listen to this talk. But the back of the house is unguarded,

and even in this soft air men think themselves to be men, and women we

know ... The child's father is away too, and I must be chowkedar

[watchman] in my old age. Up! Up! Take up the palanquin. Let the

hakim and the young priest settle between them whether charms or

medicine most avail. Ho! worthless people, fetch tobacco for the

guests, and--round the homestead go I!'

The palanquin reeled off, followed by straggling torches and a horde of

dogs. Twenty villages knew the Sahiba--her failings, her tongue, and

her large charity. Twenty villages cheated her after immemorial

custom, but no man would have stolen or robbed within her jurisdiction

for any gift under heaven. None the less, she made great parade of her

formal inspections, the riot of which could be heard half-way to

Mussoorie.

Kim relaxed, as one augur must when he meets another. The hakim, still

squatting, slid over his hookah with a friendly foot, and Kim pulled at

the good weed. The hangers-on expected grave professional debate, and

perhaps a little free doctoring.

'To discuss medicine before the ignorant is of one piece with teaching

the peacock to sing,' said the hakim.

'True courtesy,' Kim echoed, 'is very often inattention.'

These, be it understood, were company-manners, designed to impress.

'Hi! I have an ulcer on my leg,' cried a scullion. 'Look at it!'

'Get hence! Remove!' said the hakim. 'Is it the habit of the place

to pester honoured guests? Ye crowd in like buffaloes.'

'If the Sahiba knew--' Kim began.

'Ai! Ai! Come away. They are meat for our mistress. When her young

Shaitan's colics are cured perhaps we poor people may be suffered to--'

'The mistress fed thy wife when thou wast in jail for breaking the

money-lender's head. Who speaks against her?' The old servitor curled

his white moustaches savagely in the young moonlight. 'I am

responsible for the honour of this house. Go!' and he drove the

underlings before him.

Said the hakim, hardly more than shaping the words with his lips: 'How

do you do, Mister O'Hara? I am jolly glad to see you again.'

Kim's hand clenched about the pipe-stem. Anywhere on the open road,

perhaps, he would not have been astonished; but here, in this quiet

backwater of life, he was not prepared for Hurree Babu. It annoyed

him, too, that he had been hoodwinked.

'Ah ha! I told you at Lucknow--resurgam--I shall rise again and you

shall not know me. How much did you bet--eh?'

He chewed leisurely upon a few cardamom seeds, but he breathed uneasily.

'But why come here, Babuji?'

'Ah! Thatt is the question, as Shakespeare hath it. I come to

congratulate you on your extraordinary effeecient performance at Delhi.

Oah! I tell you we are all proud of you. It was verree neat and

handy. Our mutual friend, he is old friend of mine. He has been in

some dam'-tight places. Now he will be in some more. He told me; I

tell Mr Lurgan; and he is pleased you graduate so nicely. All the

Department is pleased.'

For the first time in his life, Kim thrilled to the clean pride (it can

be a deadly pitfall, none the less) of Departmental praise--ensnaring

praise from an equal of work appreciated by fellow-workers. Earth has

nothing on the same plane to compare with it. But, cried the Oriental

in him, Babus do not travel far to retail compliments.

'Tell thy tale, Babu,' he said authoritatively.

'Oah, it is nothing. Onlee I was at Simla when the wire came in about

what our mutual friend said he had hidden, and old Creighton--' He

looked to see how Kim would take this piece of audacity.

'The Colonel Sahib,' the boy from St Xavier's corrected. 'Of course.

He found me at a loose string, and I had to go down to Chitor to find

that beastly letter. I do not like the South--too much railway travel;

but I drew good travelling allowance. Ha! Ha! I meet our mutual at

Delhi on the way back. He lies quiett just now, and says

Saddhu-disguise suits him to the ground. Well, there I hear what you

have done so well, so quickly, upon the instantaneous spur of the

moment. I tell our mutual you take the bally bun, by Jove! It was

splendid. I come to tell you so.'

'Umm!'

The frogs were busy in the ditches, and the moon slid to her setting.

Some happy servant had gone out to commune with the night and to beat

upon a drum. Kim's next sentence was in the vernacular.

'How didst thou follow us?'

'Oah. Thatt was nothing. I know from our mutual friend you go to

Saharunpore. So I come on. Red Lamas are not inconspicuous persons. I

buy myself my drug-box, and I am very good doctor really. I go to

Akrola of the Ford, and hear all about you, and I talk here and talk

there. All the common people know what you do. I knew when the

hospitable old lady sent the dooli. They have great recollections of

the old lama's visits here. I know old ladies cannot keep their hands

from medicines. So I am a doctor, and--you hear my talk? I think it

is verree good. My word, Mister O'Hara, they know about you and the

lama for fifty miles--the common people. So I come. Do you mind?'

'Babuji,' said Kim, looking up at the broad, grinning face, 'I am a

Sahib.'

'My dear Mister O'Hara--'

'And I hope to play the Great Game.'

'You are subordinate to me departmentally at present.'

'Then why talk like an ape in a tree? Men do not come after one from

Simla and change their dress, for the sake of a few sweet words. I am

not a child. Talk Hindi and let us get to the yolk of the egg. Thou

art here--speaking not one word of truth in ten. Why art thou here?

Give a straight answer.'

'That is so verree disconcerting of the Europeans, Mister O'Hara. You

should know a heap better at your time of life.'

'But I want to know,' said Kim, laughing. 'If it is the Game, I may

help. How can I do anything if you bukh [babble] all round the shop?'

Hurree Babu reached for the pipe, and sucked it till it gurgled again.

'Now I will speak vernacular. You sit tight, Mister O'Hara ... It

concerns the pedigree of a white stallion.'

'Still? That was finished long ago.'

'When everyone is dead the Great Game is finished. Not before. Listen

to me till the end. There were Five Kings who prepared a sudden war

three years ago, when thou wast given the stallion's pedigree by Mahbub

Ali. Upon them, because of that news, and ere they were ready, fell

our Army.'

'Ay--eight thousand men with guns. I remember that night.'

'But the war was not pushed. That is the Government custom. The

troops were recalled because the Government believed the Five Kings

were cowed; and it is not cheap to feed men among the high Passes.

Hilas and Bunar--Rajahs with guns--undertook for a price to guard the

Passes against all coming from the North. They protested both fear and

friendship.' He broke off with a giggle into English: 'Of course, I

tell you this unoffeecially to elucidate political situation, Mister

O'Hara. Offeecially, I am debarred from criticizing any action of

superiors. Now I go on.--This pleased the Government, anxious to avoid

expense, and a bond was made for so many rupees a month that Hilas and

Bunar should guard the Passes as soon as the State's troops were

withdrawn. At that time--it was after we two met--I, who had been

selling tea in Leh, became a clerk of accounts in the Army. When the

troops were withdrawn, I was left behind to pay the coolies who made

new roads in the Hills. This road-making was part of the bond between

Bunar, Hilas, and the Government.'

'So? And then?'

'I tell you, it was jolly-beastly cold up there too, after summer,'

said Hurree Babu confidentially. 'I was afraid these Bunar men would

cut my throat every night for thee pay-chest. My native sepoy-guard,

they laughed at me! By Jove! I was such a fearful man. Nevar mind

thatt. I go on colloquially ... I send word many times that these two

Kings were sold to the North; and Mahbub Ali, who was yet farther

North, amply confirmed it. Nothing was done. Only my feet were

frozen, and a toe dropped off. I sent word that the roads for which I

was paying money to the diggers were being made for the feet of

strangers and enemies.'

'For?'

'For the Russians. The thing was an open jest among the coolies. Then

I was called down to tell what I knew by speech of tongue. Mahbub came

South too. See the end! Over the Passes this year after

snow-melting'--he shivered afresh--'come two strangers under cover of

shooting wild goats. They bear guns, but they bear also chains and

levels and compasses.'

'Oho! The thing gets clearer.'

'They are well received by Hilas and Bunar. They make great promises;

they speak as the mouthpiece of a Kaisar with gifts. Up the valleys,

down the valleys go they, saying, "Here is a place to build a

breastwork; here can ye pitch a fort. Here can ye hold the road

against an army"--the very roads for which I paid out the rupees

monthly. The Government knows, but does nothing. The three other

Kings, who were not paid for guarding the Passes, tell them by runner

of the bad faith of Bunar and Hilas. When all the evil is done, look

you--when these two strangers with the levels and the compasses make

the Five Kings to believe that a great army will sweep the Passes

tomorrow or the next day--Hill-people are all fools--comes the order to

me, Hurree Babu, "Go North and see what those strangers do." I say to

Creighton Sahib, "This is not a lawsuit, that we go about to collect

evidence."' Hurree returned to his English with a jerk: "'By Jove," I

said, "why the dooce do you not issue demi-offeecial orders to some

brave man to poison them, for an example? It is, if you permit the

observation, most reprehensible laxity on your part." And Colonel

Creighton, he laughed at me! It is all your beastly English pride.

You think no one dare conspire! That is all tommy-rott.'

Kim smoked slowly, revolving the business, so far as he understood it,

in his quick mind.

'Then thou goest forth to follow the strangers?'

'No. To meet them. They are coming in to Simla to send down their

horns and heads to be dressed at Calcutta. They are exclusively

sporting gentlemen, and they are allowed special faceelities by the

Government. Of course, we always do that. It is our British pride.'

'Then what is to fear from them?'

'By Jove, they are not black people. I can do all sorts of things with

black people, of course. They are Russians, and highly unscrupulous

people. I--I do not want to consort with them without a witness.'

'Will they kill thee?'

'Oah, thatt is nothing. I am good enough Herbert Spencerian, I trust,

to meet little thing like death, which is all in my fate, you know.

But--but they may beat me.'

'Why?'

Hurree Babu snapped his fingers with irritation. 'Of course I shall

affeeliate myself to their camp in supernumerary capacity as perhaps

interpreter, or person mentally impotent and hungree, or some such

thing. And then I must pick up what I can, I suppose. That is as easy

for me as playing Mister Doctor to the old lady. Onlee--onlee--you

see, Mister O'Hara, I am unfortunately Asiatic, which is serious

detriment in some respects. And all-so I am Bengali--a fearful man.'

'God made the Hare and the Bengali. What shame?' said Kim, quoting

the proverb.

'It was process of Evolution, I think, from Primal Necessity, but the

fact remains in all the cui bono. I am, oh, awfully fearful!--I

remember once they wanted to cut off my head on the road to Lhassa.

(No, I have never reached to Lhassa.) I sat down and cried, Mister

O'Hara, anticipating Chinese tortures. I do not suppose these two

gentlemen will torture me, but I like to provide for possible

contingency with European assistance in emergency.' He coughed and

spat out the cardamoms. 'It is purely unoffeecial indent, to which you

can say "No, Babu". If you have no pressing engagement with your old

man--perhaps you might divert him; perhaps I can seduce his fancies--I

should like you to keep in Departmental touch with me till I find those

sporting coves. I have great opeenion of you since I met my friend at

Delhi. And also I will embody your name in my offeecial report when

matter is finally adjudicated. It will be a great feather in your cap.

That is why I come really.'

'Humph! The end of the tale, I think, is true; but what of the

fore-part?'

'About the Five Kings? Oah! there is ever so much truth in it. A

lots more than you would suppose,' said Hurree earnestly. 'You

come--eh? I go from here straight into the Doon. It is verree verdant

and painted meads. I shall go to Mussoorie to good old Munsoorie

Pahar, as the gentlemen and ladies say. Then by Rampur into Chini.

That is the only way they can come. I do not like waiting in the cold,

but we must wait for them. I want to walk with them to Simla. You see,

one Russian is a Frenchman, and I know my French pretty well. I have

friends in Chandernagore.'

'He would certainly rejoice to see the Hills again,' said Kim

meditatively. 'All his speech these ten days past has been of little

else. If we go together--'

'Oah! We can be quite strangers on the road, if your lama prefers. I

shall just be four or five miles ahead. There is no hurry for

Hurree--that is an Europe pun, ha! ha!--and you come after. There is

plenty of time; they will plot and survey and map, of course. I shall

go tomorrow, and you the next day, if you choose. Eh? You go think on

it till morning. By Jove, it is near morning now.' He yawned

ponderously, and with never a civil word lumbered off to his

sleeping-place. But Kim slept little, and his thoughts ran in

Hindustani:

'Well is the Game called great! I was four days a scullion at Quetta,

waiting on the wife of the man whose book I stole. And that was part

of the Great Game! From the South--God knows how far--came up the

Mahratta, playing the Great Game in fear of his life. Now I shall go

far and far into the North playing the Great Game. Truly, it runs like

a shuttle throughout all Hind. And my share and my joy'--he smiled to

the darkness--'I owe to the lama here. Also to Mahbub Ali--also to

Creighton Sahib, but chiefly to the Holy One. He is right--a great and

a wonderful world--and I am Kim--Kim--Kim--alone--one person--in the

middle of it all. But I will see these strangers with their levels and

chains...'

'What was the upshot of last night's babble?' said the lama, after his

orisons.

'There came a strolling seller of drugs--a hanger-on of the Sahiba's.

Him I abolished by arguments and prayers, proving that our charms are

worthier than his coloured waters.'

'Alas, my charms! Is the virtuous woman still bent upon a new one?'

'Very strictly.'

'Then it must be written, or she will deafen me with her clamour.' He

fumbled at his pencase.

'In the Plains,' said Kim, 'are always too many people. In the Hills,

as I understand, there are fewer.'

'Oh! the Hills, and the snows upon the Hills.' The lami tore off a

tiny square of paper fit to go in an amulet. 'But what dost thou know

of the Hills?'

'They are very close.' Kim thrust open the door and looked at the

long, peaceful line of the Himalayas flushed in morning-gold. 'Except

in the dress of a Sahib, I have never set foot among them.'

The lama snuffed the wind wistfully.

'If we go North,'--Kim put the question to the waking sunrise--'would

not much mid-day heat be avoided by walking among the lower hills at

least? ... Is the charm made, Holy One?'

'I have written the names of seven silly devils--not one of whom is

worth a grain of dust in the eye. Thus do foolish women drag us from

the Way!'

Hurree Babu came out from behind the dovecote washing his teeth with

ostentatious ritual. Full-fleshed, heavy-haunched, bull-necked, and

deep-voiced, he did not look like 'a fearful man'. Kim signed almost

imperceptibly that matters were in good train, and when the morning

toilet was over, Hurree Babu, in flowery speech, came to do honour to

the lama. They ate, of course, apart, and afterwards the old lady,

more or less veiled behind a window, returned to the vital business of

green-mango colics in the young. The lama's knowledge of medicine was,

of course, sympathetic only. He believed that the dung of a black

horse, mixed with sulphur, and carried in a snake-skin, was a sound

remedy for cholera; but the symbolism interested him far more than the

science. Hurree Babu deferred to these views with enchanting

politeness, so that the lama called him a courteous physician. Hurree

Babu replied that he was no more than an inexpert dabbler in the

mysteries; but at least--he thanked the Gods therefore--he knew when he

sat in the presence of a master. He himself had been taught by the

Sahibs, who do not consider expense, in the lordly halls of Calcutta;

but, as he was ever first to acknowledge, there lay a wisdom behind

earthly wisdom--the high and lonely lore of meditation. Kim looked on

with envy. The Hurree Babu of his knowledge--oily, effusive, and

nervous--was gone; gone, too, was the brazen drug-vendor of overnight.

There remained--polished, polite, attentive--a sober, learned son of

experience and adversity, gathering wisdom from the lama's lips. The

old lady confided to Kim that these rare levels were beyond her. She

liked charms with plenty of ink that one could wash off in water,

swallow, and be done with. Else what was the use of the Gods? She

liked men and women, and she spoke of them--of kinglets she had known

in the past; of her own youth and beauty; of the depredations of

leopards and the eccentricities of love Asiatic; of the incidence of

taxation, rack-renting, funeral ceremonies, her son-in-law (this by

allusion, easy to be followed), the care of the young, and the age's

lack of decency. And Kim, as interested in the life of this world as

she soon to leave it, squatted with his feet under the hem of his robe,

drinking all in, while the lama demolished one after another every

theory of body-curing put forward by Hurree Babu.

At noon the Babu strapped up his brass-bound drug-box, took his

patent-leather shoes of ceremony in one hand, a gay blue-and-white

umbrella in the other, and set off northwards to the Doon, where, he

said, he was in demand among the lesser kings of those parts.

'We will go in the cool of the evening, chela,' said the lama. 'That

doctor, learned in physic and courtesy, affirms that the people among

these lower hills are devout, generous, and much in need of a teacher.

In a very short time--so says the hakim--we come to cool air and the

smell of pines.'

'Ye go to the Hills? And by Kulu road? Oh, thrice happy!' shrilled

the old lady. 'But that I am a little pressed with the care of the

homestead I would take palanquin ... but that would be shameless, and

my reputation would be cracked. Ho! Ho! I know the road--every march

of the road I know. Ye will find charity throughout--it is not denied

to the well-looking. I will give orders for provision. A servant to

set you forth upon your journey? No ... Then I will at least cook ye

good food.'

'What a woman is the Sahiba!' said the white-bearded Oorya, when a

tumult rose by the kitchen quarters. 'She has never forgotten a

friend: she has never forgotten an enemy in all her years. And her

cookery--wah!' He rubbed his slim stomach.

There were cakes, there were sweetmeats, there was cold fowl stewed to

rags with rice and prunes--enough to burden Kim like a mule.

'I am old and useless,' she said. 'None now love me--and none

respect--but there are few to compare with me when I call on the Gods

and squat to my cooking-pots. Come again, O people of good will. Holy

One and disciple, come again. The room is always prepared; the welcome

is always ready ... See the women do not follow thy chela too openly.

I know the women of Kulu. Take heed, chela, lest he run away when he

smells his Hills again ... Hai! Do not tilt the rice-bag upside down

... Bless the household, Holy One, and forgive thy servant her

stupidities.'

She wiped her red old eyes on a corner of her veil, and clucked

throatily.

'Women talk,' said the lama at last, 'but that is a woman's infirmity.

I gave her a charm. She is upon the Wheel and wholly given over to the

shows of this life, but none the less, chela, she is virtuous, kindly,

hospitable--of a whole and zealous heart. Who shall say she does not

acquire merit?'

'Not I, Holy One,' said Kim, reslinging the bountiful provision on his

shoulders. 'In my mind--behind my eyes--I have tried to picture such

an one altogether freed from the Wheel--desiring nothing, causing

nothing--a nun, as it were.'

'And, O imp?' The lama almost laughed aloud.

'I cannot make the picture.'

'Nor I. But there are many, many millions of lives before her. She

will get wisdom a little, it may be, in each one.'

'And will she forget how to make stews with saffron upon that road?'

'Thy mind is set on things unworthy. But she has skill. I am

refreshed all over. When we reach the lower hills I shall be yet

stronger. The hakim spoke truly to me this morn when he said a breath

from the snows blows away twenty years from the life of a man. We will

go up into the Hills--the high hills--up to the sound of snow-waters

and the sound of the trees--for a little while. The hakim said that at

any time we may return to the Plains, for we do no more than skirt the

pleasant places. The hakim is full of learning; but he is in no way

proud. I spoke to him--when thou wast talking to the Sahiba--of a

certain dizziness that lays hold upon the back of my neck in the night,

and he said it rose from excessive heat--to be cured by cool air. Upon

consideration, I marvelled that I had not thought of such a simple

remedy.'

'Didst thou tell him of thy Search?' said Kim, a little jealously. He

preferred to sway the lama by his own speech--not through the wiles of

Hurree Babu.

'Assuredly. I told him of my dream, and of the manner by which I had

acquired merit by causing thee to be taught wisdom.'

'Thou didst not say I was a Sahib?'

'What need? I have told thee many times we be but two souls seeking

escape. He said--and he is just herein--that the River of Healing will

break forth even as I dreamed--at my feet, if need be. Having found

the Way, seest thou, that shall free me from the Wheel, need I trouble

to find a way about the mere fields of earth--which are illusion? That

were senseless. I have my dreams, night upon night repeated; I have

Jataka; and I have thee, Friend of all the World. It was written in thy

horoscope that a Red Bull on a green field--I have not

forgotten--should bring thee to honour. Who but I saw that prophecy

accomplished? Indeed, I was the instrument. Thou shalt find me my

River, being in return the instrument. The Search is sure!'

He set his ivory-yellow face, serene and untroubled, towards the

beckoning Hills; his shadow shouldering far before him in the dust.

Chapter 13

Who hath desired the Sea--the immense and contemptuous surges?

The shudder, the stumble, the swerve ere the star-stabbing bowsprit

merges--

The orderly clouds of the Trades and the ridged roaring

sapphire thereunder--

Unheralded cliff-lurking flaws and the head-sails' low-volleying

thunder?

His Sea in no wonder the same--his Sea and the same in each wonder--

His Sea that his being fulfils?

So and no otherwise--so and no otherwise hill-men desire their hills!

The Sea and the Hills.

'Who goes to the hills goes to his mother.'

They had crossed the Siwaliks and the half-tropical Doon, left

Mussoorie behind them, and headed north along the narrow hill-roads.

Day after day they struck deeper into the huddled mountains, and day

after day Kim watched the lama return to a man's strength. Among the

terraces of the Doon he had leaned on the boy's shoulder, ready to

profit by wayside halts. Under the great ramp to Mussoorie he drew

himself together as an old hunter faces a well-remembered bank, and

where he should have sunk exhausted swung his long draperies about him,

drew a deep double-lungful of the diamond air, and walked as only a

hillman can. Kim, plains-bred and plains-fed, sweated and panted

astonished. 'This is my country,' said the lama. 'Beside Such-zen,

this is flatter than a rice-field'; and with steady, driving strokes

from the loins he strode upwards. But it was on the steep downhill

marches, three thousand feet in three hours, that he went utterly away

from Kim, whose back ached with holding back, and whose big toe was

nigh cut off by his grass sandal-string. Through the speckled shadow

of the great deodar-forests; through oak feathered and plumed with

ferns; birch, ilex, rhododendron, and pine, out on to the bare

hillsides' slippery sunburnt grass, and back into the woodlands' coolth

again, till oak gave way to bamboo and palm of the valley, the lama

swung untiring.

Glancing back in the twilight at the huge ridges behind him and the

faint, thin line of the road whereby they had come, he would lay out,

with a hillman's generous breadth of vision, fresh marches for the

morrow; or, halting in the neck of some uplifted pass that gave on

Spiti and Kulu, would stretch out his hands yearningly towards the high

snows of the horizon. In the dawns they flared windy-red above stark

blue, as Kedarnath and Badrinath--kings of that wilderness--took the

first sunlight. All day long they lay like molten silver under the

sun, and at evening put on their jewels again. At first they breathed

temperately upon the travellers, winds good to meet when one crawled

over some gigantic hog's-back; but in a few days, at a height of nine

or ten thousand feet, those breezes bit; and Kim kindly allowed a

village of hillmen to acquire merit by giving him a rough blanket-coat.

The lama was mildly surprised that anyone should object to the

knife-edged breezes which had cut the years off his shoulders.

'These are but the lower hills, chela. There is no cold till we come

to the true Hills.'

'Air and water are good, and the people are devout enough, but the food

is very bad,' Kim growled; 'and we walk as though we were mad--or

English. It freezes at night, too.'

'A little, maybe; but only enough to make old bones rejoice in the sun.

We must not always delight in soft beds and rich food.'

'We might at least keep to the road.'

Kim had all a plainsman's affection for the well-trodden track, not six

feet wide, that snaked among the mountains; but the lama, being

Tibetan, could not refrain from short cuts over spurs and the rims of

gravel-strewn slopes. As he explained to his limping disciple, a man

bred among mountains can prophesy the course of a mountain-road, and

though low-lying clouds might be a hindrance to a short-cutting

stranger, they made no earthly difference to a thoughtful man. Thus,

after long hours of what would be reckoned very fair mountaineering in

civilized countries, they would pant over a saddle-back, sidle past a

few landslips, and drop through forest at an angle of forty-five onto

the road again. Along their track lay the villages of the

hillfolk--mud and earth huts, timbers now and then rudely carved with

an axe--clinging like swallows' nests against the steeps, huddled on

tiny flats half-way down a three-thousand-foot glissade; jammed into a

corner between cliffs that funnelled and focused every wandering blast;

or, for the sake of summer pasture, cowering down on a neck that in

winter would be ten feet deep in snow. And the people--the sallow,

greasy, duffle-clad people, with short bare legs and faces almost

Esquimaux--would flock out and adore. The Plains--kindly and

gentle--had treated the lama as a holy man among holy men. But the

Hills worshipped him as one in the confidence of all their devils.

Theirs was an almost obliterated Buddhism, overlaid with a

nature-worship fantastic as their own landscapes, elaborate as the

terracing of their tiny fields; but they recognized the big hat, the

clicking rosary, and the rare Chinese texts for great authority; and

they respected the man beneath the hat.

'We saw thee come down over the black Breasts of Eua,' said a Betah who

gave them cheese, sour milk, and stone-hard bread one evening. 'We do

not use that often--except when calving cows stray in summer. There is

a sudden wind among those stones that casts men down on the stillest

day. But what should such folk care for the Devil of Eua!'

Then did Kim, aching in every fibre, dizzy with looking down, footsore

with cramping desperate toes into inadequate crannies, take joy in the

day's march--such joy as a boy of St Xavier's who had won the

quarter-mile on the flat might take in the praises of his friends. The

hills sweated the ghi and sugar suet off his bones; the dry air, taken

sobbingly at the head of cruel passes, firmed and built out his upper

ribs; and the tilted levels put new hard muscles into calf and thigh.

They meditated often on the Wheel of Life--the more so since, as the

lama said, they were freed from its visible temptations. Except the

grey eagle and an occasional far-seen bear grubbing and rooting on the

hillside; a vision of a furious painted leopard met at dawn in a still

valley devouring a goat; and now and again a bright-coloured bird, they

were alone with the winds and the grass singing under the wind. The

women of the smoky huts over whose roofs the two walked as they

descended the mountains, were unlovely and unclean, wives of many

husbands, and afflicted with goitre. The men were woodcutters when

they were not farmers--meek, and of an incredible simplicity. But that

suitable discourse might not fail, Fate sent them, overtaking and

overtaken upon the road, the courteous Dacca physician, who paid for

his food in ointments good for goitre and counsels that restore peace

between men and women. He seemed to know these hills as well as he

knew the hill dialects, and gave the lama the lie of the land towards

Ladakh and Tibet. He said they could return to the Plains at any

moment. Meantime, for such as loved mountains, yonder road might

amuse. This was not all revealed in a breath, but at evening

encounters on the stone threshing-floors, when, patients disposed of,

the doctor would smoke and the lama snuff, while Kim watched the wee

cows grazing on the housetops, or threw his soul after his eyes across

the deep blue gulfs between range and range. And there were talks

apart in the dark woods, when the doctor would seek herbs, and Kim, as

budding physician, must accompany him.

'You see, Mister O'Hara, I do not know what the deuce-an' all I shall

do when I find our sporting friends; but if you will kindly keep within

sight of my umbrella, which is fine fixed point for cadastral survey, I

shall feel much better.'

Kim looked out across the jungle of peaks. 'This is not my country,

hakim. Easier, I think, to find one louse in a bear-skin.'

'Oah, thatt is my strong points. There is no hurry for Hurree. They

were at Leh not so long ago. They said they had come down from the

Karakorum with their heads and horns and all. I am onlee afraid they

will have sent back all their letters and compromising things from Leh

into Russian territoree. Of course they will walk away as far to the

East as possible--just to show that they were never among the Western

States. You do not know the Hills?' He scratched with a twig on the

earth. 'Look! They should have come in by Srinagar or Abbottabad.

Thatt is their short road--down the river by Bunji and Astor. But they

have made mischief in the West. So'--he drew a furrow from left to

right--'they march and they march away East to Leh (ah! it is cold

there), and down the Indus to Hanle (I know that road), and then down,

you see, to Bushahr and Chini valley. That is ascertained by process

of elimination, and also by asking questions from people that I cure so

well. Our friends have been a long time playing about and producing

impressions. So they are well known from far off. You will see me

catch them somewhere in Chini valley. Please keep your eye on the

umbrella.'

It nodded like a wind-blown harebell down the valleys and round the

mountain sides, and in due time the lama and Kim, who steered by

compass, would overhaul it, vending ointments and powders at eventide.

'We came by such and such a way!' The lama would throw a careless

finger backward at the ridges, and the umbrella would expend itself in

compliments.

They crossed a snowy pass in cold moonlight, when the lama, mildly

chaffing Kim, went through up to his knees, like a Bactrian camel--the

snow-bred, shag-haired sort that came into the Kashmir Serai. They

dipped across beds of light snow and snow-powdered shale, where they

took refuge from a gale in a camp of Tibetans hurrying down tiny sheep,

each laden with a bag of borax. They came out upon grassy shoulders

still snow-speckled, and through forest, to grass anew. For all their

marchings, Kedarnath and Badrinath were not impressed; and it was only

after days of travel that Kim, uplifted upon some insignificant

ten-thousand-foot hummock, could see that a shoulder-knot or horn of

the two great lords had--ever so slightly--changed outline.

At last they entered a world within a world--a valley of leagues where

the high hills were fashioned of a mere rubble and refuse from off the

knees of the mountains. Here one day's march carried them no farther,

it seemed, than a dreamer's clogged pace bears him in a nightmare.

They skirted a shoulder painfully for hours, and, behold, it was but an

outlying boss in an outlying buttress of the main pile! A rounded

meadow revealed itself, when they had reached it, for a vast tableland

running far into the valley. Three days later, it was a dim fold in

the earth to southward.

'Surely the Gods live here!' said Kim, beaten down by the silence and

the appalling sweep and dispersal of the cloud-shadows after rain.

'This is no place for men!'

'Long and long ago,' said the lama, as to himself, 'it was asked of the

Lord whether the world were everlasting. On this the Excellent One

returned no answer ... When I was in Ceylon, a wise Seeker confirmed

that from the gospel which is written in Pali. Certainly, since we

know the way to Freedom, the question were unprofitable, but--look, and

know illusion, chela! These--are the true Hills! They are like my

hills by Suchzen. Never were such hills!'

Above them, still enormously above them, earth towered away towards the

snow-line, where from east to west across hundreds of miles, ruled as

with a ruler, the last of the bold birches stopped. Above that, in

scarps and blocks upheaved, the rocks strove to fight their heads above

the white smother. Above these again, changeless since the world's

beginning, but changing to every mood of sun and cloud, lay out the

eternal snow. They could see blots and blurs on its face where storm

and wandering wullie-wa got up to dance. Below them, as they stood,

the forest slid away in a sheet of blue-green for mile upon mile; below

the forest was a village in its sprinkle of terraced fields and steep

grazing-grounds. Below the village they knew, though a thunderstorm

worried and growled there for the moment, a pitch of twelve or fifteen

hundred feet gave to the moist valley where the streams gather that are

the mothers of young Sutluj.

As usual, the lama had led Kim by cow-track and by-road, far from the

main route along which Hurree Babu, that 'fearful man', had bucketed

three days before through a storm to which nine Englishmen out of ten

would have given full right of way. Hurree was no game-shot--the snick

of a trigger made him change colour--but, as he himself would have

said, he was 'fairly effeecient stalker', and he had raked the huge

valley with a pair of cheap binoculars to some purpose. Moreover, the

white of worn canvas tents against green carries far. Hurree Babu had

seen all he wanted to see when he sat on the threshing-floor of

Ziglaur, twenty miles away as the eagle flies, and forty by road--that

is to say, two small dots which one day were just below the snow-line,

and the next had moved downward perhaps six inches on the hillside.

Once cleaned out and set to the work, his fat bare legs could cover a

surprising amount of ground, and this was the reason why, while Kim and

the lama lay in a leaky hut at Ziglaur till the storm should be

over-past, an oily, wet, but always smiling Bengali, talking the best

of English with the vilest of phrases, was ingratiating himself with

two sodden and rather rheumatic foreigners. He had arrived, revolving

many wild schemes, on the heels of a thunderstorm which had split a

pine over against their camp, and so convinced a dozen or two forcibly

impressed baggage-coolies the day was inauspicious for farther travel

that with one accord they had thrown down their loads and jibbed. They

were subjects of a Hill Rajah who farmed out their services, as is the

custom, for his private gain; and, to add to their personal distresses,

the strange Sahibs had already threatened them with rifles. The most

of them knew rifles and Sahibs of old: they were trackers and

shikarris of the Northern valleys, keen after bear and wild goat; but

they had never been thus treated in their lives. So the forest took

them to her bosom, and, for all oaths and clamour, refused to restore.

There was no need to feign madness or--the Babu had thought of another

means of securing a welcome. He wrung out his wet clothes, slipped on

his patent-leather shoes, opened the blue-and-white umbrella, and with

mincing gait and a heart beating against his tonsils appeared as 'agent

for His Royal Highness, the Rajah of Rampur, gentlemen. What can I do

for you, please?'

The gentlemen were delighted. One was visibly French, the other

Russian, but they spoke English not much inferior to the Babu's. They

begged his kind offices. Their native servants had gone sick at Leh.

They had hurried on because they were anxious to bring the spoils of

the chase to Simla ere the skins grew moth-eaten. They bore a general

letter of introduction (the Babu salaamed to it orientally) to all

Government officials. No, they had not met any other shooting-parties

en route. They did for themselves. They had plenty of supplies. They

only wished to push on as soon as might be. At this he waylaid a

cowering hillman among the trees, and after three minutes' talk and a

little silver (one cannot be economical upon State service, though

Hurree's heart bled at the waste) the eleven coolies and the three

hangers-on reappeared. At least the Babu would be a witness to their

oppression.

'My royal master, he will be much annoyed, but these people are onlee

common people and grossly ignorant. If your honours will kindly

overlook unfortunate affair, I shall be much pleased. In a little

while rain will stop and we can then proceed. You have been shooting,

eh? That is fine performance!'

He skipped nimbly from one kilta to the next, making pretence to adjust

each conical basket. The Englishman is not, as a rule, familiar with

the Asiatic, but he would not strike across the wrist a kindly Babu who

had accidentally upset a kilta with a red oilskin top. On the other

hand, he would not press drink upon a Babu were he never so friendly,

nor would he invite him to meat. The strangers did all these things,

and asked many questions--about women mostly--to which Hurree returned

gay and unstudied answers. They gave him a glass of whitish fluid like

to gin, and then more; and in a little time his gravity departed from

him. He became thickly treasonous, and spoke in terms of sweeping

indecency of a Government which had forced upon him a white man's

education and neglected to supply him with a white man's salary. He

babbled tales of oppression and wrong till the tears ran down his

cheeks for the miseries of his land. Then he staggered off, singing

love-songs of Lower Bengal, and collapsed upon a wet tree-trunk. Never

was so unfortunate a product of English rule in India more unhappily

thrust upon aliens.

'They are all just of that pattern,' said one sportsman to the other in

French. 'When we get into India proper thou wilt see. I should like

to visit his Rajah. One might speak the good word there. It is

possible that he has heard of us and wishes to signify his good-will.'

'We have not time. We must get into Simla as soon as may be,' his

companion replied. 'For my own part, I wish our reports had been sent

back from Hilas, or even Leh.'

'The English post is better and safer. Remember we are given all

facilities--and Name of God!--they give them to us too! Is it

unbelievable stupidity?'

'It is pride--pride that deserves and will receive punishment.'

'Yes! To fight a fellow-Continental in our game is something. There

is a risk attached, but these people--bah! It is too easy.'

'Pride--all pride, my friend.'

'Now what the deuce is good of Chandernagore being so close to Calcutta

and all,' said Hurree, snoring open-mouthed on the sodden moss, 'if I

cannot understand their French? They talk so particularly fast! It

would have been much better to cut their beastly throats.'

When he presented himself again he was racked with a

headache--penitent, and volubly afraid that in his drunkenness he might

have been indiscreet. He loved the British Government--it was the

source of all prosperity and honour, and his master at Rampur held the

very same opinion. Upon this the men began to deride him and to quote

past words, till step by step, with deprecating smirks, oily grins, and

leers of infinite cunning, the poor Babu was beaten out of his defences

and forced to speak--truth. When Lurgan was told the tale later, he

mourned aloud that he could not have been in the place of the stubborn,

inattentive coolies, who with grass mats over their heads and the

raindrops puddling in their footprints, waited on the weather. All the

Sahibs of their acquaintance--rough-clad men joyously returning year

after year to their chosen gullies--had servants and cooks and

orderlies, very often hillmen. These Sahibs travelled without any

retinue. Therefore they were poor Sahibs, and ignorant; for no Sahib

in his senses would follow a Bengali's advice. But the Bengali,

appearing from somewhere, had given them money, and could make shift

with their dialect. Used to comprehensive ill-treatment from their own

colour, they suspected a trap somewhere, and stood by to run if

occasion offered.

Then through the new-washed air, steaming with delicious earth-smells,

the Babu led the way down the slopes--walking ahead of the coolies in

pride; walking behind the foreigners in humility. His thoughts were

many and various. The least of them would have interested his

companions beyond words. But he was an agreeable guide, ever keen to

point out the beauties of his royal master's domain. He peopled the

hills with anything thev had a mind to slay--thar, ibex, or markhor,

and bear by Elisha's allowance. He discoursed of botany and ethnology

with unimpeachable inaccuracy, and his store of local legends--he had

been a trusted agent of the State for fifteen years, remember--was

inexhaustible.

'Decidedly this fellow is an original,' said the taller of the two

foreigners. 'He is like the nightmare of a Viennese courier.'

'He represents in little India in transition--the monstrous hybridism

of East and West,' the Russian replied. 'It is we who can deal with

Orientals.'

'He has lost his own country and has not acquired any other. But he

has a most complete hatred of his conquerors. Listen. He confided to

me last night,' said the other.

Under the striped umbrella Hurree Babu was straining ear and brain to

follow the quick-poured French, and keeping both eyes on a kilta full

of maps and documents--an extra-large one with a double red oil-skin

cover. He did not wish to steal anything. He only desired to know

what to steal, and, incidentally, how to get away when he had stolen

it. He thanked all the Gods of Hindustan, and Herbert Spencer, that

there remained some valuables to steal.

On the second day the road rose steeply to a grass spur above the

forest; and it was here, about sunset, that they came across an aged

lama--but they called him a bonze--sitting cross-legged above a

mysterious chart held down by stones, which he was explaining to a

young man, evidently a neophyte, of singular, though unwashen, beauty.

The striped umbrella had been sighted half a march away, and Kim had

suggested a halt till it came up to them.

'Ha!' said Hurree Babu, resourceful as Puss-in-Boots. 'That is

eminent local holy man. Probably subject of my royal master.'

'What is he doing? It is very curious.'

'He is expounding holy picture--all hand-worked.'

The two men stood bareheaded in the wash of the afternoon sunlight low

across the gold-coloured grass. The sullen coolies, glad of the check,

halted and slid down their loads.

'Look!' said the Frenchman. 'It is like a picture for the birth of a

religion--the first teacher and the first disciple. Is he a Buddhist?'

'Of some debased kind,' the other answered. 'There are no true

Buddhists among the Hills. But look at the folds of the drapery. Look

at his eyes--how insolent! Why does this make one feel that we are so

young a people?' The speaker struck passionately at a tall weed. 'We

have nowhere left our mark yet. Nowhere! That, do you understand, is

what disquiets me.' He scowled at the placid face, and the monumental

calm of the pose.

'Have patience. We shall make your mark together--we and you young

people. Meantime, draw his picture.'

The Babu advanced loftily; his back out of all keeping with his

deferential speech, or his wink towards Kim.

'Holy One, these be Sahibs. My medicines cured one of a flux, and I go

into Simla to oversee his recovery. They wish to see thy picture--'

'To heal the sick is always good. This is the Wheel of Life,' said the

lama, 'the same I showed thee in the hut at Ziglaur when the rain fell.'

'And to hear thee expound it.'

The lama's eyes lighted at the prospect of new listeners. 'To expound

the Most Excellent Way is good. Have they any knowledge of Hindi, such

as had the Keeper of Images?'

'A little, maybe.'

Hereat, simply as a child engrossed with a new game, the lama threw

back his head and began the full-throated invocation of the Doctor of

Divinity ere he opens the full doctrine. The strangers leaned on their

alpenstocks and listened. Kim, squatting humbly, watched the red

sunlight on their faces, and the blend and parting of their long

shadows. They wore un-English leggings and curious girt-in belts that

reminded him hazily of the pictures in a book in St Xavier's library

"The Adventures of a Young Naturalist in Mexico" was its name. Yes,

they looked very like the wonderful M. Sumichrast of that tale, and

very unlike the 'highly unscrupulous folk' of Hurree Babu's imagining.

The coolies, earth-coloured and mute, crouched reverently some twenty

or thirty yards away, and the Babu, the slack of his thin gear snapping

like a marking-flag in the chill breeze, stood by with an air of happy

proprietorship.

'These are the men,' Hurree whispered, as the ritual went on and the

two whites followed the grass-blade sweeping from Hell to Heaven and

back again. 'All their books are in the large kilta with the reddish

top--books and reports and maps--and I have seen a King's letter that

either Hilas or Bunar has written. They guard it most carefully. They

have sent nothing back from Hilas or Leh. That is sure.'

'Who is with them?'

'Only the beegar-coolies. They have no servants. They are so close

they cook their own food.'

'But what am I to do?'

'Wait and see. Only if any chance comes to me thou wilt know where to

seek for the papers.'

'This were better in Mahbub Ali's hands than a Bengali's,' said Kim

scornfully.

'There are more ways of getting to a sweetheart than butting down a

wall.'

'See here the Hell appointed for avarice and greed. Flanked upon the

one side by Desire and on the other by Weariness.' The lama warmed to

his work, and one of the strangers sketched him in the quick-fading

light.

'That is enough,' the man said at last brusquely. 'I cannot understand

him, but I want that picture. He is a better artist than I. Ask him if

he will sell it.'

'He says "No, sar,"' the Babu replied. The lama, of course, would no

more have parted with his chart to a casual wayfarer than an archbishop

would pawn the holy vessels of his cathedral. All Tibet is full of

cheap reproductions of the Wheel; but the lama was an artist, as well

as a wealthy Abbot in his own place.

'Perhaps in three days, or four, or ten, if I perceive that the Sahib

is a Seeker and of good understanding, I may myself draw him another.

But this was used for the initiation of a novice. Tell him so, hakim.'

'He wishes it now--for money.'

The lama shook his head slowly and began to fold up the Wheel. The

Russian, on his side, saw no more than an unclean old man haggling over

a dirty piece of paper. He drew out a handful of rupees, and snatched

half-jestingly at the chart, which tore in the lama's grip. A low

murmur of horror went up from the coolies--some of whom were Spiti men

and, by their lights, good Buddhists. The lama rose at the insult; his

hand went to the heavy iron pencase that is the priest's weapon, and

the Babu danced in agony.

'Now you see--you see why I wanted witnesses. They are highly

unscrupulous people. Oh, sar! sar! You must not hit holyman!'

'Chela! He has defiled the Written Word!'

It was too late. Before Kim could ward him off, the Russian struck the

old man full on the face. Next instant he was rolling over and over

downhill with Kim at his throat. The blow had waked every unknown

Irish devil in the boy's blood, and the sudden fall of his enemy did

the rest. The lama dropped to his knees, half-stunned; the coolies

under their loads fled up the hill as fast as plainsmen run aross the

level. They had seen sacrilege unspeakable, and it behoved them to get

away before the Gods and devils of the hills took vengeance. The

Frenchman ran towards the lama, fumbling at his revolver with some

notion of making him a hostage for his companion. A shower of cutting

stones--hillmen are very straight shots--drove him away, and a coolie

from Ao-chung snatched the lama into the stampede. All came about as

swiftly as the sudden mountain-darkness.

'They have taken the baggage and all the guns,' yelled the Frenchman,

firing blindly into the twilight.

'All right, sar! All right! Don't shoot. I go to rescue,' and

Hurree, pounding down the slope, cast himself bodily upon the delighted

and astonished Kim, who was banging his breathless foe's head against a

boulder.

'Go back to the coolies,' whispered the Babu in his ear. 'They have

the baggage. The papers are in the kilta with the red top, but look

through all. Take their papers, and specially the murasla [King's

letter]. Go! The other man comes!'

Kim tore uphill. A revolver-bullet rang on a rock by his side, and he

cowered partridge-wise.

'If you shoot,' shouted Hurree, 'they will descend and annihilate us.

I have rescued the gentleman, sar. This is particularly dangerous.'

'By Jove!' Kim was thinking hard in English. 'This is dam'-tight

place, but I think it is self-defence.' He felt in his bosom for

Mahbub's gift, and uncertainly--save for a few practice shots in the

Bikanir desert, he had never used the little gun--pulled the trigger.

'What did I say, sar!' The Babu seemed to be in tears. 'Come down

here and assist to resuscitate. We are all up a tree, I tell you.'

The shots ceased. There was a sound of stumbling feet, and Kim hurried

upward through the gloom, swearing like a cat--or a country-bred.

'Did they wound thee, chela?' called the lama above him.

'No. And thou?' He dived into a clump of stunted firs.

'Unhurt. Come away. We go with these folk to Shamlegh-under-the-Snow.'

'But not before we have done justice,' a voice cried. 'I have got the

Sahibs' guns--all four. Let us go down.'

'He struck the Holy One--we saw it! Our cattle will be barren--our

wives will cease to bear! The snows will slide upon us as we go

home... Atop of all other oppression too!'

The little fir-clump filled with clamouring coolies--panic-stricken,

and in their terror capable of anything. The man from Ao-chung clicked

the breech-bolt of his gun impatiently, and made as to go downhill.

'Wait a little, Holy One; they cannot go far. Wait till I return,'

said he.

'It is this person who has suffered wrong,' said the lama, his hand

over his brow.

'For that very reason,' was the reply.

'If this person overlooks it, your hands are clean. Moreover, ye

acquire merit by obedience.'

'Wait, and we will all go to Shamlegh together,' the man insisted.

For a moment, for just so long as it needs to stuff a cartridge into a

breech-loader, the lama hesitated. Then he rose to his feet, and laid

a finger on the man's shoulder.

'Hast thou heard? I say there shall be no killing--I who was Abbot of

Such-zen. Is it any lust of thine to be re-born as a rat, or a snake

under the eaves--a worm in the belly of the most mean beast? Is it thy

wish to--'

The man from Ao-chung fell to his knees, for the voice boomed like a

Tibetan devil-gong.

'Ai! ai!' cried the Spiti men. 'Do not curse us--do not curse him.

It was but his zeal, Holy One! ... Put down the rifle, fool!'

'Anger on anger! Evil on evil! There will be no killing. Let the

priest-beaters go in bondage to their own acts. Just and sure is the

Wheel, swerving not a hair! They will be born many times--in torment.'

His head drooped, and he leaned heavily on Kim's shoulder.

'I have come near to great evil, chela,' he whispered in that dead hush

under the pines. 'I was tempted to loose the bullet; and truly, in

Tibet there would have been a heavy and a slow death for them ... He

struck me across the face ... upon the flesh ...' He slid to the

ground, breathing heavily, and Kim could hear the over-driven heart

bump and check.

'Have they hurt him to the death?' said the Ao-chung man, while the

others stood mute.

Kim knelt over the body in deadly fear. 'Nay,' he cried passionately,

'this is only a weakness.' Then he remembered that he was a white man,

with a white man's camp-fittings at his service. 'Open the kiltas! The

Sahibs may have a medicine.'

'Oho! Then I know it,' said the Ao-chung man with a laugh. 'Not for

five years was I Yankling Sahib's shikarri without knowing that

medicine. I too have tasted it. Behold!'

He drew from his breast a bottle of cheap whisky--such as is sold to

explorers at Leh--and cleverly forced a little between the lama's teeth.

'So I did when Yankling Sahib twisted his foot beyond Astor. Aha! I

have already looked into their baskets--but we will make fair division

at Shamlegh. Give him a little more. It is good medicine. Feel! His

heart goes better now. Lay his head down and rub a little on the

chest. If he had waited quietly while I accounted for the Sahibs this

would never have come. But perhaps the Sahibs may chase us here. Then

it would not be wrong to shoot them with their own guns, heh?'

'One is paid, I think, already,' said Kim between his teeth. 'I kicked

him in the groin as we went downhill. Would I had killed him!'

'It is well to be brave when one does not live in Rampur,' said one

whose hut lay within a few miles of the Rajah's rickety palace. 'If we

get a bad name among the Sahibs, none will employ us as shikarris any

more.'

'Oh, but these are not Angrezi Sahibs--not merry-minded men like Fostum

Sahib or Yankling Sahib. They are foreigners--they cannot speak

Angrezi as do Sahibs.'

Here the lama coughed and sat up, groping for the rosary.

'There shall be no killing,' he murmured. 'Just is the Wheel! Evil on

evil--'

'Nay, Holy One. We are all here.' The Ao-chung man timidly patted his

feet. 'Except by thy order, no one shall be slain. Rest awhile. We

will make a little camp here, and later, as the moon rises, we go to

Shamlegh-under-the-Snow.'

'After a blow,' said a Spiti man sententiously, 'it is best to sleep.'

'There is, as it were, a dizziness at the back of my neck, and a

pinching in it. Let me lay my head on thy lap, chela. I am an old

man, but not free from passion ... We must think of the Cause of

Things.'

'Give him a blanket. We dare not light a fire lest the Sahibs see.'

'Better get away to Shamlegh. None will follow us to Shamlegh.'

This was the nervous Rampur man.

'I have been Fostum Sahib's shikarri, and I am Yankling Sahib's

shikarri. I should have been with Yankling Sahib now but for this

cursed beegar [the corvee]. Let two men watch below with the guns lest

the Sahibs do more foolishness. I shall not leave this Holy One.'

They sat down a little apart from the lama, and, after listening

awhile, passed round a water-pipe whose receiver was an old Day and

Martin blacking-bottle. The glow of the red charcoal as it went from

hand to hand lit up the narrow, blinking eyes, the high Chinese

cheek-bones, and the bull-throats that melted away into the dark duffle

folds round the shoulders. They looked like kobolds from some magic

mine--gnomes of the hills in conclave. And while they talked, the

voices of the snow-waters round them diminished one by one as the

night-frost choked and clogged the runnels.

'How he stood up against us!' said a Spiti man admiring. 'I remember

an old ibex, out Ladakh-way, that Dupont Sahib missed on a

shoulder-shot, seven seasons back, standing up just like him. Dupont

Sahib was a good shikarri.'

'Not as good as Yankling Sahib.' The Ao-chung man took a pull at the

whisky-bottle and passed it over. 'Now hear me--unless any other man

thinks he knows more.'

The challenge was not taken up.

'We go to Shamlegh when the moon rises. There we will fairly divide

the baggage between us. I am content with this new little rifle and

all its cartridges.'

'Are the bears only bad on thy holding? said a mate, sucking at the

pipe.

'No; but musk-pods are worth six rupees apiece now, and thy women can

have the canvas of the tents and some of the cooking-gear. We will do

all that at Shamlegh before dawn. Then we all go our ways, remembering

that we have never seen or taken service with these Sahibs, who may,

indeed, say that we have stolen their baggage.'

'That is well for thee, but what will our Rajah say?'

'Who is to tell him? Those Sahibs, who cannot speak our talk, or the

Babu, who for his own ends gave us money? Will he lead an army against

us? What evidence will remain? That we do not need we shall throw on

Shamlegh-midden, where no man has yet set foot.'

'Who is at Shamlegh this summer?' The place was only a grazing centre

of three or four huts.'

'The Woman of Shamlegh. She has no love for Sahibs, as we know. The

others can be pleased with little presents; and here is enough for us

all.' He patted the fat sides of the nearest basket.

'But--but--'

'I have said they are not true Sahibs. All their skins and heads were

bought in the bazar at Leh. I know the marks. I showed them to ye

last march.'

'True. They were all bought skins and heads. Some had even the moth

in them.'

That was a shrewd argument, and the Ao-chung man knew his fellows.

'If the worst comes to the worst, I shall tell Yankling Sahib, who is a

man of a merry mind, and he will laugh. We are not doing any wrong to

any Sahibs whom we know. They are priest-beaters. They frightened us.

We fled! Who knows where we dropped the baggage? Do ye think Yankling

Sahib will permit down-country police to wander all over the hills,

disturbing his game? It is a far cry from Simla to Chini, and farther

from Shamlegh to Shamlegh-midden.'

'So be it, but I carry the big kilta. The basket with the red top that

the Sahibs pack themselves every morning.'

'Thus it is proved,' said the Shamlegh man adroitly, 'that they are

Sahibs of no account. Who ever heard of Fostum Sahib, or Yankling

Sahib, or even the little Peel Sahib that sits up of nights to shoot

serow--I say, who, ever heard of these Sahibs coming into the hills

without a down-country cook, and a bearer, and--and all manner of

well-paid, high-handed and oppressive folk in their tail? How can they

make trouble? What of the kilta?'

'Nothing, but that it is full of the Written Word--books and papers in

which they wrote, and strange instruments, as of worship.'

'Shamlegh-midden will take them all.'

'True! But how if we insult the Sahibs' Gods thereby! I do not like

to handle the Written Word in that fashion. And their brass idols are

beyond my comprehension. It is no plunder for simple hill-folk.'

'The old man still sleeps. Hst! We will ask his chela.' The Ao-chung

man refreshed himself, and swelled with pride of leadership.

'We have here,' he whispered, 'a kilta whose nature we do not know.'

'But I do,' said Kim cautiously. The lama drew breath in natural, easy

sleep, and Kim had been thinking of Hurree's last words. As a player

of the Great Game, he was disposed just then to reverence the Babu.

'It is a kilta with a red top full of very wonderful things, not to be

handled by fools.'

'I said it; I said it,' cried the bearer of that burden. 'Thinkest

thou it will betray us?'

'Not if it be given to me. I can draw out its magic. Otherwise it

will do great harm.'

'A priest always takes his share.' Whisky was demoralizing the

Ao-chung man.

'It is no matter to me.' Kim answered, with the craft of his

mother-country. 'Share it among you, and see what comes!'

'Not I. I was only jesting. Give the order. There is more than enough

for us all. We go our way from Shamlegh in the dawn.'

They arranged and re-arranged their artless little plans for another

hour, while Kim shivered with cold and pride. The humour of the

situation tickled the Irish and the Oriental in his soul. Here were

the emissaries of the dread Power of the North, very possibly as great

in their own land as Mahbub or Colonel Creighton, suddenly smitten

helpless. One of them, he privately knew, would be lame for a time.

They had made promises to Kings. Tonight they lay out somewhere below

him, chartless, foodless, tentless, gunless--except for Hurree Babu,

guideless. And this collapse of their Great Game (Kim wondered to whom

they would report it), this panicky bolt into the night, had come about

through no craft of Hurree's or contrivance of Kim's, but simply,

beautifully, and inevitably as the capture of Mahbub's fakir-friends by

the zealous young policeman at Umballa.

'They are there--with nothing; and, by Jove, it is cold! I am here

with all their things. Oh, they will be angry! I am sorry for Hurree

Babu.'

Kim might have saved his pity, for though at that moment the Bengali

suffered acutely in the flesh, his soul was puffed and lofty. A mile

down the hill, on the edge of the pine-forest, two half-frozen men--one

powerfully sick at intervals--were varying mutual recriminations with

the most poignant abuse of the Babu, who seemed distraught with terror.

They demanded a plan of action. He explained that they were very lucky

to be alive; that their coolies, if not then stalking them, had passed

beyond recall; that the Rajah, his master, was ninety miles away, and,

so far from lending them money and a retinue for the Simla journey,

would surely cast them into prison if he heard that they had hit a

priest. He enlarged on this sin and its consequences till they bade

him change the subject. Their one hope, said he, was unostentatious

flight from village to village till they reached civilization; and, for

the hundredth time dissolved in tears, he demanded of the high stars

why the Sahibs 'had beaten holy man'.

Ten steps would have taken Hurree into the creaking gloom utterly

beyond their reach--to the shelter and food of the nearest village,

where glib-tongued doctors were scarce. But he preferred to endure

cold, belly-pinch, bad words, and occasional blows in the company of

his honoured employers. Crouched against a tree-trunk, he sniffed

dolefully.

'And have you thought,' said the uninjured man hotly, 'what sort of

spectacle we shall present wandering through these hills among these

aborigines?'

Hurree Babu had thought of little else for some hours, but the remark

was not to his address.

'We cannot wander! I can hardly walk,' groaned Kim's victim.

'Perhaps the holy man will be merciful in loving-kindness, sar,

otherwise--'

'I promise myself a peculiar pleasure in emptying my revolver into that

young bonze when next we meet,' was the unchristian answer.

'Revolvers! Vengeance! Bonzes!' Hurree crouched lower. The war was

breaking out afresh. 'Have you no consideration for our loss? The

baggage! The baggage!' He could hear the speaker literally dancing on

the grass. 'Everything we bore! Everything we have secured! Our

gains! Eight months' work! Do you know what that means? "Decidedly

it is we who can deal with Orientals!" Oh, you have done well.'

They fell to it in several tongues, and Hurree smiled. Kim was with

the kiltas, and in the kiltas lay eight months of good diplomacy. There

was no means of communicating with the boy, but he could be trusted.

For the rest, Hurree could so stage-manage the journey through the

hills that Hilas, Bunar, and four hundred miles of hill-roads should

tell the tale for a generation. Men who cannot control their own

coolies are little respected in the Hills, and the hillman has a very

keen sense of humour.

'If I had done it myself,' thought Hurree, 'it would not have been

better; and, by Jove, now I think of it, of course I arranged it

myself. How quick I have been! Just when I ran downhill I thought it!

Thee outrage was accidental, but onlee me could have worked it--ah--for

all it was dam'-well worth. Consider the moral effect upon these

ignorant peoples! No treaties--no papers--no written documents at

all--and me to interpret for them. How I shall laugh with the Colonel!

I wish I had their papers also: but you cannot occupy two places in

space simultaneously. Thatt is axiomatic.'

Chapter 14

My brother kneels (so saith Kabir)

To stone and brass in heathen wise,

But in my brother's voice I hear

My own unanswered agonies.

His God is as his Fates assign--

His prayer is all the world's--and mine.

The Prayer.

At moonrise the cautious coolies got under way. The lama, refreshed by

his sleep and the spirit, needed no more than Kim's shoulder to bear

him along--a silent, swift-striding man. They held the shale-sprinkled

grass for an hour, swept round the shoulder of an immortal cliff, and

climbed into a new country entirely blocked off from all sight of Chini

valley. A huge pasture-ground ran up fan-shaped to the living snow.

At its base was perhaps half an acre of flat land, on which stood a few

soil and timber huts. Behind them--for, hill-fashion, they were

perched on the edge of all things--the ground fell sheer two thousand

feet to Shamlegh-midden, where never yet man has set foot.

The men made no motion to divide the plunder till they had seen the

lama bedded down in the best room of the place, with Kim shampooing his

feet, Mohammedan-fashion.

'We will send food,' said the Ao-chung man, 'and the red-topped kilta.

By dawn there will be none to give evidence, one way or the other. If

anything is not needed in the kilta--see here!'

He pointed through the window--opening into space that was filled with

moonlight reflected from the snow--and threw out an empty whisky-bottle.

'No need to listen for the fall. This is the world's end,' he said,

and went out. The lama looked forth, a hand on either sill, with eyes

that shone like yellow opals. From the enormous pit before him white

peaks lifted themselves yearning to the moonlight. The rest was as the

darkness of interstellar space.

'These,' he said slowly, 'are indeed my Hills. Thus should a man

abide, perched above the world, separated from delights, considering

vast matters.'

'Yes; if he has a chela to prepare tea for him, and to fold a blanket

for his head, and to chase out calving cows.'

A smoky lamp burned in a niche, but the full moonlight beat it down;

and by the mixed light, stooping above the food-bag and cups, Kim moved

like a tall ghost.

'Ai! But now I have let the blood cool, my head still beats and drums,

and there is a cord round the back of my neck.'

'No wonder. It was a strong blow. May he who dealt it--'

'But for my own passions there would have been no evil.'

'What evil? Thou hast saved the Sahibs from the death they deserved a

hundred times.'

'The lesson is not well learnt, chela.' The lama came to rest on a

folded blanket, as Kim went forward with his evening routine. 'The

blow was but a shadow upon a shadow. Evil in itself--my legs weary

apace these latter days!--it met evil in me: anger, rage, and a lust

to return evil. These wrought in my blood, woke tumult in my stomach,

and dazzled my ears.' Here he drank scalding black-tea ceremonially,

taking the hot cup from Kim's hand. 'Had I been passionless, the evil

blow would have done only bodily evil--a scar, or a bruise--which is

illusion. But my mind was not abstracted, for rushed in straightway a

lust to let the Spiti men kill. In fighting that lust, my soul was

torn and wrenched beyond a thousand blows. Not till I had repeated the

Blessings' (he meant the Buddhist Beatitudes) 'did I achieve calm. But

the evil planted in me by that moment's carelessness works out to its

end. Just is the Wheel, swerving not a hair! Learn the lesson, chela.'

'It is too high for me,' Kim muttered. 'I am still all shaken. I am

glad I hurt the man.'

'I felt that, sleeping upon thy knees, in the wood below. It

disquieted me in my dreams--the evil in thy soul working through to

mine. Yet on the other hand'--he loosed his rosary--'I have acquired

merit by saving two lives--the lives of those that wronged me. Now I

must see into the Cause of Things. The boat of my soul staggers.'

'Sleep, and be strong. That is wisest.'

'I meditate. There is a need greater than thou knowest.'

Till the dawn, hour after hour, as the moonlight paled on the high

peaks, and that which had been belted blackness on the sides of the far

hills showed as tender green forest, the lama stared fixedly at the

wall. From time to time he groaned. Outside the barred door, where

discomfited kine came to ask for their old stable, Shamlegh and the

coolies gave itself up to plunder and riotous living. The Ao-chung man

was their leader, and once they had opened the Sahibs' tinned foods and

found that they were very good they dared not turn back. Shamlegh

kitchen-midden took the dunnage.

When Kim, after a night of bad dreams, stole forth to brush his teeth

in the morning chill, a fair-coloured woman with turquoise-studded

headgear drew him aside.

'The others have gone. They left thee this kilta as the promise was. I

do not love Sahibs, but thou wilt make us a charm in return for it. We

do not wish little Shamlegh to get a bad name on account of

the--accident. I am the Woman of Shamlegh.' She looked him over with

bold, bright eyes, unlike the usual furtive glance of hillwomen.

'Assuredly. But it must be done in secret.'

She raised the heavy kilta like a toy and slung it into her own hut.

'Out and bar the door! Let none come near till it is finished,' said

Kim.

'But afterwards--we may talk?'

Kim tilted the kilta on the floor--a cascade of Survey-instruments,

books, diaries, letters, maps, and queerly scented native

correspondence. At the very bottom was an embroidered bag covering a

sealed, gilded, and illuminated document such as one King sends to

another. Kim caught his breath with delight, and reviewed the

situation from a Sahib's point of view.

'The books I do not want. Besides, they are logarithms--Survey, I

suppose.' He laid them aside. 'The letters I do not understand, but

Colonel Creighton will. They must all be kept. The maps--they draw

better maps than me--of course. All the native letters--oho!--and

particularly the murasla.' He sniffed the embroidered bag. 'That must

be from Hilas or Bunar, and Hurree Babu spoke truth. By Jove! It is a

fine haul. I wish Hurree could know ... The rest must go out of the

window.' He fingered a superb prismatic compass and the shiny top of a

theodolite. But after all, a Sahib cannot very well steal, and the

things might be inconvenient evidence later. He sorted out every scrap

of manuscript, every map, and the native letters. They made one

softish slab. The three locked ferril-backed books, with five worn

pocket-books, he put aside.

'The letters and the murasla I must carry inside my coat and under my

belt, and the hand-written books I must put into the food-bag. It will

be very heavy. No. I do not think there is anything more. If there

is, the coolies have thrown it down the khud, so thatt is all right.

Now you go too.' He repacked the kilta with all he meant to lose, and

hove it up on to the windowsill. A thousand feet below lay a long,

lazy, round-shouldered bank of mist, as yet untouched by the morning

sun. A thousand feet below that was a hundred-year-old pine-forest.

He could see the green tops looking like a bed of moss when a wind-eddy

thinned the cloud.

'No! I don't think any one will go after you!'

The wheeling basket vomited its contents as it dropped. The theodolite

hit a jutting cliff-ledge and exploded like a shell; the books,

inkstands, paint-boxes, compasses, and rulers showed for a few seconds

like a swarm of bees. Then they vanished; and, though Kim, hanging

half out of the window, strained his young ears, never a sound came up

from the gulf.

'Five hundred--a thousand rupees could not buy them,' he thought

sorrowfully. 'It was verree wasteful, but I have all their other

stuff--everything they did--I hope. Now how the deuce am I to tell

Hurree Babu, and whatt the deuce am I to do? And my old man is sick. I

must tie up the letters in oilskin. That is something to do

first--else they will get all sweated ... And I am all alone!' He

bound them into a neat packet, swedging down the stiff, sticky oilskin

at the comers, for his roving life had made him as methodical as an old

hunter in matters of the road. Then with double care he packed away

the books at the bottom of the food-bag.

The woman rapped at the door.

'But thou hast made no charm,' she said, looking about.

'There is no need.' Kim had completely overlooked the necessity for a

little patter-talk. The woman laughed at his confusion irreverently.

'None--for thee. Thou canst cast a spell by the mere winking of an

eye. But think of us poor people when thou art gone. They were all

too drunk last night to hear a woman. Thou art not drunk?'

'I am a priest.' Kim had recovered himself, and, the woman being aught

but unlovely, thought best to stand on his office.

'I warned them that the Sahibs will be angry and will make an

inquisition and a report to the Rajah. There is also the Babu with

them. Clerks have long tongues.'

'Is that all thy trouble?' The plan rose fully formed in Kim's mind,

and he smiled ravishingly.

'Not all,' quoth the woman, putting out a hard brown hand all covered

with turquoises set in silver.

'I can finish that in a breath,' he went on quickly. 'The Babu is the

very hakim (thou hast heard of him?) who was wandering among the hills

by Ziglaur. I know him.'

'He will tell for the sake of a reward. Sahibs cannot distinguish one

hillman from another, but Babus have eyes for men--and women.'

'Carry a word to him from me.'

'There is nothing I would not do for thee.'

He accepted the compliment calmly, as men must in lands where women

make the love, tore a leaf from a note-book, and with a patent

indelible pencil wrote in gross Shikast--the script that bad little

boys use when they write dirt on walls: 'I have everything that they

have written: their pictures of the country, and many letters.

Especially the murasla. Tell me what to do. I am at

Shamlegh-under-the-Snow. The old man is sick.'

'Take this to him. It will altogether shut his mouth. He cannot have

gone far.'

'Indeed no. They are still in the forest across the spur. Our

children went to watch them when the light came, and have cried the

news as they moved.'

Kim looked his astonishment; but from the edge of the sheep-pasture

floated a shrill, kite-like trill. A child tending cattle had picked

it up from a brother or sister on the far side of the slope that

commanded Chini valley.

'My husbands are also out there gathering wood.' She drew a handful of

walnuts from her bosom, split one neatly, and began to eat. Kim

affected blank ignorance.

'Dost thou not know the meaning of the walnut--priest?' she said

coyly, and handed him the half-shells.

'Well thought of.' He slipped the piece of paper between them quickly.

'Hast thou a little wax to close them on this letter?'

The woman sighed aloud, and Kim relented.

'There is no payment till service has been rendered. Carry this to the

Babu, and say it was sent by the Son of the Charm.'

'Ai! Truly! Truly! By a magician--who is like a Sahib.'

'Nay, a Son of the Charm: and ask if there be any answer.'

'But if he offer a rudeness? I--I am afraid.'

Kim laughed. 'He is, I have no doubt, very tired and very hungry. The

Hills make cold bedfellows. Hai, my'--it was on the tip of his tongue

to say Mother, but he turned it to Sister--'thou art a wise and witty

woman. By this time all the villages know what has befallen the

Sahibs--eh?'

'True. News was at Ziglaur by midnight, and by tomorrow should be at

Kotgarh. The villages are both afraid and angry.'

'No need. Tell the villages to feed the Sahibs and pass them on, in

peace. We must get them quietly away from our valleys. To steal is

one thing--to kill another. The Babu will understand, and there will

be no after-complaints. Be swift. I must tend my master when he

wakes.'

'So be it. After service--thou hast said?--comes the reward. I am the

Woman of Shamlegh, and I hold from the Rajah. I am no common bearer of

babes. Shamlegh is thine: hoof and horn and hide, milk and butter.

Take or leave.'

She turned resolutely uphill, her silver necklaces clicking on her

broad breast, to meet the morning sun fifteen hundred feet above them.

This time Kim thought in the vernacular as he waxed down the oilskin

edges of the packets.

'How can a man follow the Way or the Great Game when he is so--always

pestered by women? There was that girl at Akrola of the Ford; and

there was the scullion's wife behind the dovecot--not counting the

others--and now comes this one! When I was a child it was well enough,

but now I am a man and they will not regard me as a man. Walnuts,

indeed! Ho! ho! It is almonds in the Plains!'

He went out to levy on the village--not with a begging-bowl, which

might do for down-country, but in the manner of a prince. Shamlegh's

summer population is only three families--four women and eight or nine

men. They were all full of tinned meats and mixed drinks, from

ammoniated quinine to white vodka, for they had taken their full share

in the overnight loot. The neat Continental tents had been cut up and

shared long ago, and there were patent aluminium saucepans abroad.

But they considered the lama's presence a perfect safeguard against all

consequences, and impenitently brought Kim of their best--even to a

drink of chang--the barley-beer that comes from Ladakh-way. Then they

thawed out in the sun, and sat with their legs hanging over infinite

abysses, chattering, laughing, and smoking. They judged India and its

Government solely from their experience of wandering Sahibs who had

employed them or their friends as shikarris. Kim heard tales of shots

missed upon ibex, serow, or markhor, by Sahibs twenty years in their

graves--every detail lighted from behind like twigs on tree-tops seen

against lightning. They told him of their little diseases, and, more

important, the diseases of their tiny, sure-footed cattle; of trips as

far as Kotgarh, where the strange missionaries live, and beyond even to

marvellous Simla, where the streets are paved with silver, and anyone,

look you, can get service with the Sahibs, who ride about in

two-wheeled carts and spend money with a spade. Presently, grave and

aloof, walking very heavily, the lama joined himself to the chatter

under the eaves, and they gave him great room. The thin air refreshed

him, and he sat on the edge of precipices with the best of them, and,

when talk languished, flung pebbles into the void. Thirty miles away,

as the eagle flies, lay the next range, seamed and channelled and

pitted with little patches of brush--forests, each a day's dark march.

Behind the village, Shamlegh hill itself cut off all view to southward.

It was like sitting in a swallow's nest under the eaves of the roof of

the world.

From time to time the lama stretched out his hand, and with a little

low-voiced prompting would point out the road to Spiti and north across

the Parungla.

'Beyond, where the hills lie thickest, lies De-ch'en' (he meant

Han-le'), 'the great Monastery. s'Tag-stan-ras-ch'en built it, and of

him there runs this tale.' Whereupon he told it: a fantastic piled

narrative of bewitchment and miracles that set Shamlegh a-gasping.

Turning west a little, he steered for the green hills of Kulu, and

sought Kailung under the glaciers. 'For thither came I in the old, old

days. From Leh I came, over the Baralachi.'

'Yes, yes; we know it,' said the far-faring people of Shamlegh.

'And I slept two nights with the priests of Kailung. These are the

Hills of my delight! Shadows blessed above all other shadows! There

my eyes opened on this world; there my eyes were opened to this world;

there I found Enlightenment; and there I girt my loins for my Search.

Out of the Hills I came--the high Hills and the strong winds. Oh, just

is the Wheel!' He blessed them in detail--the great glaciers, the

naked rocks, the piled moraines and tumbled shale; dry upland, hidden

salt-lake, age-old timber and fruitful water-shot valley one after the

other, as a dying man blesses his folk; and Kim marvelled at his

passion.

'Yes--yes. There is no place like our Hills,' said the people of

Shamlegh. And they fell to wondering how a man could live in the hot

terrible Plains where the cattle run as big as elephants, unfit to

plough on a hillside; where village touches village, they had heard,

for a hundred miles; where folk went about stealing in gangs, and what

the robbers spared the Police carried utterly away.

So the still forenoon wore through, and at the end of it Kim's

messenger dropped from the steep pasture as unbreathed as when she had

set out.

'I sent a word to the hakim,' Kim explained, while she made reverence.

'He joined himself to the idolaters? Nay, I remember he did a healing

upon one of them. He has acquired merit, though the healed employed

his strength for evil. Just is the Wheel! What of the hakim?'

'I feared that thou hadst been bruised and--and I knew he was wise.'

Kim took the waxed walnut-shell and read in English on the back of his

note: Your favour received. Cannot get away from present company at

present, but shall take them into Simla. After which, hope to rejoin

you. Inexpedient to follow angry gentlemen. Return by same road you

came, and will overtake. Highly gratified about correspondence due to

my forethought. 'He says, Holy One, that he will escape from the

idolaters, and will return to us. Shall we wait awhile at Shamlegh,

then?'

The lama looked long and lovingly upon the hills and shook his head.

'That may not be, chela. From my bones outward I do desire it, but it

is forbidden. I have seen the Cause of Things.'

'Why? When the Hills give thee back thy strength day by day? Remember

we were weak and fainting down below there in the Doon.'

'I became strong to do evil and to forget. A brawler and a

swashbuckler upon the hillsides was I.' Kim bit back a smile. 'Just

and perfect is the Wheel, swerving not a hair. When I was a man--a

long time ago--I did pilgrimage to Guru Ch'wan among the poplars' (he

pointed Bhotanwards), 'where they keep the Sacred Horse.'

'Quiet, be quiet!' said Shamlegh, all arow. 'He speaks of

Jam-lin-nin-k'or, the Horse That Can Go Round The World In a Day.'

'I speak to my chela only,' said the lama, in gentle reproof, and they

scattered like frost on south eaves of a morning. 'I did not seek

truth in those days, but the talk of doctrine. All illusion! I drank

the beer and ate the bread of Guru Ch'wan. Next day one said: "We go

out to fight Sangor Gutok down the valley to discover" (mark again how

Lust is tied to Anger!) "which Abbot shall bear rule in the valley and

take the profit of the prayers they print at Sangor Gutok." I went,

and we fought a day.'

'But how, Holy One?'

'With our long pencases as I could have shown ... I say, we fought

under the poplars, both Abbots and all the monks, and one laid open my

forehead to the bone. See!' He tilted back his cap and showed a

puckered silvery scar. 'Just and perfect is the Wheel! Yesterday the

scar itched, and after fifty years I recalled how it was dealt and the

face of him who dealt it; dwelling a little in illusion. Followed that

which thou didst see--strife and stupidity. Just is the Wheel! The

idolater's blow fell upon the scar. Then I was shaken in my soul: my

soul was darkened, and the boat of my soul rocked upon the waters of

illusion. Not till I came to Shamlegh could I meditate upon the Cause

of Things, or trace the running grass-roots of Evil. I strove all the

long night.'

'But, Holy One, thou art innocent of all evil. May I be thy sacrifice!'

Kim was genuinely distressed at the old man's sorrow, and Mahbub Ali's

phrase slipped out unawares.

'In the dawn,' the lama went on more gravely, ready rosary clicking

between the slow sentences, 'came enlightenment. It is here ... I am

an old man ... hill-bred, hill-fed, never to sit down among my Hills.

Three years I travelled through Hind, but--can earth be stronger than

Mother Earth? My stupid body yearned to the Hills and the snows of the

Hills, from below there. I said, and it is true, my Search is sure.

So, at the Kulu woman's house I turned hillward, over-persuaded by

myself. There is no blame to the hakim. He--following

Desire--foretold that the Hills would make me strong. They strengthened

me to do evil, to forget my Search. I delighted in life and the lust

of life. I desired strong slopes to climb. I cast about to find them.

I measured the strength of my body, which is evil, against the high

Hills, I made a mock of thee when thy breath came short under Jamnotri.

I jested when thou wouldst not face the snow of the pass.'

'But what harm? I was afraid. It was just. I am not a hillman; and I

loved thee for thy new strength.'

'More than once I remember'--he rested his cheek dolefully on his

hand--'I sought thy praise and the hakim's for the mere strength of my

legs. Thus evil followed evil till the cup was full. Just is the

Wheel! All Hind for three years did me all honour. From the Fountain

of Wisdom in the Wonder House to'--he smiled--'a little child playing

by a big gun--the world prepared my road. And why?'

'Because we loved thee. It is only the fever of the blow. I myself am

still sick and shaken.'

'No! It was because I was upon the Way--tuned as are si-nen [cymbals]

to the purpose of the Law. I departed from that ordinance. The tune

was broken: followed the punishment. In my own Hills, on the edge of

my own country, in the very place of my evil desire, comes the

buffet--here!' (He touched his brow.) 'As a novice is beaten when he

misplaces the cups, so am I beaten, who was Abbot of Such-zen. No

word, look you, but a blow, chela.'

'But the Sahibs did not know thee, Holy One?'

'We were well matched. Ignorance and Lust met Ignorance and Lust upon

the road, and they begat Anger. The blow was a sign to me, who am no

better than a strayed yak, that my place is not here. Who can read the

Cause of an act is halfway to Freedom! "Back to the path," says the

Blow. "The Hills are not for thee. Thou canst not choose Freedom and

go in bondage to the delight of life."'

'Would we had never met that cursed Russian!'

'Our Lord Himself cannot make the Wheel swing backward. And for my

merit that I had acquired I gain yet another sign.' He put his hand in

his bosom, and drew forth the Wheel of Life. 'Look! I considered this

after I had meditated. There remains untorn by the idolater no more

than the breadth of my fingernail.'

'I see.'

'So much, then, is the span of my life in this body. I have served the

Wheel all my days. Now the Wheel serves me. But for the merit I have

acquired in guiding thee upon the Way, there would have been added to

me yet another life ere I had found my River. Is it plain, chela?'

Kim stared at the brutally disfigured chart. From left to right

diagonally the rent ran--from the Eleventh House where Desire gives

birth to the Child (as it is drawn by Tibetans)--across the human and

animal worlds, to the Fifth House--the empty House of the Senses. The

logic was unanswerable.

'Before our Lord won Enlightenment'--the lama folded all away with

reverence--'He was tempted. I too have been tempted, but it is

finished. The Arrow fell in the Plains--not in the Hills. Therefore,

what make we here?'

'Shall we at least wait for the hakim?'

'I know how long I shall live in this body. What can a hakim do?'

'But thou art all sick and shaken. Thou canst not walk.'

'How can I be sick if I see Freedom?' He rose unsteadily to his feet.

'Then I must get food from the village. Oh, the weary Road!' Kim felt

that he too needed rest.

'That is lawful. Let us eat and go. The Arrow fell in the Plains ...

but I yielded to Desire. Make ready, chela.'

Kim turned to the woman with the turquoise headgear who had been idly

pitching pebbles over the cliff. She smiled very kindly.

'I found him like a strayed buffalo in a cornfield--the Babu; snorting

and sneezing with cold. He was so hungry that he forgot his dignity

and gave me sweet words. The Sahibs have nothing.' She flung out an

empty palm. 'One is very sick about the stomach. Thy work?'

Kim nodded, with a bright eye.

'I spoke to the Bengali first--and to the people of a near-by village

after. The Sahibs will be given food as they need it--nor will the

people ask money. The plunder is already distributed. The Babu makes

lying speeches to the Sahibs. Why does he not leave them?'

'Out of the greatness of his heart.'

'Was never a Bengali yet had one bigger than a dried walnut. But it is

no matter ... Now as to walnuts. After service comes reward. I have

said the village is thine.'

'It is my loss,' Kim began. 'Even now I had planned desirable things

in my heart which'--there is no need to go through the compliments

proper to these occasions. He sighed deeply ... 'But my master, led

by a vision--'

'Huh! What can old eyes see except a full begging-bowl?'

'--turns from this village to the Plains again.'

'Bid him stay.'

Kim shook his head. 'I know my Holy One, and his rage if he be

crossed,' he replied impressively. 'His curses shake the Hills.'

'Pity they did not save him from a broken head! I heard that thou wast

the tiger-hearted one who smote the Sahib. Let him dream a little

longer. Stay!'

'Hillwoman,' said Kim, with austerity that could not harden the

outlines of his young oval face, 'these matters are too high for thee.'

'The Gods be good to us! Since when have men and women been other than

men and women?'

'A priest is a priest. He says he will go upon this hour. I am his

chela, and I go with him. We need food for the Road. He is an

honoured guest in all the villages, but'--he broke into a pure boy's

grin--'the food here is good. Give me some.'

'What if I do not give it thee? I am the woman of this village.'

'Then I curse thee--a little--not greatly, but enough to remember.' He

could not help smiling.

'Thou hast cursed me already by the down-dropped eyelash and the

uplifted chin. Curses? What should I care for mere words?' She

clenched her hands upon her bosom ... 'But I would not have thee to go

in anger, thinking hardly of me--a gatherer of cow-dung and grass at

Shamlegh, but still a woman of substance.'

'I think nothing,' said Kim, 'but that I am grieved to go, for I am

very weary; and that we need food. Here is the bag.'

The woman snatched it angrily. 'I was foolish,' said she. 'Who is thy

woman in the Plains? Fair or black? I was fair once. Laughest thou?

Once, long ago, if thou canst believe, a Sahib looked on me with

favour. Once, long ago, I wore European clothes at the Mission-house

yonder.' She pointed towards Kotgarh. 'Once, long ago. I was

Ker-lis-ti-an and spoke English--as the Sahibs speak it. Yes. My

Sahib said he would return and wed me--yes, wed me. He went away--I

had nursed him when he was sick--but he never returned. Then I saw

that the Gods of the Kerlistians lied, and I went back to my own people

... I have never set eyes on a Sahib since. (Do not laugh at me. The

fit is past, little priestling.) Thy face and thy walk and thy fashion

of speech put me in mind of my Sahib, though thou art only a wandering

mendicant to whom I give a dole. Curse me? Thou canst neither curse

nor bless!' She set her hands on her hips and laughed bitterly. 'Thy

Gods are lies; thy works are lies; thy words are lies. There are no

Gods under all the Heavens. I know it ... But for awhile I thought it

was my Sahib come back, and he was my God. Yes, once I made music on a

pianno in the Mission-house at Kotgarh. Now I give alms to priests who

are heatthen.' She wound up with the English word, and tied the mouth

of the brimming bag.

'I wait for thee, chela,' said the lama, leaning against the door-post.

The woman swept the tall figure with her eyes. 'He walk! He cannot

cover half a mile. Whither would old bones go?'

At this Kim, already perplexed by the lama's collapse and foreseeing

the weight of the bag, fairly lost his temper.

'What is it to thee, woman of ill-omen, where he goes?'

'Nothing--but something to thee, priest with a Sahib's face. Wilt thou

carry him on thy shoulders?'

'I go to the Plains. None must hinder my return. I have wrestled with

my soul till I am strengthless. The stupid body is spent, and we are

far from the Plains.'

'Behold!' she said simply, and drew aside to let Kim see his own utter

helplessness. 'Curse me. Maybe it will give him strength. Make a

charm! Call on thy great God. Thou art a priest.' She turned away.