← catalogue

Kim

by Rudyard Kipling · English · Gutenberg #2226 · 597,025 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Kim
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Kim

Author: Rudyard Kipling


        
Release date: June 1, 2000 [eBook #2226]
                Most recently updated: July 11, 2026

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2226


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KIM ***




Kim

by Rudyard Kipling


Contents

 CHAPTER I
 CHAPTER II
 CHAPTER III
 CHAPTER IV
 CHAPTER V
 CHAPTER VI
 CHAPTER VII
 CHAPTER VIII
 CHAPTER IX
 CHAPTER X
 CHAPTER XI
 CHAPTER XII
 CHAPTER XIII
 CHAPTER XIV
 CHAPTER XV




CHAPTER I


O ye who tread the Narrow Way
By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day,
Be gentle when “the heathen” pray
    To Buddha at Kamakura!

He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam Zammah on
her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher—the Wonder House, as the
natives call the Lahore Museum. Who hold Zam-Zammah, that
“fire-breathing dragon”, hold the Punjab, for the great green-bronze
piece is always first of the conqueror’s loot.

There was some justification for Kim—he had kicked Lala Dinanath’s boy
off the trunnions—since the English held the Punjab and Kim was
English. Though he was burned black as any native; though he spoke the
vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue in a clipped uncertain
sing-song; though he consorted on terms of perfect equality with the
small boys of the bazar; Kim was white—a poor white of the very
poorest. The half-caste woman who looked after him (she smoked opium,
and pretended to keep a second-hand furniture shop by the square where
the cheap cabs wait) told the missionaries that she was Kim’s mother’s
sister; but his mother had been nursemaid in a Colonel’s family and had
married Kimball O’Hara, a young colour-sergeant of the Mavericks, an
Irish regiment. He afterwards took a post on the Sind, Punjab, and
Delhi Railway, and his Regiment went home without him. The wife died of
cholera in Ferozepore, and O’Hara fell to drink and loafing up and down
the line with the keen-eyed three-year-old baby. Societies and
chaplains, anxious for the child, tried to catch him, but O’Hara
drifted away, till he came across the woman who took opium and learned
the taste from her, and died as poor whites die in India. His estate at
death consisted of three papers—one he called his “_ne varietur_”
because those words were written below his signature thereon, and
another his “clearance-certificate”. The third was Kim’s
birth-certificate. Those things, he was used to say, in his glorious
opium-hours, would yet make little Kimball a man. On no account was Kim
to part with them, for they belonged to a great piece of magic—such
magic as men practised over yonder behind the Museum, in the big
blue-and-white Jadoo-Gher—the Magic House, as we name the Masonic
Lodge. It would, he said, all come right some day, and Kim’s horn would
be exalted between pillars—monstrous pillars—of beauty and strength.
The Colonel himself, riding on a horse, at the head of the finest
Regiment in the world, would attend to Kim—little Kim that should have
been better off than his father. Nine hundred first-class devils, whose
God was a Red Bull on a green field, would attend to Kim, if they had
not forgotten O’Hara—poor O’Hara that was gang-foreman on the
Ferozepore line. Then he would weep bitterly in the broken rush chair
on the veranda. So it came about after his death that the woman sewed
parchment, paper, and birth-certificate into a leather amulet-case
which she strung round Kim’s neck.

“And some day,” she said, confusedly remembering O’Hara’s prophecies,
“there will come for you a great Red Bull on a green field, and the
Colonel riding on his tall horse, yes, and” dropping into English—“nine
hundred devils.”

“Ah,” said Kim, “I shall remember. A Red Bull and a Colonel on a horse
will come, but first, my father said, will come the two men making
ready the ground for these matters. That is how my father said they
always did; and it is always so when men work magic.”

If the woman had sent Kim up to the local Jadoo-Gher with those papers,
he would, of course, have been taken over by the Provincial Lodge, and
sent to the Masonic Orphanage in the Hills; but what she had heard of
magic she distrusted. Kim, too, held views of his own. As he reached
the years of indiscretion, he learned to avoid missionaries and white
men of serious aspect who asked who he was, and what he did. For Kim
did nothing with an immense success. True, he knew the wonderful walled
city of Lahore from the Delhi Gate to the outer Fort Ditch; was hand in
glove with men who led lives stranger than anything Haroun al Raschid
dreamed of; and he lived in a life wild as that of the Arabian Nights,
but missionaries and secretaries of charitable societies could not see
the beauty of it. His nickname through the wards was “Little Friend of
all the World”; and very often, being lithe and inconspicuous, he
executed commissions by night on the crowded housetops for sleek and
shiny young men of fashion. It was intrigue,—of course he knew that
much, as he had known all evil since he could speak,—but what he loved
was the game for its own sake—the stealthy prowl through the dark
gullies and lanes, the crawl up a waterpipe, the sights and sounds of
the women’s world on the flat roofs, and the headlong flight from
housetop to housetop under cover of the hot dark. Then there were holy
men, ash-smeared _faquirs_ by their brick shrines under the trees at
the riverside, with whom he was quite familiar—greeting them as they
returned from begging-tours, and, when no one was by, eating from the
same dish. The woman who looked after him insisted with tears that he
should wear European clothes—trousers, a shirt and a battered hat. Kim
found it easier to slip into Hindu or Mohammedan garb when engaged on
certain businesses. One of the young men of fashion—he who was found
dead at the bottom of a well on the night of the earthquake—had once
given him a complete suit of Hindu kit, the costume of a lowcaste
street boy, and Kim stored it in a secret place under some baulks in
Nila Ram’s timber-yard, beyond the Punjab High Court, where the
fragrant deodar logs lie seasoning after they have driven down the
Ravi. When there was business or frolic afoot, Kim would use his
properties, returning at dawn to the veranda, all tired out from
shouting at the heels of a marriage procession, or yelling at a Hindu
festival. Sometimes there was food in the house, more often there was
not, and then Kim went out again to eat with his native friends.

As he drummed his heels against Zam-Zammah he turned now and again from
his king-of-the-castle game with little Chota Lal and Abdullah the
sweetmeat-seller’s son, to make a rude remark to the native policeman
on guard over rows of shoes at the Museum door. The big Punjabi grinned
tolerantly: he knew Kim of old. So did the water-carrier, sluicing
water on the dry road from his goat-skin bag. So did Jawahir Singh, the
Museum carpenter, bent over new packing-cases. So did everybody in
sight except the peasants from the country, hurrying up to the Wonder
House to view the things that men made in their own province and
elsewhere. The Museum was given up to Indian arts and manufactures, and
anybody who sought wisdom could ask the Curator to explain.

“Off! Off! Let me up!” cried Abdullah, climbing up Zam-Zammah’s wheel.

“Thy father was a pastry-cook, Thy mother stole the _ghi_,” sang Kim.
“All Mussalmans fell off Zam-Zammah long ago!”

“Let _me_ up!” shrilled little Chota Lal in his gilt-embroidered cap.
His father was worth perhaps half a million sterling, but India is the
only democratic land in the world.

“The Hindus fell off Zam-Zammah too. The Mussalmans pushed them off.
Thy father was a pastry-cook—”

He stopped; for there shuffled round the corner, from the roaring Motee
Bazar, such a man as Kim, who thought he knew all castes, had never
seen. He was nearly six feet high, dressed in fold upon fold of dingy
stuff like horse-blanketing, and not one fold of it could Kim refer to
any known trade or profession. At his belt hung a long open-work iron
pencase and a wooden rosary such as holy men wear. On his head was a
gigantic sort of tam-o’-shanter. His face was yellow and wrinkled, like
that of Fook Shing, the Chinese bootmaker in the bazar. His eyes turned
up at the corners and looked like little slits of onyx.

“Who is that?” said Kim to his companions.

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

“Without doubt,” returned Kim; “but he is no man of India that _I_ have
ever seen.”

“A priest, perhaps,” said Chota Lal, spying the rosary. “See! He goes
into the Wonder House!”

“Nay, nay,” said the policeman, shaking his head. “I do not understand
your talk.” The constable spoke Punjabi. “O Friend of all the World,
what does he say?”

“Send him hither,” said Kim, dropping from Zam-Zammah, flourishing his
bare heels. “He is a foreigner, and thou art a buffalo.”

The man turned helplessly and drifted towards the boys. He was old, and
his woollen gaberdine still reeked of the stinking artemisia of the
mountain passes.

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

“The Ajaib-Gher, the Wonder House!” Kim gave him no title—such as Lala
or Mian. He could not divine the man’s creed.

“Ah! The Wonder House! Can any enter?”

“It is written above the door—all can enter.”

“Without payment?”

“I go in and out. _I_ am no banker,” laughed Kim.

“Alas! I am an old man. I did not know.” Then, fingering his rosary, he
half turned to the Museum.

“What is your caste? Where is your house? Have you come far?” Kim
asked.

“I came by Kulu—from beyond the Kailas—but what know you? From the
Hills where”—he sighed—“the air and water are fresh and cool.”

“Aha! Khitai [a Chinaman],” said Abdullah proudly. Fook Shing had once
chased him out of his shop for spitting at the joss above the boots.

“Pahari [a hillman],” said little Chota Lal.

“Aye, child—a hillman from hills thou’lt never see. Didst hear of
Bhotiyal [Tibet]? I am no Khitai, but a Bhotiya [Tibetan], since you
must know—a lama—or, say, a _guru_ in your tongue.”

“A _guru_ from Tibet,” said Kim. “I have not seen such a man. They be
Hindus in Tibet, then?”

“We be followers of the Middle Way, living in peace in our lamasseries,
and I go to see the Four Holy Places before I die. Now do you, who are
children, know as much as I do who am old.” He smiled benignantly on
the boys.

“Hast thou eaten?”

He fumbled in his bosom and drew forth a worn, wooden begging-bowl. The
boys nodded. All priests of their acquaintance begged.

“I do not wish to eat yet.” He turned his head like an old tortoise in
the sunlight. “Is it true that there are many images in the Wonder
House of Lahore?” He repeated the last words as one making sure of an
address.

“That is true,” said Abdullah. “It is full of heathen _būts_. Thou also
art an idolater.”

“Never mind _him_,” said. Kim. “That is the Government’s house and
there is no idolatry in it, but only a Sahib with a white beard. Come
with me and I will show.”

“Strange priests eat boys,” whispered Chota Lal.

“And he is a stranger and a _būt-parast_ (idolater),” said Abdullah,
the Mohammedan.

Kim laughed. “He is new. Run to your mothers’ laps, and be safe. Come!”

Kim clicked round the self-registering turnstile; the old man followed
and halted amazed. In the entrance-hall stood the larger figures of the
Greco-Buddhist sculptures done, savants know how long since, by
forgotten workmen whose hands were feeling, and not unskilfully, for
the mysteriously transmitted Grecian touch. There were hundreds of
pieces, friezes of figures in relief, fragments of statues and slabs
crowded with figures that had encrusted the brick walls of the Buddhist
_stupas_ and _viharas_ of the North Country and now, dug up and
labelled, made the pride of the Museum. In open-mouthed wonder the lama
turned to this and that, and finally checked in rapt attention before a
large alto-relief representing a coronation or apotheosis of the Lord
Buddha. The Master was represented seated on a lotus the petals of
which were so deeply undercut as to show almost detached. Round Him was
an adoring hierarchy of kings, elders, and old-time Buddhas. Below were
lotus-covered waters with fishes and water-birds. Two butterfly-winged
devas held a wreath over His head; above them another pair supported an
umbrella surmounted by the jewelled headdress of the Bodhisat.

“The Lord! The Lord! It is Sakya Muni himself,” the lama half sobbed;
and under his breath began the wonderful Buddhist invocation:

“To Him the Way,—the Law,—Apart—
Whom Maya held beneath her heart,
Ananda’s Lord—the Bodhisat.”

“And He is here! The Most Excellent Law is here also. My pilgrimage is
well begun. And what work! What work!”

“Yonder is the Sahib.” said Kim, and dodged sideways among the cases of
the arts and manufacturers wing. A white-bearded Englishman was looking
at the lama, who gravely turned and saluted him and after some fumbling
drew forth a note-book and a scrap of paper.

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

“One of us who had made pilgrimage to the Holy Places—he is now Abbot
of the Lung-Cho Monastery—gave it me,” stammered the lama. “He spoke of
these.” His lean hand moved tremulously round.

“Welcome, then, O lama from Tibet. Here be the images, and I am
here”—he glanced at the lama’s face—“to gather knowledge. Come to my
office awhile.” The old man was trembling with excitement.

The office was but a little wooden cubicle partitioned off from the
sculpture-lined gallery. Kim laid himself down, his ear against a crack
in the heat-split cedar door, and, following his instinct, stretched
out to listen and watch.

Most of the talk was altogether above his head. The lama, haltingly at
first, spoke to the Curator of his own lamassery, the Such-zen,
opposite the Painted Rocks, four months’ march away. The Curator
brought out a huge book of photos and showed him that very place,
perched on its crag, overlooking the gigantic valley of many-hued
strata.

“Ay, ay!” The lama mounted a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles of Chinese
work. “Here is the little door through which we bring wood before
winter. And thou—the English know of these things? He who is now Abbot
of Lung-Cho told me, but I did not believe. The Lord—the Excellent
One—He has honour here too? And His life is known?”

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

Out shuffled the lama to the main hall, and, the Curator beside him,
went through the collection with the reverence of a devotee and the
appreciative instinct of a craftsman.

Incident by incident in the beautiful story he identified on the
blurred stone, puzzled here and there by the unfamiliar Greek
convention, but delighted as a child at each new trove. Where the
sequence failed, as in the Annunciation, the Curator supplied it from
his mound of books—French and German, with photographs and
reproductions.

Here was the devout Asita, the pendant of Simeon in the Christian
story, holding the Holy Child on his knee while mother and father
listened; and here were incidents in the legend of the cousin
Devadatta. Here was the wicked woman who accused the Master of
impurity, all confounded; here was the teaching in the Deer-park; the
miracle that stunned the fire-worshippers; here was the Bodhisat in
royal state as a prince; the miraculous birth; the death at Kusinagara,
where the weak disciple fainted; while there were almost countless
repetitions of the meditation under the Bodhi tree; and the adoration
of the alms-bowl was everywhere. In a few minutes the Curator saw that
his guest was no mere bead-telling mendicant, but a scholar of parts.
And they went at it all over again, the lama taking snuff, wiping his
spectacles, and talking at railway speed in a bewildering mixture of
Urdu and Tibetan. He had heard of the travels of the Chinese pilgrims,
Fu-Hiouen and Hwen-Tsiang, and was anxious to know if there was any
translation of their record. He drew in his breath as he turned
helplessly over the pages of Beal and Stanislas Julien. “’Tis all here.
A treasure locked.” Then he composed himself reverently to listen to
fragments hastily rendered into Urdu. For the first time he heard of
the labours of European scholars, who by the help of these and a
hundred other documents have identified the Holy Places of Buddhism.
Then he was shown a mighty map, spotted and traced with yellow. The
brown finger followed the Curator’s pencil from point to point. Here
was Kapilavastu, here the Middle Kingdom, and here Mahabodhi, the Mecca
of Buddhism; and here was Kusinagara, sad place of the Holy One’s
death. The old man bowed his head over the sheets in silence for a
while, and the Curator lit another pipe. Kim had fallen asleep. When he
waked, the talk, still in spate, was more within his comprehension.

“And thus it was, O Fountain of Wisdom, that I decided to go to the
Holy Places which His foot had trod—to the Birthplace, even to Kapila;
then to Mahabodhi, which is Buddh Gaya—to the Monastery—to the
Deer-park—to the place of His death.”

The lama lowered his voice. “And I come here alone. For
five—seven—eighteen—forty years it was in my mind that the Old Law was
not well followed; being overlaid, as thou knowest, with devildom,
charms, and idolatry. Even as the child outside said but now. Ay, even
as the child said, with _būt-parasti_.”

“So it comes with all faiths.”

“Thinkest thou? The books of my lamassery I read, and they were dried
pith; and the later ritual with which we of the Reformed Law have
cumbered ourselves—that, too, had no worth to these old eyes. Even the
followers of the Excellent One are at feud on feud with one another. It
is all illusion. Ay, _maya_, illusion. But I have another desire”—the
seamed yellow face drew within three inches of the Curator, and the
long forefinger-nail tapped on the table. “Your scholars, by these
books, have followed the Blessed Feet in all their wanderings; but
there are things which they have not sought out. I know nothing—nothing
do I know—but I go to free myself from the Wheel of Things by a broad
and open road.” He smiled with most simple triumph. “As a pilgrim to
the Holy Places I acquire merit. But there is more. Listen to a true
thing. When our gracious Lord, being as yet a youth, sought a mate, men
said, in His father’s Court, that He was too tender for marriage. Thou
knowest?”

The Curator nodded, wondering what would come next.

“So they made the triple trial of strength against all comers. And at
the test of the Bow, our Lord first breaking that which they gave Him,
called for such a bow as none might bend. Thou knowest?”

“It is written. I have read.”

“And, overshooting all other marks, the arrow passed far and far beyond
sight. At the last it fell; and, where it touched earth, there broke
out a stream which presently became a River, whose nature, by our
Lord’s beneficence, and that merit He acquired ere He freed himself, is
that whoso bathes in it washes away all taint and speckle of sin.”

“So it is written,” said the Curator sadly.

The lama drew a long breath. “Where is that River? Fountain of Wisdom,
where fell the arrow?”

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

“Nay, if it please thee to forget—the one thing only that thou hast not
told me. Surely thou must know? See, I am an old man! I ask with my
head between thy feet, O Fountain of Wisdom. We _know_ He drew the bow!
We _know_ the arrow fell! We know the stream gushed! Where, then, is
the River? My dream told me to find it. So I came. I am here. But where
is the River?”

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

“By it one attains freedom from the Wheel of Things,” the lama went on,
unheeding. “The River of the Arrow! Think again! Some little stream,
maybe—dried in the heats? But the Holy One would never so cheat an old
man.”

“I do not know. I do not know.”

The lama brought his thousand-wrinkled face once more a handsbreadth
from the Englishman’s. “I see thou dost not know. Not being of the Law,
the matter is hid from thee.”

“Ay—hidden—hidden.”

“We are both bound, thou and I, my brother. But I”—he rose with a sweep
of the soft thick drapery—“I go to cut myself free. Come also!”

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

“First to Kashi [Benares]: where else? There I shall meet one of the
pure faith in a Jain temple of that city. He also is a Seeker in
secret, and from him haply I may learn. Maybe he will go with me to
Buddh Gaya. Thence north and west to Kapilavastu, and there will I seek
for the River. Nay, I will seek everywhere as I go—for the place is not
known where the arrow fell.”

“And how wilt thou go? It is a far cry to Delhi, and farther to
Benares.”

“By road and the trains. From Pathânkot, having left the Hills, I came
hither in a _te-rain_. It goes swiftly. At first I was amazed to see
those tall poles by the side of the road snatching up and snatching up
their threads,”—he illustrated the stoop and whirl of a telegraph-pole
flashing past the train. “But later, I was cramped and desired to walk,
as I am used.”

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

“Oh, for that one but asks a question and pays money, and the appointed
persons despatch all to the appointed place. That much I knew in my
lamassery from sure report,” said the lama proudly.

“And when dost thou go?” The Curator smiled at the mixture of old-world
piety and modern progress that is the note of India today.

“As soon as may be. I follow the places of His life till I come to the
River of the Arrow. There is, moreover, a written paper of the hours of
the trains that go south.”

“And for food?” Lamas, as a rule, have good store of money somewhere
about them, but the Curator wished to make sure.

“For the journey, I take up the Master’s begging-bowl. Yes. Even as He
went so go I, forsaking the ease of my monastery. There was with me
when I left the hills a _chela_ (disciple) who begged for me as the
Rule demands, but halting in Kulu awhile a fever took him and he died.
I have now no _chela_, but I will take the alms-bowl and thus enable
the charitable to acquire merit.” He nodded his head valiantly. Learned
doctors of a lamassery do not beg, but the lama was an enthusiast in
this quest.

“Be it so,” said the Curator, smiling. “Suffer me now to acquire merit.
We be craftsmen together, thou and I. Here is a new book of white
English paper: here be sharpened pencils two and three—thick and thin,
all good for a scribe. Now lend me thy spectacles.”

The Curator looked through them. They were heavily scratched, but the
power was almost exactly that of his own pair, which he slid into the
lama’s hand, saying: “Try these.”

“A feather! A very feather upon the face.” The old man turned his head
delightedly and wrinkled up his nose. “How scarcely do I feel them! How
clearly do I see!”

“They be _bilaur_—crystal—and will never scratch. May they help thee to
thy River, for they are thine.”

“I will take them and the pencils and the white note-book,” said the
lama, “as a sign of friendship between priest and priest—and now—” He
fumbled at his belt, detached the open-work iron pincers, and laid it
on the Curator’s table. “That is for a memory between thee and me—my
pencase. It is something old—even as I am.”

It was a piece of ancient design, Chinese, of an iron that is not
smelted these days; and the collector’s heart in the Curator’s bosom
had gone out to it from the first. For no persuasion would the lama
resume his gift.

“When I return, having found the River, I will bring thee a written
picture of the Padma Samthora such as I used to make on silk at the
lamassery. Yes—and of the Wheel of Life,” he chuckled, “for we be
craftsmen together, thou and I.”

The Curator would have detained him: they are few in the world who
still have the secret of the conventional brush-pen Buddhist pictures
which are, as it were, half written and half drawn. But the lama strode
out, head high in air, and pausing an instant before the great statue
of a Bodhisat in meditation, brushed through the turnstiles.

Kim followed like a shadow. What he had overheard excited him wildly.
This man was entirely new to all his experience, and he meant to
investigate further, precisely as he would have investigated a new
building or a strange festival in Lahore city. The lama was his trove,
and he purposed to take possession. Kim’s mother had been Irish, too.

The old man halted by Zam-Zammah and looked round till his eye fell on
Kim. The inspiration of his pilgrimage had left him for awhile, and he
felt old, forlorn, and very empty.

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

“Huh! Owl!” was Kim’s retort on the lama’s behalf. “Sit under that gun
if it please thee. When didst thou steal the milkwoman’s slippers,
Dunnoo?”

That was an utterly unfounded charge sprung on the spur of the moment,
but it silenced Dunnoo, who knew that Kim’s clear yell could call up
legions of bad bazaar boys if need arose.

“And whom didst thou worship within?” said Kim affably, squatting in
the shade beside the lama.

“I worshipped none, child. I bowed before the Excellent Law.”

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

“And what dost thou do?”

“I beg. I remember now it is long since I have eaten or drunk. What is
the custom of charity in this town? In silence, as we do of Tibet, or
speaking aloud?”

“Those who beg in silence starve in silence,” said Kim, quoting a
native proverb. The lama tried to rise, but sank back again, sighing
for his disciple, dead in far-away Kulu. Kim watched head to one side,
considering and interested.

“Give me the bowl. I know the people of this city—all who are
charitable. Give, and I will bring it back filled.”

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

“Rest, thou. _I_ know the people.”

He trotted off to the open shop of a _kunjri_, a low-caste
vegetable-seller, which lay opposite the belt-tramway line down the
Motee Bazar. She knew Kim of old.

“Oho, hast thou turned _yogi_ with thy begging-bowl?” she cried.

“Nay.” said Kim proudly. “There is a new priest in the city—a man such
as I have never seen.”

“Old priest—young tiger,” said the woman angrily. “I am tired of new
priests! They settle on our wares like flies. Is the father of my son a
well of charity to give to all who ask?”

“No,” said Kim. “Thy man is rather _yagi_ (bad-tempered) than _yogi_ (a
holy man). But this priest is new. The Sahib in the Wonder House has
talked to him like a brother. O my mother, fill me this bowl. He
waits.”

“That bowl indeed! That cow-bellied basket! Thou hast as much grace as
the holy bull of Shiv. He has taken the best of a basket of onions
already, this morn; and forsooth, I must fill thy bowl. He comes here
again.”

The huge, mouse-coloured Brahmini bull of the ward was shouldering his
way through the many-coloured crowd, a stolen plantain hanging out of
his mouth. He headed straight for the shop, well knowing his privileges
as a sacred beast, lowered his head, and puffed heavily along the line
of baskets ere making his choice. Up flew Kim’s hard little heel and
caught him on his moist blue nose. He snorted indignantly, and walked
away across the tram-rails, his hump quivering with rage.

“See! I have saved more than the bowl will cost thrice over. Now,
mother, a little rice and some dried fish atop—yes, and some vegetable
curry.”

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

“He drove away the bull,” said the woman in an undertone. “It is good
to give to the poor.” She took the bowl and returned it full of hot
rice.

“But my _yogi_ is not a cow,” said Kim gravely, making a hole with his
fingers in the top of the mound. “A little curry is good, and a fried
cake, and a morsel of conserve would please him, I think.”

“It is a hole as big as thy head,” said the woman fretfully. But she
filled it, none the less, with good, steaming vegetable curry, clapped
a fried cake atop, and a morsel of clarified butter on the cake, dabbed
a lump of sour tamarind conserve at the side; and Kim looked at the
load lovingly.

“That is good. When I am in the bazar the bull shall not come to this
house. He is a bold beggar-man.”

“And thou?” laughed the woman. “But speak well of bulls. Hast thou not
told me that some day a Red Bull will come out of a field to help thee?
Now hold all straight and ask for the holy man’s blessing upon me.
Perhaps, too, he knows a cure for my daughter’s sore eyes. Ask. him
that also, O thou Little Friend of all the World.”

But Kim had danced off ere the end of the sentence, dodging pariah dogs
and hungry acquaintances.

“Thus do we beg who know the way of it,” said he proudly to the lama,
who opened his eyes at the contents of the bowl. “Eat now and—I will
eat with thee. Ohé _bhistie!_” he called to the water-carrier, sluicing
the crotons by the Museum. “Give water here. We men are thirsty.”

“We men!” said the _bhistie_, laughing. “Is one skinful enough for such
a pair? Drink, then, in the name of the Compassionate.”

He loosed a thin stream into Kim’s hands, who drank native fashion; but
the lama must needs pull out a cup from his inexhaustible upper
draperies and drink ceremonially.

“_Pardesi_ (a foreigner),” Kim explained, as the old man delivered in
an unknown tongue what was evidently a blessing.

They ate together in great content, clearing the beggingbowl. Then the
lama took snuff from a portentous wooden snuff-gourd, fingered his
rosary awhile, and so dropped into the easy sleep of age, as the shadow
of Zam-Zammah grew long.

Kim loafed over to the nearest tobacco-seller, a rather lively young
Mohammedan woman, and begged a rank cigar of the brand that they sell
to students of the Punjab University who copy English customs. Then he
smoked and thought, knees to chin, under the belly of the gun, and the
outcome of his thoughts was a sudden and stealthy departure in the
direction of Nila Ram’s timber-yard.

The lama did not wake till the evening life of the city had begun with
lamp-lighting and the return of white-robed clerks and subordinates
from the Government offices. He stared dizzily in all directions, but
none looked at him save a Hindu urchin in a dirty turban and
Isabella-coloured clothes. Suddenly he bowed his head on his knees and
wailed.

“What is this?” said the boy, standing before him. “Hast thou been
robbed?”

“It is my new _chela_ (disciple) that is gone away from me, and I know
not where he is.”

“And what like of man was thy disciple?”

“It was a boy who came to me in place of him who died, on account of
the merit which I had gained when I bowed before the Law within there.”
He pointed towards the Museum. “He came upon me to show me a road which
I had lost. He led me into the Wonder House, and by his talk emboldened
me to speak to the Keeper of the Images, so that I was cheered and made
strong. And when I was faint with hunger he begged for me, as would a
_chela_ for his teacher. Suddenly was he sent. Suddenly has he gone
away. It was in my mind to have taught him the Law upon the road to
Benares.”

Kim stood amazed at this, because he had overheard the talk in the
Museum, and knew that the old man was speaking the truth, which is a
thing a native on the road seldom presents to a stranger.

“But I see now that he was but sent for a purpose. By this I know that
I shall find a certain River for which I seek.”

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

“Is this yet another Sending?” cried the lama. “To none have I spoken
of my search, save to the Priest of the Images. Who art thou?”

“Thy _chela_,” said Kim simply, sitting on his heels. “I have never
seen anyone like to thee in all this my life. I go with thee to
Benares. And, too, I think that so old a man as thou, speaking the
truth to chance-met people at dusk, is in great need of a disciple.”

“But the River—the River of the Arrow?”

“Oh, that I heard when thou wast speaking to the Englishman. I lay
against the door.”

The lama sighed. “I thought thou hadst been a guide permitted. Such
things fall sometimes—but I am not worthy. Thou dost not, then, know
the River?”

“Not I,” Kim laughed uneasily. “I go to look for—for a bull—a Red. Bull
on a green field who shall help me.” Boylike, if an acquaintance had a
scheme, Kim was quite ready with one of his own; and, boylike, he had
really thought for as much as twenty minutes at a time of his father’s
prophecy.

“To what, child?” said the lama.

“God knows, but so my father told me”. I heard thy talk in the Wonder
House of all those new strange places in the Hills, and if one so old
and so little—so used to truth-telling—may go out for the small matter
of a river, it seemed to me that I too must go a-travelling. If it is
our fate to find those things we shall find them—thou, thy River; and
I, my Bull, and the Strong Pillars and some other matters that I
forget.”

“It is not pillars but a Wheel from which I would be free,” said the
lama.

“That is all one. Perhaps they will make me a king,” said Kim, serenely
prepared for anything.

“I will teach thee other and better desires upon the road,” the lama
replied in the voice of authority. “Let us go to Benares.”

“Not by night. Thieves are abroad. Wait till the day.”

“But there is no place to sleep.” The old man was used to the order of
his monastery, and though he slept on the ground, as the Rule decrees,
preferred a decency in these things.

“We shall get good lodging at the Kashmir Serai,” said Kim, laughing at
his perplexity. “I have a friend there. Come!”

The hot and crowded bazars blazed with light as they made their way
through the press of all the races in Upper India, and the lama mooned
through it like a man in a dream. It was his first experience of a
large manufacturing city, and the crowded tram-car with its continually
squealing brakes frightened him. Half pushed, half towed, he arrived at
the high gate of the Kashmir Serai: that huge open square over against
the railway station, surrounded with arched cloisters, where the camel
and horse caravans put up on their return from Central Asia. Here were
all manner of Northern folk, tending tethered ponies and kneeling
camels; loading and unloading bales and bundles; drawing water for the
evening meal at the creaking well-windlasses; piling grass before the
shrieking, wild-eyed stallions; cuffing the surly caravan dogs; paying
off camel-drivers; taking on new grooms; swearing, shouting, arguing,
and chaffering in the packed square. The cloisters, reached by three or
four masonry steps, made a haven of refuge around this turbulent sea.
Most of them were rented to traders, as we rent the arches of a
viaduct; the space between pillar and pillar being bricked or boarded
off into rooms, which were guarded by heavy wooden doors and cumbrous
native padlocks. Locked doors showed that the owner was away, and a few
rude—sometimes very rude—chalk or paint scratches told where he had
gone. Thus: “Lutuf Ullah is gone to Kurdistan.” Below, in coarse verse:
“O Allah, who sufferest lice to live on the coat of a Kabuli, why hast
thou allowed this louse Lutuf to live so long?”

Kim, fending the lama between excited men and excited beasts, sidled
along the cloisters to the far end, nearest therailway station, where
Mahbub Ali, the horse-trader, lived when he came in from that
mysterious land beyond the Passes of the North.

Kim had had many dealings with Mahbub in his little life, especially
between his tenth and his thirteenth year—and the big burly Afghan, his
beard dyed scarlet with lime (for he was elderly and did not wish his
grey hairs to show), knew the boy’s value as a gossip. Sometimes he
would tell Kim to watch a man who had nothing whatever to do with
horses: to follow him for one whole day and report every soul with whom
he talked. Kim would deliver himself of his tale at evening, and Mahbub
would listen without a word or gesture. It was intrigue of some kind,
Kim knew; but its worth lay in saying nothing whatever to anyone except
Mahbub, who gave him beautiful meals all hot from the cookshop at the
head of the serai, and once as much as eight annas in money.

“He is here,” said Kim, hitting a bad-tempered camel on the nose. “Ohé,
Mahbub Ali!” He halted at a dark arch and slipped behind the bewildered
lama.

The horse-trader, his deep, embroidered Bokhariot belt unloosed, was
lying on a pair of silk carpet saddle-bags, pulling lazily at an
immense silver hookah. He turned his head very slightly at the cry; and
seeing only the tall silent figure, chuckled in his deep chest.

“Allah! A lama! A Red Lama! It is far from Lahore to the Passes. What
dost thou do here?”

The lama held out the begging-bowl mechanically.

“God’s curse on all unbelievers!” said Mahbub. “I do not give to a
lousy Tibetan; but ask my Baltis over yonder behind the camels. They
may value your blessings. Oh, horseboys, here is a countryman of yours.
See if he be hungry.”

A shaven, crouching Balti, who had come down with the horses, and who
was nominally some sort of degraded Buddhist, fawned upon the priest,
and in thick gutturals besought the Holy One to sit at the horseboys’
fire.

“Go!” said Kim, pushing him lightly, and the lama strode away, leaving
Kim at the edge of the cloister.

“Go!” said Mahbub Ali, returning to his hookah. “Little Hindu, run
away. God’s curse on all unbelievers! Beg from those of my tail who are
of thy faith.”

“Maharaj,” whined Kim, using the Hindu form of address, and thoroughly
enjoying the situation; “my father is dead—my mother is dead—my stomach
is empty.”

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

“Oh, Mahbub Ali, but am _I_ a Hindu?” said Kim in English.

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

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

“Nothing. I am now that holy man’s disciple; and we go a pilgrimage
together—to Benares, he says. He is quite mad, and I am tired of Lahore
city. I wish new air and water.”

“But for whom dost thou work? Why come to me?” The voice was harsh with
suspicion.

“To whom else should I come? I have no money. It is not good to go
about without money. Thou wilt sell many horses to the officers. They
are very fine horses, these new ones: I have seen them. Give me a
rupee, Mahbub Ali, and when I come to my wealth I will give thee a bond
and pay.”

“Um!” said Mahbub Ali, thinking swiftly. “Thou hast never before lied
to me. Call that lama—stand back in the dark.”

“Oh, our tales will agree,” said Kim, laughing.

“We go to Benares,” said the lama, as soon as he understood the drift
of Mahbub Ali’s questions. “The boy and I, I go to seek for a certain
River.”

“Maybe—but the boy?”

“He is my disciple. He was sent, I think, to guide me to that River.
Sitting under a gun was I when he came suddenly. Such things have
befallen the fortunate to whom guidance was allowed. But I remember
now, he said he was of this world—a Hindu.”

“And his name?”

“That I did not ask. Is he not my disciple?”

“His country—his race—his village? Mussalman—Sikh Hindu—Jain—low caste
or high?”

“Why should I ask? There is neither high nor low in the Middle Way. If
he is my _chela_—does—will—can anyone take him from me? for, look you,
without him I shall not find my River.” He wagged his head solemnly.

“None shall take him from thee. Go, sit among my Baltis,” said Mahbub
Ali, and the lama drifted off, soothed by the promise.

“Is he not quite mad?” said Kim, coming forward to the light again.
“Why should I lie to thee, Hajji?”

Mahbub puffed his hookah in silence. Then he began, almost whispering:
“Umballa is on the road to Benares—if indeed ye two go there.”

“Tck! Tck! I tell thee he does not know how to lie—as we two know.”

“And if thou wilt carry a message for me as far as Umballa, I will give
thee money. It concerns a horse—a white stallion which I have sold to
an officer upon the last time I returned from the Passes. But
then—stand nearer and hold up hands as begging—the pedigree of the
white stallion was not fully established, and that officer, who is now
at Umballa, bade me make it clear.” (Mahbub here described the horse
and the appearance of the officer.) “So the message to that officer
will be: ‘The pedigree of the white stallion is fully established.’ By
this will he know that thou comest from me. He will then say ‘What
proof hast thou?’ and thou wilt answer: ‘Mahbub Ali has given me the
proof.’”

“And all for the sake of a white stallion,” said Kim, with a giggle,
his eyes aflame.

“That pedigree I will give thee now—in my own fashion and some hard
words as well.” A shadow passed behind Kim, and a feeding camel. Mahbub
Ali raised his voice.

“Allah! Art thou the only beggar in the city? Thy mother is dead. Thy
father is dead. So is it with all of them. Well, well—”

He turned as feeling on the floor beside him and tossed a flap of soft,
greasy Mussalman bread to the boy. “Go and lie down among my horseboys
for tonight—thou and the lama. Tomorrow I may give thee service.”

Kim slunk away, his teeth in the bread, and, as he expected, he found a
small wad of folded tissue-paper wrapped in oilskin, with three silver
rupees—enormous largesse. He smiled and thrust money and paper into his
leather amulet-case. The lama, sumptuously fed by Mahbub’s Baltis, was
already asleep in a corner of one of the stalls. Kim lay down beside
him and laughed. He knew he had rendered a service to Mahbub Ali, and
not for one little minute did he believe the tale of the stallion’s
pedigree.

But Kim did not suspect that Mahbub Ali, known as one of the best
horse-dealers in the Punjab, a wealthy and enterprising trader, whose
caravans penetrated far and far into the Back of Beyond, was registered
in one of the locked books of the Indian Survey Department as C25 IB.
Twice or thrice yearly C25 would send in a little story, baldly told
but most interesting, and generally—it was checked by the statements of
R17 and M4—quite true. It concerned all manner of out-of-the-way
mountain principalities, explorers of nationalities other than English,
and the guntrade—was, in brief, a small portion of that vast mass of
“information received” on which the Indian Government acts. But,
recently, five confederated Kings, who had no business to confederate,
had been informed by a kindly Northern Power that there was a leakage
of news from their territories into British India. So those Kings’
Prime Ministers were seriously annoyed and took steps, after the
Oriental fashion. They suspected, among many others, the bullying,
red-bearded horsedealer whose caravans ploughed through their
fastnesses belly-deep in snow. At least, his caravan that season had
been ambushed and shot at twice on the way down, when Mahbub’s men
accounted for three strange ruffians who might, or might not, have been
hired for the job. Therefore Mahbub had avoided halting at the
insalubrious city of Peshawur, and had come through without stop to
Lahore, where, knowing his country-people, he anticipated curious
developments.

And there was that on Mahbub Ali which he did not wish to keep an hour
longer than was necessary—a wad of closely folded tissue-paper, wrapped
in oilskin—an impersonal, unaddressed statement, with five microscopic
pin-holes in one corner, that most scandalously betrayed the five
confederated Kings, the sympathetic Northern Power, a Hindu banker in
Peshawur, a firm of gun-makers in Belgium, and an important,
semi-independent Mohammedan ruler to the south. This last was R17’s
work, which Mahbub had picked up beyond the Dora Pass and was carrying
in for R17, who, owing to circumstances over which he had no control,
could not leave his post of observation. Dynamite was milky and
innocuous beside that report of C25; and even an Oriental, with an
Oriental’s views of the value of time, could see that the sooner it was
in the proper hands the better. Mahbub had no particular desire to die
by violence, because two or three family blood-feuds across the Border
hung unfinished on his hands, and when these scores were cleared he
intended to settle down as a more or less virtuous citizen. He had
never passed the serai gate since his arrival two days ago, but had
been ostentatious in sending telegrams to Bombay, where he banked some
of his money; to Delhi, where a sub-partner of his own clan was selling
horses to the agent of a Rajputana state; and to Umballa, where an
Englishman was excitedly demanding the pedigree of a white stallion.
The public letter-writer, who knew English, composed excellent
telegrams, such as: “_Creighton, Laurel Bank, Umballa. Horse is Arabian
as already advised. Sorrowful delayed pedigree which am translating._”
And later to the same address: “_Much sorrowful delay. Will forward
pedigree._” To his sub-partner at Delhi he wired: “_Lutuf Ullah. Have
wired two thousand rupees your credit Luchman Narain’s bank._—” This
was entirely in the way of trade, but every one of those telegrams was
discussed and rediscussed, by parties who conceived themselves to be
interested, before they went over to the railway station in charge of a
foolish Balti, who allowed all sorts of people to read them on the
road.

When, in Mahbub’s own picturesque language, he had muddied the wells of
inquiry with the stick of precaution, Kim had dropped on him, sent from
Heaven; and, being as prompt as he was unscrupulous, Mahbub Ali used to
taking all sorts of gusty chances, pressed him into service on the
spot.

A wandering lama with a low-caste boy-servant might attract a moment’s
interest as they wandered about India, the land of pilgrims; but no one
would suspect them or, what was more to the point, rob.

He called for a new light-ball to his hookah, and considered the case.
If the worst came to the worst, and the boy came to harm, the paper
would incriminate nobody. And he would go up to Umballa leisurely
and—at a certain risk of exciting fresh suspicion—repeat his tale by
word of mouth to the people concerned.

But R17’s report was the kernel of the whole affair, and it would be
distinctly inconvenient if that failed to come to hand. However, God
was great, and Mahbub Ali felt he had done all he could for the time
being. Kim was the one soul in the world who had never told him a lie.
That would have been a fatal blot on Kim’s character if Mahbub had not
known that to others, for his own ends or Mahbub’s business, Kim could
lie like an Oriental.

Then Mahbub Ali rolled across the serai to the Gate of the Harpies who
paint their eyes and trap the stranger, and was at some pains to call
on the one girl who, he had reason to believe, was a particular friend
of a smooth-faced Kashmiri pundit who had waylaid his simple Balti in
the matter of the telegrams. It was an utterly foolish thing to do;
because they fell to drinking perfumed brandy against the Law of the
Prophet, and Mahbub grew wonderfully drunk, and the gates of his mouth
were loosened, and he pursued the Flower of Delight with the feet of
intoxication till he fell flat among the cushions, where the Flower of
Delight, aided by a smooth-faced Kashmiri pundit, searched him from
head to foot most thoroughly.

About the same hour Kim heard soft feet in Mahbub’s deserted stall. The
horse-trader, curiously enough, had left his door unlocked, and his men
were busy celebrating their return to India with a whole sheep of
Mahbub’s bounty. A sleek young gentleman from Delhi, armed with a bunch
of keys which the Flower had unshackled from the senseless one’s belt,
went through every single box, bundle, mat, and saddle-bag in Mahbub’s
possession even more systematically than the Flower and the pundit were
searching the owner.

“And I think.” said the Flower scornfully an hour later, one rounded
elbow on the snoring carcass, “that he is no more than a pig of an
Afghan horse-dealer, with no thought except women and horses. Moreover,
he may have sent it away by now—if ever there were such a thing.”

“Nay—in a matter touching Five Kings it would be next his black heart,”
said the pundit. “Was there nothing?”

The Delhi man laughed and resettled his turban as he entered. “I
searched between the soles of his slippers as the Flower searched his
clothes. This is not the man but another. I leave little unseen.”

“They did not say he was the very man,” said the pundit thoughtfully.
“They said, ‘Look if he be the man, since our counsels are troubled.’”

“That North country is full of horse-dealers as an old coat of lice.
There is Sikandar Khan, Nur Ali Beg, and Farrukh Shah all heads of
kafilas [caravans]—who deal there,” said the Flower.

“They have not yet come in,” said the pundit. “Thou must ensnare them
later.”

Phew!” said the Flower with deep disgust, rolling Mahbub’s head from
her lap. “I earn my money. Farrukh Shah is a bear, Ali Beg a
swashbuckler, and old Sikandar Khan—yaie! Go! I sleep now. This swine
will not stir till dawn.”

When Mahbub woke, the Flower talked to him severely on the sin of
drunkenness. Asiatics do not wink when they have outmanoeuvred an
enemy, but as Mahbub Ali cleared his throat, tightened his belt, and
staggered forth under the early morning stars, he came very near to it.

“What a colt’s trick!” said he to himself. “As if every girl in
Peshawur did not use it! But ’twas prettily done. Now God He knows how
many more there be upon the Road who have orders to test me—perhaps
with the knife. So it stands that the boy must go to Umballa—and by
rail—for the writing is something urgent. I abide here, following the
Flower and drinking wine as an Afghan coper should.”

He halted at the stall next but one to his own. His men lay there heavy
with sleep. There was no sign of Kim or the lama.

“Up!” He stirred a sleeper. “Whither went those who lay here last
even—the lama and the boy? Is aught missing?”

“Nay,” grunted the man, “the old madman rose at second cockcrow saying
he would go to Benares, and the young one led him away.”

“The curse of Allah on all unbelievers!” said Mahbub heartily, and
climbed into his own stall, growling in his beard.

But it was Kim who had wakened the lama—Kim with one eye laid against a
knot-hole in the planking, who had seen the Delhi man’s search through
the boxes. This was no common thief that turned over letters, bills,
and saddles—no mere burglar who ran a little knife sideways into the
soles of Mahbub’s slippers, or picked the seams of the saddle-bags so
deftly. At first Kim had been minded to give the alarm—the long-drawn
_cho-or—choor!_ (thief! thief!) that sets the serai ablaze of nights;
but he looked more carefully, and, hand on amulet, drew his own
conclusions.

“It must be the pedigree of that made-up horse-lie,” said he, “the
thing that I carry to Umballa. Better that we go now. Those who search
bags with knives may presently search bellies with knives. Surely there
is a woman behind this. Hai! Hai! in a whisper to the light-sleeping
old man. “Come. It is time—time to go to Benares.”

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




CHAPTER II


And whoso will, from Pride released;
Contemning neither creed nor priest,
May feel the Soul of all the East.
    About him at Kamakura.

They entered the fort-like railway station, black in the end of night;
the electrics sizzling over the goods-yard where they handle the heavy
Northern grain-traffic.

“This is the work of devils!” said the lama, recoiling from the hollow
echoing darkness, the glimmer of rails between the masonry platforms,
and the maze of girders above. He stood in a gigantic stone hall paved,
it seemed, with the sheeted dead third-class passengers who had taken
their tickets overnight and were sleeping in the waiting-rooms. All
hours of the twenty-four are alike to Orientals, and their passenger
traffic is regulated accordingly.

“This is where the fire-carriages come. One stands behind that
hole”—Kim pointed to the ticket-office—“who will give thee a paper to
take thee to Umballa.”

“But we go to Benares,” he replied petulantly.

“All one. Benares then. Quick: she comes!”

“Take thou the purse.”

The lama, not so well used to trains as he had pretended, started as
the 3.25 a.m. south-bound roared in. The sleepers sprang to life, and
the station filled with clamour and shoutings, cries of water and
sweetmeat vendors, shouts of native policemen, and shrill yells of
women gathering up their baskets, their families, and their husbands.

“It is the train—only the _te-rain_. It will not come here. Wait!”
Amazed at the lama’s immense simplicity (he had handed him a small bag
full of rupees), Kim asked and paid for a ticket to Umballa. A sleepy
clerk grunted and flung out a ticket to the next station, just six
miles distant.

“Nay,” said Kim, scanning it with a grin. “This may serve for farmers,
but I live in the city of Lahore. It was cleverly done, Babu. Now give
the ticket to Umballa.”

The Babu scowled and dealt the proper ticket.

“Now another to Amritzar,” said Kim, who had no notion of spending
Mahbub Ali’s money on anything so crude as a paid ride to Umballa. “The
price is so much. The small money in return is just so much. I know the
ways of the _te-rain_ ... Never did _yogi_ need _chela_ as thou dost,”
he went on merrily to the bewildered lama. “They would have flung thee
out at Mian Mir but for me. This way! Come!” He returned the money,
keeping only one anna in each rupee of the price of the Umballa ticket
as his commission—the immemorial commission of Asia.

The lama jibbed at the open door of a crowded third-class carriage.
“Were it not better to walk?” said he weakly.

A burly Sikh artisan thrust forth his bearded head. “Is he afraid? Do
not be afraid. I remember the time when I was afraid of the train.
Enter! This thing is the work of the Government.”

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

“There is no room even for a mouse,” shrilled the wife of a well-to-do
cultivator—a Hindu Jat from the rich Jullundur, district. Our night
trains are not as well looked after as the day ones, where the sexes
are very strictly kept to separate carriages.

“Oh, mother of my son, we can make space,” said the blueturbaned
husband. “Pick up the child. It is a holy man, see’st thou?”

“And my lap full of seventy times seven bundles! Why not bid him sit on
my knee, Shameless? But men are ever thus!” She looked round for
approval. An Amritzar courtesan near the window sniffed behind her head
drapery.

“Enter! Enter!” cried a fat Hindu money-lender, his folded account-book
in a cloth under his arm. With an oily smirk: “It is well to be kind to
the poor.”

“Ay, at seven per cent a month with a mortgage on the unborn calf,”
said a young Dogra soldier going south on leave; and they all laughed.

“Will it travel to Benares?” said the lama.

“Assuredly. Else why should we come? Enter, or we are left,” cried Kim.

“See!” shrilled the Amritzar girl. “He has never entered a train. Oh,
see!”

“Nay, help,” said the cultivator, putting out a large brown hand and
hauling him in. “Thus is it done, father.”

“But—but—I sit on the floor. It is against the Rule to sit on a bench,”
said the lama. “Moreover, it cramps me.”

“I say,” began the money-lender, pursing his lips, “that there is not
one rule of right living which these _te-rains_ do not cause us to
break. We sit, for example, side by side with all castes and peoples.”

“Yea, and with most outrageously shameless ones,” said the wife,
scowling at the Amritzar girl making eyes at the young sepoy.

“I said we might have gone by cart along the road,” said the husband,
“and thus have saved some money.”

“Yes—and spent twice over what we saved on food by the way. That was
talked out ten thousand times.”

“Ay, by ten thousand tongues,” grunted he.

“The Gods help us poor women if we may not speak. Oho! He is of that
sort which may not look at or reply to a woman.” For the lama,
constrained by his Rule, took not the faintest notice of her. “And his
disciple is like him?”

“Nay, mother,” said Kim most promptly. “Not when the woman is
well-looking and above all charitable to the hungry.”

“A beggar’s answer,” said the Sikh, laughing. “Thou hast brought it on
thyself, sister!” Kim’s hands were crooked in supplication.

“And whither goest thou?” said the woman, handing him the half of a
cake from a greasy package.

“Even to Benares.”

“Jugglers belike?” the young soldier suggested. “Have ye any tricks to
pass the time? Why does not that yellow man answer?”

“Because,” said Kim stoutly, “he is holy, and thinks upon matters
hidden from thee.”

“That may be well. We of the Ludhiana Sikhs”—he rolled it out
sonorously—“do not trouble our heads with doctrine. We fight.”

“My sister’s brother’s son is _naik_ (corporal) in that regiment,” said
the Sikh craftsman quietly. “There are also some Dogra companies
there.” The soldier glared, for a Dogra is of other caste than a Sikh,
and the banker tittered.

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

“That we believe,” snorted the cultivator’s wife malignantly.

“Nay, but all who serve the Sirkar with weapons in their hands are, as
it were, one brotherhood. There is one brotherhood of the caste, but
beyond that again”—she looked round timidly—“the bond of the
_Pulton_—the Regiment—eh?”

“My brother is in a Jat regiment,” said the cultivator. “Dogras be good
men.”

“Thy Sikhs at least were of that opinion,” said the soldier, with a
scowl at the placid old man in the corner. “_Thy_ Sikhs thought so when
our two companies came to help them at the Pirzai Kotal in the face of
eight Afridi standards on the ridge not three months gone.”

He told the story of a Border action in which the Dogra companies of
the Ludhiana Sikhs had acquitted themselves well. The Amritzar girl
smiled; for she knew the talk was to win her approval.

“Alas!” said the cultivator’s wife at the end. “So their villages were
burnt and their little children made homeless?”

“They had marked our dead. They paid a great payment after we of the
Sikhs had schooled them. So it was. Is this Amritzar?”

“Ay, and here they cut our tickets,” said the banker, fumbling at his
belt.

The lamps were paling in the dawn when the half-caste guard came round.
Ticket-collecting is a slow business in the East, where people secrete
their tickets in all sorts of curious places. Kim produced his and was
told to get out.

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

“Thou canst go to Jehannum for aught I care. This ticket is only—”

Kim burst into a flood of tears, protesting that the lama was his
father and his mother, that he was the prop of the lama’s declining
years, and that the lama would die without his care. All the carriage
bade the guard be merciful—the banker was specially eloquent here—but
the guard hauled Kim on to the platform. The lama blinked—he could not
overtake the situation and Kim lifted up his voice and wept outside the
carriage window.

“I am very poor. My father is dead—my mother is dead. O charitable
ones, if I am left here, who shall tend that old man?”

“What—what is this?” the lama repeated. “He must go to Benares. He must
come with me. He is my _chela_. If there is money to be paid—”

“Oh, be silent,” whispered Kim; “are we Rajahs to throw away good
silver when the world is so charitable?”

The Amritzar girl stepped out with her bundles, and it was on her that
Kim kept his watchful eye. Ladies of that persuasion, he knew, were
generous.

“A ticket—a little _tikkut_ to Umballa—O Breaker of Hearts!” She
laughed. “Hast thou no charity?”

“Does the holy man come from the North?”

“From far and far in the North he comes,” cried Kim. “From among the
hills.”

“There is snow among the pine-trees in the North—in the hills there is
snow. My mother was from Kulu. Get thee a ticket. Ask him for a
blessing.”

“Ten thousand blessings,” shrilled Kim. “O Holy One, a woman has given
us in charity so that I can come with thee—a woman with a golden heart.
I run for the _tikkut_.”

The girl looked up at the lama, who had mechanically followed Kim to
the platform. He bowed his head that he might not see her, and muttered
in Tibetan as she passed on with the crowd.

“Light come—light go,” said the cultivator’s wife viciously.

“She has acquired merit,” returned the lama. “Beyond doubt it was a
nun.”

“There be ten thousand such nuns in Amritzar alone. Return, old man, or
the _te-rain_ may depart without thee,” cried the banker.

“Not only was it sufficient for the ticket, but for a little food
also,” said Kim, leaping to his place. “Now eat, Holy One. Look. Day
comes!”

Golden, rose, saffron, and pink, the morning mists smoked away across
the flat green levels. All the rich Punjab lay out in the splendour of
the keen sun. The lama flinched a little as the telegraph-posts swung
by.

“Great is the speed of the _te-rain_,” said the banker, with a
patronizing grin. “We have gone farther since Lahore than thou couldst
walk in two days: at even, we shall enter Umballa.”

“And that is still far from Benares,” said the lama wearily, mumbling
over the cakes that Kim offered. They all unloosed their bundles and
made their morning meal. Then the banker, the cultivator, and the
soldier prepared their pipes and wrapped the compartment in choking,
acrid smoke, spitting and coughing and enjoying themselves. The Sikh
and the cultivator’s wife chewed _pan;_ the lama took snuff and told
his beads, while Kim, cross-legged, smiled over the comfort of a full
stomach.

“What rivers have ye by Benares?” said the lama of a sudden to the
carriage at large.

“We have Gunga,” returned the banker, when the little titter had
subsided.

“What others?”

“What other than Gunga?”

“Nay, but in my mind was the thought of a certain River of healing.”

“That is Gunga. Who bathes in her is made clean and goes to the Gods.
Thrice have I made pilgrimage to Gunga.” He looked round proudly.

“There was need,” said the young sepoy drily, and the travellers’ laugh
turned against the banker.

“Clean—to return again to the Gods,” the lama muttered. “And to go
forth on the round of lives anew—still tied to the Wheel.” He shook his
head testily. “But maybe there is a mistake. Who, then, made Gunga in
the beginning?”

“The Gods. Of what known faith art thou?” the banker said, appalled.

“I follow the Law—the Most Excellent Law. So it was the Gods that made
Gunga. What like of Gods were they?”

The carriage looked at him in amazement. It was inconceivable that
anyone should be ignorant of Gunga.

“What—what is thy God?” said the money-lender at last.

“Hear!” said the lama, shifting the rosary to his hand. “Hear: for I
speak of Him now! O people of Hind, listen!”

He began in Urdu the tale of the Lord Buddha, but, borne by his own
thoughts, slid into Tibetan and long-droned texts from a Chinese book
of the Buddha’s life. The gentle, tolerant folk looked on reverently.
All India is full of holy men stammering gospels in strange tongues;
shaken and consumed in the fires of their own zeal; dreamers, babblers,
and visionaries: as it has been from the beginning and will continue to
the end.

“Um!” said the soldier of the Ludhiana Sikhs. “There was a Mohammedan
regiment lay next to us at the Pirzai Kotal, and a priest of theirs—he
was, as I remember, a _naik_—when the fit was on him, spake prophecies.
But the mad all are in God’s keeping. His officers overlooked much in
that man.”

The lama fell back on Urdu, remembering that he was in a strange land.
“Hear the tale of the Arrow which our Lord loosed from the bow,” he
said.

This was much more to their taste, and they listened curiously while he
told it. “Now, O people of Hind, I go to seek that River. Know ye aught
that may guide me, for we be all men and women in evil case.”

“There is Gunga—and Gunga alone—who washes away sin.” ran the murmur
round the carriage.

“Though past question we have good Gods Jullundur-way,” said the
cultivator’s wife, looking out of the window. “See how they have
blessed the crops.”

“To search every river in the Punjab is no small matter,” said her
husband. “For me, a stream that leaves good silt on my land suffices,
and I thank Bhumia, the God of the Home-stead.” He shrugged one
knotted, bronzed shoulder.

“Think you our Lord came so far North?” said the lama, turning to Kim.

“It may be,” Kim replied soothingly, as he spat red _pan_-juice on the
floor.

“The last of the Great Ones,” said the Sikh with authority, “was
Sikander Julkarn [Alexander the Great]. He paved the streets of
Jullundur and built a great tank near Umballa. That pavement holds to
this day; and the tank is there also. I never heard of thy God.”

“Let thy hair grow long and talk Punjabi,” said the young soldier
jestingly to Kim, quoting a Northern proverb. “That is all that makes a
Sikh.” But he did not say this very loud.

The lama sighed and shrank into himself, a dingy, shapeless mass. In
the pauses of their talk they could hear the low droning “_Om mane
pudme hum! Om mane pudme hum!_”—and the thick click of the wooden
rosary beads.

“It irks me,” he said at last. “The speed and the clatter irk me.
Moreover, my _chela_, I think that maybe we have over-passed that
River.”

“Peace, peace,” said Kim. “Was not the River near Benares? We are yet
far from the place.”

“But—if our Lord came North, it may be any one of these little ones
that we have run across.”

“I do not know.”

“But thou wast sent to me—wast thou sent to me?—for the merit I had
acquired over yonder at Such-zen. From beside the cannon didst thou
come—bearing two faces—and two garbs.”

“Peace. One must not speak of these things here,” whispered Kim. “There
was but one of me. Think again and thou wilt remember. A boy—a Hindu
boy—by the great green cannon.”

“But was there not also an Englishman with a white beard holy among
images—who himself made more sure my assurance of the River of the
Arrow?”

“He—we—went to the Ajaib-Gher in Lahore to pray before the Gods there,”
Kim explained to the openly listening company. “And the Sahib of the
Wonder House talked to him—yes, this is truth as a brother. He is a
very holy man, from far beyond the Hills. Rest, thou. In time we come
to Umballa.”

“But my River—the River of my healing?”

“And then, if it please thee, we will go hunting for that River on
foot. So that we miss nothing—not even a little rivulet in a
field-side.”

“But thou hast a Search of thine own?” The lama—very pleased that he
remembered so well—sat bolt upright.

“Ay,” said Kim, humouring him. The boy was entirely happy to be out
chewing _pan_ and seeing new people in the great good-tempered world.

“It was a bull—a Red Bull that shall come and help thee and carry
thee—whither? I have forgotten. A Red Bull on a green field, was it
not?”

“Nay, it will carry me nowhere,” said Kim. “It is but a tale I told
thee.”

“What is this?” The cultivator’s wife leaned forward, her bracelets
clinking on her arm. “Do ye both dream dreams? A Red Bull on a green
field, that shall carry thee to the heavens or what? Was it a vision?
Did one make a prophecy? _We_ have a Red Bull in our village behind
Jullundur city, and he grazes by choice in the very greenest of our
fields!”

“Give a woman an old wife’s tale and a weaver-bird a leaf and a
thread”, they will weave wonderful things,” said the Sikh. “All holy
men dream dreams, and by following holy men their disciples attain that
power.”

“A Red Bull on a green field, was it?” the lama repeated. “In a former
life it may be thou hast acquired merit, and the Bull will come to
reward thee.”

“Nay—nay—it was but a tale one told to me—for a jest belike. But I will
seek the Bull about Umballa, and thou canst look for thy River and rest
from the clatter of the train.”

“It may be that the Bull knows—that he is sent to guide us both.” said
the lama, hopefully as a child. Then to the company, indicating Kim:
“This one was sent to me but yesterday. He is not, I think, of this
world.”

“Beggars aplenty have I met, and holy men to boot, but never such a
_yogi_ nor such a disciple,” said the woman.

Her husband touched his forehead lightly with one finger and smiled.
But the next time the lama would eat they took care to give him of
their best.

And at last—tired, sleepy, and dusty—they reached Umballa City Station.

“We abide here upon a law-suit,” said the cultivator’s wife to Kim. “We
lodge with my man’s cousin’s younger brother. There is room also in the
courtyard for thy _yogi_ and for thee. Will—will he give me a
blessing?”

“O holy man! A woman with a heart of gold gives us lodging for the
night. It is a kindly land, this land of the South. See how we have
been helped since the dawn!”

The lama bowed his head in benediction.

“To fill my cousin’s younger brother’s house with wastrels—” the
husband began, as he shouldered his heavy bamboo staff.

“Thy cousin’s younger brother owes my father’s cousin something yet on
his daughter’s marriage-feast,” said the woman crisply. “Let him put
their food to that account. The _yogi_ will beg, I doubt not.”

“Ay, I beg for him,” said Kim, anxious only to get the lama under
shelter for the night, that he might seek Mahbub Ali’s Englishman and
deliver himself of the white stallion’s pedigree.

“Now,” said he, when the lama had come to an anchor in the inner
courtyard of a decent Hindu house behind the cantonments, “I go away
for a while—to—to buy us victual in the bazar. Do not stray abroad till
I return.”

“Thou wilt return? Thou wilt surely return?” The old man caught at his
wrist. “And thou wilt return in this very same shape? Is it too late to
look tonight for the River?”

“Too late and too dark. Be comforted. Think how far thou art on the
road—an hundred _kos_ from Lahore already.”

“Yea—and farther from my monastery. Alas! It is a great and terrible
world.”

Kim stole out and away, as unremarkable a figure as ever carried his
own and a few score thousand other folk’s fate slung round his neck.
Mahbub Ali’s directions left him little doubt of the house in which his
Englishman lived; and a groom, bringing a dog-cart home from the Club,
made him quite sure. It remained only to identify his man, and Kim
slipped through the garden hedge and hid in a clump of plumed grass
close to the veranda. The house blazed with lights, and servants moved
about tables dressed with flowers, glass, and silver. Presently forth
came an Englishman, dressed in black and white, humming a tune. It was
too dark to see his face, so Kim, beggar-wise, tried an old experiment.

“Protector of the Poor!”

The man backed towards the voice.

“Mahbub Ali says—”

“Hah! What says Mahbub Ali?” He made no attempt to look for the
speaker, and that showed Kim that he knew.

“The pedigree of the white stallion is fully established.”

“What proof is there?” The Englishman switched at the rose-hedge in the
side of the drive.

“Mahbub Ali has given me this proof.” Kim flipped the wad of folded
paper into the air, and it fell in the path beside the man, who put his
foot on it as a gardener came round the corner. When the servant passed
he picked it up, dropped a rupee—Kim could hear the clink—and strode
into the house, never turning round. Swiftly Kim took up the money; but
for all his training, he was Irish enough by birth to reckon silver the
least part of any game. What he desired was the visible effect of
action; so, instead of slinking away, he lay close in the grass and
wormed nearer to the house.

He saw—Indian bungalows are open through and through—the Englishman
return to a small dressing-room, in a comer of the veranda, that was
half office, littered with papers and despatch-boxes, and sit down to
study Mahbub Ali’s message. His face, by the full ray of the kerosene
lamp, changed and darkened, and Kim, used as every beggar must be to
watching countenances, took good note.

“Will! Will, dear!” called a woman’s voice. “You ought to be in the
drawing-room. They’ll be here in a minute.”

The man still read intently.

“Will!” said the voice, five minutes later. “_He’s_ come. I can hear
the troopers in the drive.”

The man dashed out bareheaded as a big landau with four native troopers
behind it halted at the veranda, and a tall, black haired man, erect as
an arrow, swung out, preceded by a young officer who laughed
pleasantly.

Flat on his belly lay Kim, almost touching the high wheels. His man and
the black stranger exchanged two sentences.

“Certainly, sir,” said the young officer promptly. “Everything waits
while a horse is concerned.”

“We shan’t be more than twenty minutes,” said Kim’s man. “You can do
the honours—keep ’em amused, and all that.”

“Tell one of the troopers to wait,” said the tall man, and they both
passed into the dressing-room together as the landau rolled away. Kim
saw their heads bent over Mahbub Ali’s message, and heard the
voices—one low and deferential, the other sharp and decisive.

“It isn’t a question of weeks. It is a question of days—hours almost,”
said the elder. “I’d been expecting it for some time, but this”—he
tapped Mahbub Ali’s paper—“clinches it. Grogan’s dining here to-night,
isn’t he?”

“Yes, sir, and Macklin too.”

“Very good. I’ll speak to them myself. The matter will be referred to
the Council, of course, but this is a case where one is justified in
assuming that we take action at once. Warn the Pined and Peshawar
brigades. It will disorganize all the summer reliefs, but we can’t help
that. This comes of not smashing them thoroughly the first time. Eight
thousand should be enough.”

“What about artillery, sir?”

“I must consult Macklin.”

“Then it means war?”

“No. Punishment. When a man is bound by the action of his predecessor—”

“But C25 may have lied.”

“He bears out the other’s information. Practically, they showed their
hand six months back. But Devenish would have it there was a chance of
peace. Of course they used it to make themselves stronger. Send off
those telegrams at once—the new code, not the old—mine and Wharton’s. I
don’t think we need keep the ladies waiting any longer. We can settle
the rest over the cigars. I thought it was coming. It’s punishment—not
war.”

As the trooper cantered off, Kim crawled round to the back of the
house, where, going on his Lahore experiences, he judged there would be
food—and information. The kitchen was crowded with excited scullions,
one of whom kicked him.

“Aie,” said Kim, feigning tears. “I came only to wash dishes in return
for a bellyful.”

“All Umballa is on the same errand. Get hence. They go in now with the
soup. Think you that we who serve Creighton Sahib need strange
scullions to help us through a big dinner?”

“It is a very big dinner,” said Kim, looking at the plates.

“Small wonder. The guest of honour is none other than the Jang-i-Lat
Sahib [the Commander-in-Chief].”

“Ho!” said Kim, with the correct guttural note of wonder. He had
learned what he wanted, and when the scullion turned he was gone.

“And all that trouble,” said he to himself, thinking as usual in
Hindustani, “for a horse’s pedigree! Mahbub Ali should have come to me
to learn a little lying. Every time before that I have borne a message
it concerned a woman. Now it is men. Better. The tall man said that
they will loose a great army to punish someone—somewhere—the news goes
to Pindi and Peshawur. There are also guns. Would I had crept nearer.
It is big news!”

He returned to find the cultivator’s cousin’s younger brother
discussing the family law-suit in all its bearings with the cultivator
and his wife and a few friends, while the lama dozed. After the evening
meal some one passed him a water-pipe; and Kim felt very much of a man
as he pulled at the smooth coconut-shell, his legs spread abroad in the
moonlight, his tongue clicking in remarks from time to time. His hosts
were most polite; for the cultivator’s wife had told them of his vision
of the Red Bull, and of his probable descent from another world.
Moreover, the lama was a great and venerable curiosity.

The family priest, an old, tolerant Sarsut Brahmin, dropped in later,
and naturally started a theological argument to impress the family. By
creed, of course, they were all on their priest’s side, but the lama
was the guest and the novelty. His gentle kindliness, and his
impressive Chinese quotations, that sounded like spells, delighted them
hugely; and in this sympathetic, simple air, he expanded like the
Bodhisat’s own lotus, speaking of his life in the great hills of
Such-zen, before, as he said, “I rose up to seek enlightenment.”

Then it came out that in those worldly days he had been a master-hand
at casting horoscopes and nativities; and the family priest led him on
to describe his methods; each giving the planets names that the other
could not understand, and pointing upwards as the big stars sailed
across the dark. The children of the house tugged unrebuked at his
rosary; and he clean forgot the Rule which forbids looking at women as
he talked of enduring snows, landslips, blocked passes, the remote
cliffs where men find sapphires and turquoise, and that wonderful
upland road that leads at last into Great China itself.

“How thinkest thou of this one?” said the cultivator aside to the
priest.

“A holy man—a holy man indeed. His Gods are not the Gods, but his feet
are upon the Way,” was the answer. “And his methods of nativities,
though that is beyond thee, are wise and sure.”

“Tell me,” said Kim lazily, “whether I find my Red Bull on a green
field, as was promised me.”

“What knowledge hast thou of thy birth-hour?” the priest asked,
swelling with importance.

“Between first and second cockcrow of the first night in May.”

“Of what year?”

“I do not know; but upon the hour that I cried first fell the great
earthquake in Srinagar which is in Kashmir.” This Kim had from the
woman who took care of him, and she again from Kimball O’Hara. The
earthquake had been felt in India, and for long stood a leading date in
the Punjab.

“Ai!” said a woman excitedly. This seemed to make Kim’s supernatural
origin more certain. “Was not such an one’s daughter born then—”

“And her mother bore her husband four sons in four years all likely
boys,” cried the cultivator’s wife, sitting outside the circle in the
shadow.

“None reared in the knowledge,” said the family priest, “forget how the
planets stood in their Houses upon that night.” He began to draw in the
dust of the courtyard. “At least thou hast good claim to a half of the
House of the Bull. How runs thy prophecy?”

“Upon a day,” said Kim, delighted at the sensation he was creating, “I
shall be made great by means of a Red Bull on a green field, but first
there will enter two men making all things ready.”

“Yes: thus ever at the opening of a vision. A thick darkness that
clears slowly; anon one enters with a broom making ready the place.
Then begins the Sight. Two men—thou sayest? Ay, ay. The Sun, leaving
the House of the Bull, enters that of the Twins. Hence the two men of
the prophecy. Let us now consider. Fetch me a twig, little one.”

He knitted his brows, scratched, smoothed out, and scratched again in
the dust mysterious signs—to the wonder of all save the lama, who, with
fine instinct, forbore to interfere.

At the end of half an hour, he tossed the twig from him with a grunt.

“Hm! Thus say the stars. Within three days come the two men to make all
things ready. After them follows the Bull; but the sign over against
him is the sign of War and armed men.”

“There was indeed a man of the Ludhiana Sikhs in the carriage from
Lahore,” said the cultivator’s wife hopefully.

“Tck! Armed men—many hundreds. What concern hast thou with war?” said
the priest to Kim. “Thine is a red and an angry sign of War to be
loosed very soon.”

“None—none.” said the lama earnestly. “We seek only peace and our
River.”

Kim smiled, remembering what he had overheard in the dressing-room.
Decidedly he was a favourite of the stars.

The priest brushed his foot over the rude horoscope. “More than this I
cannot see. In three days comes the Bull to thee, boy.”

“And my River, my River,” pleaded the lama. “I had hoped his Bull would
lead us both to the River.”

“Alas, for that wondrous River, my brother,” the priest replied. “Such
things are not common.”

Next morning, though they were pressed to stay, the lama insisted on
departure. They gave Kim a large bundle of good food and nearly three
annas in copper money for the needs of the road, and with many
blessings watched the two go southward in the dawn.

“Pity it is that these and such as these could not be freed from—”

“Nay, then would only evil people be left on the earth, and who would
give us meat and shelter?” quoth Kim, stepping merrily under his
burden.

“Yonder is a small stream. Let us look,” said the lama, and he led from
the white road across the fields; walking into a very hornets’ nest of
pariah dogs.




CHAPTER III


Yea, voice of every Soul that clung
To life that strove from rung to rung
When Devadatta’s rule was young,
    The warm wind brings Kamakura.

Behind them an angry farmer brandished a bamboo pole. He was a
market-gardener, Arain by caste, growing vegetables and flowers for
Umballa city, and well Kim knew the breed.

“Such an one,” said the lama, disregarding the dogs, “is impolite to
strangers, intemperate of speech and uncharitable. Be warned by his
demeanour, my disciple.”

“Ho, shameless beggars!” shouted the farmer. “Begone! Get hence!”

“We go,” the lama returned, with quiet dignity. “We go from these
unblessed fields.”

“Ah,” said Kim, sucking in his breath. “If the next crops fail, thou
canst only blame thine own tongue.”

The man shuffled uneasily in his slippers. “The land is full of
beggars,” he began, half apologetically.

“And by what sign didst thou know that we would beg from thee, O Mali?”
said Kim tartly, using the name that a market-gardener least likes.
“All we sought was to look at that river beyond the field there.”

“River, forsooth!” the man snorted. “What city do ye hail from not to
know a canal-cut? It runs as straight as an arrow, and I pay for the
water as though it were molten silver. There is a branch of a river
beyond. But if ye need water I can give that—and milk.”

“Nay, we will go to the river,” said the lama, striding out.

“Milk and a meal.” the man stammered, as he looked at the strange tall
figure. “I—I would not draw evil upon myself—or my crops. But beggars
are so many in these hard days.”

“Take notice.” The lama turned to Kim. “He was led to speak harshly by
the Red Mist of anger. That clearing from his eyes, he becomes
courteous and of an affable heart. May his fields be blessed! Beware
not to judge men too hastily, O farmer.”

“I have met holy ones who would have cursed thee from hearthstone to
byre,” said Kim to the abashed man. “Is he not wise and holy? I am his
disciple.”

He cocked his nose in the air loftily and stepped across the narrow
field-borders with great dignity.

“There is no pride,” said the lama, after a pause, “there is no pride
among such as follow the Middle Way.”

“But thou hast said he was low-caste and discourteous.”

“Low-caste I did not say, for how can that be which is not? Afterwards
he amended his discourtesy, and I forgot the offence. Moreover, he is
as we are, bound upon the Wheel of Things; but he does not tread the
way of deliverance.” He halted at a little runlet among the fields, and
considered the hoof-pitted bank.

“Now, how wilt thou know thy River?” said Kim, squatting in the shade
of some tall sugar-cane.

“When I find it, an enlightenment will surely be given. This, I feel,
is not the place. O littlest among the waters, if only thou couldst
tell me where runs my River! But be thou blessed to make the fields
bear!”

“Look! Look!” Kim sprang to his side and dragged him back. A
yellow-and-brown streak glided from the purple rustling stems to the
bank, stretched its neck to the water, drank, and lay still—a big cobra
with fixed, lidless eyes.

“I have no stick—I have no stick,” said Kim. “I will get me one and
break his back.”

“Why? He is upon the Wheel as we are—a life ascending or
descending—very far from deliverance. Great evil must the soul have
done that is cast into this shape.”

“I hate all snakes,” said Kim. No native training can quench the white
man’s horror of the Serpent.

“Let him live out his life.” The coiled thing hissed and half opened
its hood. “May thy release come soon, brother!” the lama continued
placidly. “Hast _thou_ knowledge, by chance, of my River?”

“Never have I seen such a man as thou art,” Kim whispered, overwhelmed.
“Do the very snakes understand thy talk?”

“Who knows?” He passed within a foot of the cobra’s poised head. It
flattened itself among the dusty coils.

“Come, thou!” he called over his shoulder.

“Not I,” said Kim”. “I go round.”

“Come. He does no hurt.”

Kim hesitated for a moment. The lama backed his order by some droned
Chinese quotation which Kim took for a charm. He obeyed and bounded
across the rivulet, and the snake, indeed, made no sign.

“Never have I seen such a man.” Kim wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“And now, whither go we?”

“That is for thee to say. I am old, and a stranger—far from my own
place. But that the _rêl_-carriage fills my head with noises of
devil-drums I would go in it to Benares now ... Yet by so going we may
miss the River. Let us find another river.”

Where the hard-worked soil gives three and even four crops a year
through patches of sugar-cane, tobacco, long white radishes, and
nol-kol, all that day they strolled on, turning aside to every glimpse
of water; rousing village dogs and sleeping villages at noonday; the
lama replying to the volleyed questions with an unswerving simplicity.
They sought a River: a River of miraculous healing. Had any one
knowledge of such a stream?

Sometimes men laughed, but more often heard the story out to the end
and offered them a place in the shade, a drink of milk, and a meal. The
women were always kind, and the little children as children are the
world over, alternately shy and venturesome.

Evening found them at rest under the village tree of a mud-walled,
mud-roofed hamlet, talking to the headman as the cattle came in from
the grazing-grounds and the women prepared the day’s last meal. They
had passed beyond the belt of market-gardens round hungry Umballa, and
were among the mile-wide green of the staple crops.

He was a white-bearded and affable elder, used to entertaining
strangers. He dragged out a string bedstead for the lama, set warm
cooked food before him, prepared him a pipe, and, the evening
ceremonies being finished in the village temple, sent for the village
priest.

Kim told the older children tales of the size and beauty of Lahore, of
railway travel, and such-like city things, while the men talked, slowly
as their cattle chew the cud.

“I cannot fathom it,” said the headman at last to the priest. “How
readest thou this talk?” The lama, his tale told, was silently telling
his beads.

“He is a Seeker.” the priest answered. “The land is full of such.
Remember him who came only last, month—the _faquir_ with the tortoise?”

“Ay, but that man had right and reason, for Krishna Himself appeared in
a vision promising him Paradise without the burning-pyre if he
journeyed to Prayag. This man seeks no God who is within my knowledge.”

“Peace, he is old: he comes from far off, and he is mad,” the
smooth-shaven priest replied. “Hear me.” He turned to the lama. “Three
_kos_ (six miles) to the westward runs the great road to Calcutta.”

“But I would go to Benares—to Benares.”

“And to Benares also. It crosses all streams on this side of Hind. Now
my word to thee, Holy One, is rest here till tomorrow. Then take the
road” (it was the Grand Trunk Road he meant) “and test each stream that
it overpasses; for, as I understand, the virtue of thy River lies
neither in one pool nor place, but throughout its length. Then, if thy
Gods will, be assured that thou wilt come upon thy freedom.”

“That is well said.” The lama was much impressed by the plan. “We will
begin tomorrow, and a blessing on thee for showing old feet such a near
road.” A deep, sing-song Chinese half-chant closed the sentence. Even
the priest was impressed, and the headman feared an evil spell: but
none could look at the lama’s simple, eager face and doubt him long.

“Seest thou my _chela?_” he said, diving into his snuff-gourd with an
important sniff. It was his duty to repay courtesy with courtesy.

“I see—and hear.” The headman rolled his eye where Kim was chatting to
a girl in blue as she laid crackling thorns on a fire.

“He also has a Search of his own. No river, but a Bull. Yea, a Red Bull
on a green field will some day raise him to honour. He is, I think, not
altogether of this world. He was sent of a sudden to aid me in this
search, and his name is Friend of all the World.”

The priest smiled. “Ho, there, Friend of all the World,” he cried
across the sharp-smelling smoke, “what art thou?”

“This Holy One’s disciple,” said Kim.

“He says thou are a _būt_ (a spirit).”

“Can _būts_ eat?” said Kim, with a twinkle. “For I am hungry.”

“It is no jest,” cried the lama. “A certain astrologer of that city
whose name I have forgotten—”

“That is no more than the city of Umballa where we slept last night,”
Kim whispered to the priest.

“Ay, Umballa was it? He cast a horoscope and declared that my _chela_
should find his desire within two days. But what said he of the meaning
of the stars, Friend of all the World?”

Kim cleared his throat and looked around at the village greybeards.

“The meaning of my Star is War,” he replied pompously.

Somebody laughed at the little tattered figure strutting on the
brickwork plinth under the great tree. Where a native would have lain
down, Kim’s white blood set him upon his feet.

“Ay, War,” he answered.

“That is a sure prophecy,” rumbled a deep voice. “For there is always
war along the Border—as I know.”

It was an old, withered man, who had served the Government in the days
of the Mutiny as a native officer in a newly raised cavalry regiment.
The Government had given him a good holding in the village, and though
the demands of his sons, now grey-bearded officers on their own
account, had impoverished him, he was still a person of consequence.
English officials—Deputy Commissioners even—turned aside from the main
road to visit him, and on those occasions he dressed himself in the
uniform of ancient days, and stood up like a ramrod.

“But this shall be a great war—a war of eight thousand.” Kim’s voice
shrilled across the quick-gathering crowd, astonishing himself.

“Redcoats or our own regiments?” the old man snapped, as though he were
asking an equal. His tone made men respect Kim.

“Redcoats,” said Kim at a venture. “Redcoats and guns.”

“But—but the astrologer said no word of this,” cried the lama, snuffing
prodigiously in his excitement.

“But _I_ know. The word has come to me, who am this Holy One’s
disciple. There will rise a war—a war of eight thousand redcoats. From
Pindi and Peshawur they will be drawn. This is sure.”

“The boy has heard bazar-talk,” said the priest.

“But he was always by my side,” said the lama. “How should he know? I
did not know.”

“He will make a clever juggler when the old man is dead,” muttered the
priest to the headman. “What new trick is this?”

“A sign. Give me a sign,” thundered the old soldier suddenly. “If there
were war my sons would have told me.”

“When all is ready, thy sons, doubt not, will be told. But it is a long
road from thy sons to the man in whose hands these things lie.” Kim
warmed to the game, for it reminded him of experiences in the
letter-carrying line, when, for the sake of a few pice, he pretended to
know more than he knew. But now he was playing for larger things—the
sheer excitement and the sense of power. He drew a new breath and went
on.

“Old man, give _me_ a sign. Do underlings order the goings of eight
thousand redcoats—with guns?”

“No.” Still the old man answered as though Kim were an equal.

“Dost thou know who He is, then, that gives the order?”

“I have seen Him.”

“To know again?”

“I have known Him since he was a lieutenant in the _top-khana_ (the
Artillery).”

“A tall man. A tall man with black hair, walking thus?” Kim took a few
paces in a stiff, wooden style.

“Ay. But that anyone may have seen.” The crowd were breathless—still
through all this talk.

“That is true,” said Kim. “But I will say more. Look now. First the
great man walks thus. Then He thinks thus.” (Kim drew a forefinger over
his forehead and downwards till it came to rest by the angle of the
jaw.) “Anon He twitches his fingers thus. Anon He thrusts his hat under
his left armpit.” Kim illustrated the motion and stood like a stork.

The old man groaned, inarticulate with amazement; and the crowd
shivered.

“So—so—so. But what does He when He is about to give an order?”

“He rubs the skin at the back of his neck—thus. Then falls one finger
on the table and He makes a small sniffing noise through his nose. Then
He speaks, saying: ‘Loose such and such a regiment. Call out such
guns.’”

The old man rose stiffly and saluted.

“‘For’”—Kim translated into the vernacular the clinching sentences he
had heard in the dressing-room at Umballa—“‘For,’ says He, ‘we should
have done this long ago. It is not war—it is a chastisement. Snff!’”

“Enough. I believe. I have seen Him thus in the smoke of battles. Seen
and heard. It is He!”

“I saw no smoke”—Kim’s voice shifted to the rapt sing-song of the
wayside fortune-teller. “I saw this in darkness. First came a man to
make things clear. Then came horsemen. Then came He standing in a ring
of light. The rest followed as I have said. Old man, have I spoken
truth?”

“It is He. Past all doubt it is He.”

The crowd drew a long, quavering breath, staring alternately at the old
man, still at attention, and ragged Kim against the purple twilight.

“Said I not—said I not he was from the other world?” cried the lama
proudly. “He is the Friend of all the World. He is the Friend of the
Stars!”

“At least it does not concern us,” a man cried. “O thou young
soothsayer, if the gift abides with thee at all seasons, I have a
red-spotted cow. She may be sister to thy Bull for aught I know—”

“Or I care,” said Kim. “My Stars do not concern themselves with thy
cattle.”

“Nay, but she is very sick,” a woman struck in. “My man is a buffalo,
or he would have chosen his words better. Tell me if she recover?”

Had Kim been at all an ordinary boy, he would have carried on the play;
but one does not know Lahore city, and least of all the _faquirs_ by
the Taksali Gate, for thirteen years without also knowing human nature.

The priest looked at him sideways, something bitterly—a dry and
blighting smile.

“Is there no priest, then, in the village? I thought I had seen a great
one even now,” cried Kim.

“Ay—but—” the woman began.

“But thou and thy husband hoped to get the cow cured for a handful of
thanks.” The shot told: they were notoriously the closest-fisted couple
in the village. “It is not well to cheat the temples. Give a young calf
to thine own priest, and, unless thy Gods are angry past recall, she
will give milk within a month.”

“A master-beggar art thou,” purred the priest approvingly. “Not the
cunning of forty years could have done better. Surely thou hast made
the old man rich?”

“A little flour, a little butter and a mouthful of cardamoms,” Kim
retorted, flushed with the praise, but still cautious—“Does one grow
rich on that? And, as thou canst see, he is mad. But it serves me while
I learn the road at least.”

He knew what the _faquirs_ of the Taksali Gate were like when they
talked among themselves, and copied the very inflection of their lewd
disciples.

“Is his Search, then, truth or a cloak to other ends? It may be
treasure.”

“He is mad—many times mad. There is nothing else.”

Here the old soldier bobbled up and asked if Kim would accept his
hospitality for the night. The priest recommended him to do so, but
insisted that the honour of entertaining the lama belonged to the
temple—at which the lama smiled guilelessly. Kim glanced from one face
to the other, and drew his own conclusions.

“Where is the money?” he whispered, beckoning the old man off into the
darkness.

“In my bosom. Where else?”

“Give it me. Quietly and swiftly give it me.”

“But why? Here is no ticket to buy.”

“Am I thy _chela_, or am I not? Do I not safeguard thy old feet about
the ways? Give me the money and at dawn I will return it.” He slipped
his hand above the lama’s girdle and brought away the purse.

“Be it so—be it so.” The old man nodded his head. “This is a great and
terrible world. I never knew there were so many men alive in it.”

Next morning the priest was in a very bad temper, but the lama was
quite happy; and Kim had enjoyed a most interesting evening with the
old man, who brought out his cavalry sabre and, balancing it on his dry
knees, told tales of the Mutiny and young captains thirty years in
their graves, till Kim dropped off to sleep.

“Certainly the air of this country is good,” said the lama. “I sleep
lightly, as do all old men; but last night I slept unwaking till broad
day. Even now I am heavy.”

“Drink a draught of hot milk,” said Kim, who had carried not a few such
remedies to opium-smokers of his acquaintance. “It is time to take the
Road again.”

“The long Road that overpasses all the rivers of Hind,” said the lama
gaily. “Let us go. But how thinkest thou, _chela_, to recompense these
people, and especially the priest, for their great kindness? Truly they
are _būt-parast_, but in other lives, maybe, they will receive
enlightenment. A rupee to the temple? The thing within is no more than
stone and red paint, but the heart of man we must acknowledge when and
where it is good.”

“Holy One, hast thou ever taken the Road alone?” Kim looked up sharply,
like the Indian crows so busy about the fields.

“Surely, child: from Kulu to Pathânkot—from Kulu, where my first
_chela_ died. When men were kind to us we made offerings, and all men
were well-disposed throughout all the Hills.”

“It is otherwise in Hind,” said Kim drily. “Their Gods are many-armed
and malignant. Let them alone.”

“I would set thee on thy road for a little, Friend of all the World,
thou and thy yellow man.” The old soldier ambled up the village street,
all shadowy in the dawn, on a punt, scissor-hocked pony. “Last night
broke up the fountains of remembrance in my so-dried heart, and it was
as a blessing to me. Truly there is war abroad in the air. I smell it.
See! I have brought my sword.”

He sat long-legged on the little beast, with the big sword at his
side—hand dropped on the pommel—staring fiercely over the flat lands
towards the North. “Tell me again how He showed in thy vision. Come up
and sit behind me. The beast will carry two.”

“I am this Holy One’s disciple,” said Kim, as they cleared the
village-gate. The villagers seemed almost sorry to be rid of them, but
the priest’s farewell was cold and distant. He had wasted some opium on
a man who carried no money.

“That is well spoken. I am not much used to holy men, but respect is
always good. There is no respect in these days—not even when a
Commissioner Sahib comes to see me. But why should one whose Star leads
him to war follow a holy man?”

“But he _is_ a holy man,” said Kim earnestly. “In truth, and in talk
and in act, holy. He is not like the others. I have never seen such an
one. We be not fortune-tellers, or jugglers, or beggars.”

“Thou art not. That I can see. But I do not know that other. He marches
well, though.”

The first freshness of the day carried the lama forward with long,
easy, camel-like strides. He was deep in meditation, mechanically
clicking his rosary.

They followed the rutted and worn country road that wound across the
flat between the great dark-green mango-groves, the line of the
snowcapped Himalayas faint to the eastward. All India was at work in
the fields, to the creaking of well-wheels, the shouting of ploughmen
behind their cattle, and the clamour of the crows. Even the pony felt
the good influence and almost broke into a trot as Kim laid a hand on
the stirrup-leather.

“It repents me that I did not give a rupee to the shrine,” said the
lama on the last bead of his eighty-one.

The old soldier growled in his beard, so that the lama for the first
time was aware of him.

“Seekest thou the River also?” said he, turning.

“The day is new,” was the reply. “What need of a river save to water at
before sundown? I come to show thee a short lane to the Big Road.”

“That is a courtesy to be remembered, O man of good will. But why the
sword?”

The old soldier looked as abashed as a child interrupted in his game of
make-believe.

“The sword,” he said, fumbling it. “Oh, that was a fancy of mine an old
man’s fancy. Truly the police orders are that no man must bear weapons
throughout Hind, but”—he cheered up and slapped the hilt—“all the
constabeels hereabout know me.”

“It is not a good fancy,” said the lama. “What profit to kill men?”

“Very little—as I know; but if evil men were not now and then slain it
would not be a good world for weaponless dreamers. I do not speak
without knowledge who have seen the land from Delhi south awash with
blood.”

“What madness was that, then?”

“The Gods, who sent it for a plague, alone know. A madness ate into all
the Army, and they turned against their officers. That was the first
evil, but not past remedy if they had then held their hands. But they
chose to kill the Sahibs’ wives and children. Then came the Sahibs from
over the sea and called them to most strict account.”

“Some such rumour, I believe, reached me once long ago. They called it
the Black Year, as I remember.”

“What manner of life hast thou led, not to know The Year? A rumour
indeed! All earth knew, and trembled!”

“Our earth never shook but once—upon the day that the Excellent One
received Enlightenment.”

“Umph! I saw Delhi shake at least—and Delhi is the navel of the world.”

“So they turned against women and children? That was a bad deed, for
which the punishment cannot be avoided.”

“Many strove to do so, but with very small profit. I was then in a
regiment of cavalry. It broke. Of six hundred and eighty sabres stood
fast to their salt—how many, think you? Three. Of whom I was one.”

“The greater merit.”

“Merit! We did not consider it merit in those days. My people, my
friends, my brothers fell from me. They said: ‘The time of the English
is accomplished. Let each strike out a little holding for himself.’ But
I had talked with the men of Sobraon, of Chilianwallah, of Moodkee and
Ferozeshah. I said: ‘Abide a little and the wind turns. There is no
blessing in this work.’ In those days I rode seventy miles with an
English Memsahib and her babe on my saddle-bow. (Wow! That was a horse
fit for a man!) I placed them in safety, and back came I to my
officer—the one that was not killed of our five. ‘Give me work,’ said
I, ‘for I am an outcast among my own kind, and my cousin’s blood is wet
on my sabre.’ ‘Be content,’ said he. ‘There is great work forward. When
this madness is over there is a recompense.’”

“Ay, there is a recompense when the madness is over, surely?” the lama
muttered half to himself.

“They did not hang medals in those days on all who by accident had
heard a gun fired. No! In nineteen pitched battles was I; in
six-and-forty skirmishes of horse; and in small affairs without number.
Nine wounds I bear; a medal and four clasps and the medal of an Order,
for my captains, who are now generals, remembered me when the
Kaisar-i-Hind had accomplished fifty years of her reign, and all the
land rejoiced. They said: ‘Give him the Order of Berittish India.’ I
carry it upon my neck now. I have also my _jaghir_ (holding) from the
hands of the State—a free gift to me and mine. The men of the old
days—they are now Commissioners—come riding to me through the
crops—high upon horses so that all the village sees—and we talk out the
old skirmishes, one dead man’s name leading to another.”

“And after?” said the lama.

“Oh, afterwards they go away, but not before my village has seen.”

“And at the last what wilt thou do?”

“At the last I shall die.”

“And after?”

“Let the Gods order it. I have never pestered Them with prayers. I do
not think They will pester me. Look you, I have noticed in my long life
that those who eternally break in upon Those Above with complaints and
reports and bellowings and weepings are presently sent for in haste, as
our Colonel used to send for slack-jawed down-country men who talked
too much. No, I have never wearied the Gods. They will remember this,
and give me a quiet place where I can drive my lance in the shade, and
wait to welcome my sons: I have no less than three Rissaldar—majors
all—in the regiments.”

“And they likewise, bound upon the Wheel, go forth from life to
life—from despair to despair,” said the lama below his breath, “hot,
uneasy, snatching.”

“Ay,” the old soldier chuckled. “Three Rissaldar—majors in three
regiments. Gamblers a little, but so am I. They must be well mounted;
and one cannot take the horses as in the old days one took women. Well,
well, my holding can pay for all. How thinkest thou? It is a
well-watered strip, but my men cheat me. I do not know how to ask save
at the lance’s point. Ugh! I grow angry and I curse them, and they
feign penitence, but behind my back I know they call me a toothless old
ape.”

“Hast thou never desired any other thing?”

“Yes—yes—a thousand times! A straight back and a close-clinging knee
once more; a quick wrist and a keen eye; and the marrow that makes a
man. Oh, the old days—the good days of my strength!”

“That strength is weakness.”

“It has turned so; but fifty years since I could have proved it
otherwise,” the old soldier retorted, driving his stirrup-edge into the
pony’s lean flank.

“But I know a River of great healing.”

“I have drank Gunga-water to the edge of dropsy. All she gave me was a
flux, and no sort of strength.”

“It is not Gunga. The River that I know washes from all taint of sin.
Ascending the far bank one is assured of Freedom. I do not know thy
life, but thy face is the face of the honourable and courteous. Thou
hast clung to thy Way, rendering fidelity when it was hard to give, in
that Black Year of which I now remember other tales. Enter now upon the
Middle Way which is the path to Freedom. Hear the Most Excellent Law,
and do not follow dreams.”

“Speak, then, old man,” the soldier smiled, half saluting. “We be all
babblers at our age.”

The lama squatted under the shade of a mango, whose shadow played
checkerwise over his face; the soldier sat stiffly on the pony; and
Kim, making sure that there were no snakes, lay down in the crotch of
the twisted roots.

There was a drowsy buzz of small life in hot sunshine, a cooing of
doves, and a sleepy drone of well-wheels across the fields. Slowly and
impressively the lama began. At the end of ten minutes the old soldier
slid from his pony, to hear better as he said, and sat with the reins
round his wrist. The lama’s voice faltered, the periods lengthened. Kim
was busy watching a grey squirrel. When the little scolding bunch of
fur, close pressed to the branch, disappeared, preacher and audience
were fast asleep, the old officer’s strong-cut head pillowed on his
arm, the lama’s thrown back against the tree-bole, where it showed like
yellow ivory. A naked child toddled up, stared, and, moved by some
quick impulse of reverence, made a solemn little obeisance before the
lama—only the child was so short and fat that it toppled over sideways,
and Kim laughed at the sprawling, chubby legs. The child, scared and
indignant, yelled aloud.

“Hai! Hai!” said the soldier, leaping to his feet. “What is it? What
orders? ... It is ... a child! I dreamed it was an alarm. Little
one—little one—do not cry. Have I slept? That was discourteous indeed!”

“I fear! I am afraid!” roared the child.

“What is it to fear? Two old men and a boy? How wilt thou ever make a
soldier, Princeling?”

The lama had waked too, but, taking no direct notice of the child,
clicked his rosary.

“What is that?” said the child, stopping a yell midway. “I have never
seen such things. Give them me.”

“Aha.” said the lama, smiling, and trailing a loop of it on the grass:

This is a handful of cardamoms, This is a lump of _ghi:_
This is millet and chillies and rice, A supper for thee and me!

The child shrieked with joy, and snatched at the dark, glancing beads.

“Oho!” said the old soldier. “Whence hadst thou that song, despiser of
this world?”

“I learned it in Pathânkot—sitting on a doorstep,” said the lama shyly.
“It is good to be kind to babes.”

“As I remember, before the sleep came on us, thou hadst told me that
marriage and bearing were darkeners of the true light, stumbling-blocks
upon the Way. Do children drop from Heaven in thy country? Is it the
Way to sing them songs?”

“No man is all perfect,” said the lama gravely, recoiling the rosary.
“Run now to thy mother, little one.”

“Hear him!” said the soldier to Kim. “He is ashamed for that he has
made a child happy. There was a very good householder lost in thee, my
brother. Hai, child!” He threw it a pice. “Sweetmeats are always
sweet.” And as the little figure capered away into the sunshine: “They
grow up and become men. Holy One, I grieve that I slept in the midst of
thy preaching. Forgive me.”

“We be two old men,” said the lama. “The fault is mine. I listened to
thy talk of the world and its madness, and one fault led to the next.”

“Hear him! What harm do thy Gods suffer from play with a babe? And that
song was very well sung. Let us go on and I will sing thee the song of
Nikal Seyn before Delhi—the old song.”

And they fared out from the gloom of the mango-tope, the old man’s
high, shrill voice ringing across the field, as wail by long-drawn wail
he unfolded the story of Nikal Seyn [Nicholson]—the song that men sing
in the Punjab to this day. Kim was delighted, and the lama listened
with deep interest.

“_Ahi! Nikal Seyn is dead—he died before Delhi! Lances of the North,
take vengeance for Nikal Seyn_.” He quavered it out to the end, marking
the trills with the flat of his sword on the pony’s rump.

“And now we come to the Big Road,” said he, after receiving the
compliments of Kim; for the lama was markedly silent. “It is long since
I have ridden this way, but thy boy’s talk stirred me. See, Holy
One—the Great Road which is the backbone of all Hind. For the most part
it is shaded, as here, with four lines of trees; the middle road—all
hard—takes the quick traffic. In the days before rail-carriages the
Sahibs travelled up and down here in hundreds. Now there are only
country-carts and such like. Left and right is the rougher road for the
heavy carts—grain and cotton and timber, fodder, lime and hides. A man
goes in safety here for at every few _kos_ is a police-station. The
police are thieves and extortioners (I myself would patrol it with
cavalry—young recruits under a strong captain), but at least they do
not suffer any rivals. All castes and kinds of men move here.

“Look! Brahmins and chumars, bankers and tinkers, barbers and bunnias,
pilgrims and potters—all the world going and coming. It is to me as a
river from which I am withdrawn like a log after a flood.”

And truly the Grand Trunk Road is a wonderful spectacle. It runs
straight, bearing without crowding India’s traffic for fifteen hundred
miles—such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world. They
looked at the green-arched, shade-flecked length of it, the white
breadth speckled with slow-pacing folk; and the two-roomed
police-station opposite.

“Who bears arms against the law?” a constable called out laughingly, as
he caught sight of the soldier’s sword. “Are not the police enough to
destroy evil-doers?”

“It was because of the police I bought it,” was the answer. “Does all
go well in Hind?”

“Rissaldar Sahib, all goes well.”

“I am like an old tortoise, look you, who puts his head out from the
bank and draws it in again. Ay, this is the Road of Hindustan. All men
come by this way...”

“Son of a swine, is the soft part of the road meant for thee to scratch
thy back upon? Father of all the daughters of shame and husband of ten
thousand virtueless ones, thy mother was devoted to a devil, being led
thereto by her mother. Thy aunts have never had a nose for seven
generations! Thy sister—What Owl’s folly told thee to draw thy carts
across the road? A broken wheel? Then take a broken head and put the
two together at leisure!”

The voice and a venomous whip-cracking came out of a pillar of dust
fifty yards away, where a cart had broken down. A thin, high Kathiawar
mare, with eyes and nostrils aflame, rocketed out of the jam, snorting
and wincing as her rider bent her across the road in chase of a
shouting man. He was tall and grey-bearded, sitting the almost mad
beast as a piece of her, and scientifically lashing his victim between
plunges.

The old man’s face lit with pride. “My child!” said he briefly, and
strove to rein the pony’s neck to a fitting arch.

“Am I to be beaten before the police?” cried the carter. “Justice! I
will have Justice—”

“Am I to be blocked by a shouting ape who upsets ten thousand sacks
under a young horse’s nose? That is the way to ruin a mare.”

“He speaks truth. He speaks truth. But she follows her man close,” said
the old man. The carter ran under the wheels of his cart and thence
threatened all sorts of vengeance.

“They are strong men, thy sons,” said the policeman serenely, picking
his teeth.

The horseman delivered one last vicious cut with his whip and came on
at a canter.

“My father!” He reigned back ten yards and dismounted.

The old man was off his pony in an instant, and they embraced as do
father and son in the East.




CHAPTER IV


Good Luck, she is never a lady,
But the cursedest quean alive,
Tricksy, wincing, and jady—
Kittle to lead or drive.
Greet her—she’s hailing a stranger!
Meet her—she’s busking to leave!
Let her alone for a shrew to the bone
And the hussy comes plucking your sleeve!
    Largesse! Largesse, O Fortune!
    Give or hold at your will.
    If I’ve no care for Fortune,
    Fortune must follow me still!

_The Wishing-Caps_.

Then, lowering their voices, they spoke together. Kim came to rest
under a tree, but the lama tugged impatiently at his elbow.

“Let us go on. The River is not here.”

“Hai mai! Have we not walked enough for a little? Our River will not
run away. Patience, and he will give us a dole.”

“This.” said the old soldier suddenly, “is the Friend of the Stars. He
brought me the news yesterday. Having seen the very man Himself, in a
vision, giving orders for the war.”

“Hm!” said his son, all deep in his broad chest. “He came by a
bazar-rumour and made profit of it.”

His father laughed. “At least he did not ride to me begging for a new
charger, and the Gods know how many rupees. Are thy brothers’ regiments
also under orders?”

“I do not know. I took leave and came swiftly to thee in case—”

“In case they ran before thee to beg. O gamblers and spendthrifts all!
But thou hast never yet ridden in a charge. A good horse is needed
there, truly. A good follower and a good pony also for the marching.
Let us see—let us see.” He thrummed on the pommel.

“This is no place to cast accounts in, my father. Let us go to thy
house.”

“At least pay the boy, then: I have no pice with me, and he brought
auspicious news. Ho! Friend of all the World, a war is toward as thou
hast said.”

“Nay, as I know, _the_ war,” returned Kim composedly.

“Eh?” said the lama, fingering his beads, all eager for the road.

“My master does not trouble the Stars for hire. We brought the news
bear witness, we brought the news, and now we go.” Kim half-crooked his
hand at his side.

The son tossed a silver coin through the sunlight, grumbling something
about beggars and jugglers. It was a four-anna piece, and would feed
them well for days. The lama, seeing the flash of the metal, droned a
blessing.

“Go thy way, Friend of all the World,” piped the old soldier, wheeling
his scrawny mount. “For once in all my days I have met a true
prophet—who was not in the Army.”

Father and son swung round together: the old man sitting as erect as
the younger.

A Punjabi constable in yellow linen trousers slouched across the road.
He had seen the money pass.

“Halt!” he cried in impressive English. “Know ye not that there is a
_takkus_ of two annas a head, which is four annas, on those who enter
the Road from this side-road? It is the order of the Sirkar, and the
money is spent for the planting of trees and the beautification of the
ways.”

“And the bellies of the police,” said Kim, slipping out of arm’s reach.
“Consider for a while, man with a mud head. Think you we came from the
nearest pond like the frog, thy father-in-law? Hast thou ever heard the
name of thy brother?”

“And who was he? Leave the boy alone,” cried a senior constable,
immensely delighted, as he squatted down to smoke his pipe in the
veranda.

“He took a label from a bottle of _belaitee-pani_ (soda-water), and,
affixing it to a bridge, collected taxes for a month from those who
passed, saying that it was the Sirkar’s order. Then came an Englishman
and broke his head. Ah, brother, I am a town-crow, not a village-crow!”

The policeman drew back abashed, and Kim hooted at him all down the
road.

“Was there ever such a disciple as I?” he cried merrily to the lama.
“All earth would have picked thy bones within ten mile of Lahore city
if I had not guarded thee.”

“I consider in my own mind whether thou art a spirit, sometimes, or
sometimes an evil imp,” said the lama, smiling slowly.

“I am thy _chela_.” Kim dropped into step at his side—that
indescribable gait of the long-distance tramp all the world over.

“Now let us walk,” muttered the lama, and to the click of his rosary
they walked in silence mile upon mile. The lama as usual, was deep in
meditation, but Kim’s bright eyes were open wide. This broad, smiling
river of life, he considered, was a vast improvement on the cramped and
crowded Lahore streets. There were new people and new sights at every
stride—castes he knew and castes that were altogether out of his
experience.

They met a troop of long-haired, strong-scented Sansis with baskets of
lizards and other unclean food on their backs, their lean dogs sniffing
at their heels. These people kept their own side of the road, moving at
a quick, furtive jog-trot, and all other castes gave them ample room;
for the Sansi is deep pollution. Behind them, walking wide and stiffly
across the strong shadows, the memory of his leg-irons still on him,
strode one newly released from the jail; his full stomach and shiny
skin to prove that the Government fed its prisoners better than most
honest men could feed themselves. Kim knew that walk well, and made
broad jest of it as they passed. Then an Akali, a wild-eyed,
wild-haired Sikh devotee in the blue-checked clothes of his faith, with
polished-steel quoits glistening on the cone of his tall blue turban,
stalked past, returning from a visit to one of the independent Sikh
States, where he had been singing the ancient glories of the Khalsa to
College-trained princelings in top-boots and white-cord breeches. Kim
was careful not to irritate that man; for the Akali’s temper is short
and his arm quick. Here and there they met or were overtaken by the
gaily dressed crowds of whole villages turning out to some local fair;
the women, with their babes on their hips, walking behind the men, the
older boys prancing on sticks of sugar-cane, dragging rude brass models
of locomotives such as they sell for a halfpenny, or flashing the sun
into the eyes of their betters from cheap toy mirrors. One could see at
a glance what each had bought; and if there were any doubt it needed
only to watch the wives comparing, brown arm against brown arm, the
newly purchased dull glass bracelets that come from the North-West.
These merry-makers stepped slowly, calling one to the other and
stopping to haggle with sweetmeat-sellers, or to make a prayer before
one of the wayside shrines—sometimes Hindu, sometimes Mussalman—which
the low-caste of both creeds share with beautiful impartiality. A solid
line of blue, rising and falling like the back of a caterpillar in
haste, would swing up through the quivering dust and trot past to a
chorus of quick cackling. That was a gang of _changars_—the women who
have taken all the embankments of all the Northern railways under their
charge—a flat-footed, big-bosomed, strong-limbed, blue-petticoated clan
of earth-carriers, hurrying north on news of a job, and wasting no time
by the road. They belong to the caste whose men do not count, and they
walked with squared elbows, swinging hips, and heads on high, as suits
women who carry heavy weights. A little later a marriage procession
would strike into the Grand Trunk with music and shoutings, and a smell
of marigold and jasmine stronger even than the reek of the dust. One
could see the bride’s litter, a blur of red and tinsel, staggering
through the haze, while the bridegroom’s bewreathed pony turned aside
to snatch a mouthful from a passing fodder-cart. Then Kim would join
the Kentish-fire of good wishes and bad jokes, wishing the couple a
hundred sons and no daughters, as the saying is. Still more interesting
and more to be shouted over it was when a strolling juggler with some
half-trained monkeys, or a panting, feeble bear, or a woman who tied
goats’ horns to her feet, and with these danced on a slack-rope, set
the horses to shying and the women to shrill, long-drawn quavers of
amazement.

The lama never raised his eyes. He did not note the money-lender on his
goose-rumped pony, hastening along to collect the cruel interest; or
the long-shouting, deep-voiced little mob—still in military
formation—of native soldiers on leave, rejoicing to be rid of their
breeches and puttees, and saying the most outrageous things to the most
respectable women in sight. Even the seller of Ganges-water he did not
see, and Kim expected that he would at least buy a bottle of that
precious stuff. He looked steadily at the ground, and strode as
steadily hour after hour, his soul busied elsewhere. But Kim was in the
seventh heaven of joy. The Grand Trunk at this point was built on an
embankment to guard against winter floods from the foothills, so that
one walked, as it were, a little above the country, along a stately
corridor, seeing all India spread out to left and right. It was
beautiful to behold the many-yoked grain and cotton wagons crawling
over the country roads: one could hear their axles, complaining a mile
away, coming nearer, till with shouts and yells and bad words they
climbed up the steep incline and plunged on to the hard main road,
carter reviling carter. It was equally beautiful to watch the people,
little clumps of red and blue and pink and white and saffron, turning
aside to go to their own villages, dispersing and growing small by twos
and threes across the level plain. Kim felt these things, though he
could not give tongue to his feelings, and so contented himself with
buying peeled sugar-cane and spitting the pith generously about his
path. From time to time the lama took snuff, and at last Kim could
endure the silence no longer.

“This is a good land—the land of the South!” said he. “The air is good;
the water is good. Eh?”

“And they are all bound upon the Wheel,” said the lama. “Bound from
life after life. To none of these has the Way been shown.” He shook
himself back to this world.

“And now we have walked a weary way,” said Kim. “Surely we shall soon
come to a _parao_ (a resting-place). Shall we stay there? Look, the sun
is sloping.”

“Who will receive us this evening?”

“That is all one. This country is full of good folk. Besides” he sunk
his voice beneath a whisper—“we have money.”

The crowd thickened as they neared the resting-place which marked the
end of their day’s journey. A line of stalls selling very simple food
and tobacco, a stack of firewood, a police-station, a well, a
horse-trough, a few trees, and, under them, some trampled ground dotted
with the black ashes of old fires, are all that mark a _parao_ on the
Grand Trunk; if you except the beggars and the crows—both hungry.

By this time the sun was driving broad golden spokes through the lower
branches of the mango-trees; the parakeets and doves were coming home
in their hundreds; the chattering, grey-backed Seven Sisters, talking
over the day’s adventures, walked back and forth in twos and threes
almost under the feet of the travellers; and shufflings and scufflings
in the branches showed that the bats were ready to go out on the
night-picket. Swiftly the light gathered itself together, painted for
an instant the faces and the cartwheels and the bullocks’ horns as red
as blood. Then the night fell, changing the touch of the air, drawing a
low, even haze, like a gossamer veil of blue, across the face of the
country, and bringing out, keen and distinct, the smell of wood-smoke
and cattle and the good scent of wheaten cakes cooked on ashes. The
evening patrol hurried out of the police-station with important
coughings and reiterated orders; and a live charcoal ball in the cup of
a wayside carter’s hookah glowed red while Kim’s eye mechanically
watched the last flicker of the sun on the brass tweezers.

The life of the _parao_ was very like that of the Kashmir Serai on a
small scale. Kim dived into the happy Asiatic disorder which, if you
only allow time, will bring you everything that a simple man needs.

His wants were few, because, since the lama had no caste scruples,
cooked food from the nearest stall would serve; but, for luxury’s sake,
Kim bought a handful of dung-cakes to build a fire. All about, coming
and going round the little flames, men cried for oil, or grain, or
sweetmeats, or tobacco, jostling one another while they waited their
turn at the well; and under the men’s voices you heard from halted,
shuttered carts the high squeals and giggles of women whose faces
should not be seen in public.

Nowadays, well-educated natives are of opinion that when their
womenfolk travel—and they visit a good deal—it is better to take them
quickly by rail in a properly screened compartment; and that custom is
spreading. But there are always those of the old rock who hold by the
use of their forefathers; and, above all, there are always the old
women—more conservative than the men—who toward the end of their days
go on a pilgrimage. They, being withered and undesirable, do not, under
certain circumstances, object to unveiling. After their long seclusion,
during which they have always been in business touch with a thousand
outside interests, they love the bustle and stir of the open road, the
gatherings at the shrines, and the infinite possibilities of gossip
with like-minded dowagers. Very often it suits a longsuffering family
that a strong-tongued, iron-willed old lady should disport herself
about India in this fashion; for certainly pilgrimage is grateful to
the Gods. So all about India, in the most remote places, as in the most
public, you find some knot of grizzled servitors in nominal charge of
an old lady who is more or less curtained and hid away in a
bullock-cart. Such men are staid and discreet, and when a European or a
high-caste native is near will net their charge with most elaborate
precautions; but in the ordinary haphazard chances of pilgrimage the
precautions are not taken. The old lady is, after all, intensely human,
and lives to look upon life.

Kim marked down a gaily ornamented _ruth_ or family bullock-cart, with
a broidered canopy of two domes, like a double-humped camel, which had
just been drawn into the _parao_. Eight men made its retinue, and two
of the eight were armed with rusty sabres—sure signs that they followed
a person of distinction, for the common folk do not bear arms. An
increasing cackle of complaints, orders, and jests, and what to a
European would have been bad language, came from behind the curtains.
Here was evidently a woman used to command.

Kim looked over the retinue critically. Half of them were thin-legged,
grey-bearded Ooryas from down country. The other half were duffle-clad,
felt-hatted hillmen of the North; and that mixture told its own tale,
even if he had not overheard the incessant sparring between the two
divisions. The old lady was going south on a visit—probably to a rich
relative, most probably to a son-in-law, who had sent up an escort as a
mark of respect. The hillmen would be of her own people—Kulu or Kangra
folk. It was quite clear that she was not taking her daughter down to
be wedded, or the curtains would have been laced home and the guard
would have allowed no one near the car. A merry and a high-spirited
dame, thought Kim, balancing the dung-cake in one hand, the cooked food
in the other, and piloting the lama with a nudging shoulder. Something
might be made out of the meeting. The lama would give him no help, but,
as a conscientious _chela_, Kim was delighted to beg for two.

He built his fire as close to the cart as he dared, waiting for one of
the escort to order him away. The lama dropped wearily to the ground,
much as a heavy fruit-eating bat cowers, and returned to his rosary.

“Stand farther off, beggar!” The order was shouted in broken Hindustani
by one of the hillmen.

“Huh! It is only a _pahari_ (a hillman)”, said Kim over his shoulder.
“Since when have the hill-asses owned all Hindustan?”

The retort was a swift and brilliant sketch of Kim’s pedigree for three
generations.

“Ah!” Kim’s voice was sweeter than ever, as he broke the dung-cake into
fit pieces. “In_ my_ country we call that the beginning of love-talk.”

A harsh, thin cackle behind the curtains put the hillman on his mettle
for a second shot.

“Not so bad—not so bad,” said Kim with calm. “But have a care, my
brother, lest we—_we_, I say—be minded to give a curse or so in return.
And our curses have the knack of biting home.”

The Ooryas laughed; the hillman sprang forward threateningly. The lama
suddenly raised his head, bringing his huge tam-o’-shanter hat into the
full light of Kim’s new-started fire.

“What is it?” said he.

The man halted as though struck to stone. “I—I—am saved from a great
sin,” he stammered.

“The foreigner has found him a priest at last,” whispered one of the
Ooryas.

“Hai! Why is that beggar-brat not well beaten?” the old woman cried.

The hillman drew back to the cart and whispered something to the
curtain. There was dead silence, then a muttering.

“This goes well,” thought Kim, pretending neither to see nor hear.

“When—when—he has eaten”—the hillman fawned on Kim—“it—it is requested
that the Holy One will do the honour to talk to one who would speak to
him.”

“After he has eaten he will sleep,” Kim returned loftily. He could not
quite see what new turn the game had taken, but stood resolute to
profit by it. “Now I will get him his food.” The last sentence, spoken
loudly, ended with a sigh as of faintness.

“I—I myself and the others of my people will look to that—if it is
permitted.”

“It is permitted,” said Kim, more loftily than ever. “Holy One, these
people will bring us food.”

“The land is good. All the country of the South is good—a great and a
terrible world,” mumbled the lama drowsily.

“Let him sleep,” said Kim, “but look to it that we are well fed when he
wakes. He is a very holy man.”

Again one of the Ooryas said something contemptuously.

“He is not a _faquir_. He is not a down-country beggar,” Kim went on
severely, addressing the stars. “He is the most holy of holy men. He is
above all castes. I am his _chela_.”

“Come here!” said the flat thin voice behind the curtain; and Kim came,
conscious that eyes he could not see were staring at him. One skinny
brown finger heavy with rings lay on the edge of the cart, and the talk
went this way:

“Who is that one?”

“An exceedingly holy one. He comes from far off. He comes from Tibet.”

“Where in Tibet?”

“From behind the snows—from a very far place. He knows the stars; he
makes horoscopes; he reads nativities. But he does not do this for
money. He does it for kindness and great charity. I am his disciple. I
am called also the Friend of the Stars.”

“Thou art no hillman.”

“Ask him. He will tell thee I was sent to him from the Stars to show
him an end to his pilgrimage.”

“Humph! Consider, brat, that I am an old woman and not altogether a
fool. Lamas I know, and to these I give reverence, but thou art no more
a lawful _chela_ than this my finger is the pole of this wagon. Thou
art a casteless Hindu—a bold and unblushing beggar, attached, belike,
to the Holy One for the sake of gain.”

“Do we not all work for gain?” Kim changed his tone promptly to match
that altered voice. “I have heard”—this was a bow drawn at a venture—“I
have heard—”

“What hast thou heard?” she snapped, rapping with the finger.

“Nothing that I well remember, but some talk in the bazars, which is
doubtless a lie, that even Rajahs—small Hill Rajahs—”

“But none the less of good Rajput blood.”

“Assuredly of good blood. That these even sell the more comely of their
womenfolk for gain. Down south they sell them—to zemindars and such—all
of Oudh.”

If there be one thing in the world that the small Hill Rajahs deny it
is just this charge; but it happens to be one thing that the bazars
believe, when they discuss the mysterious slave-traffics of India. The
old lady explained to Kim, in a tense, indignant whisper, precisely
what manner and fashion of malignant liar he was. Had Kim hinted this
when she was a girl, he would have been pommelled to death that same
evening by an elephant. This was perfectly true.

“Ahai! I am only a beggar’s brat, as the Eye of Beauty has said,” he
wailed in extravagant terror.

“Eye of Beauty, forsooth! Who am I that thou shouldst fling
beggar-endearments at me?” And yet she laughed at the long-forgotten
word. “Forty years ago that might have been said, and not without
truth. Ay. thirty years ago. But it is the fault of this gadding up and
down Hind that a king’s widow must jostle all the scum of the land, and
be made a mock by beggars.”

“Great Queen,” said Kim promptly, for he heard her shaking with
indignation, “I am even what the Great Queen says I am; but none the
less is my master holy. He has not yet heard the Great Queen’s order
that—”

“Order? I order a Holy One—a Teacher of the Law—to come and speak to a
woman? Never!”

“Pity my stupidity. I thought it was given as an order—”

“It was not. It was a petition. Does this make all clear?”

A silver coin clicked on the edge of the cart. Kim took it and salaamed
profoundly. The old lady recognized that, as the eyes and the ears of
the lama, he was to be propitiated.

“I am but the Holy One’s disciple. When he has eaten perhaps he will
come.”

“Oh, villain and shameless rogue!” The jewelled forefinger shook itself
at him reprovingly; but he could hear the old lady’s chuckle.

“Nay, what is it?” he said, dropping into his most caressing and
confidential tone—the one, he well knew, that few could resist. “Is—is
there any need of a son in thy family? Speak freely, for we priests—”
That last was a direct plagiarism from a _faquir_ by the Taksali Gate.

“We priests! Thou art not yet old enough to—” She checked the joke with
another laugh. “Believe me, now and again, we women, O priest, think of
other matters than sons. Moreover, my daughter has borne her
man-child.”

“Two arrows in the quiver are better than one; and three are better
still.” Kim quoted the proverb with a meditative cough, looking
discreetly earthward.

“True—oh, true. But perhaps that will come. Certainly those
down-country Brahmins are utterly useless. I sent gifts and monies and
gifts again to them, and they prophesied.”

“Ah,” drawled Kim, with infinite contempt, “they prophesied!” A
professional could have done no better.

“And it was not till I remembered my own Gods that my prayers were
heard. I chose an auspicious hour, and—perhaps thy Holy One has heard
of the Abbot of the Lung-Cho lamassery. It was to him I put the matter,
and behold in the due time all came about as I desired. The Brahmin in
the house of the father of my daughter’s son has since said that it was
through _his_ prayers—which is a little error that I will explain to
him when we reach our journey’s end. And so afterwards I go to Buddh
Gaya, to make _shraddha_ for the father of my children.”

“Thither go we.”

“Doubly auspicious,” chirruped the old lady. “A second son at least!”

“O Friend of all the World!” The lama had waked, and, simply as a child
bewildered in a strange bed, called for Kim.

“I come! I come, Holy One!” He dashed to the fire, where he found the
lama already surrounded by dishes of food, the hillmen visibly adoring
him and the Southerners looking sourly.

“Go back! Withdraw!” Kim cried. “Do we eat publicly like dogs?” They
finished the meal in silence, each turned a little from the other, and
Kim topped it with a native-made cigarette.

“Have I not said an hundred times that the South is a good land? Here
is a virtuous and high-born widow of a Hill Rajah on pilgrimage, she
says, to Buddha Gay. She it is sends us those dishes; and when thou art
well rested she would speak to thee.”

“Is this also thy work?” The lama dipped deep into his snuff-gourd.

“Who else watched over thee since our wonderful journey began?” Kim’s
eyes danced in his head as he blew the rank smoke through his nostrils
and stretched him on the dusty ground. “Have I failed to oversee thy
comforts, Holy One?”

“A blessing on thee.” The lama inclined his solemn head. “I have known
many men in my so long life, and disciples not a few. But to none among
men, if so be thou art woman-born, has my heart gone out as it has to
thee—thoughtful, wise, and courteous; but something of a small imp.”

“And I have never seen such a priest as thou.” Kim considered the
benevolent yellow face wrinkle by wrinkle. “It is less than three days
since we took the road together, and it is as though it were a hundred
years.”

“Perhaps in a former life it was permitted that I should have rendered
thee some service. Maybe”—he smiled—“I freed thee from a trap; or,
having caught thee on a hook in the days when I was not enlightened,
cast thee back into the river.”

“Maybe,” said Kim quietly. He had heard this sort of speculation again
and again, from the mouths of many whom the English would not consider
imaginative. “Now, as regards that woman in the bullock-cart. _I_ think
she needs a second son for her daughter.”

“That is no part of the Way,” sighed the lama. “But at least she is
from the Hills. Ah, the Hills, and the snow of the Hills!”

He rose and stalked to the cart. Kim would have given his ears to come
too, but the lama did not invite him; and the few words he caught were
in an unknown tongue, for they spoke some common speech of the
mountains. The woman seemed to ask questions which the lama turned over
in his mind before answering. Now and again he heard the singsong
cadence of a Chinese quotation. It was a strange picture that Kim
watched between drooped eyelids. The lama, very straight and erect, the
deep folds of his yellow clothing slashed with black in the light of
the _parao_ fires precisely as a knotted tree-trunk is slashed with the
shadows of the low sun, addressed a tinsel and lacquered _ruth_ which
burned like a many-coloured jewel in the same uncertain light. The
patterns on the gold-worked curtains ran up and down, melting and
reforming as the folds shook and quivered to the night wind; and when
the talk grew more earnest the jewelled forefinger snapped out little
sparks of light between the embroideries. Behind the cart was a wall of
uncertain darkness speckled with little flames and alive with
half-caught forms and faces and shadows. The voices of early evening
had settled down to one soothing hum whose deepest note was the steady
chumping of the bullocks above their chopped straw, and whose highest
was the tinkle of a Bengali dancing-girl’s _sitar_. Most men had eaten
and pulled deep at their gurgling, grunting hookahs, which in full
blast sound like bull-frogs.

At last the lama returned. A hillman walked behind him with a wadded
cotton-quilt and spread it carefully by the fire.

“She deserves ten thousand grandchildren,” thought Kim. “None the less,
but for me, those gifts would not have come.”

“A virtuous woman—and a wise one.” The lama slackened off, joint by
joint, like a slow camel. “The world is full of charity to those who
follow the Way.” He flung a fair half of the quilt over Kim.

“And what said she?” Kim rolled up in his share of it.

“She asked me many questions and propounded many problems—the most of
which were idle tales which she had heard from devil-serving priests
who pretend to follow the Way. Some I answered, and some I said were
foolish. Many wear the Robe, but few keep the Way.”

“True. That is true.” Kim used the thoughtful, conciliatory tone of
those who wish to draw confidences.

“But by her lights she is most right-minded. She desires greatly that
we should go with her to Buddh Gaya; her road being ours, as I
understand, for many days’ journey to the southward.”

“And?”

“Patience a little. To this I said that my Search came before all
things. She had heard many foolish legends, but this great truth of my
River she had never heard. Such are the priests of the lower hills! She
knew the Abbot of Lung-Cho, but she did not know of my River—nor the
tale of the Arrow.”

“And?”

“I spoke therefore of the Search, and of the Way, and of matters that
were profitable; she desiring only that I should accompany her and make
prayer for a second son.”

“Aha! ‘We women’ do _not_ think of anything save children,” said Kim
sleepily.

“Now, since our roads run together for a while, I do not see that we in
any way depart from our Search if so be we accompany her—at least as
far as—I have forgotten the name of the city.”

“Ohé!” said Kim, turning and speaking in a sharp whisper to one of the
Ooryas a few yards away. “Where is your master’s house?”

“A little behind Saharunpore, among the fruit gardens.” He named the
village.

“That was the place,” said the lama. “So far, at least, we can go with
her.”

“Flies go to carrion,” said the Oorya, in an abstracted voice.

“For the sick cow a crow; for the sick man a Brahmin.” Kim breathed the
proverb impersonally to the shadow-tops of the trees overhead.

The Oorya grunted and held his peace.

“So then we go with her, Holy One?”

“Is there any reason against? I can still step aside and try all the
rivers that the road overpasses. She desires that I should come. She
very greatly desires it.”

Kim stifled a laugh in the quilt. When once that imperious old lady had
recovered from her natural awe of a lama he thought it probable that
she would be worth listening to.

He was nearly asleep when the lama suddenly quoted a proverb: “The
husbands of the talkative have a great reward hereafter.” Then Kim
heard him snuff thrice, and dozed off, still laughing.

The diamond-bright dawn woke men and crows and bullocks together. Kim
sat up and yawned, shook himself, and thrilled with delight. This was
seeing the world in real truth; this was life as he would have
it—bustling and shouting, the buckling of belts, and beating of
bullocks and creaking of wheels, lighting of fires and cooking of food,
and new sights at every turn of the approving eye. The morning mist
swept off in a whorl of silver, the parrots shot away to some distant
river in shrieking green hosts: all the well-wheels within ear-shot
went to work. India was awake, and Kim was in the middle of it, more
awake and more excited than anyone, chewing on a twig that he would
presently use as a toothbrush; for he borrowed right- and left-handedly
from all the customs of the country he knew and loved. There was no
need to worry about food—no need to spend a cowrie at the crowded
stalls. He was the disciple of a holy man annexed by a strong-willed
old lady. All things would be prepared for them, and when they were
respectfully invited so to do they would sit and eat. For the rest—Kim
giggled here as he cleaned his teeth—his hostess would rather heighten
the enjoyment of the road. He inspected her bullocks critically, as
they came up grunting and blowing under the yokes. If they went too
fast—it was not likely—there would be a pleasant seat for himself along
the pole; the lama would sit beside the driver. The escort, of course,
would walk. The old lady, equally of course, would talk a great deal,
and by what he had heard that conversation would not lack salt. She was
already ordering, haranguing, rebuking, and, it must be said, cursing
her servants for delays.

“Get her her pipe. In the name of the Gods, get her her pipe and stop
her ill-omened mouth,” cried an Oorya, tying up his shapeless bundles
of bedding. “She and the parrots are alike. They screech in the dawn.”

“The lead-bullocks! Hai! Look to the lead-bullocks!” They were backing
and wheeling as a grain-cart’s axle caught them by the horns. “Son of
an owl, where dost thou go?” This to the grinning carter.

“Ai! Yai! Yai! That within there is the Queen of Delhi going to pray
for a son,” the man called back over his high load. “Room for the Queen
of Delhi and her Prime Minister the grey monkey climbing up his own
sword!” Another cart loaded with bark for a down-country tannery
followed close behind, and its driver added a few compliments as the
_ruth_-bullocks backed and backed again.

From behind the shaking curtains came one volley of invective. It did
not last long, but in kind and quality, in blistering, biting
appropriateness, it was beyond anything that even Kim had heard. He
could see the carter’s bare chest collapse with amazement, as the man
salaamed reverently to the voice, leaped from the pole, and helped the
escort haul their volcano on to the main road. Here the voice told him
truthfully what sort of wife he had wedded, and what she was doing in
his absence.

“Oh, _shabash!_” murmured Kim, unable to contain himself, as the man
slunk away.

“Well done, indeed? It is a shame and a scandal that a poor woman may
not go to make prayer to her Gods except she be jostled and insulted by
all the refuse of Hindustan—that she must eat _gâli_ (abuse) as men eat
_ghi_. But I have yet a wag left to my tongue—a word or two well spoken
that serves the occasion. And _still_ am I without my tobacco! Who is
the one-eyed and luckless son of shame that has not yet prepared my
pipe?”

It was hastily thrust in by a hillman, and a trickle of thick smoke
from each corner of the curtains showed that peace was restored.

If Kim had walked proudly the day before, disciple of a holy man, today
he paced with tenfold pride in the train of a semi-royal procession,
with a recognized place under the patronage of an old lady of charming
manners and infinite resource. The escort, their heads tied up
native-fashion, fell in on either side the cart, shuffling enormous
clouds of dust.

The lama and Kim walked a little to one side; Kim chewing his stick of
sugarcane, and making way for no one under the status of a priest. They
could hear the old lady’s tongue clack as steadily as a rice-husker.
She bade the escort tell her what was going on on the road; and so soon
as they were clear of the _parao_ she flung back the curtains and
peered out, her veil a third across her face. Her men did not eye her
directly when she addressed them, and thus the proprieties were more or
less observed.

A dark, sallowish District Superintendent of Police, faultlessly
uniformed, an Englishman, trotted by on a tired horse, and, seeing from
her retinue what manner of person she was, chaffed her.

“O mother,” he cried, “do they do this in the _zenanas?_ Suppose an
Englishman came by and saw that thou hast no nose?”

“What?” she shrilled back. “Thine own mother has no nose? Why say so,
then, on the open road?”

It was a fair counter. The Englishman threw up his hand with the
gesture of a man hit at sword-play. She laughed and nodded.

“Is this a face to tempt virtue aside?” She withdrew all her veil and
stared at him.

It was by no means lovely, but as the man gathered up his reins he
called it a Moon of Paradise, a Disturber of Integrity, and a few other
fantastic epithets which doubled her up with mirth.

“That is a _nut-cut_ (rogue),” she said. “All police-constables are
_nut-cuts;_ but the police-wallahs are the worst. Hai, my son, thou
hast never learned all that since thou camest from _Belait_ (Europe).
Who suckled thee?”

“A _pahareen_—a hillwoman of Dalhousie, my mother. Keep thy beauty
under a shade—O Dispenser of Delights,” and he was gone.

“These be the sort”—she took a fine judicial tone, and stuffed her
mouth with _pan_—“These be the sort to oversee justice. They know the
land and the customs of the land. The others, all new from Europe,
suckled by white women and learning our tongues from books, are worse
than the pestilence. They do harm to Kings.” Then she told a long, long
tale to the world at large, of an ignorant young policeman who had
disturbed some small Hill Rajah, a ninth cousin of her own, in the
matter of a trivial land-case, winding up with a quotation from a work
by no means devotional.

Then her mood changed, and she bade one of the escort ask whether the
lama would walk alongside and discuss matters of religion. So Kim
dropped back into the dust and returned to his sugar-cane. For an hour
or more the lama’s tam-o’shanter showed like a moon through the haze;
and, from all he heard, Kim gathered that the old woman wept. One of
the Ooryas half apologized for his rudeness overnight, saying that he
had never known his mistress of so bland a temper, and he ascribed it
to the presence of the strange priest. Personally, he believed in
Brahmins, though, like all natives, he was acutely aware of their
cunning and their greed. Still, when Brahmins but irritated with
begging demands the mother of his master’s wife, and when she sent them
away so angry that they cursed the whole retinue (which was the real
reason of the second off-side bullock going lame, and of the pole
breaking the night before), he was prepared to accept any priest of any
other denomination in or out of India. To this Kim assented with wise
nods, and bade the Oorya observe that the lama took no money, and that
the cost of his and Kim’s food would be repaid a hundred times in the
good luck that would attend the caravan henceforward. He also told
stories of Lahore city, and sang a song or two which made the escort
laugh. As a town-mouse well acquainted with the latest songs by the
most fashionable composers—they are women for the most part—Kim had a
distinct advantage over men from a little fruit-village behind
Saharunpore, but he let that advantage be inferred.

At noon they turned aside to eat, and the meal was good, plentiful, and
well-served on plates of clean leaves, in decency, out of drift of the
dust. They gave the scraps to certain beggars, that all requirements
might be fulfilled, and sat down to a long, luxurious smoke. The old
lady had retreated behind her curtains, but mixed most freely in the
talk, her servants arguing with and contradicting her as servants do
throughout the East. She compared the cool and the pines of the Kangra
and Kulu hills with the dust and the mangoes of the South; she told a
tale of some old local Gods at the edge of her husband’s territory; she
roundly abused the tobacco which she was then smoking, reviled all
Brahmins, and speculated without reserve on the coming of many
grandsons.




CHAPTER V


Here come I to my own again
Fed, forgiven, and known again
Claimed by bone of my bone again,
    And sib to flesh of my flesh!
The fatted calf is dressed for me,
But the husks have greater zest for me ...
I think my pigs will be best for me,
    So I’m off to the styes afresh.

_The Prodigal Son_.

Once more the lazy, string-tied, shuffling procession got under way,
and she slept till they reached the next halting-stage. It was a very
short march, and time lacked an hour to sundown, so Kim cast about for
means of amusement.

“But why not sit and rest?” said one of the escort. “Only the devils
and the English walk to and fro without reason.”

“Never make friends with the Devil, a Monkey, or a Boy. No man knows
what they will do next,” said his fellow.

Kim turned a scornful back—he did not want to hear the old story how
the Devil played with the boys and repented of it and walked idly
across country.

The lama strode after him. All that day, whenever they passed a stream,
he had turned aside to look at it, but in no case had he received any
warning that he had found his River. Insensibly, too, the comfort of
speaking to someone in a reasonable tongue, and of being properly
considered and respected as her spiritual adviser by a well-born woman,
had weaned his thoughts a little from the Search. And further, he was
prepared to spend serene years in his quest; having nothing of the
white man’s impatience, but a great faith.

“Where goest thou?” he called after Kim.

“Nowhither—it was a small march, and all this”—Kim waved his hands
abroad—“is new to me.”

“She is beyond question a wise and a discerning woman. But it is hard
to meditate when—”

“All women are thus.” Kim spoke as might have Solomon.

“Before the lamassery was a broad platform,” the lama muttered, looping
up the well-worn rosary, “of stone. On that I have left the marks of my
feet—pacing to and fro with these.”

He clicked the beads, and began the “_Om mane pudme hum_” of his
devotion; grateful for the cool, the quiet, and the absence of dust.

One thing after another drew Kim’s idle eye across the plain. There was
no purpose in his wanderings, except that the build of the huts near by
seemed new, and he wished to investigate.

They came out on a broad tract of grazing-ground, brown and purple in
the afternoon light, with a heavy clump of mangoes in the centre. It
struck Kim as curious that no shrine stood in so eligible a spot: the
boy was observing as any priest for these things. Far across the plain
walked side by side four men, made small by the distance. He looked
intently under his curved palms and caught the sheen of brass.

“Soldiers. White soldiers!” said he. “Let us see.”

“It is always soldiers when thou and I go out alone together. But I
have never seen the white soldiers.”

“They do no harm except when they are drunk. Keep behind this tree.”

They stepped behind the thick trunks in the cool dark of the
mango-tope. Two little figures halted; the other two came forward
uncertainly. They were the advance-party of a regiment on the march,
sent out, as usual, to mark the camp. They bore five-foot sticks with
fluttering flags, and called to each other as they spread over the flat
earth.

At last they entered the mango-grove, walking heavily.

“It’s here or hereabouts—officers’ tents under the trees, I take it,
an’ the rest of us can stay outside. Have they marked out for the
baggage-wagons behind?”

They cried again to their comrades in the distance, and the rough
answer came back faint and mellowed.

“Shove the flag in here, then,” said one.

“What do they prepare?” said the lama, wonderstruck. “This is a great
and terrible world. What is the device on the flag?”

A soldier thrust a stave within a few feet of them, grunted
discontentedly, pulled it up again, conferred with his companion, who
looked up and down the shaded cave of greenery, and returned it.

Kim stared with all his eyes, his breath coming short and sharp between
his teeth. The soldiers stamped off into the sunshine.

“O Holy One!” he gasped. “My horoscope! The drawing in the dust by the
priest at Umballa! Remember what he said. First come two—_ferashes_—to
make all things ready—in a dark place, as it is always at the beginning
of a vision.”

“But this is not vision,” said the lama. “It is the world’s Illusion,
and no more.”

“And after them comes the Bull—the Red Bull on the green field. Look!
It is he!”

He pointed to the flag that was snap snapping in the evening breeze not
ten feet away. It was no more than an ordinary camp marking-flag; but
the regiment, always punctilious in matters of millinery, had charged
it with the regimental device, the Red Bull, which is the crest of the
Mavericks—the great Red Bull on a background of Irish green.

“I see, and now I remember.” said the lama. “Certainly it is thy Bull.
Certainly, also, the two men came to make all ready.”

“They are soldiers—white soldiers. What said the priest? ‘The sign over
against the Bull is the sign of War and armed men.’ Holy One, this
thing touches my Search.”

“True. It is true.” The lama stared fixedly at the device that flamed
like a ruby in the dusk. “The priest at Umballa said that thine was the
sign of War.”

“What is to do now?”

“Wait. Let us wait.”

“Even now the darkness clears,” said Kim. It was only natural that the
descending sun should at last strike through the tree-trunks, across
the grove, filling it with mealy gold light for a few minutes; but to
Kim it was the crown of the Umballa Brahmin’s prophecy.

“Hark!” said the lama. “One beats a drum—far off!”

At first the sound, carrying diluted through the still air, resembled
the beating of an artery in the head. Soon a sharpness was added.

“Ah! The music,” Kim explained. He knew the sound of a regimental band,
but it amazed the lama.

At the far end of the plain a heavy, dusty column crawled in sight.
Then the wind brought the tune:

We crave your condescension
To tell you what we know
Of marching in the Mulligan Guards
To Sligo Port below!

Here broke in the shrill-tongued fifes:

We shouldered arms,
We marched—we marched away.
From Phœnix Park
We marched to Dublin Bay.
The drums and the fifes,
Oh, sweetly they did play,
As we marched—marched—marched—with the
Mulligan Guards!

It was the band of the Mavericks playing the regiment to camp; for the
men were route-marching with their baggage. The rippling column swung
into the level—carts behind it divided left and right, ran about like
an ant-hill, and ...

“But this is sorcery!” said the lama.

The plain dotted itself with tents that seemed to rise, all spread,
from the carts. Another rush of men invaded the grove, pitched a huge
tent in silence, ran up yet eight or nine more by the side of it,
unearthed cooking-pots, pans, and bundles, which were taken possession
of by a crowd of native servants; and behold the mango-tope turned into
an orderly town as they watched!

“Let us go,” said the lama, sinking back afraid, as the fires twinkled
and white officers with jingling swords stalked into the Mess-tent.

“Stand back in the shadow. No one can see beyond the light of a fire,”
said Kim, his eyes still on the flag. He had never before watched the
routine of a seasoned regiment pitching camp in thirty minutes.

“Look! look! look!” clucked the lama. “Yonder comes a priest.” It was
Bennett, the Church of England Chaplain of the regiment, limping in
dusty black. One of his flock had made some rude remarks about the
Chaplain’s mettle; and to abash him Bennett had marched step by step
with the men that day. The black dress, gold cross on the watch-chain,
the hairless face, and the soft, black wideawake hat would have marked
him as a holy man anywhere in all India. He dropped into a camp-chair
by the door of the Mess-tent and slid off his boots. Three or four
officers gathered round him, laughing and joking over his exploit.

“The talk of white men is wholly lacking in dignity,” said the lama,
who judged only by tone. “But I considered the countenance of that
priest and I think he is learned. Is it likely that he will understand
our talk? I would talk to him of my Search.”

“Never speak to a white man till he is fed,” said Kim, quoting a
well-known proverb. “They will eat now, and—and I do not think they are
good to beg from. Let us go back to the resting-place. After we have
eaten we will come again. It certainly was a Red Bull—_my_ Red Bull.”

They were both noticeably absent-minded when the old lady’s retinue set
their meal before them; so none broke their reserve, for it is not
lucky to annoy guests.

“Now,” said Kim, picking his teeth, “we will return to that place; but
thou, O Holy One, must wait a little way off, because thy feet are
heavier than mine and I am anxious to see more of that Red Bull.”

“But how canst thou understand the talk? Walk slowly. The road is
dark,” the lama replied uneasily.

Kim put the question aside. “I marked a place near to the trees,” said
he, “where thou canst sit till I call. Nay,” as the lama made some sort
of protest, “remember this is _my_ Search—the Search for my Red Bull.
The sign in the Stars was not for thee. I know a little of the customs
of white soldiers, and I always desire to see some new things.”

“What dost thou not know of this world?” The lama squatted obediently
in a little hollow of the ground not a hundred yards from the hump of
the mango-trees dark against the star-powdered sky.

“Stay till I call.” Kim flitted into the dusk. He knew that in all
probability there would be sentries round the camp, and smiled to
himself as he heard the thick boots of one. A boy who can dodge over
the roofs of Lahore city on a moonlight night, using every little patch
and corner of darkness to discomfit his pursuer, is not likely to be
checked by a line of well-trained soldiers. He paid them the compliment
of crawling between a couple, and, running and halting, crouching and
dropping flat, worked his way toward the lighted Mess-tent where, close
pressed behind the mango-tree, he waited till some chance word should
give him a returnable lead.

The one thing now in his mind was further information as to the Red
Bull. For aught he knew, and Kim’s limitations were as curious and
sudden as his expansions, the men, the nine hundred thorough devils of
his father’s prophecy, might pray to the beast after dark, as Hindus
pray to the Holy Cow. That at least would be entirely right and
logical, and the padre with the gold cross would be therefore the man
to consult in the matter. On the other hand, remembering sober-faced
padres whom he had avoided in Lahore city, the priest might be an
inquisitive nuisance who would bid him learn. But had it not been
proven at Umballa that his sign in the high heavens portended War and
armed men? Was he not the Friend of the Stars as well as of all the
World, crammed to the teeth with dreadful secrets? Lastly—and firstly
as the undercurrent of all his quick thoughts—this adventure, though he
did not know the English word, was a stupendous lark—a delightful
continuation of his old flights across the housetops, as well as the
fulfilment of sublime prophecy. He lay belly-flat and wriggled towards
the Mess-tent door, a hand on the amulet round his neck.

It was as he suspected. The Sahibs prayed to their God; for in the
centre of the Mess-table—its sole ornament when they were on the line
of march—stood a golden bull fashioned from old-time loot of the Summer
Palace at Pekin—a red-gold bull with lowered head, ramping upon a field
of Irish green. To him the Sahibs held out their glasses and cried
aloud confusedly.

Now the Reverend Arthur Bennett always left Mess after that toast, and
being rather tired by his march his movements were more abrupt than
usual. Kim, with slightly raised head, was still staring at his totem
on the table, when the Chaplain stepped on his right shoulder-blade.
Kim flinched under the leather, and, rolling sideways, brought down the
Chaplain, who, ever a man of action, caught him by the throat and
nearly choked the life out of him. Kim then kicked him desperately in
the stomach. Mr Bennett gasped and doubled up, but without relaxing his
grip, rolled over again, and silently hauled Kim to his own tent. The
Mavericks were incurable practical jokers; and it occurred to the
Englishman that silence was best till he had made complete inquiry.

“Why, it’s a boy!” he said, as he drew his prize under the light of the
tent-pole lantern, then shaking him severely cried: “What were you
doing? You’re a thief. _Choor? Mallum?_” His Hindustanee was very
limited, and the ruffled and disgusted Kim intended to keep to the
character laid down for him. As he recovered his breath he was
inventing a beautifully plausible tale of his relations to some
scullion, and at the same time keeping a keen eye on and a little under
the Chaplain’s left arm-pit. The chance came; he ducked for the
doorway, but a long arm shot out and clutched at his neck, snapping the
amulet-string and closing on the amulet.

“Give it me. O, give it me. Is it lost? Give me the papers.”

The words were in English—the tinny, saw-cut English of the
native-bred, and the Chaplain jumped.

“A scapular,” said he, opening his hand. “No, some sort of heathen
charm. Why—why, do you speak English? Little boys who steal are beaten.
You know that?”

“I do not—I did not steal.” Kim danced in agony like a terrier at a
lifted stick. “Oh, give it me. It is my charm. Do not thieve it from
me.”

The Chaplain took no heed, but, going to the tent door, called aloud. A
fattish, clean-shaven man appeared.

“I want your advice, Father Victor,” said Bennett. “I found this boy in
the dark outside the Mess-tent. Ordinarily, I should have chastised him
and let him go, because I believe him to be a thief. But it seems he
talks English, and he attaches some sort of value to a charm round his
neck. I thought perhaps you might help me.”

Between himself and the Roman Catholic Chaplain of the Irish contingent
lay, as Bennett believed, an unbridgeable gulf, but it was noticeable
that whenever the Church of England dealt with a human problem she was
very likely to call in the Church of Rome. Bennett’s official
abhorrence of the Scarlet Woman and all her ways was only equalled by
his private respect for Father Victor.

“A thief talking English, is it? Let’s look at his charm. No, it’s not
a scapular, Bennett.” He held out his hand.

“But have we any right to open it? A sound whipping—”

“I did _not_ thieve,” protested Kim. “You have hit me kicks all over my
body. Now give me my charm and I will go away.”

“Not quite so fast. We’ll look first,” said Father Victor, leisurely
rolling out poor Kimball O’Hara’s “_ne varietur_” parchment, his
clearance-certificate, and Kim’s baptismal certificate. On this last
O’Hara—with some confused idea that he was doing wonders for his
son—had scrawled scores of times: “_Look after the boy. Please look
after the boy_”—signing his name and regimental number in full.

“Powers of Darkness below!” said Father Victor, passing all over to Mr
Bennett. “Do you know what these things are?”

“Yes.” said Kim. “They are mine, and I want to go away.”

“I do not quite understand,” said Mr Bennett. “He probably brought them
on purpose. It may be a begging trick of some kind.”

“I never saw a beggar less anxious to stay with his company, then.
There’s the makings of a gay mystery here. Ye believe in Providence,
Bennett?”

“I hope so.”

“Well, I believe in miracles, so it comes to the same thing. Powers of
Darkness! Kimball O’Hara! And his son! But then he’s a native, and I
saw Kimball married myself to Annie Shott. How long have you had these
things, boy?”

“Ever since I was a little baby.”

Father Victor stepped forward quickly and opened the front of Kim’s
upper garment. “You see, Bennett, he’s not very black. What’s your
name?”

“Kim.”

“Or Kimball?”

“Perhaps. Will you let me go away?”

“What else?”

“They call me Kim Rishti ke. That is Kim of the Rishti.”

“What is that—‘Rishti’?”

“_Eye_-rishti—that was the Regiment—my father’s.”

“Irish—oh, I see.”

“Yess. That was how my father told me. My father, he has lived.”

“Has lived where?”

“Has lived. Of _course_ he is dead—gone-out.”

“Oh! That’s your abrupt way of putting it, is it?”

Bennett interrupted. “It is possible I have done the boy an injustice.
He is certainly white, though evidently neglected. I am sure I must
have bruised him. I do not think spirits—”

“Get him a glass of sherry, then, and let him squat on the cot. Now,
Kim,” continued Father Victor, “no one is going to hurt you. Drink that
down and tell us about yourself. The truth, if you’ve no objection.”

Kim coughed a little as he put down the empty glass, and considered.
This seemed a time for caution and fancy. Small boys who prowl about
camps are generally turned out after a whipping. But he had received no
stripes; the amulet was evidently working in his favour, and it looked
as though the Umballa horoscope and the few words that he could
remember of his father’s maunderings fitted in most miraculously. Else
why did the fat padre seem so impressed, and why the glass of hot
yellow drink from the lean one?

“My father, he is dead in Lahore city since I was very little. The
woman, she kept _kabarri_ shop near where the hire-carriages are.” Kim
began with a plunge, not quite sure how far the truth would serve him.

“Your mother?”

“_No!_”—with a gesture of disgust. “She went out when I was born. My
father, he got these papers from the Jadoo-Gher what do you call that?”
(Bennett nodded) “because he was in good-standing. What do you call
that?” (again Bennett nodded). “My father told me that. He said, too,
and also the Brahmin who made the drawing in the dust at Umballa two
days ago, _he_ said, that I shall find a Red Bull on a green field and
that the Bull shall help me.”

“A phenomenal little liar,” muttered Bennett.

“Powers of Darkness below, what a country!” murmured Father Victor. “Go
on, Kim.”

“I did _not_ thieve. Besides, I am just now disciple of a very holy
man. He is sitting outside. We saw two men come with flags, making the
place ready. That is _always_ so in a dream, or on account of
a—a—prophecy. So I knew it was come true. I saw the Red Bull on the
green field, and my father he said: ‘Nine hundred _pukka_ devils and
the Colonel riding on a horse will look after you when you find the Red
Bull!’ I did not know what to do when I saw the Bull, but I went away
and I came again when it was dark. I wanted to see the Bull again, and
I saw the Bull again with the—the Sahibs praying to it. I think the
Bull shall help me. The holy man said so too. He is sitting outside.
Will you hurt him, if I call him a shout now? He is very holy. He can
witness to all the things I say, and he knows I am not a thief.”

“‘Sahibs praying to a bull!’ What in the world do you make of that?”
said Bennett. “‘Disciple of a holy man!’ Is the boy mad?”

“It’s O’Hara’s boy, sure enough. O’Hara’s boy leagued with all the
Powers of Darkness. It’s very much what his father would have done if
he was drunk. We’d better invite the holy man. He may know something.”

“He does not know anything,” said Kim. “I will show you him if you
come. He is my master. Then afterwards we can go.”

“Powers of Darkness!” was all that Father Victor could say, as Bennett
marched off, with a firm hand on Kim’s shoulder.

They found the lama where he had dropped.

“The Search is at an end for me,” shouted Kim in the vernacular. “I
have found the Bull, but God knows what comes next. They will not hurt
you. Come to the fat priest’s tent with this thin man and see the end.
It is all new, and they cannot talk Hindi. They are only uncurried
donkeys.”

“Then it is not well to make a jest of their ignorance,” the lama
returned. “I am glad if thou art rejoiced, _chela_.”

Dignified and unsuspicious, he strode into the little tent, saluted the
Churches as a Churchman, and sat down by the open charcoal brazier. The
yellow lining of the tent reflected in the lamplight made his face
red-gold.

Bennett looked at him with the triple-ringed uninterest of the creed
that lumps nine-tenths of the world under the title of “heathen”.

“And what was the end of the Search? What gift has the Red Bull
brought?” The lama addressed himself to Kim.

“He says, ‘What are you going to do?’” Bennett was staring uneasily at
Father Victor, and Kim, for his own ends, took upon himself the office
of interpreter.

“I do not see what concern this _faquir_ has with the boy, who is
probably his dupe or his confederate,” Bennett began. “We cannot allow
an English boy—Assuming that he is the son of a Mason, the sooner he
goes to the Masonic Orphanage the better.”

“Ah! That’s your opinion as Secretary to the Regimental Lodge,” said
Father Victor; “but we might as well tell the old man what we are going
to do. He doesn’t look like a villain.”

“My experience is that one can never fathom the Oriental mind. Now,
Kimball, I wish you to tell this man what I say word for word.”

Kim gathered the import of the next few sentences and began thus:

“Holy One, the thin fool who looks like a camel says that I am the son
of a Sahib.”

“But how?”

“Oh, it is true. I knew it since my birth, but _he_ could only find it
out by rending the amulet from my neck and reading all the papers. He
thinks that once a Sahib is always a Sahib, and between the two of them
they purpose to keep me in this Regiment or to send me to a _madrissah_
(a school). It has happened before. I have always avoided it. The fat
fool is of one mind and the camel-like one of another. But that is no
odds. I may spend one night here and perhaps the next. It has happened
before. Then I will run away and return to thee.”

“But tell them that thou art my _chela_. Tell them how thou didst come
to me when I was faint and bewildered. Tell them of our Search, and
they will surely let thee go now.”

“I have already told them. They laugh, and they talk of the police.”

“What are you saying?” asked Mr Bennett.

“Oah. He only says that if you do not let me go it will stop him in his
business—his ur-gent private af-fairs.” This last was a reminiscence of
some talk with a Eurasian clerk in the Canal Department, but it only
drew a smile, which nettled him. “And if you _did_ know what his
business was you would not be in such a beastly hurry to interfere.”

“What is it then?” said Father Victor, not without feeling, as he
watched the lama’s face.

“There is a River in this country which he wishes to find so verree
much. It was put out by an Arrow which—” Kim tapped his foot
impatiently as he translated in his own mind from the vernacular to his
clumsy English. “Oah, it was made by our Lord God Buddha, you know, and
if you wash there you are washed away from all your sins and made as
white as cotton-wool.” (Kim had heard mission-talk in his time.) “I am
his disciple, and we _must_ find that River. It is so verree valuable
to us.”

“Say that again,” said Bennett. Kim obeyed, with amplifications.

“But this is gross blasphemy!” cried the Church of England.

“Tck! Tck!” said Father Victor sympathetically. “I’d give a good deal
to be able to talk the vernacular. A river that washes away sin! And
how long have you two been looking for it?”

“Oh, many days. Now we wish to go away and look for it again. It is not
here, you see.”

“I see,” said Father Victor gravely. “But he can’t go on in that old
man’s company. It would be different, Kim, if you were not a soldier’s
son. Tell him that the Regiment will take care of you and make you as
good a man as your—as good a man as can be. Tell him that if he
believes in miracles he must believe that—”

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

“I’m doing no such thing. He must believe that the boy’s coming here—to
his own Regiment—in search of his Red Bull is in the nature of a
miracle. Consider the chances against it, Bennett. This one boy in all
India, and our Regiment of all others on the line o’ march for him to
meet with! It’s predestined on the face of it. Yes, tell him it’s
_Kismet. Kismet, mallum?_ (Do you understand?)”

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

“They say,”—the old man’s eye lighted at Kim’s speech “they say that
the meaning of my horoscope is now accomplished, and that being led
back—though as thou knowest I went out of curiosity—to these people and
their Red Bull I must needs go to a _madrissah_ and be turned into a
Sahib. Now I make pretence of agreement, for at the worst it will be
but a few meals eaten away from thee. Then I will slip away and follow
down the road to Saharunpore. Therefore, Holy One, keep with that Kulu
woman—on no account stray far from her cart till I come again. Past
question, my sign is of War and of armed men. See how they have given
me wine to drink and set me upon a bed of honour! My father must have
been some great person. So if they raise me to honour among them, good.
If not, good again. However it goes, I will run back to thee when I am
tired. But stay with the Rajputni, or I shall miss thy feet ... Oah
yess,” said the boy, “I have told him everything you tell me to say.”

“And I cannot see any need why he should wait,” said Bennett, feeling
in his trouser-pocket. “We can investigate the details later—and I will
give him a ru—”

“Give him time. Maybe he’s fond of the lad,” said Father Victor, half
arresting the clergyman’s motion.

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

“What can he want now?”

“He says”—Kim put up one hand. “He says: ‘Be quiet.’ He wants to speak
to me by himself. You see, you do not know one little word of what he
says, and I think if you talk he will perhaps give you very bad curses.
When he takes those beads like that, you see, he always wants to be
quiet.”

The two Englishmen sat overwhelmed, but there was a look in Bennett’s
eye that promised ill for Kim when he should be relaxed to the
religious arm.

“A Sahib and the son of a Sahib—” The lama’s voice was harsh with pain.
“But no white man knows the land and the customs of the land as thou
knowest. How comes it this is true?”

“What matter, Holy One?—but remember it is only for a night or two.
Remember, I can change swiftly. It will all be as it was when I first
spoke to thee under Zam-Zammah the great gun—”

“As a boy in the dress of white men—when I first went to the Wonder
House. And a second time thou wast a Hindu. What shall the third
incarnation be?” He chuckled drearily. “Ah, _chela_, thou has done a
wrong to an old man because my heart went out to thee.”

“And mine to thee. But how could I know that the Red Bull would bring
me to this business?”

The lama covered his face afresh, and nervously rattled the rosary. Kim
squatted beside him and laid hold upon a fold of his clothing.

“Now it is understood that the boy is a Sahib?” he went on in a muffled
tone. “Such a Sahib as was he who kept the images in the Wonder House.”
The lama’s experience of white men was limited. He seemed to be
repeating a lesson. “So then it is not seemly that he should do other
than as the Sahibs do. He must go back to his own people.”

“For a day and a night and a day,” Kim pleaded.

“No, ye don’t!” Father Victor saw Kim edging towards the door, and
interposed a strong leg.

“I do not understand the customs of white men. The Priest of the Images
in the Wonder House in Lahore was more courteous than the thin one
here. This boy will be taken from me. They will make a Sahib of my
disciple? Woe to me! How shall I find my River? Have _they_ no
disciples? Ask.”

“He says he is very sorree that he cannot find the River now any more.
He says, Why have you no disciples, and stop bothering him? He wants to
be washed of his sins.”

Neither Bennett nor Father Victor found any answer ready.

Said Kim in English, distressed for the lama’s agony: “I think if you
will let me go now we will walk away quietly and not steal. We will
look for that River like before I was caught. I wish I did not come
here to find the Red Bull and all that sort of thing. I do not want
it.”

“It’s the very best day’s work you ever did for yourself, young man,”
said Bennett.

“Good heavens, I don’t know how to console him,” said Father Victor,
watching the lama intently. “He can’t take the boy away with him, and
yet he’s a good man—I’m sure he’s a good man. Bennett, if you give him
that rupee he’ll curse you root and branch!”

They listened to each other’s breathing—three—five full minutes. Then
the lama raised his head, and looked forth across them into space and
emptiness.

“And I am a Follower of the Way,” he said bitterly. “The sin is mine
and the punishment is mine. I made believe to myself for now I see it
was but make-belief—that thou wast sent to me to aid in the Search. So
my heart went out to thee for thy charity and thy courtesy and the
wisdom of thy little years. But those who follow the Way must permit
not the fire of any desire or attachment, for that is all Illusion. As
says ...” He quoted an old, old Chinese text, backed it with another,
and reinforced these with a third. “I stepped aside from the Way, my
_chela_. It was no fault of thine. I delighted in the sight of life,
the new people upon the roads, and in thy joy at seeing these things. I
was pleased with thee who should have considered my Search and my
Search alone. Now I am sorrowful because thou art taken away and my
River is far from me. It is the Law which I have broken!”

“Powers of Darkness below!” said Father Victor, who, wise in the
confessional, heard the pain in every sentence.

“I see now that the sign of the Red Bull was a sign for me as well as
for thee. All Desire is red—and evil. I will do penance and find my
River alone.”

“At least go back to the Kulu woman,” said Kim, “otherwise thou wilt be
lost upon the roads. She will feed thee till I run back to thee.”

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

“Now,”—his tone altered as he turned to Kim,—“what will they do with
thee? At least I may, acquiring merit, wipe out past ill.”

“Make me a Sahib—so they think. The day after tomorrow I return. Do not
grieve.”

“Of what sort? Such an one as this or that man?” He pointed to Father
Victor. “Such an one as those I saw this evening, men wearing swords
and stamping heavily?”

“Maybe.”

“That is not well. These men follow desire and come to emptiness. Thou
must not be of their sort.”

“The Umballa priest said that my Star was War,” Kim interjected. “I
will ask these fools—but there is truly no need. I will run away this
night, for all I wanted to see the new things.”

Kim put two or three questions in English to Father Victor, translating
the replies to the lama.

Then: “He says, ‘You take him from me and you cannot say what you will
make him.’ He says, ‘Tell me before I go, for it is not a small thing
to make a child.’”

“You will be sent to a school. Later on, we shall see. Kimball, I
suppose you’d like to be a soldier?”

“_Gorah-log_ (white-folk). No-ah! No-ah!” Kim shook his head violently.
There was nothing in his composition to which drill and routine
appealed. “I will not be a soldier.”

“You will be what you’re told to be,” said Bennett; “and you should be
grateful that we’re going to help you.”

Kim smiled compassionately. If these men lay under the delusion that he
would do anything that he did not fancy, so much the better.

Another long silence followed. Bennett fidgeted with impatience, and
suggested calling a sentry to evict the _faquir_.

“Do they give or sell learning among the Sahibs? Ask them,” said the
lama, and Kim interpreted.

“They say that money is paid to the teacher—but that money the Regiment
will give ... What need? It is only for a night.”

“And—the more money is paid the better learning is given?” The lama
disregarded Kim’s plans for an early flight. “It is no wrong to pay for
learning. To help the ignorant to wisdom is always a merit.” The rosary
clicked furiously as an abacus. Then he faced his oppressors.

“Ask them for how much money do they give a wise and suitable teaching?
And in what city is that teaching given?”

“Well,” said Father Victor in English, when Kim had translated, “that
depends. The Regiment would pay for you all the time you are at the
Military Orphanage; or you might go on the Punjab Masonic Orphanage’s
list (not that he or you ’ud understand what that means); but the best
schooling a boy can get in India is, of course, at St Xavier’s in
Partibus at Lucknow.” This took some time to interpret, for Bennett
wished to cut it short.

“He wants to know how much?” said Kim placidly.

“Two or three hundred rupees a year.” Father Victor was long past any
sense of amazement. Bennett, impatient, did not understand.

“He says: ‘Write that name and the money upon a paper and give it him.’
And he says you must write your name below, because he is going to
write a letter in some days to you. He says you are a good man. He says
the other man is a fool. He is going away.”

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

“He’ll run slap into the sentries,” cried Father Victor, jumping up as
the lama stalked out; “but I can’t leave the boy.” Kim made swift
motion to follow, but checked himself. There was no sound of challenge
outside. The lama had disappeared.

Kim settled himself composedly on the Chaplain’s cot. At least the lama
had promised that he would stay with the Raiput woman from Kulu, and
the rest was of the smallest importance. It pleased him that the two
padres were so evidently excited. They talked long in undertones,
Father Victor urging some scheme on Mr Bennett, who seemed incredulous.
All this was very new and fascinating, but Kim felt sleepy. They called
men into the tent—one of them certainly was the Colonel, as his father
had prophesied—and they asked him an infinity of questions, chiefly
about the woman who looked after him, all of which Kim answered
truthfully. They did not seem to think the woman a good guardian.

After all, this was the newest of his experiences. Sooner or later, if
he chose, he could escape into great, grey, formless India, beyond
tents and padres and colonels. Meantime, if the Sahibs were to be
impressed, he would do his best to impress them. He too was a white
man.

After much talk that he could not comprehend, they handed him over to a
sergeant, who had strict instructions not to let him escape. The
Regiment would go on to Umballa, and Kim would be sent up, partly at
the expense of the Lodge and in part by subscription, to a place called
Sanawar.

“It’s miraculous past all whooping, Colonel,” said Father Victor, when
he had talked without a break for ten minutes. “His Buddhist friend has
levanted after taking my name and address. I can’t quite make out
whether he’ll pay for the boy’s education or whether he is preparing
some sort of witchcraft on his own account.” Then to Kim: “You’ll live
to be grateful to your friend the Red Bull yet. We’ll make a man of you
at Sanawar—even at the price o’ making you a Protestant.”

“Certainly—most certainly,” said Bennett.

“But you will not go to Sanawar,” said Kim.

“But we will go to Sanawar, little man. That’s the order of the
Commander-in-Chief, who’s a trifle more important than O’Hara’s son.”

“You will not go to Sanawar. You will go to thee War.”

There was a shout of laughter from the full tent.

“When you know your own Regiment a trifle better you won’t confuse the
line of march with line of battle, Kim. We hope to go to ‘thee War’
sometime.”

“Oah, I know all thatt.” Kim drew his bow again at a venture. If they
were not going to the war, at least they did not know what he knew of
the talk in the veranda at Umballa.

“I know you are not at thee war now; but I tell _you_ that as soon as
you get to Umballa you will be sent to the war—the new war. It is a war
of eight thousand men, besides the guns.”

“That’s explicit. D’you add prophecy to your other gifts? Take him
along, sergeant. Take up a suit for him from the Drums, an’ take care
he doesn’t slip through your fingers. Who says the age of miracles is
gone by? I think I’ll go to bed. My poor mind’s weakening.”

At the far end of the camp, silent as a wild animal, an hour later sat
Kim, newly washed all over, in a horrible stiff suit that rasped his
arms and legs.

“A most amazin’ young bird,” said the sergeant. “He turns up in charge
of a yellow-headed buck-Brahmin priest, with his father’s Lodge
certificates round his neck, talkin’ God knows what all of a red bull.
The buck-Brahmin evaporates without explanations, an’ the bhoy sets
cross-legged on the Chaplain’s bed prophesyin’ bloody war to the men at
large. Injia’s a wild land for a God-fearin’ man. I’ll just tie his leg
to the tent-pole in case he’ll go through the roof. What did ye say
about the war?”

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

“You’re a consolin’ little imp. Lie down between the Drums an’ go to
bye-bye. Those two boys will watch your slumbers.”




CHAPTER VI


Now I remember comrades—
    Old playmates on new seas—
Whenas we traded orpiment
    Among the savages.
Ten thousand leagues to southward,
    And thirty years removed—
They knew not noble Valdez,
    But me they knew and loved.

_Song of Diego Valdez._

Very early in the morning the white tents came down and disappeared as
the Mavericks took a side-road to Umballa. It did not skirt the
resting-place, and Kim, trudging beside a baggage-cart under fire of
comments from soldiers’ wives, was not so confident as overnight. He
discovered that he was closely watched—Father Victor on the one side,
and Mr Bennett on the other.

In the forenoon the column checked. A camel-orderly handed the Colonel
a letter. He read it, and spoke to a Major. Half a mile in the rear,
Kim heard a hoarse and joyful clamour rolling down on him through the
thick dust. Then someone beat him on the back, crying: “Tell us how ye
knew, ye little limb of Satan? Father dear, see if ye can make him
tell.”

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

“Now, my son, your prophecy of last night has come true. Our orders are
to entrain at Umballa for the Front tomorrow.”

“What is thatt?” said Kim, for “_front_” and “_entrain_” were newish
words to him.

“We are going to ‘thee War,’ as you called it.”

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

“Ye did; but, Powers o’ Darkness, how did ye know?”

Kim’s eyes sparkled. He shut his lips, nodded his head, and looked
unspeakable things. The Chaplain moved on through the dust, and
privates, sergeants, and subalterns called one another’s attention to
the boy. The Colonel, at the head of the column, stared at him
curiously. “It was probably some bazar rumour.” he said; “but even
then—” He referred to the paper in his hand. “Hang it all, the thing
was only decided within the last forty-eight hours.”

“Are there many more like you in India?” said Father Victor, “or are
you by way o’ being a _lusus naturæ?_”

“Now I have told you,” said the boy, “will you let me go back to my old
man? If he has not stayed with that woman from Kulu, I am afraid he
will die.”

“By what I saw of him he’s as well able to take care of himself as you.
No. Ye’ve brought us luck, an’ we’re goin’ to make a man of you. I’ll
take ye back to your baggage-cart and ye’ll come to me this evening.”

For the rest of the day Kim found himself an object of distinguished
consideration among a few hundred white men. The story of his
appearance in camp, the discovery of his parentage, and his prophecy,
had lost nothing in the telling. A big, shapeless white woman on a pile
of bedding asked him mysteriously whether he thought her husband would
come back from the war. Kim reflected gravely, and said that he would,
and the woman gave him food. In many respects, this big procession that
played music at intervals—this crowd that talked and laughed so
easily—resembled a festival in Lahore city. So far, there was no sign
of hard work, and he resolved to lend the spectacle his patronage. At
evening there came out to meet them bands of music, and played the
Mavericks into camp near Umballa railway station. That was an
interesting night. Men of other regiments came to visit the Mavericks.
The Mavericks went visiting on their own account. Their pickets hurried
forth to bring them back, met pickets of strange regiments on the same
duty; and, after a while, the bugles blew madly for more pickets with
officers to control the tumult. The Mavericks had a reputation for
liveliness to live up to. But they fell in on the platform next morning
in perfect shape and condition; and Kim, left behind with the sick,
women, and boys, found himself shouting farewells excitedly as the
trains drew away. Life as a Sahib was amusing so far; but he touched it
with a cautious hand. Then they marched him back in charge of a
drummer-boy to empty, lime-washed barracks, whose floors were covered
with rubbish and string and paper, and whose ceilings gave back his
lonely footfall. Native-fashion, he curled himself up on a stripped cot
and went to sleep. An angry man stumped down the veranda, woke him up,
and said he was a schoolmaster. This was enough for Kim, and he retired
into his shell. He could just puzzle out the various English Police
notices in Lahore city, because they affected his comfort; and among
the many guests of the woman who looked after him had been a queer
German who painted scenery for the Parsee travelling theatre. He told
Kim that he had been “on the barricades in “Forty-eight,” and
therefore—at least that was how it struck Kim—he would teach the boy to
write in return for food. Kim had been kicked as far as single letters,
but did not think well of them.

“I do not know anything. Go away!” said Kim, scenting evil. Hereupon
the man caught him by the ear, dragged him to a room in a far-off wing
where a dozen drummer-boys were sitting on forms, and told him to be
still if he could do nothing else. This he managed very successfully.
The man explained something or other with white lines on a black board
for at least half an hour, and Kim continued his interrupted nap. He
much disapproved of the present aspect of affairs, for this was the
very school and discipline he had spent two-thirds of his young life in
avoiding. Suddenly a beautiful idea occurred to him, and he wondered
that he had not thought of it before.

The man dismissed them, and first to spring through the veranda into
the open sunshine was Kim.

“’Ere, you! ’Alt! Stop!” said a high voice at his heels. “I’ve got to
look after you. My orders are not to let you out of my sight. Where are
you goin’?”

It was the drummer-boy who had been hanging round him all the
forenoon—a fat and freckled person of about fourteen, and Kim loathed
him from the soles of his boots to his cap-ribbons.

“To the bazar—to get sweets—for you,” said Kim, after thought.

“Well, the bazar’s out o’ bounds. If we go there we’ll get a
dressing-down. You come back.”

“How near can we go?” Kim did not know what bounds meant, but he wished
to be polite—for the present.

“’Ow near? ’Ow far, you mean! We can go as far as that tree down the
road.”

“Then I will go there.”

“All right. I ain’t goin’. It’s too ’ot. I can watch you from ’ere.
It’s no good your runninv away. If you did, they’d spot you by your
clothes. That’s regimental stuff you’re wearin’. There ain’t a picket
in Umballa wouldn’t ’ead you back quicker than you started out.”

This did not impress Kim as much as the knowledge that his raiment
would tire him out if he tried to run. He slouched to the tree at the
corner of a bare road leading towards the bazar, and eyed the natives
passing. Most of them were barrack-servants of the lowest caste. Kim
hailed a sweeper, who promptly retorted with a piece of unnecessary
insolence, in the natural belief that the European boy could not follow
it. The low, quick answer undeceived him. Kim put his fettered soul
into it, thankful for the late chance to abuse somebody in the tongue
he knew best. “And now, go to the nearest letter-writer in the bazar
and tell him to come here. I would write a letter.”

“But—but what manner of white man’s son art thou to need a bazar
letter-writer? Is there not a schoolmaster in the barracks?”

“Ay; and Hell is full of the same sort. Do my order, you—you Od! Thy
mother was married under a basket! Servant of Lal Beg” (Kim knew the
God of the sweepers), “run on my business or we will talk again.”

The sweeper shuffled off in haste. “There is a white boy by the
barracks waiting under a tree who is not a white boy,” he stammered to
the first bazar letter-writer he came across. “He needs thee.”

“Will he pay?” said the spruce scribe, gathering up his desk and pens
and sealing-wax all in order.

“I do not know. He is not like other boys. Go and see. It is well
worth.”

Kim danced with impatience when the slim young Kayeth hove in sight. As
soon as his voice could carry he cursed him volubly.

“First I will take my pay,” the letter-writer said. “Bad words have
made the price higher. But who art thou, dressed in that fashion, to
speak in this fashion?”

“Aha! That is in the letter which thou shalt write. Never was such a
tale. But I am in no haste. Another writer will serve me. Umballa city
is as full of them as is Lahore.”

“Four annas,” said the writer, sitting down and spreading his cloth in
the shade of a deserted barrack-wing.

Mechanically Kim squatted beside him—squatted as only the natives
can—in spite of the abominable clinging trousers.

The writer regarded him sideways.

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

“An anna and a half. How do I know, having written the letter, that
thou wilt not run away?”

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

“I get no commission on the price of the stamp. Once more, what manner
of white boy art thou?”

“That shall be said in the letter, which is to Mahbub Ali, the
horse-dealer in the Kashmir Serai, at Lahore. He is my friend.”

“Wonder on wonder!” murmured the letter-writer, dipping a reed in the
inkstand. “To be written in Hindi?”

“Assuredly. To Mahbub Ali then. Begin! _I have come down with the old
man as far as Umballa in the train. At Umballa I carried the news of
the bay mare’s pedigree._” After what he had seen in the garden, he was
not going to write of white stallions.

“Slower a little. What has a bay mare to do ... Is it Mahbub Ali, the
great dealer?”

“Who else? I have been in his service. Take more ink. Again. _As the
order was, so I did it. We then went on foot towards Benares, but on
the third day we found a certain regiment._ Is that down?”

“Ay, _pulton_,” murmured the writer, all ears.

“_I went into their camp and was caught, and by means of the charm
about my neck, which thou knowest, it was established that I was the
son of some man in the regiment: according to the prophecy of the Red
Bull, which thou knowest was common talk of our bazar._” Kim waited for
this shaft to sink into the letter-writer’s heart, cleared his throat,
and continued: “_A priest clothed me and gave me a new name ... One
priest, however, was a fool. The clothes are very heavy, but I am a
Sahib and my heart is heavy too. They send me to a school and beat me.
I do not like the air and water here. Come then and help me, Mahbub
Ali, or send me some money, for I have not sufficient to pay the writer
who writes this._”

“‘Who writes this.’ It is my own fault that I was tricked. Thou art as
clever as Husain Bux that forged the Tr

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/2226