Kim.......................................................................................................................................................................1

Rudyard Kipling......................................................................................................................................1

Chapter I ..................................................................................................................................................1

Chapter 2 ................................................................................................................................................17

Chapter 3 ................................................................................................................................................28

Chapter 4 ................................................................................................................................................39

Chapter 5 ...............................................................................................................................................51

Chapter 6 ..............................................................................................................................................63

Chapter 7 ...............................................................................................................................................75

Chapter 8 ................................................................................................................................................85

Chapter 9 ................................................................................................................................................95

Chapter 10 ............................................................................................................................................108

Chapter 11 ............................................................................................................................................118

Chapter 12 ...........................................................................................................................................132

Chapter 13 ............................................................................................................................................146

Chapter 14 ............................................................................................................................................159

Chapter 15 ............................................................................................................................................169

He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old

AjaibGher the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum. Who hold ZamZammah, that

'firebreathing dragon', hold the Punjab, for the great greenbronze piece is always first of the conqueror's

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 mothertongue in a clipped uncertain singsong; 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 halfcaste woman who looked after him (she smoked opium, and pretended to keep a

secondhand 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 keeneyed threeyearold

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 'clearancecertificate'. The third was Kim's birthcertificate.

Those things, he was used to say, in his glorious opiumhours, 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 blueandwhite JadooGher 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 firstclass 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 amuletcase 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

'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

If the woman had sent Kim up to the local JadooGher 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, ashsmeared fakirs by their brick shrines under the trees at the riverside, with whom he

was quite familiar greeting them as they returned from beggingtours, 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 timberyard,

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

As he drummed his heels against ZamZammah he turned now and again from his kingofthecastle game

with little Chota Lal and Abdullah the sweetmeatseller'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 watercarrier, sluicing water on the dry road from his goat skin bag. So did Jawahir Singh, the

Museum carpenter, bent over new packingcases. 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

'Thy father was a pastrycook, Thy mother stole the ghi" sang Kim. 'All Mussalmans fell off ZamZammah

'Let me up!' shrilled little Chota Lal in his giltembroidered cap. His father was worth perhaps half a million

'The Hindus fell off ZamZammah too. The Mussalmans pushed them off. Thy father was a pastrycook '

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 horseblanketing, and not one fold of it could Kim refer to any known trade or profession. At his

belt hung a long openwork iron pencase and a wooden rosary such as holy men wear. On his head was a

gigantic sort of tamo'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.

'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.

'Send him hither,' said Kim, dropping from ZamZammah, flourishing his bare heels. 'He is a foreigner, and

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

'The AjaibGher, the Wonder House!' Kim gave him no title such as Lala or Mian. He could not divine the

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

'I came by Kulu from beyond the Kailas but what know you? >From the Hills where' he sighed 'the

'Aha! Khitai [a Chinaman],' said Abdullah proudly. Fook Shing had once chased him out of his shop for

'Aye, child a hillman from hills thou'lt never see. Didst hear of Bhotiyal [Tibet]? I am no Khitai, but a

'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

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

'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 buts. 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

'And he is a stranger and a butparast [idolater],' said Abdullah, the Mohammedan.

Kim clicked round the selfregistering turnstile; the old man followed and halted amazed. In the

entrancehall stood the larger figures of the GrecoBuddhist 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 openmouthed 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 oldtime Buddhas. Below were lotuscovered waters with fishes and water birds. Two

butterflywinged dewas held a wreath over His head; above them another pair supported an umbrella

'The Lord! The Lord! It is Sakya Muni himself,' the lama half sobbed; and under his breath began the

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

'Yonder is the Sahib.' said Kim, and dodged sideways among the cases of the arts and manufacturers wing. A

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

'One of us who had made pilgrimage to the Holy Places he is now Abbot of the LungCho 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 sculpturelined gallery. Kim laid himself

down, his ear against a crack in the heatsplit cedar door, and, following his instinct, stretched out to listen

Most of the talk was altogether above his head. The lama, haltingly at first, spoke to the Curator of his own

lamassery, the Suchzen, 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

'Ay, ay!' The lama mounted a pair of hornrimmed 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 LungCho told me, but I did not believe. The Lord the Excellent One He has honour here too?

Out shuffled the lama to the main hall, and, the Curator beside him, went through the collection with the

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

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 Deerpark;

the miracle that stunned the fireworshippers; 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 almsbowl 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

HwenTsiang, 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

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 butparasti.'

'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

forefingernail 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

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

'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

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

'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

'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

The lama brought his thousandwrinkled face once more a handsbreadth from the Englishman's. 'I see thou

'We are both bound, thou and I, my brother. But I' he rose with a sweep of the soft thick drapery 'I go to

'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

'By road and the trains. From Pathankot, having left the Hills, I came hither in a terain. 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 telegraphpole flashing past the train. 'But later, I was cramped and

'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 oldworld piety and modern progress that is

'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

'And for food?' Lamas, as a rule, have good store of money somewhere about them, but the Curator wished to

'For the journey, I take up the Master's beggingbowl. 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

'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

The Curator looked through them. They were heavily scratched, but the power was almost exactly that of his

'A feather! A very feather upon the face? The old man turned his head delightedly and wrinkled up his nose.

'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 notebook,' said the lama, 'as a sign of friendship between

priest and priest and now ' He fumbled at his belt, detached the openwork 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

The Curator would have detained him: they are few in the world who still have the secret of the conventional

brushpen 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

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

The old man halted by ZamZammah and looked round till his eye fell on Kim. The inspiration of his

'Huh! Owl!' was Kim's retort on the lama's behalf 'Sit under that gun if it please thee. When didst thou steal

That was an utterly unfounded charge sprung on the spur of the moment, but it silenced Dunnoo, who knew

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

'I beg. I remember now it is long since I have eaten or drunk. What is the custom of charity in this town? In

'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 faraway Kulu. Kim watched head to one side, considering

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

Simply as a child the old man handed him the bowl. [start here] 'Rest, thou. I know the people.'

He trotted off to the open shop of a kunjri, a lowcaste vegetableseller, which lay opposite the

'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

'No,' said Kim. 'Thy man is rather yagi [badtempered] 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 cowbellied 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, mousecoloured Brahmini bull of the ward was shouldering his way through the manycoloured

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

'See! I have saved more than the bowl will cost thrice over. Now, mother, a little rice and some dried fish

'He drove away the bull,' said the woman in an undertone. 'It is good to give to the poor.' She took the bowl

'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

'That is good. When I am in the bazar the bull shall not come to this house. He is a bold beggarman.'

'And thou?' laughed the woman. 'But speak well of bulls. Hast thou not told me that some day a Red Bull will

come out of a field to help thee? Now hold all straight and ask for the holy man's blessing upon me. Perhaps,

too, he knows a cure for my daughter's sore eyes. Ask. him that also, O thou Little Friend of all the World.'

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

'Thus do we beg who know the way of it,' said he proudly to the lama, who opened his eyes at the contents of

the bowl. 'Eat now and I will eat with thee. Ohe, bhisti!' he called to the water carrier, sluicing the crotons

'We men!' said the bhisti, laughing. 'Is one skinful enough for such a pair? Drink, then, in the name of the

He loosed a thin stream into Kim's hands, who drank nativefasion; but the lama must needs pull out a cup

'Pardesi [a foreigner],' Kim explained, as the old man delivered in an unknown tongue what was evidently a

They ate together in great content, clearing the beggingbowl. Then the lama took snuff from a portentous

wooden snuffgourd, fingered his rosary awhile, and so dropped into the easy sleep of age, as the shadow of

Kim loafed over to the nearest tobaccoseller, 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

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

whiterobed 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 Isabellacoloured clothes. Suddenly he bowed

'It is my new chela [disciple] that is gone away from me, and I know not where he is.'

'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

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

'Is this yet another Sending?' cried the lama. 'To none have I spoken of my search, save to the Priest of the

'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 chancemet people

'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

'Not U 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.

'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 truthtelling may go out for the small matter of a

river, it seemed to me that I too must go atravelling. 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.'

'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

'But there is no place to sleep.' The old man was used to the order of his monastery, and though he slept on

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

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

wellwindlasses; piling grass before the shrieking, wildeyed stallions; cuffing the surly caravan dogs;

paying off cameldrivers; 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

Kim, fending the lama between excited men and excited beasts, sidled along the cloisters to the far end,

nearest the railway station, where Mahbub Ali, the horsetrader, lived when he came in from that

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

'He is here,' said Kim, hitting a badtempered camel on the nose. 'Ohe. Mahbub Ali!' He halted at a dark arch

The horsetrader, his deep, embroidered Bokhariot belt unloosed, was lying on a pair of silk carpet

saddlebags, pulling lazily at an immense silver hookah. He turned his head very slightly at the cry; and

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

'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

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

'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

'Maharaj,' whined Kim, using the Hindu form of address, and thoroughly enjoying the situation; 'my father is

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

'Nothing. I am now that holy man's disciple; and we go a pilgrimage together to Benares, he says. He is

'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,

'Um!' said Mahbub Ali, thinking swiftly. 'Thou hast never before lied to me. Call that lama stand back in

'We go to Benares,' said the lama, as soon as he understood the drift of Mahbub Ali's questions. 'The boy and

'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

'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

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

'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

'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

'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

'Allah! Art thou the only beggar in the city? Thy mother is dead. Thy father is dead. So is it with all of them.

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 tissuepaper

wrapped in oilskin, with three silver rupees enormous largesse. He smiled and thrust money and paper into

his leather amuletcase. 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 horsedealers 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 outoftheway 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, redbearded horsedealer whose caravans

ploughed through their fastnesses bellydeep 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 countrypeople, he anticipated

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 pinholes in one corner, that most scandalously betrayed the five confederated Kings, the

sympathetic Northern Power, a Hindu banker in Peshawur, a firm of gunmakers in Belgium, and an

important, semiindependent 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 bloodfeuds 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 subpartner 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

letterwriter, 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 subpartner 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 re discussed, 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

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 lowcaste boyservant 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 lightball 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

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

smoothfaced 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 smoothfaced Kashmiri pundit, searched him from head to foot most thoroughly.

About the same hour Kim heard soft feet in Mahbub's deserted stall. The horsetrader, 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 saddlebag 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 horsedealer, with no thought except women and horses. Moreover, he may

'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

'That North country is full of horsedealers as an old coat of lice. There is Sikandar Khan, Nur Ali Beg, and

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

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

'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

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

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

'Nay,' grunted the man, 'the old madman rose at second cockcrow saying he would go to Benares, and the

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

But it was Kim who had wakened the lama Kim with one eye laid against a knothole 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 saddlebags so deftly. At first Kim had been minded to give the alarm the longdrawn

choor choor! [thief! thief!] that sets the serai ablaze of nights; but he looked more carefully, and, hand on

'It must be the pedigree of that madeup horselie,' 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 lightsleeping old man. 'Come. It is time time to go to

They entered the fortlike railway station, black in the end of night; the electrics sizzling over the

'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 thirdclass passengers who had taken their tickets overnight and were sleeping

in the waitingrooms. All hours of the twentyfour are alike to Orientals, and their passenger traffic is

'This is where the firecarriages come. One stands behind that hole' Kim pointed to the ticketoffice 'who

The lama, not so well used to trains as he had pretended, started as the 3.25a.m. southbound 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

'It is the train only the terain. 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

'Nay,' said Kim, scanning it with a grin. 'This may serve for farmers, but I live in the city of Lahore. It was

'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 terain ... 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

The lama jibbed at the open door of a crowded thirdclass carriage. 'Were it not better to walk?' said he

A burly Sikh artisan thrust forth his bearded head. 'Is he afraid? Do not be afraid. I remember the time when I

'There is no room even for a mouse,' shrilled the wife of a well todo 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

'Oh, mother of my son, we can make space,' said the blueturbaned husband. 'Pick up the child. It is a holy

'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

'Enter! Enter!' cried a fat Hindu moneylender, his folded accountbook in a cloth under his arm. With an

'Ay, at seven per cent a month with a mortgage on the unborn calf,' said a young Dogra, soldier going south

'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 moneylender, pursing his lips, 'that there is not one rule of right living which these terains

do not cause as 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

'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.'

'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

'Nay, mother,' said Kim most promptly. 'Not when the woman is welllooking and above all charitable to the

'A beggar's answer,' said the Sikh, laughing. 'Thou hast brought it on thyself, sister!' Kim's hands were

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

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

'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

'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

'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

'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

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 talc was to win her approval.

'Alas!' said the cultivator's wife at the end. 'So their villages were burnt and their little children made

'They had marked our dead. They paid a great payment after we of the Sikhs had schooled them. So it was. Is

The lamps were paling in the dawn when the halfcaste guard came round. Ticketcollecting is a slow

business in the East, where people secrete their tickets in all sorts of curious places. Kim produced his and

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

'I am very poor. My father is dead my mother is dead. O charitable ones, if I am left here, who shall tend

'What what is this?' the lama repeated. 'He must go to Benares. He must come with me. He is my chela. If

'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

'A ticket a little tikkut to Umballa O Breaker of Hearts!' She laughed. 'Hast thou no charity?'

'There is snow among the pinetrees in the North in the hills there is snow. My mother was from Kulu. Get

'Ten thousand blessings,' shrilled Kim. 'O Holy One, a woman has given us in charity so that I can come with

The girl looked up at the lama, who had mechanically followed Kim to the platform. He bowed his head that

'Not only was it sufficient for the ticket, but for a little food also, ' said Kim, leaping to his place. 'Now eat,

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 telegraphposts swung by.

'Great is the speed of the terain,' said the banker, with a patronizing grin. 'We have gone farther since

'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

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

'That is Gunga. Who bathes in her is made clean and goes to the Gods. Thrice have I made pilgrimage to

'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

'I follow the Law the Most Excellent Law. So it was the Gods that made Gunga. What like of Gods were

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

'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

longdroned 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 lama fell back on Urdu, remembering that he was in a strange land. 'Hear the tale of the Arrow which our

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 Jullundurway,' said the cultivator's wife, looking out of the

'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 Homestead.' He shrugged one knotted, bronzed

'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

'Let thy hair grow long and talk Punjabi,' said the young soldier jestingly to Kim, quoting a Northern proverb.

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

'It irks me,' he said at last. 'The speed and the clatter irk me. Moreover, my chela, I think that maybe we have

'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.'

'But thou wast sent to me wast thou sent to me? for the merit I had acquired over yonder at Suchzen.

'Peace. One must not speak of these things here,' whispered Kim. 'There was but one of me. Think again and

'But was there not also an Englishman with a white beard holy among images who himself made more sure

'He we went to the AjaibGher 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.'

'And then, if it please thee, we will go hunting for that River on foot. So that we miss nothing not even a

'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

'It was a bull a Red Bull that shall come and help thee and carry thee whither? I have forgotten. A Red

'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

'Give a woman an old wife's tale and a weaverbird 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,

'Nay nay it was but a tale one told to me for a jest belike. But I will seek the Bull about Umballa, and

'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

Her husband touched his forehead lightly with one finger and smiled. But the next time the lama would eat

'We abide here upon a lawsuit,' 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

'To fill my cousin's younger brother's house with wastrels ' the husband began, as he shouldered his heavy

'Thy cousin's younger brother owes my father's cousin something yet on his daughter's marriagefeast,' 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

'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

'Too late and too dark. Be comforted. Think how far thou art on the road an hundred miles from Lahore

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

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

'What proof is there?' The Englishman switched at the rosehedge 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

He saw Indian bungalows are open through and through the Englishman return to a small dressingroom,

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,

'Will! Will, dear!' called a woman's voice. 'You ought to be in the drawingroom. They'll be here in a

'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

'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

'Tell one of the troopers to wait,' said the tall man, and they both passed into the dressingroom together as

the landau rolled away. Kim saw their heads bent over Mahbub Ali's message, and heard the voices one

'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 tonight, isn't he?'

'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

'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

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

'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

'Small wonder. The guest of honour is none other than the Jangi Lat Sahib [the CommanderinChief].'

'Ho!' said Kim, with the correct guttural note of wonder. He had learned what he wanted, and when the

'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

He returned to find the cultivator's cousin's younger brother discussing the family lawsuit 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 waterpipe; and Kim felt very much of a man as he pulled at the smooth coconutshell, 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

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 Suchzen, 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

'A holy man a holy man indeed. His Gods are not the Gods, but his feet are upon the Way,' was the answer.

'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 birthhour?' the priest asked, swelling with importance.

'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

'Ai!' said a woman excitedly. This seemed to make Kim's supernatural origin more certain. "Was not such an

'And her mother bore her husband four sons in four years all likely boys,' cried the cultivator's wife, sitting

'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

'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

He knitted his brows, scratched, smoothed out, and scratched again in the dust mysterious signs to the

'Hm! Thus say the stars. Within three days come the two men to make all things ready. After them follows

'There was indeed a man of the Ludhiana Sikhs in the carriage from Lahore,' said the cultivator's wife

'Tck! Armed men many hundreds. What concern hast thou with war?' said the priest to Kim. 'Thine is a red

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

The priest brushed his foot over the rude horoscope. 'More than this I cannot see. In three days comes the

'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

'Nay, then would only evil people be left on the earth, and who would give us meat and shelter?' quoth Kim,

'Yonder is a small stream. Let us look,' said the lama, and he led from the white road across the fields;

Behind them an angry farmer brandished a bamboo pole. He was a marketgardener, Arain by caste, growing

'Such an one,' said the lama, disregarding the dogs, 'is impolite to strangers, intemperate of speech and

'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 marketgardener 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 canalcut? 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

'Milk and a meal.' the man stammered, as he looked at the strange tall figure. 'I I would not draw evil upon

'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

'I have met holy ones who would have cursed thee from hearthstone to byre,' said Kim to the abashed man. 'Is

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

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

'Lowcaste 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 hoofpitted bank.

'Now, how wilt thou know thy River?' said Kim, squatting in the shade of some tall sugarcane.

'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 yellowandbrown 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,

'I have no stick I have no stick,' said Kim. '1 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

'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

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

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 relcarriage fills my

head with noises of devildrums I would go in it to Benares now ... Yet by so going we may miss the River.

Where the hardworked soil gives three and even four crops a year through patches of sugarcane, tobacco,

long white radishes, and nolkol, 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, mudroofed hamlet, talking to the headman as the cattle came in from the grazinggrounds and the

women prepared the day's last meal. They had passed beyond the belt of marketgardens round hungry

He was a whitebearded 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

Kim told the older children tales of the size and beauty of Lahore, of railway travel, and suchlike city things,

'I cannot fathom it,' said the headman at last to the priest. 'How readest thou this talk?' The lama, his tale told,

'He is a Seeker.' the priest answered. 'The land is full of such. Remember him who came only last, month

'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 smoothshaven priest replied. 'Hear me.' He

turned to the lama. 'Three koss [six miles] to the westward runs the great road to Calcutta.'

'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, singsong Chinese halfchant closed the sentence. Even

the priest was impressed, and the headman feared an evil spell: but none could look at the lama's simple,

'Seest thou my chela?' he said, diving into his snuffgourd with an important sniff. It was his duty to repay

'I see and hear.' The headman rolled his eye where Kim was chatting to a girl in blue as she laid crackling

'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,

The priest smiled. 'Ho, there, Friend of all the World,' he cried across the sharpsmelling smoke, 'what art

'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.

Somebody laughed at the little tattered figure strutting on the brickwork plinth under the great tree. Where a

'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 greybearded 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

'But this shall be a great war a war of eight thousand.' Kim's voice shrilled across the quickgathering

'Redcoats or our own regiments?' the old man snapped, as though he were asking an equal. His tone made

'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.

'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

'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 lettercarrying

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?'

'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

'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

'"For"' Kim translated into the vernacular the clinching sentences he had heard in the dressingroom 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 singsong of the wayside fortuneteller. 'I saw this in

darkness. First came a man to make things clear. Then came horsemen. Then came He. standing in a ring of

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

'Said I not said I not he was from the other world?' cried the lama proudly. 'He is the Friend of all the

'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 redspotted cow. She may be sister to thy Bull for aught I know '

'Nay, but she is very sick,' a woman struck in. 'My man is a buffalo, or he would have chosen his words

Had Kim been at all an ordinary boy, he would have carried on the play; but one does not know Lahore city,

and least of all the fakirs by the Taksali Gate, for thirteen years without also knowing human nature.

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

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

'But thou and thy husband hoped to get the cow cured for a handful of thanks.' The shot told: they were

notoriously the closestfisted 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 masterbeggar art thou,' purred the priest approvingly. 'Not the cunning of forty years could have done

'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

He knew what the fakirs of the Taksali Gate were like when they talked among themselves, and copied the

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.

'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

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

'Drink a draught of hot milk,' said Kim, who had carried not a few such remedies to opiumsmokers of his

'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

butparast, 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

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

'Surely, child: from Kulu to Pathankot from Kulu, where my first chela died. When men were kind to us we

'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, scissorhocked pony. 'Last night broke up

the fountains of remembrance in my sodried heart, and it was as a blessing to me. Truly there is war abroad

He sat longlegged 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

'I am this Holy One's disciple,' said Kim, as they cleared the villagegate. 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

'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

'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 fortunetellers, 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, camellike strides. He was deep in

They followed the rutted and worn country road that wound across the flat between the great darkgreen

mangogroves, the line of the snowcapped Himalayas faint to the eastward. All India was at work in the

fields, to the creaking of wellwheels, 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

'It repents me that I did not give a rupee to the shrine,' said the lama on the last bead of his eightyone.

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

'The day is new,' was the reply. 'What need of a river save to water at before sundown? I come to show thee a

The old soldier looked as abashed as a child interrupted in his game of makebelieve.

'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

'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

'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

'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.'

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

'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.'

'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 saddlebow. (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

'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 andforty 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 KaisariHind 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

'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

slackjawed downcountry 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

'And they likewise, bound upon the Wheel, go forth from life to life from despair to despair,' said the lama

'Ay,' the old soldier chuckled. 'Three Rissaldarmajors 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 wellwatered 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

'Yes yes a thousand times! A straight back and a closeclinging 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!'

'It has turned so; but fifty years since I could have proved it otherwise,' the old soldier retorted, driving his

'I have drank Gungawater 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

'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

There was a drowsy buzz of small life in hot sunshine, a cooing of doves, and a sleepy drone of wellwheels

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 strongcut head pillowed on

his arm, the lama's thrown back against the treebole, 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

'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!'

'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.'

This is a handful of cardamoms, This is a lump of ghi: This is millet and chillies and rice, A supper for thee

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

'I learned it in Pathankot sitting on a doorstep,' said the lama shyly. 'It is good to be kind to babes.'

'As I remember, before the sleep came on us, thou hadst told me that marriage and bearing were darkeners of

the true light, stumblingblocks upon the Way. Do children drop from Heaven in thy country? Is it the Way

'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

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

'Hear him! What harm do thy Gods suffer from play with a babe? And that song was very well sung. Let us

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 longdrawn 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 railcarriages the Sahibs travelled up and

down here in hundreds. Now there are only countrycarts and such like. Left and right is the rougher road for

the heavy carts grain and cotton and timber, fodder, lime and hides. A man goes in safety here for at every

few koss is a policestation. 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

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

greenarched, shadeflecked length of it, the white breadth speckled with slowpacing folk; and the

'Who bears arms against the law?' a constable called out laughingly, as he caught sight of the soldier's sword.

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

'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

'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

The voice and a venomous whipcracking 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 greybearded,

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

'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

'He speaks truth. He speaks truth. But she follows her man close,' said the old man. The carter ran under the

'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.

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

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

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

'This.' said the old soldier suddenly, 'is the Friend of the Stars. He brought me the news yesterday. Having

'Hm!' said his son, all deep in his broad chest. 'He came by a bazarrumour 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

'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

'At least pay the boy, then: I have no pice with me, and he brought auspicious news. Ho! Friend of all the

'My master does not trouble the Stars for hire. We brought the news bear witness, we brought the news, and

The son tossed a silver coin through the sunlight, grumbling something about beggars and jugglers. It was a

fouranna piece, and would feed them well for days. The lama, seeing the flash of the metal, droned a

'Go thy way, Friend of all the World,' piped the old soldier, wheeling his scrawny mount. 'For once in all my

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 sideroad? It is the order of the Sirkar, and the money is spent

'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 fatherinlaw? Hast thou ever heard the

'And who was he? Leave the boy alone,' cried a senior constable, immensely delighted, as he squatted down

'He took a label from a bottle of belaiteepani [sodawater], 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

'Was there ever such a disciple as I?' he cried merrily to the lama. 'All earth would have picked thy bones

'I consider in my own mind whether thou art a spirit, sometimes, or sometimes an evil imp,' said the lama,

'I am thy chela.' Kim dropped into step at his side that indescribable gait of the longdistance tramp all the

'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 longhaired, strongscented 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 jogtrot, 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 legirons 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 wildeyed, wildhaired Sikh devotee in the bluechecked clothes of his

faith, with polishedsteel 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

Collegetrained princelings in topboots and whitecord 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 sugarcane, 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 NorthWest. These merrymakers stepped slowly, calling one to the other and stopping to haggle with

sweetmeatsellers, or to make a prayer before one of the wayside shrines sometimes Hindu, sometimes

Mussalman which the lowcaste 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 flatfooted, bigbosomed, stronglimbed, bluepetticoated

clan of earthcarriers, 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 foddercart. Then Kim would join the

Kentishfire 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

halftrained monkeys, or a panting, feeble bear, or a woman who tied goats' horns to her feet, and with these

danced on a slackrope, set the horses to shying and the women to shrill, longdrawn quavers of amazement.

The lama never raised his eyes. He did not note the moneylender on his gooserumped pony, hastening

along to collect the cruel interest; or the longshouting, deepvoiced 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 Gangeswater 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 manyyoked 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

sugarcane and spitting the pith generously about his path. From time to time the lama took snuff, and at last

'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

'And now we have walked a weary way,' said Kim. 'Surely we shall soon come to a parao [a restingplace].

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

The crowd thickened as they neared the restingplace which marked the end of their day's journey. A line of

stalls selling very simple food and tobacco, a stack of firewood, a policestation, a well, a horsetrough, a

few trees, and, under them, some trampled ground dotted with the black ashes of old fires, are all that mark a

By this time the sun was driving broad golden spokes through the lower branches of the mangotrees; the

parakeets and doves were coming. home in their hundreds; the chattering, greybacked 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 nightpicket.

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

woodsmoke and cattle and the good scent of wheaten cakes cooked on ashes. The evening patrol hurried out

of the policestation 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

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 dungcakes 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

Nowadays, welleducated 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 likeminded dowagers. Very often it suits a longsuffering family that a

strongtongued, ironwilled 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 bullockcart. Such men are staid and discreet, and when a European or a highcaste 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 bullockcart, with a broidered canopy of two domes,

like a doublehumped camel, which had just been drawn into the par. Eight men made its retinue, and two of

the eight were armed with rusty sabres sure signs that they followed a person of distinction, for the

common folk do not bear arms. An increasing cackle of complaints, orders, and jests, and what to a European

would have been bad language, came from behind the curtains. Here was evidently a woman used to

Kim looked over the retinue critically. Half of them were thin legged, greybearded Ooryas from down

country. The other half were duffleclad, felthatted 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 sonin 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 highspirited dame, thought Kim, balancing the dungcake

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

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 fruiteating 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 hillasses owned all

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 dungcake into fit pieces. 'In my country we call

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

The Ooryas laughed; the hillman sprang forward threateningly. The lama suddenly raised his head, bringing

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

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

'When when he has eaten' the hillman fawned on Kim 'it it is requested that the Holy One will do

'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

'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

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

'He is not a fakir. He is not a downcountry beggar,' Kim went on severely, addressing the stars. 'He is the

'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

'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

'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

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

'Assuredly of good blood. That these even sell the more comely of their womenfolk for gain. Down south

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 slavetraffics 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.

'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 beggarendearments 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

'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 ' I

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

A silver coin clicked on the edge of the cart. Kim took it and salaamed profoundly. The old lady recognized

'Oh, villain and shameless rogue!' The jewelled forefinger shook itself at him reprovingly; but he could hear

'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

'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

'Two arrows in the quiver are better than one; and three are better still.' Kim quoted the proverb with a

'True oh, true. But perhaps that will come. Certainly those down country Brahmins are utterly useless. I

'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 LungCho 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

'O Friend of all the World!' The lama had waked, and, simply as a child bewildered in a strange bed, called

'I come! I come, Holy One!' He dashed to the fire, where he found the lama already surrounded by dishes of

'Go back! Withdraw!' Kim cried. 'Do we eat publicly like dogs?' They finished the meal in silence, each

'Have I not said an hundred times that the South is a good land? Here is a virtuous and highborn widow of a

Hill Rajah on pilgrimage, she says, to Buddha Gay. She it is sends us those dishes; and when thou art well

'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

'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 womanborn, has my heart gone out as it has to

'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

'Maybe,' said Kim quietly. He had heard this sort of speculation again and again, from the mouths of many

'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

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 treetrunk is slashed with the shadows

of the low sun, addressed a tinsel and lacquered ruth which burned like a manycoloured jewel in the same

uncertain light. The patterns on the goldworked 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 halfcaught 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 dancinggirl's sitar. Most men had

eaten and pulled deep at their gurgling, grunting hookahs, which in full blast sound like bullfrogs.

At last the lama returned. A hillman walked behind him with a wadded cottonquilt and spread it carefully by

'She deserves ten thousand grandchildren,' thought Kim. 'None the less, but for me, those gifts would not

'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?'

'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

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

'But by her lights she is most rightminded. She desires greatly that we should go with her to Buddh Gaya;

'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

'I spoke therefore of the Search, and of the Way, and of matters that were profitable; she desiring only that I

'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

'Ohe!' said Kim, turning and speaking in a sharp whisper to one of the Ooryas a few yards away. 'Where is

'For the sick cow a crow; for the sick man a Brahmin.' Kim breathed the proverb impersonally to the

'Is there any reason against? I can still step aside and try all the rivers that the road overpasses. She desires

Kim stifled a laugh in the quilt. When once that imperious old lady had recovered from her natural awe of a

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 diamondbright 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 wellwheels

within earshot 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 lefthandedly 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

strongwilled 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 illomened mouth,' cried an Oorya,

tying up his shapeless bundles of bedding. 'She and the parrots are alike. They screech in the dawn.'

'The leadbullocks! Hai! Look to the leadbullocks!' They were backing and wheeling as a graincart'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 downcountry tannery followed close behind, and its driver

>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

'Well done, indeed? It is a shame and a scandal that a poor woman may not go to make prayer to her Gods

except she be jostled and insulted by all the refuse of Hindustan that she must eat gali [abuse] as men eat

ghi. But I have yet a wag left to my tongue a word or two well spoken that serves the occasion. And still am

I without my tobacco! Who is the oneeyed 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

If Kim had walked proudly the day before, disciple of a holy man, today he paced with tenfold pride in the

train of a semiroyal procession, with a recognized place under the patronage of an old lady of charming

manners and infinite resource. The escort, their heads tied up nativefashion, fell in on either side the cart,

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 ricehusker. 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

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 hats

'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 swordplay. She

'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 nutcut [rogue],' she said. 'All policeconstables are nutcuts; but the policewallahs 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

'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 landcase, winding up with a quotation

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 sugarcane. For an hour or

more the lama's tamo'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 offside

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 townmouse 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

At noon they turned aside to eat, and the meal was good, plentiful, and wellserved 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

Once more the lazy, stringtied, shuffling procession got under way, and she slept till they reached the next

haltingstage. It was a very short march, and time lacked an hour to sundown, so Kim cast about for means

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

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

Kim turned a scornful back he did not want to hear the old story how the Devil played with the boys and

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 wellborn 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 manis impatience, but a great faith.

'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 '

'Before the lamassery was a broad platform,' the lama muttered, looping up the wellworn rosary, 'of stone.

He clicked the beads, and began the 'Om mane pudme hum's of his devotion; grateful for the cool, the quiet,

One thing after another drew Kim's idle eye across the plain. There was no purpose in his wanderings, except

They came out on a broad tract of grazingground, 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.

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

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 advanceparty of a regiment on the march, sent out, as usual,

to mark the camp. They bore fivefoot sticks with fluttering flags, and called to each other as they spread

'It's here or hereabouts officers' tents under the trees, I take it, an' the rest of us can stay outside. Have they

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

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

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

'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

'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

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

'They are soldiers white soldiers. What said the priest? "The sign over against the Bull is the sign of War

'True. It is true.' The lama stared fixedly at the device that flamed like a ruby in the dusk. 'The priest at

'Even now the darkness clears" said Kim. It was only natural that the descending sun should at last strike

through the treetrunks, across the grove, filling it with mealy gold light for a few minutes; but to Kim it was

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

'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

We shouldered arms, We marched we marched away. >From Phoenix Park We marched to Dublin Bay.

The drums and the fifes, Oh, sweetly they did play, As we marched marched marched with the

It was the band of the Mavericks playing the regiment to camp; for the men were routemarching with their

baggage. The rippling column swung into the level carts behind it divided left and right, ran about like an

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

cookingpots, pans, and bundles, which were taken possession of by a crowd of native servants; and behold

'Let us go,' said the lama, sinking back afraid, as the fires twinkled and white officers with jingling swords

'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 watchchain, 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 campchair by the door of the Messtent 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

'Never speak to a white man till he is fed,' said Kim, quoting a wellknown proverb. 'They will eat now, and

and I do not think they are good to beg from. Let us go back to the restingplace. After we have eaten we

They were both noticeably absentminded when the old lady's retinue set their meal before them; so none

'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

'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 mangotrees dark against the starpowdered 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 welltrained 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

Messtent where, close pressed behind the mangotree, he waited till some chance word should give him a

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 soberfaced 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

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

bellyflat and wriggled towards the Messtent 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 Messtable its sole

ornament when they were on the line of march stood a golden bull fashioned from oldtime loot of the

Summer Palace at Pekin a redgold bull with lowered head, ramping upon a field of Irish green. To him the

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 shoulderblade. 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

'Why, it's a boy!' he said, as he drew his prize under the light of the tentpole lantern, then shaking him

severely cried: 'What were you doing? You're a thief. Choor? Mallum?' His Hindustani was very limited, and

the ruffled and disgusted Kim intended to keep to the character laid down for him. As he recovered his breath

he was inventing a beautifully plausible tale of his relations to some scullion, and at the same time keeping a

keen eye on and a little under the Chaplain's left armpit. The chance came; he ducked for the doorway, but a

long arm shot out and clutched at his neck, snapping the amuletstring and closing on the amulet.

The words were in English the tinny, sawcut English of the nativebred, and the Chaplain jumped.

'A scapular,' said he, opening his hand. 'No, some sort of heathen charm. Why why, do you speak English?

'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.

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

'I want your advice, Father Victor,' said Bennett. 'I found this boy in the dark outside the Messtent.

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

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

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

'I did not thieve,' protested Kim. 'You have hit me kicks all over my body. Now give me my charm and I will

'Not quite so fast. We'll look first,' said Father Victor, leisurely rolling out poor Kimball O'Hara's 'ne varietur'

parchment, his clearancecertificate, 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.

'Powers of Darkness below!" said Father Victor, passing all over to Mr Bennett. 'Do you know what these

'I do not quite understand,' said Mr Bennett. 'He probably brought them on purpose. It may be a begging trick

'I never saw a beggar less anxious to stay with his company, then. There's the makings of a gay mystery here.

'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

Father Victor stepped forward quickly and opened the front of Kim's upper garment. 'You see, Bennett, he's

Bennett interrupted. 'It is possible I have done the boy an injustice. He is certainly white, though evidently

'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

hirecarriages are.' Kim began with a plunge, not quite sure how far the truth would serve him.

'No!' with a gesture of disgust. 'She went out when I was born. My father, he got these papers from the

JadooGher what do you call that?' (Bennett nodded) 'because he was in goodstanding. 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

'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

'"Sahibs praying to a bull!" What in the world do you make of that?' said Bennett. "'Disciple of a holy man!"

'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

'Powers of Darkness!' was all that Father Victor could say, as Bennett marched off, with a firm hand on Kim's

'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

'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 redgold.

Bennett looked at him with the tripleringed uninterest of the creed that lumps ninetenths of the world

'And what was the end of the Search? What gift has the Red Bull brought?' The lama addressed himself to

'He says, "What are you going to do?"' Bennett was staring uneasily at Father Victor, and Kim, for his own

'I do not see what concern this fakir has with the boy, who is probably his dupe or his confederate,' Bennett

began. 'We cannot allow an English boy Assuming that he is the son of a Mason, the sooner he goes to the

'Ah! That's your opinion as Secretary to the Regimental Lodge,' said Father Victor; 'but we might as well tell

'My experience is that one can never fathom the Oriental mind. Now, Kimball, I wish you to tell this man

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

'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 camellike 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.

'Oah. He only says that if you do not let me go it will stop him in his business his urgent private affairs.'

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

'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 cottonwool.' (Kim had heard missiontalk in his time.) 'I am his disciple,

'Tck! Tck!' said Father Victor sympathetically. 'I'd give a good deal to be able to talk the vernacular. A river

'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 '

'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,

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

'And I cannot see any need why he should wait,' said Bennett, feeling in his trouserpocket. 'We can

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

'He says' Kim put up one hand. 'He says: Be quiett.' 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.

The two Englishmen sat overwhelmed, but there was a look in Bennett's eye that promised ill for Kim when

'A Sahib and the son of a Sahib ' The lama's voice was harsh with pain. 'But no white man knows the land

'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 ZamZammah 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

'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

'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

'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

'He says he is very sorree that he cannot find the River now any more. He says, Why have you no disciples,

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

'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

They listened to each other's breathing three five full minutes. Then the lama raised his head, and looked

'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 makebelief 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

'Powers of Darkness below!' said Father Victor, who, wise in the confessional, heard the pain in every

'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

'At least go back to the Kulu woman,' said Kim, 'otherwise thou wilt be lost upon the roads. She will feed

'Now,' his tone altered as he turned to Kim, 'what will they do with thee? At least I may, acquiring merit,

'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

'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

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

'You will be sent to a school. Later on, we shall see. Kimball, I suppose you'd like to be a soldier?'

'Gorahlog [whitefolk]. Noah! Noah!' Kim shook his head violently. There was nothing in his

'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

Another long silence followed. Bennett fidgeted with impatience, and suggested calling a sentry to evict the

'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

'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

'Ask them for how much money do they give a wise and suitable teaching? And in what city is that teaching

'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

'Two or three hundred rupees a year.' Father Victor was long past any sense of amazement. Bennett,

'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

'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

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

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

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

'But we will go to Sanawar, little man. That's the order of the CommanderinChief, who's a trifle more

'When you know your own Regiment a trifle better you won't confuse the line of march with line of battle,

'Oah, I know all thatt.' Kim drew his bow again at a venture. If they were not going to the war, at least they

'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

'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

At the far end of the camp, silent as a wild animal, an hour later sat Kim, newly washed all over, in a horrible

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

priest, with his father's Lodge certificates round his neck, talkin' God knows what all of a red bull. The

buckBrahmin evaporates without explanations, an' the bhoy sets crosslegged on the Chaplain's bed

prophesyin' bloody war to the men at large. Injia's a wild land for a Godfearin' man. I'll just tie his leg to the

'You're a consolin' little imp. Lie down between the Drums an' go to byebye. Those two boys will watch

Very early in the morning the white tents came down and disappeared as the Mavericks took a sideroad to

Umballa. It did not skirt the restingplace, and Kim, trudging beside a baggagecart under fire of comments

from soldiers' wives, was not so confident as overnight. He discovered that he was closely watched Father

In the forenoon the column checked. A camelorderly 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,

'Now, my son, your prophecy of last night has come true. Our orders are to entrain at Umballa for the Front

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

Are there many more like you in India?' said Father Victor, 'or are you by way o' being a lusus naturae?'

'Now I have told you,' said the boy, 'will you let me go back to my old man? If he has not stayed with that

'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 baggagecart 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 drummerboy to empty, limewashed barracks, whose floors were covered with rubbish

and string and paper, and whose ceilings gave back his lonely footfall. Nativefashion, 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 'Fortyeight,' 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,

'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 faroff wing where a dozen drummerboys 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 or 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

twothirds of his young life in avoiding. Suddenly a beautiful idea occurred to him, and he wondered that he

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

It was the drummerboy 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 capribbons.

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

'How near can we go?' Kim did not know what bounds meant, but he wished to be polite for the present.

'All right. I ain't goin'. It's too 'ot. I can watch you from 'ere. It's no good your runnin' away. If you did, they'd

spot you by your clothes. That's regimental stuff you're wearin'. There ain't a picket in Umballa wouldn't 'ead

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 barrackservants 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 letterwriter in the bazar and tell him to come here. I

'But but what manner of white man's son art thou to need a bazar letterwriter? Is there not a schoolmaster

'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 letterwriter he came across. 'He needs thee.' TO HERE

'Will he pay?' said the spruce scribe, gathering up his desk and pens and sealingwax all in order.

Kim danced with impatience when the slim young Kayeth hove in sight. As soon as his voice could carry he

'First I will take my pay,' the letterwriter said. 'Bad words have made the price higher. But who art thou,

'Aha! That is in the letter which thou shalt write. Never was such a tale. But I am in no haste. Another writer

'Four annas,' said the writer, sitting down and spreading his cloth in the shade of a deserted barrackwing.

Mechanically Kim squatted beside him squatted as only the natives can in spite of the abominable clinging

'An anna and a half. How do I know, having written the letter, that thou wilt not run away?'

'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 horsedealer in the Kashmir Serai, at Lahore. He

'Wonder on wonder!' murmured the letterwriter, 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

'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?'

'I went into their camp and was caught, and by means of the charm about my neck, which thou kno west, 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 letterwriter'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

' "Who writes this." It is my own fault that I was tricked. Thou art as clever as Husain Bux that forged the

Treasury stamps at Nucklao. But what a tale! What a tale! Is it true by any chance?'

'It does not profit to tell lies to Mahbub Ali. It is better to help his friends by lending them a stamp. When the

The writer grunted doubtfully, but took a stamp out of his desk, sealed the letter, handed it over to Kim, and

'What was you bukkin' to that nigger about?' said the drummerboy when Kim returned to the veranda. 'I was

'The bugles'll go for dinner in arf a minute. My Gawd! I wish I'd gone up to the Front with the Regiment. It's

I'd run away if I knew where to go to, but, as the men say, in this bloomin' Injia you're only a prisoner at

'W'y, I only come out last troopin' season with my mother. I should think I 'ave been in England. What a

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

Liverpool suburb which was his England. It passed the heavy time till dinner a most unappetizing meal

served to the boys and a few invalids in a corner of a barrackroom. But that he had written to Mahbub Ali,

Kim would have been almost depressed. The indifference of native crowds he was used to; but this strong

loneliness among white men preyed on him. He was grateful when, in the course of the afternoon, a big

soldier took him over to Father Victor, who lived in another wing across another dusty paradeground. The

priest was reading an English letter written in purple ink. He looked at Kim more curiously than ever.

'An' how do you like it, my son, as far as you've gone? Not much, eh? It must be hard very hard on a wild

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

'Oah no. Not that I know, but of course he found a letterwriter who can write English verree well, and so he

'That accounts for it. D'you know anything about his money affairs?' Kim's face showed that he did not.

'That's what I'm askin'. Now listen if you can make head or tail o' this. We'll skip the first part . . . It's written

from Jagadhir Road . . . "Sitting on wayside in grave meditation, trusting to be favoured with your Honour's

applause of present step, which recommend your Honour to execute for Almighty God's sake. Education is

greatest blessing if of best sorts. Otherwise no earthly use." Faith, the old man's hit the bull'seye that time!

"If your Honour condescending giving my boy best educations Xavier" (I suppose that's St Xavier's in

Partibus) "in terms of our conversation dated in your tent 15th instant" (a businesslike touch there!) "then

Almighty God blessing your Honour's succeedings to third an' fourth generation and" now listen! "confide

in your Honour's humble servant for adequate remuneration per hoondi per annum three hundred rupees a

year to one expensive education St Xavier, Lucknow, and allow small time to forward same per hoondi sent

to any part of India as your Honour shall address yourself This servant of your Honour has presently no place

to lay crown of his head, but going to Benares by train on account of persecution of old woman talking so

much and unanxious residing Saharunpore in any domestic capacity." Now what in the world does that

'She has asked him to be her puro her clergyman at Saharunpore, I think. He would not do that on

'It's clear to you, is it? It beats me altogether. "So going to Benares, where will find address and forward

rupees for boy who is apple of eye, and for Almighty God's sake execute this education, and your petitioner

as in duty bound shall ever awfully pray. Written by Sobrao Satai, Failed Entrance Allahabad University, for

Venerable Teshoo Lama the priest of Suchzen looking for a River, address care of Tirthankars' Temple,

Benares. P. M. Please note boy is apple of eye, and rupees shall be sent per hoondi three hundred per

annum. For God Almighty's sake." Now, is that ravin' lunacy or a business proposition? I ask you, because

The priest whistled; then he addressed Kim as an equal.'I don't believe it; but we'll see. You were goin' off

today to the Military Orphanage at Sanawar, where the Regiment would keep you till you were old enough to

enlist. Ye'd be brought up to the Church of England. Bennett arranged for that. On the other hand, if ye go to

St Xavier's ye'll get a better education an an can have the religion. D'ye see my dilemma? Kim saw nothing

'Like most people, I'm going to temporize. If your friend sends the money from Benares Powers of

Darkness below, where's a street beggar to raise three hundred rupees? ye'll go down to Lucknow and I'll

pay your fare, because I can't touch the subscription money if I intend, as I do, to make ye a Catholic. If he

doesn't, ye'll go to the Military Orphanage at the Regiment's expense. I'll allow him three days' grace, though

I don't believe it at all. Even then, if he fails in his payments later on . . . but it's beyond me. We can only

walk one step at a time in this world, praise God! An' they sent Bennett to the Front an' left me behind.

The priest leaned forward. 'I'd give a month's pay to find what's goin' on inside that little round head of yours.'

'There is nothing,' said Kim, and scratched it. He was wondering whether Mahbub Ali would send him as

much as a whole rupee. Then he could pay the letterwriter and write letters to the lama at Benares. Perhaps

Mahbub Ali would visit him next time he came south with horses. Surely he must know that Kim's delivery

of the letter to the officer at Umballa had caused the great war which the men and boys had discussed so

loudly over the barrack dinnertables. But if Mahbub Ali did not know this, it would be very unsafe to tell

'Well, till I get further news' Father Victor's voice interrupted the reverie. 'Ye can run along now and play

with the other boys. They'll teach ye something but I don't think ye'll like it.'

The day dragged to its weary end. When he wished to sleep he was instructed how to fold up his clothes and

set out his boots; the other boys deriding. Bugles waked him in the dawn; the schoolmaster caught him after

breakfast, thrust a page of meaningless characters under his nose, gave them senseless names and whacked

him without reason. Kim meditated poisoning him with opium borrowed from a barracksweeper, but

reflected that, as they all ate at one table in public (this was peculiarly revolting to Kim, who preferred to turn

his back on the world at meals), the stroke might be drug the lama the village where the old soldier lived. But

farseeing sentries at every exit headed back the little scarlet figure. Trousers and jacket crippled body and

mind alike dangerous. Then he attempted running off to the village where the priest had tried to, so he

abandoned the project and fell back, Orientalfashion, on time and chance. Three days of torment passed in

the big, echoing white rooms. He walked out of affernoons under escort of the drummerboy, and all he

heard from his companions were the few useless words which seemed to make twothirds of the white man's

abuse. Kim knew and despised them all long ago. The boy resented his silence and lack of interest by beating

him, as was only natural. He did not care for any of the bazars which were in bounds. He styled all natives

'niggers'; yet servants and sweepers called him abominable names to his face, and, misled by their deferential

On the morning of the fourth day a judgement overtook that drummer. They had gone out together towards

Umballa racecourse. He returned alone, weeping, with news that young O'Hara, to whom he had been doing

nothing in particular, had hailed a scarletbearded nigger on horseback; that the nigger had then and there

laid into him with a peculiarly adhesive quirt, picked up young O'Hara, and borne him off at full gallop.

These tidings came to Father Victor, and he drew down his long upper lip. He was already sufficiently

startled by a letter from the Temple of the Tirthankars at Benares, enclosing a native banker's note of hand for

three hundred rupees, and an amazing prayer to 'Almighty God'. The lama would have been more annoyed

than the priest had he known how the bazar letter writer had translated his phrase 'to acquire merit

'Powers of Darkness below!' Father Victor fumbled with the note. 'An' now he's off with another of his

peepo'day friends. I don't know whether it will be a greater relief to me to get him back or to have him lost.

He's beyond my comprehension. How the Divil yes, he's the man I mean can a streetbeggar raise money

Three miles off, on Umballa racecourse, Mahbub Ali, reining a grey Kabuli stallion with Kim in front of him,

'But, Little Friend of all the World, there is my honour and reputation to be considered. All the officerSahibs

in all the regiments, and all Umballa, know Mahbub Ali. Men saw me pick thee up and chastise that boy. We

are seen now from far across this plain. How can I take thee away, or account for thy disappearing if I set

thee down and let thee run off into the crops? They would put me in jail. Be patient. Once a Sahib, always a

'Take me beyond their sentries where I can change this red. Give me money and I will go to Benares and be

with my lama again. I do not want to be a Sahib, and remember I did deliver that message.'

The stallion bounded wildly. Mahbub Ali had incautiously driven home the sharpedged stirrup. (He was not

the new sort of fluent horsedealer who wears English boots and spurs.) Kim drew his own conclusions from

'That was a small matter. It lay on the straight road to Benares. I and the Sahib have by this time forgotten it. I

send so many letters and messages to men who ask questions about horses, I cannot well remember one from

the other. Was it some matter of a bay mare that Peters Sahib wished the pedigree of?'

Kim saw the trap at once. If he had said 'bay mare' Mahbub would have known by his very readiness to fall in

'Who cares to tell truth to a letterwriter?' Kim answered, feeling Mahbub's palm on his heart.

'Hi! Mahbub, you old villain, pull up!' cried a voice, and an Englishman raced alongside on a little

polopony. 'I've been chasing you half over the country. That Kabuli of yours can go. For sale, I suppose?'

'I have some young stuff coming on made by Heaven for the delicate and difficult pologame. He has no

'Plays polo and waits at table. Yes. We know all that. What the deuce have you got there?'

'A. boy,' said Mahbub gravely. 'He was being beaten by another boy. His father was once a white soldier in

the big war. The boy was a child in Lahore city. He played with my horses when he was a babe. Now I think

they will make him a soldier. He has been newly caught by his father's Regiment that went up to the war last

week. But I do not think he wants to be a soldier. I take him for a ride. Tell me where thy barracks are and I

'He was born in the land. He has friends. He goes where he chooses. He is a chabuk sawai [a sharp chap]. It

needs only to change his clothing, and in a twinkling he would be a lowcaste Hindu boy.'

'The deuce he would!' The Englishman looked critically at the boy as Mahbub headed towards the barracks.

Kim ground his teeth. Mahbub was mocking him, as faithless Afghans will; for he went on:

'They will send him to a school and put heavy boots on his feet and swaddle him in these clothes. Then he

Kim pointed he could not speak to Father Victor's wing, all staring white near by.

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

Here was deadly insult on deadlier injury and the Sahib to whom he had so craftily given that warwaking

letter heard it all. Kim beheld Mahbub Ali frying in flame for his treachery, but for himself he saw one long

grey vista of barracks, schools, and barracks again. He gazed imploringly at the clearcut face in which there

was no glimmer of recognition; but even at this extremity it never occurred to him to throw himself on the

white man's mercy or to denounce the Afghan. And Mahbub stared deliberately at the Englishman, who

'Ah,' said the Englishman at last, rubbing his pony's damp withers with his whipbutt. 'Who makes the boy a

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

'There is the Padre!' Kim choked as bareheaded Father Victor sailed down upon them from the veranda.

'Powers O' Darkness below, O'Hara! How many more mixed friends do you keep in Asia?' he cried, as Kim

'Good morning, Padre,' the Englishman said cheerily. 'I know you by reputation well enough. Meant to have

'Of the Ethnological Survey?' said Father Victor. The Englishman nodded. 'Faith, I'm glad to meet ye then;

'No thanks to me, Padre. Besides, the boy wasn't going away. You don't know old Mahbub Ali.' The

horsedealer sat impassive in the sunlight. 'You will when you have been in the station a month. He sells us

all our crocks. That boy is rather a curiosity. Can you tell me anything about him?'

'Can I tell you?' puffed Father Victor. 'You'll be the one man that could help me in my quandaries. Tell you!

Powers o' Darkness, I'm bursting to tell someone who knows something o' the native!'

A groom came round the corner. Colonel Creighton raised his voice, speaking in Urdu. 'Very good, Mahbub

Ali, but what is the use of telling me all those stories about the pony? Not one pice more than three hundred

'The Sahib is a little hot and angry after riding,' the horse dealer returned, with the leer of a privileged jester.

'Presently, he will see my horse's points more clearly. I will wait till he has finished his talk with the Padre. I

'Confound you!' The Colonel laughed. 'That comes of looking at one of Mahbub's horses. He's a regular old

leech, Padre. Wait, then, if thou hast so much time to spare, Mahbub. Now I'm at your service, Padre. Where

is the boy? Oh, he's gone off to collogue with Mahbub. Queer sort of boy. Might I ask you to send my mare

He dropped into a chair which commanded a clear view of Kim and Mahbub Ali in conference beneath the

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

'That is all one.' The great red beard wagged solemnly. 'Children should not see a carpet on the loom till the

pattern is made plain. Believe me, Friend of all the World, I do thee great service. They will not make a

'You crafty old sinner!' thought Creighton. 'But you're not far wrong. That boy mustn't be wasted if he is as

'Excuse me half a minute,' cried the Padre from within, 'but I'm gettin' the documents in the case.

'If through me the favour of this bold and wise Colonel Sahib comes to thee, and thou art raised to honour,

'Nay, nay! I begged thee to let me take the Road again, where I should have been safe; and thou hast sold me

'A cheerful young demon!' The Colonel bit his cigar, and turned politely to Father Victor.

'What are the letters that the fat priest is waving before the Colonel? Stand behind the stallion as though

'A letter from my lama which he wrote from Jagadhir Road, saying that he will pay three hundred rupees by

'Yes. There is a big school there for the sons of Sahibs and halfSahibs. I have seen it when I sell horses

'Small wonder the Padre does not know how to unravel the thread. How fast he talks to the Colonel Sahib!'

Mahbub Ali chuckled. 'By Allah!' the keen eyes swept the veranda for an Instant 'thy lama has sent what to

me looks like a note of hand. I have had some few dealings in hoondis. The Colonel Sahib is looking at it.'

'What good is all this to me?' said Kim wearily. 'Thou wilt go away, and they will return me to those empty

'I do not think that. Have patience, child. All Pathans are not faithless except in horseflesh.'

Five ten fifteen minutes passed, Father Victor talking energetically or asking questions which the Colonel

'Now I've told you everything that I know about the boy from beginnin to end; and it's a blessed relief to me.

'At any rate, the old man has sent the money. Gobind Sahai's notes of hand are good from here to China,' said

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

'That's consolin' from the head of the Ethnological Survey. It's this mixture of Red Bulls and Rivers of

Healing (poor heathen, God help him!) an' notes of hand and Masonic certificates. Are you a Mason, by any

'By Jove, I am, now I come to think of it. That's an additional reason,' said the Colonel absently.

'I'm glad ye see a reason in it. But as I said, it's the mixture o' things that's beyond me. An' his prophesyin' to

our Colonel, sitting on my bed with his little shimmy torn open showing his white skin; an' the prophecy

'On my word, I fancy I ought to sometimes. But I'm hoping he'll be brought up as a good Catholic. All that

'The lama, then, fails to pay next year. He's a fine business head to plan on the spur of the moment, but he's

bound to die some day. An' takin' a heathen's money to give a child a Christian education '

'But he said explicitly what he wanted. As soon as he knew the boy was white he seems to have made his

arrangements accordingly. I'd give a month's pay to hear how he explained it all at the Tirthankars' Temple at

Benares. Look here, Padre, I don't pretend to know much about natives, but if he says he'll pay, he'll pay

dead or alive. I mean, his heirs will assume the debt. My advice to you is, send the boy down to Lucknow. If

Bad luck to Bennett! He was sent to the Front instead O' me. Doughty certified me medically unfit. I'll

excommunicate Doughty if he comes back alive! Surely Bennett ought to be content with ,

'Glory, leaving you the religion. Quite so! As a matter of fact I don't think Bennett will mind. Put the blame

on me. I er strongly recommend sending the boy to St Xavier's. He can go down on pass as a soldier's

orphan, so the railway fare will be saved. You can buy him an outfit from the Regimental subscription. The

Lodge will be saved the expense of his education, and that will put the Lodge in a good temper. It's perfectly

easy. I've got to go down to Lucknow next week. I'll look after the boy on the way give him in charge of

'Not in the least. Don't make that mistake. The lama has sent us money for a definite end. We can't very well

return it. We shall have to do as he says. Well, that's settled, isn't it? Shall we say that, Tuesday next, you'll

hand him over to me at the night train south? That's only three days. He can't do much harm in three days.'

'It's a weight off my mind, but this thing here?' he waved the note of hand 'I don't know Gobind Sahai:

'You've never been a subaltern in debt. I'll cash it if you like, and send you the vouchers in proper order.'

'It's not the least trouble indeed. You see, as an ethnologist, the thing's very interesting to me. I'd like to make

a note of it for some Government work that I'm doing. The transformation of a regimental badge like your

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

discoveries. They're of no interest to anyone but ourselves, of course, but you know what bookcollectors are

like. Well, don't say a word, directly or indirectly, about the Asiatic side of the boy's character his

adventures and his prophecy, and so on. I'll worm them out of the boy later on and you see?'

'I do. Ye'll make a wonderful account of it. Never a word will I say to anyone till I see it in print.'

'Thank you. That goes straight to an ethnologist's heart. Well, I must be getting back to my breakfast. Good

Heavens! Old Mabbub here still?' He raised his voice, and the horsedealer came out from under the shadow

'As regards that young horse,' said Mahbub, 'I say that when a colt is born to be a polopony, closely

following the ball without teaching when such a colt knows the game by divination then I say it is a great

'So say I also, Mahbub. The colt will be entered for polo only. (These fellows think of nothing in the world

but horses, Padre.) I'll see you tomorrow, Mahbub, if you've anything likely for sale.'

The dealer saluted, horsemanfashion, with a sweep of the off hand. 'Be patient a little, Friend of all the

World,' he whispered to the agonized Kim. 'Thy fortune is made. In a little while thou goest to Nucklao, and

here is something to pay the letterwriter. I shall see thee again, I think, many times,' and he cantered off

'Listen to me,' said the Colonel from the veranda, speaking in the vernacular. 'In three days thou wilt go with

me to Lucknow, seeing and hearing new things all the while. Therefore sit still for three days and do not run

'At least Lucknow is nearer to Benares than Umballa. It may be thou wilt go under my protection. Mahbub

Ali knows this, and he will be angry if thou returnest to the Road now. Remember much has been told me

In the afternoon the redfaced schoolmaster told Kim that he had been 'struck off the strength', which

conveyed no meaning to him till he was ordered to go away and play. Then he ran to the bazar, and found the

'Mahbub Ali is in Umballa,' said the writer jauntily. He was, by virtue of his office, a bureau of general

'This is not to Mahbub, but to a priest. Take thy pen and write quickly. To Teshoo La ma, the Holy One from

Bhotiyal seeking for a River, who is now in the Temple ofihe Tirthankars at Benares. Take more ink! In three

days I am to go down to Nucklao to the school at Nucklao. The name of the school is Xavier. I do not know

The reed pen scratched busily. 'He cannot mistake.' The man lifted his head. 'Who watches us across the

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

'Then why hast thou left out my name in writing to that Holy One?' The Colonel smiled a queer smile. Kim

'It was said once to me that it is inexpedient to write the names of strangers concerned in any matter, because

'Thou hast been well taught,' the Colonel replied, and Kim flushed. 'I have left my cherootcase in the Padre's

'Where is the house?' said Kim. His quick wit told him that he was being tested in some fashion or another,

'He has forgotten his cherootcase,' said Kim, returning. 'I must bring it to him this evening. That is all my

letter except, thrice over, Come to me! Come to me! Come to me! Now I will pay for a stamp and put it in the

post. He rose to go, and as an afterthought asked: 'Who is that angryfaced Sahib who lost the cherootcase?'

'Oh, he is only Creighton Sahib a very foolish Sahib, who is a Colonel Sahib without a regiment.'

'God knows. He is always buying horses which he cannot ride, and asking riddles about the works of God

such as plants and stones and the customs of people. The dealers call him the father of fools, because he is so

easily cheated about a horse. Mahbub Ali says he is madder than most other Sahibs.'

'Oh!' said Kim, and departed. His training had given him some small knowledge of character, and he argued

that fools are not given information which leads to calling out eight thousand men besides guns. The

CommanderinChief of all India does not talk, as Kim had heard him talk, to fools. Nor would Mahbub

Ali's tone have changed, as it did every time he mentioned the Colonel's name, if the Colonel had been a fool.

Consequently and this set Kim to skipping there was a mystery somewhere, and Mahbub Ali probably

spied for the Colonel much as Kim had spied for Mahbub. And, like the horsedealer, the Colonel evidently

He rejoiced that he had not betrayed his knowledge of the Colonel's house; and when, on his return to

barracks, he discovered that no cherootcase had been left behind, he beamed with delight. Here was a man

after his own heart a tortuous and indirect person playing a hidden game. Well, if he could be a fool, so

He showed nothing of his mind when Father Victor, for three long mornings, discoursed to him of an entirely

new set of Gods and Godlings notably of a Goddess called Mary, who, he gathered, was one with Bibi

Miriam of Mahbub Ali's theology. He betrayed no emotion when, after the lecture, Father Victor dragged him

from shop to shop buying articles of outfit, nor when envious drummer boys kicked him because he was

going to a superior school did he complain, but awaited the play of circumstances with an interested soul.

Father Victor, good man, took him to the station, put him into an empty secondclass next to Colonel

'They'll make a man o' you, O'Hara, at St Xavier's a white man, an', I hope, a good man. They know all

about your comin', an' the Colonel will see that ye're not lost or mislaid anywhere on the road. I've given you

a notion of religious matters, at least I hope so, and you'll remember, when they ask you your religion,

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

Kim lit a rank cigarette he had been careful to buy a stock in the bazar and lay down to think. This

solitary passage was verv different from that joyful downjourney in the thirdclass with the lama. 'Sahibs

'Hai mai! I go from one place to another as it might be a kickball. It is my Kismet. No man can escape his

Kismet. But I am to pray to Bibi Miriam, and I am a Sahib.' He looked at his boots ruefully. 'No; I am Kim.

This is the great world, and I am only Kim. Who is Kim?' He considered his own identity, a thing he had

never done before, till his head swam. He was one insignificant person in all this roaring whirl of India, going

Presently the Colonel sent for him, and talked for a long time. So far as Kim could gather, he was to be

diligent and enter the Survey of India as a chainman. If he were very good, and passed the proper

examinations, he would be earning thirty rupees a month at seventeen years old, and Colonel Creighton

Kim pretended at first to understand perhaps one word in three of this talk. Then the Colonel, seeing his

mistake, turned to fluent and picturesque Urdu and Kim was contented. No man could be a fool who knew

the language so intimately, who moved so gently and silently, and whose eyes were so different from the dull

'Yes, and thou must learn how to make pictures of roads and mountains and rivers to carry these pictures in

thine eye till a suitable time comes to set them upon paper. Perhaps some day, when thou art a chainman, I

may say to thee when we are working together: "Go across those hills and see what lies beyond." Then one

will say: "There are bad people living in those hills who will slay the chainman if he be seen to look like a

'But if I answered: "I will give thee a hundred rupees for knowledge of what is behind those hills for a

picture of a river and a little news of what the people say in the villages there"?'

'How can I tell? I am only a boy. Wait till I am a man.' Then, seeing the Colonel's brow clouded, he went on:

Kim shook his head resolutely. 'If I said how I would earn them, another man might hear and forestall me. It

'Tell now.' The Colonel held up a rupee. Kim's hand half reached towards it, and dropped.

'Nay, Sahib; nay. I know the price that will be paid for the answer, but I do not know why the question is

'Take it for a gift, then,' said Creighton, tossing it over. 'There is a good spirit in thee. Do not let it be blunted

'Their mothers were bazarwomen,' said Kim. He knew well there is no hatred like that of the halfcaste for

'True; but thou art a Sahib and the son of a Sahib. Therefore, do not at any time be led to contemn the black

men. I have known boys newly entered into the service of the Government who feigned not to understand the

talk or the customs of black men. Their pay was cut for ignorance. There is no sin so great as ignorance.

Several times in the course of the long twentyfour hours' run south did the Colonel send for Kim, always

'We be all on one leadrope, then,' said Kim at last, 'the Colonel, Mahbub Ali, and I when I become a

chainman. He will use me as Mahbub Ali employed me, I think. That is good, if it allows me to return to the

When they came to the crowded Lucknow station there was no sign of the lama. He swallowed his

disappointment, while the Colonel bundled him into a ticcagharri with his neat belongings and despatched

'I do not say farewell, because we shall meet again,' he cried. 'Again, and many times, if thou art one of good

'Not when I brought thee' Kim actually dared to use the tum of equals 'a white stallion's pedigree that

'Much is gained by forgetting, little brother,' said the Colonel, with a look that pierced through Kim's

It took him nearly five minutes to recover. Then he sniffed the new air appreciatively. 'A rich city,' he said.

'Richer than Lahore. How good the bazars must be! Coachman, drive me a little through the bazars here.'

'My order is to take thee to the school.' The driver used the 'thou', which is rudeness when applied to a white

man. In the clearest and most fluent vernacular Kim pointed out his error, climbed on to the boxseat, and,

perfect understanding established, drove for a couple of hours up and down, estimating, comparing, and

enjoying. There is no city except Bombay, the queen of all more beautiful in her garish style than

Lucknow, whether you see her from the bridge over the river, or from the top of the Imambara looking down

on the gilt umbrellas of the Chutter Munzil, and the trees in which the town is bedded. Kings have adorned

her with fantastic buildings, endowed her with charities, crammed her with pensioners, and drenched her with

blood. She is the centre of all idleness, intrigue, and luxury, and shares with Delhi the claim to talk the only

'A fair city a beautiful city.' The driver, as a Lucknow man, was pleased with the compliment, and told Kim

'Now we will go to the school,' said Kim at last. The great old school of St Xavier's in Partibus, block on

block of low white buildings, stands in vast grounds over against the Gumti River,' at some distance from the

'Young Sahibs all devils. But to speak truth, and I drive many of them to and fro from the railway station, I

have never seen one that had in him the making of a more perfect devil than thou this young Sahib whom I

Naturally, for he was never trained to consider them in any way improper, Kim had passed the time of day

with one or two frivolous ladies at upper windows in a certain street, and naturally, in the exchange of

compliments, had acquitted himself well. He was about to acknowledge the driver's last insolence, when his

eye it was growing dusk caught a figure sitting by one of the white plaster gatepillars in the long sweep

'But what is to pay me for this coming and recoming?' said the driver petulantly. 'Is the boy mad? Last time

Kim was in the road headlong, patting the dusty feet beneath the dirty yellow robe.

'I have waited here a day and a half,' the lama's level voice began. 'Nay, I had a disciple with me. He that was

my friend at the Temple of the Tirthankars gave me a guide for this journey. I came from Benares in the

'But why didst thou not stay with the Kulu woman, O Holy One? In what way didst thou get to Benares? My

'The woman wearied me by constant flux of talk and requiring charms for children. I separated myself from

that company, permitting her to acquire merit by gifts. She is at least a woman of open hands, and I made a

promise to return to her house if need arose. Then, perceiving myself alone in this great and terrible world, I

bethought me of the terain to Benares, where I knew one abode in the Tirthankars' Temple who was a

'So soon, my chela? I have never forgotten it. But when I had left thee it seemed better that I should go to the

Temple and take counsel, for, look you, India is very large, and it may be that wise men before us, some two

or three, have left a record of the place of our River. There is debate in the Temple of the Tirthankars on this

'I acquire merit in that I help thee, my chela, to wisdom. The priest of that body of men who serve the Red

Bull wrote me that all should be as I desired for thee. I sent the money to suffice for one year, and then I

came, as thou seest me, to watch for thee going up into the Gates of Learning. A day and a half have I waited

not because I was led by any affection towards thee that is no part of the Way but, as they said at the

Tirthankars' Temple, because, money having been paid for learning, it was right that I should oversee the end

of the matter. They resolved my doubts most clearly. I had a fear that, perhaps, I came because I wished to

see thee misguided by the Red Mist of affection. It is not so . . . Moreover, I am troubled by a dream.'

'But surely, Holy One, thou hast not forgotten the Road and all that befell on it. Surely it was a little to see me

'Go to Jehannum and abide there with thy reputationless aunt!' Kim snarled over his shoulder. 'I am all alone

in this land; I know not where I go nor what shall befall me. My heart was in that letter I sent thee. Except for

Mahbub Ali, and he is a Pathan, I have no friend save thee, Holy One. Do not altogether go away.'

'I have considered that also,' the lama replied, in a shaking voice. 'It is manifest that from time to time I shall

acquire merit if before that I have not found my River by assuring myself that thy feet are set on wisdom.

What they will teach thee I do not know, but the priest wrote me that no son of a Sahib in all India will be

better taught than thou. So from time to time, therefore, I will come again. Maybe thou wilt be such a Sahib

as he who gave me these spectacles' the lama wiped them elaborately 'in the Wonder House at Lahore.

That is my hope, for he was a Fountain of Wisdom wiser than many abbots .... Again, maybe thou wilt

'If I eat thy bread,' cried Kim passionately, 'how shall I ever forget thee?' 'No no.' He put the boy aside. 'I

must go back to Benares. From time to time,now that I know the customs of letter writers in this land, I will

'But whither shall I send my letters?' wailed Kim, clutching at the robe, all forgetful that he was a Sahib.

'To the Temple of the Tirthankars at Benares. That is the place I have chosen till I find my River. Do not

weep; for, look you, all Desire is Illusion and a new binding upon the Wheel. Go up to the Gates of Learning.

Let me see thee go . .. Dost thou love me? Then go, or my heart cracks .. . I will come again. Surely I will

The lama watched the ticcagharri rumble into the compound, and strode off, snuffing between each long

The country born and bred boy has his own manners and customs, which do not resemble those of any other

land; and his teachers approach him by roads which an English master would not understand. Therefore, you

would scarcely be interested in Kim's experiences as a St Xavier's boy among two or three hundred

precocious youths, most of whom had never seen the sea. He suffered the usual penalties for breaking out of

bounds when there was cholera in the city. This was before he had learned to write fair English, and so was

obliged to find a bazar letterwriter. He was, of course, indicted for smoking and for the use of abuse more

fullflavoured than even St Xavier's had ever heard. He learned to wash himself with the Levitical

scrupulosity of the nativeborn, who in his heart considers the Englishman rather dirty. He played the usual

tricks on the patient coolies pulling the punkahs in the sleeping rooms where the boys threshed through the

hot nights telling tales till the dawn; and quietly he measured himself against his self reliant mates.

They were sons of subordinate officials in the Railway, Telegraph, and Canal Services; of warrantofficers,

sometimes retired and sometimes acting as commandersinchief to a feudatory Rajah's army; of captains of

the Indian Marine Government pensioners, planters, Presidency shopkeepers, and missionaries. A few were

cadets of the old Eurasian houses that have taken strong root in Dhurrumtollah Pereiras, De Souzas, and

D'Silvas. Their parents could well have educated them in England, but they loved the school that had served

their own youth, and generation followed sallow hued generation at St Xavier's. Their homes ranged from

Howrah of the railway people to abandoned cantonments like Monghyr and Chunar; lost teagardens

Shillongway; villages where their fathers were large landholders in Oudh or the Deccan; Missionstations a

week from the nearest railway line; seaports a thousand miles south, facing the brazen Indian surf; and

cinchonaplantations south of all. The mere story of their adventures, which to them were no adventures, on

their road to and from school would have crisped a Western boy's hair. They were used to jogging off alone

through a hundred miles of jungle, where there was always the delightful chance of being delayed by tigers;

but they would no more have bathed in the English Channel in an English August than their brothers across

the world would have lain still while a leopard snuffed at their palanquin. There were boys of fifteen who had

spent a day and a half on an islet in the middle of a flooded river, taking charge, as by right, of a camp of

frantic pilgrims returning from a shrine. There were seniors who had requisitioned a chancemet Rajah's

elephant, in the name of St Francis Xavier, when the Rains once blotted out the carttrack that led to their

father's estate, and had all but lost the huge beast in a quicksand. There was a boy who, he said, and none

doubted, had helped his father to beat off with rifles from the veranda a rush of Akas in the days when those

And every tale was told in the even, passionless voice of the nativeborn, mixed with quaint reflections,

borrowed unconsciously from native fostermothers, and turns of speech that showed they had been that

instant translated from the vernacular. Kim watched, listened, and approved. This was not insipid,

singleword talk of drummerboys. It dealt with a life he knew and in part understood. The atmosphere

suited him, and he throve by inches. They gave him a white drill suit as the weather warmed, and he rejoiced

in the new found bodily comforts as he rejoiced to use his sharpened mind over the tasks they set him. His

quickness would have delighted an English master; but at St Xavier's they know the first rush of minds

developed by sun and surroundings, as they know the half collapse that sets in at twentytwo or

None the less he remembered to hold himself lowly. When tales were told of hot nights, Kim did not sweep

the board with his reminiscences; for St Xavier's looks down on boys who 'go native alltogether.' One must

never forget that one is a Sahib, and that some day, when examinations are passed, one will command

natives. Kim made a note of this, for he began to understand where examinations led.

Then came the holidays from August to October the long holidays imposed by the heat and the Rains. Kim

was informed that he would go north to some station in the hills behind Umballa, where Father Victor would

'Yes, I suppose so,' said the master. 'It will not do you any harm to keep you out of mischief. You can go up

Kim considered it in every possible light. He had been diligent, even as the Colonel advised. A boy's holiday

was his own property of so much the talk of his companions had advised him, and a barrackschool

would be torment after St Xavier's. Moreover this was magic worth anything else he could write. In three

months he had discovered how men can speak to each other without a third party, at the cost of half an anna

and a little knowledge. No word had come from the lama, but there remained the Road. Kim yearned for the

caress of soft mud squishing up between the toes, as his mouth watered for mutton stewed with butter and

cabbages, for rice speckled with strong scented cardamoms, for the saffrontinted rice, garlic and onions, and

the forbidden greasy sweetmeats of the bazars. They would feed him raw beef on a platter at the barrack

school, and he must smoke by stealth. But again, he was a Sahib and was at St Xavier's, and that pig Mahbub

it out alone in the dormitory, and came to the conclusion he had been unjust to Mahbub.

The school was empty; nearly all the masters had gone away; Colonel Creighton 's railway pass lay in his

hand, and Kim puffed himself that he had not spent Colonel Creighton 's or Mahbub's money in riotous

living. He was still lord of two rupees seven annas. His new bullocktrunk, marked 'K. O'H.', and

beddingroll lay in the empty sleepingroom. 'Sahibs are always tied to their baggage,' said Kim, nodding at

them. 'You will stay here' He went out into the warm rain, smiling sinfully, and sought a certain house whose

'Was I born yesterday?' Kim squatted nativefashion on the cushions of that upper room. 'A little dyestuff

'Twelve years, I think,' said the shameless Kim. 'Spread it also on the breast. It may be her father will tear my

The girl worked busily, dabbing a twist of cloth into a little saucer of brown dye that holds longer than any

'Now send out and get me a cloth for the turban. Woe is me, my head is all unshaved! And he will surely

'I am not a barber, but I will make shift. Thou wast born to be a breaker of hearts! All this disguise for one

evening? Remember, the stuff does not wash away.' She shook with laughter till her bracelets and anklets

jingled. 'But who is to pay me for this? Huneefa herself could not have given thee better stuff.'

'Trust in the Gods, my sister,' said Kim gravely, screwing his face round as the stain dried. 'Besides, hast thou

'Child, thou art beyond all dispute the most shameless son of Shaitan that I have ever known to take up a poor

girl's time with this play, and then to say: "Is not the jest enough?" Thou wilt go very far in this world.' She

'All one. Make haste and roughcut my head.' Kim shifted from foot to foot, his eyes ablaze with mirth as he

thought of the fat days before him. He gave the girl four annas, and ran down the stairs in the likeness of a

lowcaste Hindu boy perfect in every detail. A cookshop was his next point of call, where he feasted in

On Lucknow station platform he watched young De Castro, all covered with pricklyheat, get into a

secondclass compartment. Kim patronized a third, and was the life and soul of it. He explained to the

company that he was assistant to a juggler who had left him behind sick with fever, and that he would pick up

his master at Umballa. As the occupants of the carriage changed, he varied this tale, or adorned it with all the

shoots of a budding fancy, the more rampant for being held off native speech so long. In all India that night

was no human being so joyful as Kim. At Umballa he got out and headed eastward, plashing over the sodden

About this time Colonel Creighton at Simla was advised from Lucknow by wire that young O'Hara had

disappeared. Mahbub Ali was in town selling horses, and to him the Colonel confided the affair one morning

'Oh, that is nothing,' said the horsedealer. 'Men are like horses. At certain times they need salt, and if that

salt is not in the mangers they will lick it up from the earth. He has gone back to the Road again for a while.

The madrissak wearied him. I knew it would. Another time, I will take him upon the Road myself. Do not be

troubled, Creighton Sahib. It is as though a polopony, breaking loose, ran out to learn the game alone.'

'Fever might kill him. I do not fear for the boy otherwise. A monkey does not fall among trees.'

Next morning, on the same course, Mahbub's stallion ranged alongside the Colonel.

'It is as I had thought,' said the horsedealer. 'He has come through Umballa at least, and there he has written

'Read,' said the Colonel, with a sigh of relief. It was absurd that a man of his position should take an interest

in a little country bred vagabond; but the Colonel remembered the conversation in the train, and often in the

past few months had caught himself thinking of the queer, silent, selfpossessed boy. His evasion, of course,

Mahbub's eyes twinkled as he reined out into the centre of the cramped little plain, where none could come

'A name we give him in Lahore city. "The Friend of all the World takes leave to go to his own places. He will

come back upon the appointed day. Let the box and the beddingroll be sent for; and if there has been a fault,

let the Hand of Friendship turn aside the Whip of Calamity." There is yet a little more, but'

'"Certain things are not known to those who eat with forks. It is better to eat with both hands for a while.

Speak soft words to those who do not understand this that the return may be propitious." Now the manner in

which that was cast is, of course, the work of the letterwriter, but see how wisely the boy has devised the

'Is this the Hand of Friendship to avert the Whip of Calamity?' laughed the Colonel.

'See how wise is the boy. He would go back to the Road again, as I said. Not knowing yet thy trade '

'He turns to me to make a peace between you. Is he not wise? He says he will return. He is but perfecting his

knowledge. Think, Sahib! He has been three months at the school. And he is not mouthed to that bit. For my

'Why? He went alone before he came under the Colonel Sahib's protection. When he comes to the Great

Game he must go alone alone, and at peril of his head. Then, if he spits, or sneezes, or sits down other than

as the people do whom he watches, he may be slain. Why hinder him now? Remember how the Persians say:

The jackal that lives in the wilds of Mazanderan can only be caught by the hounds of Mazanderan.'

'True. It is true, Mahbub Ali. And if he comes to no harm, I do not desire anything better. But it is great

'He does not tell me, even, whither he goes,' said Mahbub. 'He is no fool. When his time is accomplished he

will come to me. It is time the healer of pearls took him in hand. He ripens too quickly as Sahibs reckon.'

This prophecy was fulfilled to the letter a month later. Mahbub had gone down to Umballa to bring up a fresh

consignment of horses, and Kim met him on the Kalka road at dusk riding alone, begged an alms of him, was

sworn at, and replied in English. There was nobody within earshot to hear Mahbub's gasp of amazement.

'Come under a tree, out of the wet, and tell.' 'I stayed for a while with an old man near Umballa; anon with a

household of my acquaintance in Umballa. With one of these I went as far as Delhi to the southward. That is

a wondrous city. Then I drove a bullock for a teli [an oilman] coming north; but I heard of a great feast

forward in Patiala, and thither went I in the company of a fireworkmaker. It was a great feast' (Kim rubbed

his stomach). 'I saw Rajahs, and elephants with gold and silver trappings; and they lit all the fireworks at

once, whereby eleven men were killed, my fireworkmaker among them, and I was blown across a tent but

took no harm. Then I came back to the rel with a Sikh horseman, to whom I was groom for my bread; and so

'The Hand of Friendship has averted the Whip of Calamity; but another time, when thou takest the Road it

'Late enough for me. I have learned to read and to write English a little at the madrissah. I shall soon be

'Hear him!' laughed Mahbub, looking at the little drenched figure dancing in the wet. 'Salaam Sahib,' and he

saluted ironically. 'Well, art tired of the Road, or wilt thou come on to Umballa with me and work back with

'Then in God's name take blue for red,' said Mahbub, alluding to the Hindu colour of Kim's disreputable

Kim countered with the old proverb, 'I will change my faith and my bedding, but thou must pay for it.'

The dealer laughed till he nearly fell from his horse. At a shop on the outskirts of the city the change was

Mahbub hired a room over against the railway station, sent for a cooked meal of the finest with the

'This is better than some other meat that I ate with the Sikh,' said Kim, grinning as he squatted, 'and assuredly

'I have a desire to hear of that same madrissah.' Mahbub stuffed himself with great boluses of spiced mutton

fried in fat with cabbage and goldenbrown onions. 'But tell me first, altogether and truthfully, the manner of

thy escape. For, O Friend of all the World,' he loosed his cracking belt 'I do not think it is often that a

'How should they? They do not know the land. It was nothing,' said Kim, and began his tale. When he came

to the disguisement and the interview with the girl in the bazar, Mahbub Ali's gravity went from him. He

'Shabash! Shabash! Oh, well done, little one! What will the healer of turquoises say to this? Now, slowly, let

Step by step then, Kim told his adventures between coughs as the fullflavoured tobacco caught his lungs.

'I said,' growled Mahbub Ali to himself, 'I said it was the pony breaking out to play polo. The fruit is ripe

already except that he must learn his distances and his pacings, and his rods and his compasses. Listen now.

I have turned aside the Colonel's whip from thy skin, and that is no small service.'

'It was my holiday, Hajji. I was a slave for many weeks. Why should I not run away when the school was

shut? Look, too, how I, living upon my friends or working for my bread, as I did with the Sikh, have saved

'What are a few rupees' the Pathan threw out his open hand carelessly 'to the Colonel Sahib? He spends

'The Colonel Sahib himself. Not in those many words, but plainly enough for one who is not altogether a

'Be it so. Then I will tell thee more, Friend of all the World, though in the telling I lend thee my head.'

'It was forfeit to me,' said Kim, with deep relish, 'in Umballa, when thou didst pick me up on the horse after

'Speak a little plainer. All the world may tell lies save thou and I. For equally is thy life forfeit to me if I

'And this is known to me also,' said Kim, readjusting the live charcoalball on the weed. 'It is a very sure tie

between us. Indeed, thy hold is surer even than mine; for who would miss a boy beaten to death, or, it may

be, thrown into a well by the roadside? Most people here and in Simla and across the passes behind the Hills

would, on the other hand, say: "What has come to Mahbub Ali?" if he were found dead among his horses.

Surely, too, the Colonel Sahib would make inquiries. But again,' Kim's face puckered with cunning, 'he

would not make overlong inquiry, lest people should ask: "What has this Colonel Sahib to do with that

'Maybe; but I say, if I lived, I, and I alone, would know that one had come by night, as a common thief

perhaps, to Mahbub Ali's bulkhead in the serai, and there had slain him, either before or after that thief had

made a full search into his saddlebags and between the soles of his slippers. Is that news to tell to the

Colonel, or would he say to me (I have not forgotten when he sent me back for a cigarcase that he had not

Up went a gout of heavy smoke. There was a long pause: then Mahbub Ali spoke in admiration: 'And with

these things on thy mind, dost thou lie down and rise again among all the Sahibs' little sons at the madrissah

'A most finished Son of Eblis,' said Mahbub Ali. 'But what is this tale of the thief and the search?'

'That which I saw,' said Kim, 'the night that my lama and I lay next thy place in the Kashmir Seral. The door

was left unlocked, which I think is not thy custom, Mahbub. He came in as one assured that thou wouldst not

soon return. My eye was against a knothole in the plank. He searched as it were for something not a rug,

not stirrups, nor a bridle, nor brass pots something little and most carefully hid. Else why did he prick with

'Ha!' Mahbub Ali smiled gently. 'And seeing these things, what tale didst thou fashion to thyself, Well of the

'None. I put my hand upon my amulet, which lies always next to my skin, and, remembering the pedigree of a

white stallion that I had bitten out of a piece of Mussalmani bread, I went away to Umballa perceiving that a

heavy trust was laid upon me. At that hour, had I chosen, thy head was forfeit. It needed only to say to that

man, "I have here a paper concerning a horse which I cannot read." And then?' Kim peered at Mahbub under

'Then thou wouldst have drunk water twice perhaps thrice, afterwards. I do not think more than thrice,' said

'It is true. I thought of that a little, but most I thought that I loved thee, Mahbub. Therefore I went to Umballa,

as thou knowest, but (and this thou dost not know) I lay hid in the gardengrass to see what Colonel

'I sell and I buy.' Mahbub took a fouranna piece out of his belt and held it up.

Mahbub laughed, and put away the coin. It is too easy to deal in that market, Friend of all the World. Tell me

'Very good. I saw the JangiLat Sahib [the CommanderinChief] come to a big dinner. I saw him in

Creighton Sahib's office. I saw the two read the white stallion's pedigree. I heard the very orders given for the

'Hah!' Mahbub nodded with deepest eyes afire. 'The game is well played. That war is done now, and the evil,

we hope, nipped before the flower thanks to me and thee. What didst thou later?'

'I made the news as it were a hook to catch me victual and honour among the villagers in a village whose

priest drugged my lama. But I bore away the old man's purse, and the Brahmin found nothing. So next

morning he was angry. Ho! Ho! And I also used the news when I fell into the hands of that white Regiment

'That was foolishness.' Mahbub scowled. 'News is not meant to be thrown about like dungcakes, but used

'So I think now, and moreover, it did me no sort of good. But that was very long ago,' he made as to brush it

all away with a thin brown hand 'and since then, and especially in the nights under the punkah at the

'Is it permitted to ask whither the Heavenborn's thought might have led?' said Mahbub, with an elaborate

'It is permitted,' said Kim, and threw back the very tone. 'They say at Nucklao that no Sahib must tell a black

Mahbub's hand shot into his bosom, for to call a Pathan a 'black man' [kala admi] is a bloodinsult. Then he

'But,' said Kim, 'I am not a Sahib, and I say I made a fault to curse thee, Mahbub Ali, on that day at Umballa

when I thought I was betrayed by a Pathan. I was senseless; for I was but newly caught, and I wished to kill

that lowcaste drummerboy. I say now, Hajji, that it was well done; and I see my road all clear before me to

'Well said. Especially are distances and numbers and the manner of using compasses to be learned in that

'I will learn their teaching upon a condition that my time is given to me without question when the

'The Colonel is the servant of the Government. He is sent hither and yon at a word, and must consider his

own advancement. (See how much I have already learned at Nucklao!) Moreover, the Colonel I know since

three months only. I have known one Mahbub Ali for six years. So! To the madrissah I will go. At the

madrissah I will learn. In the madrissah I will be a Sahib. But when the madrissah is shut, then must I be free

'This great and beautiful land,' said Kim, waving his paw round the little claywalled room where the

oillamp in its niche burned heavily through the tobaccosmoke. 'And, further, I would see my lama again.

'That is the need of everyone,' said Mahbub ruefully. 'I will give thee eight annas, for much money is not

picked out of horses' hooves, and it must suffice for many days. As to all the rest, I am well pleased, and no

further talk is needed. Make haste to learn, and in three years, or it may be less, thou wilt be an aid even to

'Do not give answers,' Mahbub grunted. 'Thou art my new horseboy. Go and bed among my men. They are

'They will beat me to the south end of the station if I come without authority.'

Mahbub felt in his belt, wetted his thumb on a cake of Chinese ink, and dabbed the impression on a piece of

soft native paper. From Balkh to Bombay men know that roughridged print with the old scar running

'By the road from the city. There is but one, and then we return to Creighton Sahib. I have saved thee a

Kim slid out quietly into the night, walked half round the house, keeping close to the walls, and headed away

from the station for a mile or so. Then, fetching a wide compass, he worked back at leisure, for he needed

They were camped on a piece of waste ground beside the railway, and, being natives, had not, of course,

unloaded the two trucks in which Mahbub's animals stood among a consignment of countrybreds bought by

the Bombay tramcompany. The headman, a brokendown, consumptivelooking Mohammedan, promptly

'The Hajji has of his favour given me service,' said Kim testily. 'If this be doubted, wait till he comes in the

Followed the usual aimless babble that every lowcaste native must raise on every occasion. It died down,

and Kim lay out behind the little knot of Mahbub's followers, almost under the wheels of a horsetruck, a

borrowed blanket for covering. Now a bed among brickbats and ballastrefuse on a damp night, between

overcrowded horses and unwashed Baltis, would not appeal to many white boys; but Kim was utterly happy.

Change of scene, service, and surroundings were the breath of his little nostrils, and thinking of the neat white

cots of St Xavier's all arow under the punkah gave him joy as keen as the repetition of the

'I am very old,' he thought sleepily. 'Every month I become a year more old. I was very young, and a fool to

boot, when I took Mahbub's message to Umballa. Even when I was with that white Regiment I was very

young and small and had no wisdom. But now I learn every day, and in three years the Colonel will take me

out of the madrissah and let me go upon the Road with Mahbub hunting for horses' pedigrees, or maybe I

shall go by myself; or maybe I shall find the lama and go with him. Yes; that is best. To walk again as a chela

with my lama when he comes back to Benares.' The thoughts came more slowly and disconnectedly. He was

plunging into a beautiful dreamland when his ears caught a whisper, thin and sharp, above the monotonous

'Where should he be but roystering in the city. Who looks for a rat in a frogpond? Come away. He is not our

'Hire some woman to drug him. It is a few rupees only, and there is no evidence.'

'Except the woman. It must be more certain; and remember the price upon his head.'

'Ay, but the police have a long arm, and we are far from the Border. If it were in Peshawur, now!'

'Yes in Peshawur,' the second voice sneered. 'Peshawur, full of his bloodkin full of boltholes and

women behind whose clothes he will hide. Yes, Peshawur or Jehannum would suit us equally well.'

'O fool, have I not told it a hundred times? Wait till he comes to lie down, and then one sure shot. The trucks

are between us and pursuit. We have but to run back over the lines and go our way. They will not see whence

the shot came. Wait here at least till the dawn. What manner of fakir art thou, to shiver at a little watching?'

'Oho!' thought Kim, behind closeshut eyes. 'Once again it is Mahbub. Indeed a white stallion's pedigree is

not a good thing to peddle to Sahibs! Or maybe Mahbub has been selling other news. Now what is to do,

Kim? I know not where Mahbub houses, and if he comes here before the dawn they will shoot him. That

would be no profit for thee, Kim. And this is not a matter for the police. That would be no profit for Mahbub;

and' he giggled almost aloud 'I do not remember any lesson at Nucklao which will help me. Allah! Here

is Kim and yonder are they. First, then, Kim must wake and go away, so that they shall not suspect. A bad

He threw the blanket off his face, and raised himself suddenly with the terrible, bubbling, meaningless yell of

A churel is the peculiarly malignant ghost of a woman who has died in childbed. She haunts lonely roads,

Louder rose Kim's quavering howl, till at last he leaped to his feet and staggered off sleepily, while the camp

cursed him for waking them. Some twenty yards farther up the line he lay down again, taking care that the

whisperers should hear his grunts and groans as he recomposed himself. After a few minutes he rolled

He paddled along swiftly till he came to a culvert, and dropped behind it, his chin on a level with the

Two or three carts passed, jingling out to the suburbs; a coughing policeman and a hurrying footpassenger

'Ah! This is more like Mahbub,' thought Kim, as the beast shied at the little head above the culvert.

The horse was reined back almost on its haunches, and forced towards the culvert.

'Never again,' said Mahbub, 'will I take a shod horse for night work. They pick up all the bones and nails in

the city.' He stooped to lift its forefoot, and that brought his head within a foot of Kim's. Down keep down,'

'Two men wait thy coming behind the horsetrucks. They will shoot thee at thy lying down, because there is

'Didst thou see them? . .. Hold still, Sire of Devils!' This furiously to the horse.

'One said to the other, "What manner of fakir art thou, to shiver at a little watching?"'

Mahbub wheeled his horse and vanished. Kim tore back down the ditch till he reached a point opposite his

second restingplace, slipped across the road like a weasel, and recoiled himself in the blanket.

'At least Mahbub knows,' he thought contentedly. 'And certainly he spoke as one expecting it. I do not think

An hour passed, and, with the best will in the world to keep awake all night, he slept deeply. Now and again a

night train roared along the metals within twenty feet of him; but he had all the Oriental's indifference to

Mahbub was anything but asleep. It annoyed him vehemently that people outside his tribe and unaffected by

his casual amours should pursue him for the life. His first and natural impulse was to cross the line lower

down, work up again, and, catching his wellwishers from behind, summarily slay them. Here, he reflected

with sorrow, another branch of the Government, totally unconnected with Colonel Creighton, might demand

explanations which would be hard to supply; and he knew that south of the Border a perfectly ridiculous fuss

is made about a corpse or so. He had not been troubled in this way since he sent Kim to Umballa with the

'The English do eternally tell the truth,' he said, 'therefore we of this country are eternally made foolish. By

Allah, I will tell the truth to an Englishman! Of what use is the Government police if a poor Kabuli be robbed

of his horses in their very trucks. This is as bad as Peshawur! I should lay a complaint at the station. Better

still, some young Sahib on the Railway! They are zealous, and if they catch thieves it is remembered to their

'Hullo, Mahbub Ali' said a young Assistant District Traffic Superintendent who was waiting to go down the

line a tall, tow haired, horsey youth in dingy white linen. 'What are you doing here? Selling weeds eh?'

'No; I am not troubled for my horses. I come to look for Lutuf Ullah. I have a truckload up the line. Could

'I have seen two men crouching under the wheels of one of the trucks nearly all night. Fakirs do not steal

'The deuce you did? And you didn't bother your head about it? 'Pon my word, it's just almost as well that I

'They were only fakirs. They will no more than take a little grain, perhaps, from one of the trucks. There are

many up the line. The State will never miss the dole. I came here seeking for my partner, Lutuf Ullah

'A little to this side of the farthest place where they make lamps for the trains.'

'And upon the rail nearest to the road upon the righthand side looking up the line thus. But as regards

The boy had hurried off to wake up a young and enthusiastic policeman; for, as he said, the Railway had

suffered much from depredations in the goodsyard. Mahbub Ali chuckled in his dyed beard.

'They will walk in their boots, making a noise, and then they will wonder why there are no fakirs. They are

He waited idly for a few minutes, expecting to see them hurry up the line girt for action. A light engine slid

'I did that child an injustice. He is not altogether a fool,' said Mahbub Ali. 'To take a firecarriage for a thief

When Mahbub Ali came to his camp in the dawn, no one thought it worth while to tell him any news of the

night. No one, at least, but one small horseboy, newly advanced to the great man's service, whom Mahbub

'It is all known to me,' whispered Kim, bending above saddlebags. 'Two Sahibs came up on a tetrain. I was

running to and fro in the dark on this side of the trucks as the tetrain moved up and down slowly. They fell

upon two men sitting under this truck Hajji, what shall I do with this lump of tobacco? Wrap it in paper and

put it under the saltbag? Yes and struck them down. But one man struck at a Sahib with a fakir's buck's

horn' (Kim meant the conjoined blackbuck horns, which are a fakir's sole temporal weapon) 'the blood

came. So the other Sahib, first smiting his own man senseless, smote the stabber with a short gun which had

Mahbub smiled with heavenly resignation. 'No! That is not so much dewanee [madness, or a case for the civil

court the word can be punned upon both ways] as nizamut [a criminal case]. A gun, sayest thou? Ten good

'Then they both lay still, but I think they were nearly dead when they were put on the tetrain. Their heads

'I have seen blood before. Jail is the sure place and assuredly they will give false names, and assuredly no

man will find them for a long time. They were unfriends of mine. Thy fate and mine seem on one string.

What a tale for the healer of pearls! Now swiftly with the saddlebags and the cookingplatter. We will take

Swiftly as Orientals understand speed with long explanations, with abuse and windy talk, carelessly,

amid a hundred checks for little things forgotten, the untidy camp broke up and led the half dozen stiff and

fretful horses along the Kalka road in the fresh of the rainswept dawn. Kim, regarded as Mahbub Ali's

favourite by all who wished to stand well with the Pathan, was not called upon to work. They strolled on by

the easiest of stages, halting every few hours at a wayside shelter. Very many Sahibs travel along the Kalka

road; and, as Mahbub Ali says, every young Sahib must needs esteem himself a judge of a horse, and, though

he be over head in debt to the moneylender, must make as if to buy. That was the reason that Sahib after

Sahib, rolling along in a stagecarriage, would stop and open talk. Some would even descend from their

vehicles and feel the horses' legs; asking inane questions, or, through sheer ignorance of the vernacular,

'When first I dealt with Sahibs, and that was when Colonel Soady Sahib was Governor of Fort Abazai and

flooded the Commissioner's campingground for spite,' Mahbub confided to Kim as the boy filled his pipe

under a tree, 'I did not know how greatly they were fools, and this made me wroth. As thus , and he told

Kim a tale of an expression, misused in all innocence, that doubled Kim up with mirth. 'Now I see, however,'

he exhaled smoke slowly 'that it is with them as with all men in certain matters they are wise, and in

others most foolish. Very foolish it is to use the wrong word to a stranger; for though the heart may be clean

of offence, how is the stranger to know that? He is more like to search truth with a dagger.'

'True. True talk,' said Kim solemnly. 'Fools speak of a cat when a woman is brought to bed, for instance. I

'Therefore, in one situate as thou art, it particularly behoves thee to remember this with both kinds of faces.

Among Sahibs, never forgetting thou art a Sahib; among the folk of Hind, always remembering thou art ' He

'Thou art beyond question an unbeliever, and therefore thou wilt be damned. So says my Law or I think it

does. But thou art also my Little Friend of all the World, and I love thee. So says my heart. This matter of

creeds is like horseflesh. The wise man knows horses are good that there is a profit to be made from all;

and for myself but that I am a good Sunni and hate the men of Tirah I could believe the same of all the

Faiths. Now manifestly a Kathiawar mare taken from the sands of her birthplace and removed to the west of

Bengal founders nor is even a Balkh stallion (and there are no better horses than those of Balkh, were they

not so heavy in the shoulder) of any account in the great Northern deserts beside the snowcamels I have

seen. Therefore I say in my heart the Faiths are like the horses. Each has merit in its own country.'

'Oh, he is an old dreamer of dreams from Bhotiyal. My heart is a little angry, Friend of all the World, that

'And his to thine, I hear. Hearts are like horses. They come and they go against bit or spur. Shout Gul Sher

Khan yonder to drive in that bay stallion's pickets more firmly. We do not want a horse fight at every

restingstage, and the dun and the black will be locked in a little . . . Now hear me. Is it necessary to the

'It is one part of my bond,' said Kim. 'If I do not see him, and if he is taken from me, I will go out of that

'It is true. Never was colt held on a lighter heelrope than thou.' Mahbub nodded his head.

'Do not be afraid.' Kim spoke as though he could have evanished on the moment. 'My lama has said that he

'Not all!' Kim cut in with a snort. 'Their eyes are blued and their nails are blackened with lowcaste blood,

We need not follow the rest of the pedigree; but Kim made his little point clearly and without heat, chewing a

'Friend of all the World,' said Mahbub, pushing over the pipe for the boy to clean, 'I have met many men,

women, and boys, and not a few Sahibs. I have never in all my days met such an imp as thou art.'

'Perhaps the very reason, for this is a world of danger to honest men.' Mahbub Ali hauled himself off the

'Rememberest thou the little business of the thieves in the dark, down yonder at Umballa?'

'No need Pathan. Only, the second fakir, whom the Sahibs beat senseless, was the man who came to search

thy bulkhead at Lahore. I saw his face as they helped him on the engine. The very same man.'

'Oh, he will go to jail, and be safe for some years. There is no need to tell more than is necessary at any one

'Allah kerim!' said Mahbub Ah. 'Wilt thou some day sell my head for a few sweetmeats if the fit takes thee?'

Kim will remember till he dies that long, lazy journey from Umballa, through Kalka and the Pinjore Gardens

near by, up to Simla. A sudden spate in the Gugger River swept down one horse (the most valuable, be sure),

and nearly drowned Kim among the dancing boulders. Farther up the road the horses were stampeded by a

Government elephant, and being in high condition of grass food, it cost a day and a half to get them together

again. Then they met Sikandar Khan coming down with a few unsaleable screws remnants of his string

and Mahbub, who has more of horsecoping in his little fingernail than Sikandar Khan in all his tents, must

needs buy two of the worst, and that meant eight hours' laborious diplomacy and untold tobacco. But it was

all pure delight the wandering road, climbing, dipping, and sweeping about the growing spurs; the flush of

the morning laid along the distant snows; the branched cacti, tier upon tier on the stony hillsides; the voices

of a thousand waterchannels; the chatter of the monkeys; the solemn deodars, climbing one after another

with downdrooped branches; the vista of the Plains rolled out far beneath them; the incessant twanging of

the tongahorns and the wild rush of the led horses when a tonga swung round a curve; the halts for prayers

(Mahbub was very religious in drywashings and bellowings when time did not press); the evening

conferences by the haltingplaces, when camels and bullocks chewed solemnly together and the stolid

drivers told the news of the Road all these things lifted Kim's heart to song within him.

'But, when the singing and dancing is done,' said Mahbub Ali, 'comes the Colonel Sahib's, and that is not so

'A fair land a most beautiful land is this of Hind and the land of the Five Rivers is fairer than all,' Kim

half chanted. 'Into it I will go again if Mahbub Ali or the Colonel lift hand or foot against me. Once gone,

who shall find me? Look, Hajji, is yonder the city of Simla? Allah, what a city!'

'My father's brother, and he was an old man when Mackerson Sahib's well was new at Peshawur, could recall

He led the horses below the main road into the lower Simla bazar the crowded rabbitwarren that climbs up

from the valley to the Town Hall at an angle of fortyfive. A man who knows his way there can defy all the

police of India's summer capital, so cunningly does veranda communicate with veranda, alleyway with

alleyway, and bolthole with bolthole. Here live those who minister to the wants of the glad city

jhampanis who pull the pretty ladies' 'rickshaws by night and gamble till the dawn; grocers, oilsellers,

curiovendors, firewooddealers, priests, pickpockets, and native employees of the Government. Here are

discussed by courtesans the things which are supposed to be profoundest secrets of the India Council; and

here gather all the subsubagents of half the Native States. Here, too, Mahbub Ali rented a room, much

more securely locked than his bulkhead at Lahore, in the house of a Mohammedan cattledealer. It was a

place of miracles, too, for there went in at twilight a Mohammedan horseboy, and there came out an hour

later a Eurasian lad the Lucknow girl's dye was of the best in badly fitting shopclothes.

'I have spoken with Creighton Sahib,' quoth Mahbub Ali, and a second time has the Hand of Friendship

averted the Whip of Calamity. He says that thou hast altogether wasted sixty days upon the Road, and it is too

'I have said that my holidays are my own. I do not go to school twice over. That is one part of my bond.'

'The Colonel Sahib is not yet aware of that contract. Thou art to lodge in Lurgan Sahib's house till it is time to

'Thou dost not know the honour. Lurgan Sahib himself asked for thee. Thou wilt go up the hill and along the

road atop, and there thou must forget for a while that thou hast ever seen or spoken to me, Mahbub Ali, who

Kim nodded. 'Good,' said he, 'and who is Lurgan Sahib? Nay' he caught Mahbub's swordkeen glance

'indeed I have never heard his name. Is he by chance he lowered his voice 'one of us?'

'What talk is this of us, Sahib?' Mahbub Ali returned, in the tone he used towards Europeans. 'I am a Pathan;

thou art a Sahib and the son of a Sahib. Lurgan Sahib has a shop among the European shops. All Simla

knows it. Ask there ... and, Friend of all the World, he is one to be obeyed to the last wink of his eyelashes.

Men say he does magic, but that should not touch thee. Go up the hill and ask. Here begins the Great Game.'

Kim flung himself wholeheartedly upon the next turn of the wheel. He would be a Sahib again for a while.

In that idea, so soon as he had reached the broad road under Simla Town Hall, he cast about for one to

'I do not understand English,' was the answer, and Kim shifted his speech accordingly.

Together they set off through the mysterious dusk, full of the noises of a city below the hillside, and the

breath of a cool wind in deodarcrowned Jakko, shouldering the stars. The houselights, scattered on every

level, made, as it were, a double firmament. Some were fixed, others belonged to the 'rickshaws of the

'It is here,' said Kim's guide, and halted in a veranda flush with the main road. No door stayed them, but a

'He is come,' said the boy, in a voice little louder than a sigh, and vanished. Kim felt sure that the boy had

been posted to guide him from the first, but, putting a bold face on it, parted the curtain. A blackbearded

man, with a green shade over his eyes, sat at a table, and, one by one, with short, white hands, picked up

globules of light from a tray before him, threaded them on a glancing silken string, and hummed to himself

the while. Kim was conscious that beyond the circle of light the room was full of things that smelt like all the

temples of all the East. A whiff of musk, a puff of sandalwood, and a breath of sickly jessamineoil caught

'I am here,' said Kim at last, speaking in the vernacular: the smells made him forget that he was to be a Sahib

'Seventynine, eighty, eightyone,' the man counted to himself, stringing pearl after pearl so quickly that

Kim could scarcely follow his fingers. He slid off the green shade and looked fixedly at Kim for a full

halfminute. The pupils of the eye dilated and closed to pinpricks, as if at will. There was a fakir by the

Taksali Gate who had just this gift and made money by it, especially when cursing silly women. Kim stared

with interest. His disreputable friend could further twitch his ears, almost like a goat, and Kim was

'Thou wilt sleep here tonight, and stay with me till it is time to go again to Nucklao. It is an order.'

'Here, in this room.' Lurgan Sahib waved his hand towards the darkness behind him.

He nodded and held the lamp above his head. As the light swept them, there leaped out from the walls a

collection of Tibetan devildance masks, hanging above the fiendembroidered draperies of those ghastly

functions horned masks, scowling masks, and masks of idiotic terror. In a corner, a Japanese warrior,

mailed and plumed, menaced him with a halberd, and a score of lances and khandas and kuttars gave back the

unsteady gleam. But what interested Kim more than all these things he had seen devildance masks at the

Lahore Museum was a glimpse of the softeyed Hindu child who had left him in the doorway, sitting

'I think that Lurgan Sahib wishes to make me afraid. And I am sure that that devil's brat below the table

wishes to see me afraid. This place,' he said aloud, 'is like a Wonder House. Where is my bed?'

Lurgan Sahib pointed to a native quilt in a corner by the loathsome masks, picked up the lamp, and left the

'Was that Lurgan Sahib?' Kim asked as he cuddled down. No answer. He could hear the Hindu boy breathing,

however, and, guided by the sound, crawled across the floor, and cuffed into the darkness, crying: 'Give

>From the darkness he fancied he could hear the echo of a chuckle. It could not be his softfleshed

'Lurgan Sahib! O Lurgan Sahib! Is it an order that thy servant does not speak to me?'

'Very good. But remember,' he muttered, as he resought the quilt, 'I will beat thee in the morning. I do not

That was no cheerful night; the room being overfull of voices and music. Kim was waked twice by someone

calling his name. The second time he set out in search, and ended by bruising his nose against a box that

certainly spoke with a human tongue, but in no sort of human accent. It seemed to end in a tin trumpet and to

be joined by wires to a smaller box on the floor so far, at least, as he could judge by touch. And the voice,

very hard and whirring, came out of the trumpet. Kim rubbed his nose and grew furious, thinking, as usual, in

'This with a beggar from the bazar might be good, but I am a Sahib and the son of a Sahib and, whichis

twice as much more beside, a student of Nucklao. Yess' (here he turned to English), 'a boy of St Xavier's.

Damn Mr Lurgan's eyes! It is some sort of machinery like a sewingmachine. Oh, it is a great cheek of him

we are not frightened that way at Lucknow No!' Then in Hindi: 'But what does he gain? He is only a

trader I am in his shop. But Creighton Sahib is a Colonel and I think Creighton Sahib gave orders that it

The trumpetbox was pouring out a string of the most elaborate abuse that even Kim had ever heard, in a

high uninterested voice, that for a moment lifted the short hairs of his neck. When the vile thing drew breath,

'Chup! [Be still)' he cried, and again he heard a chuckle that decided him. 'Chup or I break your head.'

The box took no heed. Kim wrenched at the tin trumpet and something lifted with a click. He had evidently

raised a lid. If there were a devil inside, now was its time, for he sniffed thus did the sewingmachines of

the bazar smell. He would clean that shaitan. He slipped off his jacket, and plunged it into the box's mouth.

Something long and round bent under the pressure, there was a whirr and the voice stopped as voices must

if you ram a thricedoubled coat on to the wax cylinder and into the works of an expensive phonograph. Kim

'Oah!' said Kim, firmly resolved to cling to his Sahibdom. 'There was a box in the night that gave me bad

'Shake hands, O'Hara,' he said. 'Yes, it was my box. I keep such things because my friends the Rajahs like

them. That one is broken, but it was cheap at the price. Yes, my friends, the Kings, are very fond of toys

Kim looked him over out of the corners of his eyes. He was a Sahib in that he wore Sahib's clothes; the

accent of his Urdu, the intonation of his English, showed that he was anything but a Sahib. He seemed to

understand what moved in Kim's mind ere the boy opened his mouth, and he took no pains to explain himself

as did Father Victor or the Lucknow masters. Sweetest of all he treated Kim as an equal on the Asiatic side.

'I am sorry you cannot beat my boy this morning. He says he will kill you with a knife or poison. He is

jealous, so I have put him in the corner and I shall not speak to him today. He has just tried to kill me. You

Now a genuine imported Sahib from England would have made a great todo over this tale. Lurgan Sahib

stated it as simply as Mahbub Ali was used to record his little affairs in the North.

The back veranda of the shop was built out over the sheer hillside, and they looked down into their

neighbours' chimneypots, as is the custom of Simla. But even more than the purely Persian meal cooked by

Lurgan Sahib with his own hands, the shop fascinated Kim. The Lahore Museum was larger, but here were

more wonders ghost daggers and prayerwheels from Tibet; turquoise and raw amber necklaces; green

jade bangles; curiously packed incensesticks in jars crusted over with raw garnets; the devilmasks of

overnight and a wall full of peacockblue draperies; gilt figures of Buddha, and little portable lacquer altars;

Russian samovars with turquoises on the lid; eggshell china sets in quaint octagonal cane boxes; yellow

ivory crucifixes from Japan of all places in the world, so Lurgan Sahib said; carpets in dusty bales, smelling

atrociously, pushed back behind torn and rotten screens of geometrical work; Persian waterjugs for the

hands after meals; dull copper incenseburners neither Chinese nor Persian, with friezes of fantastic devils

running round them; tarnished silver belts that knotted like raw hide; hairpins of jade, ivory, and plasma;

arms of all sorts and kinds, and a thousand other oddments were cased, or piled, or merely thrown into the

room, leaving a clear space only round the rickety deal table, where Lurgan Sahib worked.

'Those things are nothing,' said his host, following Kim's glance. 'I buy them because they are pretty, and

sometimes I sell if I like the buyer's look. My work is on the table some of it.'

It blazed in the morning light all red and blue and green flashes, picked out with the vicious bluewhite

'Oh, they are quite well, those stones. It will not hurt them to take the sun. Besides, they are cheap. But with

sick stones it is very different.' He piled Kim's plate anew. 'There is no one but me can doctor a sick pearl and

reblue turquoises. I grant you opals any fool can cure an opal but for a sick pearl there is only me.

Suppose I were to die! Then there would be no one ... Oh no! You cannot do anything with jewels. It will be

He moved to the end of the veranda to refill the heavy, porous clay waterjug from the filter.

Kim nodded. Lurgan Sahib, fifteen feet off, laid one hand on the jar. Next instant, it stood at Kim's elbow,

full to within half an inch of the brim the white cloth only showing, by a small wrinkle, where it had slid

'Wah!' said Kim in most utter amazement. 'That is magic.' Lurgan Sahib's smile showed that the compliment

Kim pitched it at random. It fell short and crashed into fifty pieces, while the water dripped through the rough

That lay with a sparkle of water in its curve, as it were a star on the floor. Kim looked intently. Lurgan Sahib

laid one hand gently on the nape of his neck, stroked it twice or thrice, and whispered: 'Look! It shall come to

life again, piece by piece. First the big piece shall join itself to two others on the right and the left on the

To save his life, Kim could not have turned his head. The light touch held him as in a vice, and his blood

tingled pleasantly through him. There was one large piece of the jar where there had been three, and above

them the shadowy outline of the entire vessel. He could see the veranda through it, but it was thickening and

darkening with each beat of his pulse. Yet the jar how slowly the thoughts came! the jar had been

smashed before his eyes. Another wave of prickling fire raced down his neck, as Lurgan Sahib moved his

So far Kim had been thinking in Hindi, but a tremor came on him, and with an effort like that of a swimmer

before sharks, who hurls himself half out of the water, his mind leaped up from a darkness that was

The jar had been smashed yess, smashed not the native word, he would not think of that but smashed

into fifty pieces, and twice three was six, and thrice three was nine, and four times three was twelve. He clung

desperately to the repetition. The shadowoutline of the jar cleared like a mist after rubbing eyes. There were

the broken shards; there was the spilt water drying in the sun, and through the cracks of the veranda showed,

'But it is smashed smashed,' he gasped Lurgan Sahib had been muttering softly for the last halfminute.

'It is there as it was there,' said Lurgan, watching Kim closely while the boy rubbed his neck. 'But you are the

'Was that more magic?' Kim asked suspiciously. The tingle had gone from his veins; he felt unusually wide

'No, that was not magic. It was only to see if there was a flaw in a jewel. Sometimes very fine jewels will

fly all to pieces if a man holds them in his hand, and knows the proper way. That is why one must be careful

'Oah! I knew it was broken, and so, I think, that was what I thought and it was broken.'

Lurgan Sahib looked at him more closely than ever. 'I shall ask Mahbub Ali not now, but some day later,'

he muttered. 'I am pleased with you yes; and I am pleased with you no. You are the first that ever saved

himself. I wish I knew what it was that ... But you are right. You should not tell that not even to me.'

He turned into the dusky gloom of the shop, and sat down at the table, rubbing his hands softly. A small,

husky sob came from behind a pile of carpets. It was the Hindu child obediently facing towards the wall. His

'Ah! He is jealous, so jealous. I wonder if he will try to poison me again in my breakfast, and make me cook

'Because he is so fond of me. Suppose you were fond of someone, and you saw someone come, and the man

you were fond of was more pleased with him than he was with you, what would you do?'

Kim thought. Lurgan repeated the sentence slowly in the vernacular. 'I should not poison that man,' said Kim

reflectively, 'but I should beat that boy if that boy was fond of my man. But first, I would ask that boy if it

'Hearest thou?' said Lurgan Sahib to the shaking shoulders. 'The Sahib's son thinks thou art a little fool. Come

out, and next time thy heart is troubled, do not try white arsenic quite so openly. Surely the Devil Dasim was

lord of our tablecloth that day! It might have made me ill, child, and then a stranger would have guarded the

The child, heavyeyed with much weeping, crept out from behind the bale and flung himself passionately at

'I will look into the inkpools I will faithfully guard the jewels! Oh, my Father and my Mother, send him

'Not yet not yet. In a little while he will go away again. But now he is at school at a new madrissah and

thou shalt be his teacher. Play the Play of the Jewels against him. I will keep tally.'

The child dried his tears at once, and dashed to the back of the shop, whence he returned with a copper tray.

'Give me!' he said to Lurgan Sahib. 'Let them come from thy hand, for he may say that I knew them before.'

'Gently gently,' the man replied, and from a drawer under the table dealt a halfhandful of clattering trifles

'Now,' said the child, waving an old newspaper. 'Look on them as long as thou wilt, stranger. Count and, if

'When thou hast counted and handled and art sure that thou canst remember them all, I cover them with this

'Oah!' The instinct of competition waked in his breast. He bent over the tray. There were but fifteen stones on

it. 'That is easy,' he said after a minute. The child slipped the paper over the winking jewels and scribbled in a

'There are under that paper five blue stones one big, one smaller, and three small,' said Kim, all in haste.

'There are four green stones, and one with a hole in it; there is one yellow stone that I can see through, and

one like a pipestem. There are two red stones, and and I made the count fifteen, but two I have

forgotten. No! Give me time. One was of ivory, little and brownish; and and give me time...'

'Hear my count!' the child burst in, trilling with laughter. 'First, are two flawed sapphires one of two ruttees

and one of four as I should judge. The fourruttee sapphire is chipped at the edge. There is one Turkestan

turquoise, plain with black veins, and there are two inscribed one with a Name of God in gilt, and the other

being cracked across, for it came out of an old ring, I cannot read. We have now all five blue stones. Four

flawed emeralds there are, but one is drilled in two places, and one is a little carven'

'Three five five and four ruttees as I judge it. There is one piece of old greenish pipe amber, and a cut

topaz from Europe. There is one ruby of Burma, of two ruttees, without a flaw, and there is a balasruby,

flawed, of two ruttees. There is a carved ivory from China representing a rat sucking an egg; and there is last

'Huh! He knew the names of the stones,' said Kim, flushing. 'Try again! With common things such as he and I

They heaped the tray again with odds and ends gathered from the shop, and even the kitchen, and every time

'Bind my eyes let me feel once with my fingers, and even then I will leave thee openedeyed behind,' he

'If it were men or horses,' he said, 'I could do better. This playing with tweezers and knives and scissors is

'And I will see that thou art well taught,' said Lurgan Sahib, still speaking in the vernacular, 'for except my

boy here it was foolish of him to buy so much white arsenic when, if he had asked, I could have given it

except my boy here I have not in a long time met with one better worth teaching. And there are ten days more

ere thou canst return to Lucknao where they teach nothing at the long price. We shall, I think, be friends.'

They were a most mad ten days, but Kim enjoyed himself too much to reflect on their craziness. In the

morning they played the Jewel Game sometimes with veritable stones, sometimes with piles of swords and

daggers, sometimes with photographs of natives. Through the afternoons he and the Hindu boy would

mount guard in the shop, sitting dumb behind a carpetbale or a screen and watching Mr Lurgan's many and

very curious visitors. There were small Rajahs, escorts coughing in the veranda, who came to buy curiosities

such as phonographs and mechanical toys. There were ladies in search of necklaces, and men, it seemed to

Kim but his mind may have been vitiated by early training in search of the ladies; natives from

independent and feudatory Courts whose ostensible business was the repair of broken necklaces rivers of

light poured out upon the table but whose true end seemed to be to raise money for angry Maharanees or

young Rajahs. There were Babus to whom Lurgan Sahib talked with austerity and authority, but at the end of

each interview he gave them money in coined silver and currency notes. There were occasional gatherings of

longcoated theatrical natives who discussed metaphysics in English and Bengali, to Mr Lurgan's great

edification. He was always interested in religions. At the end of the day, Kim and the Hindu boy whose

name varied at Lurgan's pleasure were expected to give a detailed account of all that they had seen and

heard their view of each man's character, as shown in his face, talk, and manner, and their notions of his

real errand. After dinner, Lurgan Sahib's fancy turned more to what might be called dressingup, in which

game he took a most informing interest. He could paint faces to a marvel; with a brushdab here and a line

there changing them past recognition. The shop was full of all manner of dresses and turbans, and Kim was

apparelled variously as a young Mohammedan of good family, an oilman, and once which was a joyous

evening as the son of an Oudh landholder in the fullest of full dress. Lurgan Sahib had a hawk's eye to

detect the least flaw in the makeup; and lying on a worn teakwood couch, would explain by the halfhour

together how such and such a caste talked, or walked, or coughed, or spat, or sneezed, and, since 'hows'

matter little in this world, the 'why' of everything. The Hindu child played this game clumsily. That little

mind, keen as an icicle where tally of jewels was concerned, could not temper itself to enter another's soul;

but a demon in Kim woke up and sang with joy as he put on the changing dresses, and changed speech and

Carried away by enthusiasm, he volunteered to show Lurgan Sahib one evening how the disciples of a certain

caste of fakir, old Lahore acquaintances, begged doles by the roadside; and what sort of language he would

use to an Englishman, to a Punjabi farmer going to a fair, and to a woman without a veil. Lurgan Sahib

laughed immensely, and begged Kim to stay as he was, immobile for half an hour crosslegged,

ashsmeared, and wildeyed, in the back room. At the end of that time entered a hulking, obese Babu whose

stockinged legs shook with fat, and Kim opened on him with a shower of wayside chaff. Lurgan Sahib this

'I think,' said the Babu heavily, lighting a cigarette, 'I am of opeenion that it is most extraordinary and

effeecient performance. Except that you had told me I should have opined that that that you were pulling

my legs. How soon can he become approximately effeecient chainman? Because then I shall indent for him.'

'Then order him to be jollydam'quick. Goodnight, Lurgan.' The Babu swung out with the gait of a bogged

When they were telling over the day's list of visitors, Lurgan Sahib asked Kim who he thought the man might

'God knows!' said Kim cheerily. The tone might almost have deceived Mahbub Ali, but it failed entirely with

'I I think he will want me when I come from the school, but' confidentially, as Lurgan Sahib nodded

approval 'I do not understand how he can wear many dresses and talk many tongues.'

'Thou wilt understand many things later. He is a writer of tales for a certain Colonel. His honour is great only

in Simla, and it is noticeable that he has no name, but only a number and a letter that is a custom among us.'

'Not yet; but if a boy rose up who is now sitting here and went look, the door is open! as far as a certain

house with a red painted veranda, behind that which was the old theatre in the Lower Bazar, and whispered

through the shutters: "Hurree Chunder Mookerjee bore the bad news of last month", that boy might take away

'Good. And for how long might such a boy live after the news was told?' He smiled merrily at Lurgan's

'Ah! That is to be well thought of. Perhaps if he were very clever, he might live out the day but not the

'Eighty perhaps a hundred perhaps a hundred and fifty rupees; but the pay is the least he might be almost

as great as Mahbub Ali! The housetops of his search should be half India; he would follow Kings and

Ministers, as in the old days he had followed vakils and lawyers' touts across Lahore city for Mahbub Ali's

sake. Meantime, there was the present, and not at all unpleasant, fact of St Xavier's immediately before him.

There would be new boys to condescend to, and there would be tales of holiday adventures to hear. Young

Martin, son of the teaplanter at Manipur, had boasted that he would go to war, with a rifle, against the

That might be, but it was certain young Martin had not been blown half across the forecourt of a Patiala

palace by an explosion of fireworks; nor had he... Kim fell to telling himself the story of his own adventures

through the last three months. He could paralyse St Xavier's even the biggest boys who shaved with the

recital, were that permitted. But it was, of course, out of the question. There would be a price upon his head

in good time, as Lurgan Sahib had assured him; and if he talked foolishly now, not only would that price

never be set, but Colonel part of the work. From time to time, God causes men to be born and thou art one

of them who have a lust to go abroad at the risk of their lives and discover news today it may be of faroff

things, tomorrow of some hidden mountain, and the next day of some nearby men who have done a

foolishness against the State. These souls are very few; and of these few, not more than ten are of the best.

Among these ten I count the Babu, and that is curious. How great, therefore, and desirable must be a business

'True. But the days go slowly for me. I am yet a boy, and it is only within two months I learned to write

Angrezi. Even now I cannot read it well. And there are yet years and years and long years before I can be

'Have patience, Friend of all the World' Kim started at the title. 'Would I had a few of the years that so irk

thee. I have proved thee in several small ways. This will not be forgotten when I make my report to the

'By Jove! O'Hara, I think there is a great deal in you; but you must not become proud and you must not talk.

You must go back to Lucknow and be a good little boy and mind your book, as the English say, and perhaps,

next holidays if you care, you can come back to me!' Kim's face fell. 'Oh, I mean if you like. I know where

Four days later a seat was booked for Kim and his small trunk at the rear of a Kalka tonga. His companion

was the whalelike Babu, who, with a fringed shawl wrapped round his head, and his fat openwork

stockinged left leg tucked under him, shivered and grunted in the morning chill.

'How comes it that this man is one of us?' thought Kim considering the jelly back as they jolted down the

road; and the reflection threw him into most pleasant daydreams. Lurgan Sahib had given him five rupees

a splendid sum as well as the assurance of his protection if he worked. Unlike Mahbub, Lurgan Sahib had

spoken most explicitly of the reward that would follow obedience, and Kim was content. If only, like the

Babu, he could enjoy the dignity of a letter and a number and a price upon his head! Some day he would be

all that and more. Some day he might be almost as great as Mahbub Ali! The housetops of his search should

be half India; he would follow Kings and Ministers, as in the old days he had followed vakils and lawyers'

touts across Lahore city for Mahbub Ali's sake. Meantime, there was the present, and not at all unpleasant,

fact of St Xavier's immediately before him. There would be new boys to condescend to, and there would be

tales of holiday adventures to hear. Young Martin, son of the teaplanter at Manipur, had boasted that he

That might be, but it was certain young Martin had not been blown half across the forecourt of a Patiala

palace by an explosion of fireworks; nor had he... Kim fell to telling himself the story of his own adventures

through the last three months. He could paralyse St Xavier's even the biggest boys who shaved with the

recital, were that permitted. But it was, of course, out of the question. There would be a price upon his head

in good time, as Lurgan Sahib had assured him; and if he talked foolishly now, not only would that price

never be set, but Colonel Creighton would cast him off and he would be left to the wrath of Lurgan Sahib

'So I should lose Delhi for the sake of a fish,' was his proverbial philosophy. It behoved him to forget his

holidays (there would always remain the fun of inventing imaginary adventures) and, as Lurgan Sahib had

said, to work. Of all the boys hurrying back to St Xavier's, from Sukkur in the sands to Galle beneath the

palms, none was so filled with virtue as Kimball O'Rara, jiggeting down to Umballa behind Hurree Chunder

Mookerjee, whose name on the books of one section of the Ethnological Survey was R.

And if additional spur were needed, the Babu supplied it. After a huge meal at Kalka, he spoke

uninterruptedly. Was Kim going to school? Then he, an M A of Calcutta University, would explain the

advantages of education. There were marks to be gained by due attention to Latin and Wordsworth's

Excursion (all this was Greek to Kim). French, too was vital, and the best was to be picked up in

Chandernagore a few miles from Calcutta. Also a man might go far, as he himself had done, by strict

attention to plays called Lear and Julius Caesar, both much in demand by examiners. Lear was not so full of

historical allusions as Julius Caesar; the book cost four annas, but could be bought secondhand in Bow

Bazar for two. Still more important than Wordsworth, or the eminent authors, Burke and Hare, was the art

and science of mensuration. A boy who had passed his examination in these branches for which, by the

way, there were no crambooks could, by merely marching over a country with a compass and a level and

a straight eye, carry away a picture of that country which might be sold for large sums in coined silver. But as

it was occasionally inexpedient to carry about measuringchains a boy would do well to know the precise

length of his own footpace, so that when he was deprived of what Hurree Chunder called adventitious aids'

he might still tread his distances. To keep count of thousands of paces, Hurree Chunder's experience had

shown him nothing more valuable than a rosary of eightyone or a hundred and eight beads, for 'it was

divisible and subdivisible into many multiples and submultiples'. Through the volleying drifts of English,

Kim caught the general trend of the talk, and it interested him very much. Here was a new craft that a man

could tuck away in his head and by the look of the large wide world unfolding itself before him, it seemed

Said the Babu when he had talked for an hour and a half 'I hope some day to enjoy your offeecial

acquaintance. Ad interim, if I may be pardoned that expression, I shall give you this betelbox, which is

highly valuable article and cost me two rupees only four years ago.' It was a cheap, heartshaped brass thing

with three compartments for carrying the eternal betelnut, lime and panleaf; but it was filled with little

tabloidbottles. 'That is reward of merit for your performance in character of that holy man. You see, you are

so young you think you will last for ever and not take care of your body. It is great nuisance to go sick in the

middle of business. I am fond of drugs myself, and they are handy to cure poor people too. These are good

Departmental drugs quinine and so on. I give it you for souvenir. Now goodbye. I have urgent private

He slipped out noiselessly as a cat, on the Umballa road, hailed a passing cart and jingled away, while Kim,

The record of a boy's education interests few save his parents, and, as you know, Kim was an orphan. It is

written in the books of St Xavier's in Partibus that a report of Kim's progress was forwarded at the end of

each term to Colonel Creighton and to Father Victor, from whose hands duly came the money for his

schooling. It is further recorded in the same books that he showed a great aptitude for mathematical studies as

well as mapmaking, and carried away a prize (The Life of Lord Lawrence, treecalf, two vols., nine rupees,

eight annas) for proficiency therein; and the same term played in St Xavier's eleven against the Alighur

Mohammedan College, his age being fourteen years and ten months. He was also revaccinated (from which

we may assume that there had been another epidemic of smallpox at Lucknow) about the same time. Pencil

notes on the edge of an old musterroll record that he was punished several times for 'conversing with

improper persons', and it seems that he was once sentenced to heavy pains for 'absenting himself for a day in

the company of a street beggar'. That was when he got over the gate and pleaded with the lama through a

whole day down the banks of the Gumti to accompany him on the Road next holidays for one month for a

little week; and the lama set his face as a flint against it, averring that the time had not yet come. Kim's

business, said the old man as they ate cakes together, was to get all the wisdom of the Sahibs and then he

would see. The Hand of Friendship must in some way have averted the Whip of Calamity, for six weeks later

Kim seems to have passed an examination in elementary surveying 'with great credit', his age being fifteen

years and eight months. From this date the record is silent. His name does not appear in the year's batch of

those who entered for the subordinate Survey of India, but against it stand the words 'removed on

Several times in those three years, cast up at the Temple of the Tirthankars in Benares the lama, a little

thinner and a shade yellower, if that were possible, but gentle and untainted as ever. Sometimes it was from

the South that he came from south of Tuticorin, whence the wonderful fireboats go to Ceylon where are

priests who know Pali; sometimes it was from the wet green West and the thousand cottonfactory chimneys

that ring Bombay; and once from the North, where he had doubled back eight hundred miles to talk for a day

with the Keeper of the Images in the Wonder House. He would stride to his cell in the cool, cut marble the

priests of the Temple were good to the old man, wash off the dust of travel, make prayer, and depart for

Lucknow, well accustomed now to the way of the rail, in a thirdclass carriage. Returning, it was noticeable,

as his friend the Seeker pointed out to the headpriest, that he ceased for a while to mourn the loss of his

River, or to draw wondrous pictures of the Wheel of Life, but preferred to talk of the beauty and wisdom of a

certain mysterious chela whom no man of the Temple had ever seen. Yes, he had followed the traces of the

Blessed Feet throughout all India. (The Curator has still in his possession a most marvellous account of his

wanderings and meditations.) There remained nothing more in life but to find the River of the Arrow. Yet it

was shown to him in dreams that it was a matter not to be undertaken with any hope of success unless that

seeker had with him the one chela appointed to bring the event to a happy issue, and versed in great wisdom

such wisdom as whitehaired Keepers of Images possess. For example (here came out the snuffgourd, and

'Long and long ago, when Devadatta was King of Benares let all listen to theTataka! an elephant was

captured for a time by the king's hunters and ere he broke free, beringed with a grievous legiron. This he

strove to remove with hate and frenzy in his heart, and hurrying up and down the forests, besought his

brotherelephants to wrench it asunder. One by one, with their strong trunks, they tried and failed. At the last

they gave it as their opinion that the ring was not to be broken by any bestial power. And in a thicket,

newborn, wet with moisture of birth, lay a dayold calf of the herd whose mother had died. The fettered

elephant, forgetting his own agony, said: "If I do not help this suckling it will perish under our feet." So he

stood above the young thing, making his legs buttresses against the uneasily moving herd; and he begged

milk of a virtuous cow, and the calf throve, and the ringed elephant was the calf's guide and defence. Now the

days of an elephant let all listen to the Tataka! are thirtyfive years to his full strength, and through

thirtyfive Rains the ringed elephant befriended the younger, and all the while the fetter ate into the flesh.

'Then one day the young elephant saw the halfburied iron, and turning to the elder said: "What is this?" "It is

even my sorrow," said he who had befriended him. Then that other put out his trunk and in the twinkling of

an eyelash abolished the ring, saying: "The appointed time has come." So the virtuous elephant who had

waited temperately and done kind acts was relieved, at the appointed time, by the very calf whom he had

turned aside to cherish let all listen to the Tataka! for the Elephant was Ananda, and the Calf that broke the

Then he would shake his head benignly, and over the everclicking rosary point out how free that

elephantcalf was from the sin of pride. He was as humble as a chela who, seeing his master sitting in the

dust outside the Gates of Learning, overleapt the gates (though they were locked) and took his master to his

heart in the presence of the proudstomached city. Rich would be the reward of such a master and such a

So did the lama speak, coming and going across India as softly as a bat. A sharptongued old woman in a

house among the fruittrees behind Saharunpore honoured him as the woman honoured the prophet, but his

chamber was by no means upon the wall. In an apartment of the forecourt overlooked by cooing doves he

would sit, while she laid aside her useless veil and chattered of spirits and fiends of Kulu, of grandchildren

unborn, and of the freetongued brat who had talked to her in the restingplace. Once, too, he strayed alone

from the Grand Trunk Road below Umballa to the very village whose priest had tried to drug him; but the

kind Heaven that guards lamas sent him at twilight through the crops, absorbed and unsuspicious, to the

Rissaldar's door. Here was like to have been a grave misunderstanding, for the old soldier asked him why the

'He sat in that corner telling a hundred merry tales five nights ago,' his host insisted. 'True, he vanished

somewhat suddenly in the dawn after foolish talk with my granddaughter. He grows apace, but he is the same

'Yes and no,' the lama replied. 'We we have not altogether parted, but the time is not ripe that we should

'All one but if it were not the boy how did he come to speak so continually of thee?'

'Sweet words an hundred thousand that thou art his father and mother and such all. Pity that he does not

This news amazed the lama, who did not then know how religiously Kim kept to the contract made with

'There is no holding the young pony from the game,' said the horse dealer when the Colonel pointed out that

vagabonding over India in holiday time was absurd. 'If permission be refused to go and come as he chooses,

he will make light of the refusal. Then who is to catch him? Colonel Sahib, only once in a thousand years is a

Lurgan Sahib did not use as direct speech, but his advice tallied with Mahbub's; and the upshot was good for

Kim. He knew better now than to leave Lucknow city in native garb, and if Mahbub were anywhere within

reach of a letter, it was to Mahbub's camp he headed, and made his change under the Pathan's wary eye.

Could the little Survey paintbox that he used for maptinting in term time have found a tongue to tell of

holiday doings, he might have been expelled. Once Mahbub and he went together as far as the beautiful city

of Bombay, with three truckloads of tramhorses, and Mahbub nearly melted when Kim proposed a sail in a

dhow across the Indian Ocean to buy Gulf Arabs, which, he understood from a hanger on of the dealer

He dipped his hand into the dish with that great trader when Mahbub and a few coreligionists were invited

to a big Haj dinner. They came back by way of Karachi by sea, when Kim took his first experience of

seasickness sitting on the forehatch of a coasting steamer, well persuaded he had been poisoned. The

Babu's famous drugbox proved useless, though Kim had restocked it at Bombay. Mahbub had business at

Quetta, and there Kim, as Mahbub admitted, earned his keep, and perhaps a little over, by spending four

curious days as scullion in the house of a fat Commissariat sergeant, from whose officebox, in an auspicious

moment, he removed a little vellum ledger which he copied out it seemed to deal entirely with cattle and

camel sales by moonlight, lying behind an outhouse, all through one hot night. Then he returned the ledger

to its place, and, at Mahbub's word, left that service unpaid, rejoining him six miles down the road, the clean

'That soldier is a small fish,' Mahbub Ali explained, 'but in time we shall catch the larger one. He only sells

oxen at two prices one for himself and one for the Government which I do not think is a sin.'

Then he would have been frightened, and he would have told his master. Then we should miss, perhaps, a

great number of new rifles which seek their way up from Quetta to the North. The Game is so large that one

'Oho!' said Kim, and held his tongue. That was in the monsoon holidays, after he had taken the prize for

mathematics. The Christmas holidays he spent deducting ten days for private amusements with Lurgan

Sahib, where he sat for the most part in front of a roaring woodfire Jakko road was four feet deep in snow

that year and the small Hindu had gone away to be married helped Lurgan to thread pearls. He made

Kim learn whole chapters of the Koran by heart, till he could deliver them with the very roll and cadence of a

mullah. Moreover, he told Kim the names and properties of many native drugs, as well as the runes proper to

recite when you administer them. And in the evenings he wrote charms on parchment elaborate pentagrams

crowned with the names of devils Murra, and Awan the Companion of Kings all fantastically written in

the corners. More to the point, he advised Kim as to the care of his own body, the cure of feverfits, and

simple remedies of the Road. A week before it was time to go down, Colonel Creighton Sahib this was

unfair sent Kim a written examination~paper that concerned itself solely with rods and chains and links and

Next holidays he was out with Mahbub, and here, by the way, he nearly died of thirst, plodding through the

sand on a camel to the mysterious city of Bikanir, where the wells are four hundred feet deep, and lined

throughout with camelbone. It was not an amusing trip from Kim's point of view, because in defiance of

the contract the Colonel ordered him to make a map of that wild, walled city; and since Mohammedan

horseboys and pipetenders are not expected to drag Surveychains round the capital of an independent

Native State, Kim was forced to pace all his distances by means of a bead rosary. He used the compass for

bearings as occasion served after dark chiefly, when the camels had been fed and by the help of his little

Survey paintbox of six colourcakes and three brushes, he achieved something not remotely unlike the city

of Jeysulmir. Mahbub laughed a great deal, and advised him to make up a written report as well; and in the

back of the big accountbook that lay under the flap of Mahbub's pet saddle Kim fell to work..

'It must hold everything that thou hast seen or touched or considered. Write as though the JungiLat Sahib

'Folly! Remember how few and bad were the wells in the sand. Not a thousand thirsty men could come near

'Then write that down also all the old breaches in the walls and whence the firewood is cut and what is

the temper and disposition of the King. I stay here till all my horses are sold. I will hire a room by the

The report in its unmistakable St Xavier's running script, and the brown, yellow, and lakedaubed map, was

on hand a few years ago (a careless clerk filed it with the rough notes of E's second Seistan survey), but by

now the pencil characters must be almost illegible. Kim translated it, sweating under the light of an oillamp,

'I knew it would be worthy a dress of honour, and so I made one ready,' he said, smiling. 'Were I Amir of

Afghanistan (and some day we may see him), I would fill thy mouth with gold.' He laid the garments

formally at Kim's feet. There was a goldembroidered Peshawur turbancap, rising to a cone, and a big

turbancloth ending in a broad fringe of gold. There was a Delhi embroidered waistcoat to slip over a milky

white shirt, fastening to the right, ample and flowing; green pyjamas with twisted silk waiststring; and that

nothing might be lacking, russialeather slippers, smelling divinely, with arrogantly curled tips.

'Upon a Wednesday, and in the morning, to put on new clothes is auspicious,' said Mahbub solemnly. 'But we

He capped all the splendour, that was taking Kim's delighted breath away, with a motherofpearl,

'I had thought of a smaller bore, but reflected that this takes Government bullets. A man can always come by

those especially across the Border. Stand up and let me look.' He clapped Kim on the shoulder. 'May you

never be tired, Pathan! Oh, the hearts to be broken! Oh, the eyes under the eyelashes, looking sideways!'

Kim turned about, pointed his toes, stretched, and felt mechanically for the moustache that was just

beginning. Then he stooped towards Mahbub's feet to make proper acknowledgment with fluttering, quick

patting hands; his heart too full for words. Mahbub forestalled and embraced him.

'My son, said he, 'what need of words between us? But is not the little gun a delight? All six cartridges come

out at one twist. It is borne in the bosom next the skin, which, as it were, keeps it oiled. Never put it

'Hai mai!' said Kim ruefully. 'If a Sahib kills a man he is hanged in the jail.'

'True: but one pace beyond the Border, men are wiser. Put it away; but fill it first. Of what use is a gun

'When I go back to the madrissah I must return it. They do not allow little guns. Thou wilt keep it for me?'

'Son, I am wearied of that madrissah, where they take the best years of a man to teach him what he can only

learn upon the Road. The folly of the Sahibs has neither top nor bottom. No matter. Maybe thy written report

shall save thee further bondage; and God He knows we need men more and more in the Game.'

They marched, jawbound against blowing sand, across the salt desert to Jodhpur, where Mahbub and his

handsome nephew Habib Ullah did much trading; and then sorrowfully, in European clothes, which he was

fast outgrowing, Kim went secondclass to St Xavier's. Three weeks later, Colonel Creighton, pricing

Tibetan ghostdaggers at Lurgan's shop, faced Mahbub Ali openly mutinous. Lurgan Sahib operated as

'The pony is made finished mouthed and paced, Sahib! From now on, day by day, he will lose his

manners if he is kept at tricks. Drop the rein on his back and let go,' said the horsedealer. 'We need him.'

'You impenitent old heathen!' Creighton turned to Lurgan. The black beard nodded assent to the wisdom of

'I should have used him long ago,' said Lurgan. 'The younger the better. That is why I always have my really

valuable jewels watched by a child. You sent him to me to try. I tried him in every way: he is the only boy I

'No. Under my hand, as I told you. That has never happened before. It means that he is strong enough but

you think it skittles, Colonel Creighton to make anyone do anything he wants. And that is three years ago. I

have taught him a good deal since, Colonel Creighton. I think you waste him now.'

'Hmm! Maybe you're right. But, as you know, there is no Survey work for him at present.'

'Let him out let him go,' Mahbub interrupted. 'Who expects any colt to carry heavy weight at first? Let him

run with the caravans like our white camelcolts for luck. I would take him myself, but ,

'There is a little business where he would be most useful in the South,' said Lurgan, with peculiar suavity,

'E has that in hand,' said Creighton quickly. 'He must not go down there. Besides, he knows no Turki.'

'Only tell him the shape and the smell of the letters we want and he will bring them back,' Lurgan insisted.

It was a wrynecked matter of unauthorized and incendiary correspondence between a person who claimed to

be the ultimate authority in all matters of the Mohammedan religion throughout the world, and a younger

member of a royal house who had been brought to book for kidnapping women within British territory. The

Moslem Archbishop had been emphatic and overarrogant; the young prince was merely sulky at the

curtailment of his privileges, but there was no need he should continue a correspondence which might some

day compromise him. One letter indeed had been procured, but the finder was later found dead by the

roadside in the habit of an Arab trader, as E, taking up the work, duly reported.

These facts, and a few others not to be published, made both Mahbub and Creighton shake their heads.

'Let him go out with his Red Lama,' said the horsedealer with visible effort. 'He is fond of the old man. He

'I have had some dealings with the old man by letter,' said Colonel Creighton, smiling to himself. 'Whither

'Up and down the land, as he has these three years. He seeks a River of Healing. God's curse upon all '

Mahbub checked himself. 'He beds down at the Temple of the Tirthankars or at Buddh Gaya when he is in

from the Road. Then he goes to see the boy at the madrissah, as we know for the boy was punished for it

twice or thrice. He is quite mad, but a peaceful man. I have met him. The Babu also has had dealings with

him. We have watched him for three years. Red Lamas are not so common in Hind that one loses track.'

'Babus are very curious,' said Lurgan meditatively. 'Do you know what Hurree Babu really wants? He wants

to be made a member of the Royal Society by taking ethnological notes. I tell you, I tell him about the lama

everything which Mahbub and the boy have told me. Hurree Babu goes down to Benares at his own

'I don't,' said Creighton briefly. He had paid Hurree's travelling expenses, out of a most lively curiosity to

'And he applies to the lama for information on lamaism, and devil dances, and spells and charms, several

times in these few years. Holy Virgin! I could have told him all that yeears ago. I think Hurree Babu is

getting too old for the Road. He likes better to collect manners and customs information. Yes, he wants to be

'Oh, very indeed we have had some pleasant evenings at my little place but I think it would be waste to

'Not for a first experience. How does that strike you, Mahbub? Let the boy run with the lama for six months.

'He has it already, Sahib as a fish controls the water he swims in. But for every reason it will be well to

'Very good, then,' said Creighton, half to himself. 'He can go with the lama, and if Hurree Babu cares to keep

an eye on them so much the better. He won't lead the boy into any danger as Mahbub would. Curious his

wish to be an F R S. Very human, too. He is best on the Ethnological side Hurree.'

No money and no preferment would have drawn Creighton from his work on the Indian Survey, but deep in

his heart also lay the ambition to write 'F R S' after his name. Honours of a sort he knew could be obtained by

ingenuity and the help of friends, but, to the best of his belief, nothing save work papers representing a life

of it took a man into the Society which he had bombarded for years with monographs on strange Asiatic

cults and unknown customs. Nine men out of ten would flee from a Royal Society soiree in extremity of

boredom; but Creighton was the tenth, and at times his soul yearned for the crowded rooms in easy London

where silverhaired, bald headed gentlemen who know nothing of the Army move among spectroscopic

experiments, the lesser plants of the frozen tundras, electric flightmeasuring machines, and apparatus for

slicing into fractional millimetres the left eye of the female mosquito. By all right and reason, it was the

Royal Geographical that should have appealed to him, but men are as chancy as children in their choice of

playthings. So Creighton smiled, and thought the better of Hurree Babu, moved by like desire.

'How soon can we get the colt from the stable?' said the horse dealer, reading his eyes.

'Hmm! If I withdraw him by order now what will he do, think you? I have never before assisted at the

'He will come to me,' said Mahbub promptly. 'Lurgan Sahib and I will prepare him for the Road.'

'So be it, then. For six months he shall run at his choice. But who will be his sponsor?'

Lurgan slightly inclined his head. 'He will not tell anything, if that is what you are afraid of, Colonel

'Yees; but first, he has nothing to tell; and secondly, he knows what would happen. Also, he is very fond of

One advantage of the Secret Service is that it has no worrying audit. That Service is ludicrously starved, of

course, but the funds are administered by a few men who do not call for vouchers or present itemized

accounts. Mahbub's eyes lighted with almost a Sikh's love of money. Even Lurgan's impassive face changed.

He considered the years to come when Kim would have been entered and made to the Great Game that never

ceases day and night, throughout India. He foresaw honour and credit in the mouths of a chosen few, coming

to him from his pupil. Lurgan Sahib had made E what E was, out of a bewildered, impertinent, lying, little

But the joy of these masters was pale and smoky beside the joy of Kim when St Xavier's Head called him

'I understand, O'Hara, that he has found you a place as an assistant chainman in the Canal Department: that

comes of taking up mathematics. It is great luck for you, for you are only sixteen; but of course you

understand that you do not become pukka [permanent] till you have passed the autumn examination. So you

must not think you are going out into the world to enjoy yourself, or that your fortune is made. There is a

great deal of hard work before you. Only, if you succeed in becoming pukka, you can rise, you know, to four

hundred and fifty a month.' Whereat the Principal gave him much good advice as to his conduct, and his

manners, and his morals; and others, his elders, who had not been wafted into billets, talked as only

AngloIndian lads can, of favouritism and corruption. Indeed, young Cazalet, whose father was a pensioner

at Chunar, hinted very broadly that Colonel Creighton's interest in Kim was directly paternal; and Kim,

instead of retaliating, did not even use language. He was thinking of the immense fun to come, of Mahbub's

letter of the day before, all neatly written in English, making appointment for that afternoon in a house the

Said Kim to Mahbub in Lucknow railway station that evening, above the luggagescales: 'I feared lest at the

last, the roof would fall upon me and cheat me. It is indeed all finished, O my father?'

Mahbub snapped his fingers to show the utterness of that end, and his eyes blazed like red coals.

'Softly! A halfyear, to run without heelropes. I begged that much from Colonel Creighton Sahib. At twenty

'I will pay thee dustoorie [commission] on my pay for three months,' said Kim gravely. 'Yea, two rupees a

month. But first we must get rid of these.' He plucked his thin linen trousers and dragged at his collar. 'I have

brought with me all that I need on the Road. My trunk has gone up to Lurgan Sahib's.'

'I go North again, upon the Great Game. What else? Is thy mind still set on following old Red Hat?'

'Do not forget he made me that I am though he did not know it. Year by year, he sent the money that taught

'I would have done as much had it struck my thick head,' Mahbub growled. 'Come away. The lamps are lit

On the way thither, Mahbub gave him much the same sort of advice as his mother gave to Lemuel, and

curiously enough, Mahbub was exact to point out how Huneefa and her likes destroyed kings.

'And I remember,' he quoted maliciously, 'one who said, "Trust a snake before an harlot, and an harlot before

a Pathan, Mahbub Ali." Now, excepting as to Pathans, of whom I am one, all that is true. Most true is it in the

Great Game, for it is by means of women that all plans come to ruin and we lie out in the dawning with our

'Then why ?' Kim paused before a filthy staircase that climbed to the warm darkness of an upper chamber,

in the ward that is behind Azim Ullah's tobaccoshop. Those who know it call it The Birdcage it is so full

The room, with its dirty cushions and halfsmoked hookahs, smelt abominably of stale tobacco. In one

corner lay a huge and shapeless woman clad in greenish gauzes, and decked, brow, nose, ear, neck, wrist,

arm, waist, and ankle with heavy native jewellery. When she turned it was like the clashing of copper pots. A

lean cat in the balcony outside the window mewed hungrily. Kim checked, bewildered, at the doorcurtain.

'Is that the new stuff, Mahbub?' said Huneefa lazily, scarce troubling to remove the mouthpiece from her lips.

'O Buktanoos!' like most of her kind, she swore by the Djinns 'O Buktanoos! He is very good to look

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

'I have heard that talk since my Sixth Day,' he replied, squatting by the light. 'Whither does it lead?'

'To protection. Tonight we change thy colour. This sleeping under roofs has blanched thee like an almond.

But Huneefa has the secret of a colour that catches. No painting of a day or two. Also, we fortify thee against

the chances of the Road. That is my gift to thee, my son. Take out all metals on thee and lay them here. Make

Kim dragged forth his compass, Survey paintbox, and the newfilled medicinebox. They had all

The woman rose slowly and moved with her hands a little spread before her. Then Kim saw that she was

blind. 'No, no,' she muttered, 'the Pathan speaks truth my colour does not go in a week or a month, and

'When one is far off and alone, it would not be well to grow blotched and leprous of a sudden,' said Mahbub.

'When thou wast with me I could oversee the matter. Besides, a Pathan is a fairskin. Strip to the waist now

and look how thou art whitened.' Huneefa felt her way back from an inner room. 'It is no matter, she cannot

The dyestuff showed blue and gummy. Kim experimented on the back of his wrist, with a dab of

'No, no,' she cried, 'the thing is not done thus, but with the proper ceremonies. The colouring is the least part.

'Tadoo? [magic],'said Kim, with a half start. He did not like the white, sightless eyes. Mahbub's hand on his

He could not see what the woman was about, but heard the dishclash of her jewellery for many minutes. A

match lit up the darkness; he caught the wellknown purr and fizzle of grains of incense. Then the room

filled with smoke heavy aromatic, and stupefying. Through growing drowse he heard the names of devils

of Zulbazan, Son of Eblis, who lives in bazars and paraos, making all the sudden lewd wickedness of wayside

halts; of Dulhan, invisible about mosques, the dweller among the slippers of the faithful, who hinders folk

from their prayers; and Musboot, Lord of lies and panic. Huneefa, now whispering in his ear, now talking as

from an immense distance, touched him with horrible soft fingers, but Mahbub's grip never shifted from his

'Allah! How he fought! We should never have done it but for the drugs. That was his white blood, I take it,'

said Mahbub testily. 'Go on with the dawut [invocation]. Give him full Protection.'

'O Hearer! Thou that hearest with ears, be present. Listen, O Hearer!' Huneefa moaned, her dead eyes turned

>From the outer balcony, a ponderous figure raised a round bullet head and coughed nervously.

'Do not interrupt this ventriloquial necromanciss, my friend,' it said in English. 'I opine that it is very

'..........I will lay a plot for their ruin! O Prophet, bear with the unbelievers. Let them alone awhile!' Huneefa's

face, turned to the northward, worked horribly, and it was as though voices from the ceiling answered her.

Hurree Babu returned to his notebook, balanced on the windowsill, but his hand shook. Huneefa, in some

sort of drugged ecstasy, wrenched herself to and fro as she sat crosslegged by Kim's still head, and called

upon devil after devil, in the ancient order of the ritual, binding them to avoid the boy's every action.

'With Him are the keys of the Secret Things! None knoweth them besides Himself He knoweth that which is

in the dry land and in the sea!' Again broke out the unearthly whistling responses.

'I I apprehend it is not at all malignant in its operation?' said the Babu, watching the throatmuscles quiver

and jerk as Huneefa spoke with tongues. 'It it is not likely that she has killed the boy? If so, I decline to be

'Babuji,' said Mahbub in the vernacular. 'I have no regard for the devils of Hind, but the Sons of Eblis are far

otherwise, and whether they be jumalee [wellaffected] or jullalee [terrible) they love not Kafirs.'

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

Huneefa's crisis passed, as these things must, in a paroxysm of howling, with a touch of froth at the lips. She

'Wah! That work is done. May the boy be better for it; and Huneefa is surely a mistress of dawut. Help haul

'How am I to fear the absolutely nonexistent?' said Hurree Babu, talking English to reassure himself. It is an

awful thing still to dread the magic that you contemptuously investigate to collect folklore for the Royal

Mahbub chuckled. He had been out with Hurree on the Road ere now. 'Let us finish the colouring,' said he.

'The boy is well protected if if the Lords of the Air have ears to hear. I am a Sufi [free thinker), but when

one can get blindsides of a woman, a stallion, or a devil, why go round to invite a kick? Set him upon the

way, Babu, and see that old Red Hat does not lead him beyond our reach. I must get back to my horses.'

About third cockcrow, Kim woke after a sleep of thousands of years. Huneefa, in her corner, snored heavily,

'I hope you were not frightened,' said an oily voice at his elbow. 'I superintended entire operation, which was

'And also I had honour to bring down from Lurgan your present costume. I am not in the habit offeecially of

carrying such gauds to subordinates, but' he giggled 'your case is noted as exceptional on the books. I

Kim yawned and stretched himself. It was good to turn and twist within loose clothes once again.

'What is this?' He looked curiously at the heavy dufflestuff loaded with the scents of the far North.

'Oho! That is inconspicuous dress of chela attached to service of lamaistic lama. Complete in every

particular,' said Hurree Babu, rolling into the balcony to clean his teeth at a goglet. 'I am of opeenion it is not

your old gentleman's precise releegion, but rather subvariant of same. I have contributed rejected notes To

Whom It May Concern: Asiatic Quarterly Review on these subjects. Now it is curious that the old gentleman

Hurree Babu held up his hand to show he was engaged in the prescribed rites that accompany toothcleaning

and such things among decently bred Bengalis. Then he recited in English an AryaSomaj prayer of a

'Oah yes. I have met him several times at Benares, and also at Buddh Gaya, to interrogate him on releegious

Huneefa stirred in her sleep, and Hurree Babu jumped nervously to the copper incenseburner, all black and

discoloured in morning light, rubbed a finger in the accumulated lampblack, and drew it diagonally across

'I will set thee on thy way to Benares, if thou goest thither, and tell thee what must be known by Us.'

'I go. At what hour runs the terain?' He rose to his feet, looked round the desolate chamber and at the

yellowwax face of Huneefa as the low sun stole across the floor. 'Is there money to be paid that witch?'

'No. She has charmed thee against all devils and all dangers in the name of her devils. It was Mahbub's

desire.' In English: 'He is highly obsolete, I think, to indulge in such supersteetion. Why, it is all ventriloquy.

Kim snapped his fingers mechanically to avert whatever evil Mahbub, he knew, meditated none might

have crept in through Huneefa's ministrations; and Hurree giggled once more. But as he crossed the room he

was careful not to step in Huneefa's blotched, squat shadow on the boards. Witches when their time is on

'Now you must well listen,' said the Babu when they were in the fresh air. 'Part of these ceremonies which we

witnessed they include supply of effeecient amulet to those of our Department. If you feel in your neck you

will find one small silver amulet, verree cheap. That is ours. Do you understand?'

'Huneefa she makes them for two rupees twelve annas with oh, all sorts of exorcisms. They are quite

common, except they are partially black enamel, and there is a paper inside each one full of names of local

saints and such things. Thatt is Huneefa's lookout, you see? Huneefa makes them onlee for us, but in case

she does not, when we get them we put in, before issue, one small piece of turquoise. Mr Lurgan he gives

them. There is no other source of supply; but it was me invented all this. It is strictly unoffeecial of course,

but convenient for subordinates. Colonel Creighton he does not know. He is European. The turquoise is

wrapped in the paper . . . Yes, that is road to railway station . . . Now suppose you go with the lama, or with

me, I hope, some day, or with Mahbub. Suppose we get into a dam'tight place. I am a fearful man most

fearful but I tell you I have been in dam'tight places more than hairs on my head. You say: "I am Son of

'That is all raight. I am only Babu showing off my English to you. All we Babus talk English to show off;'

said Hurree, flinging his shouldercloth jauntily. 'As I was about to say, "Son of the Charm" means that you

may be member of the Sat Bhai the Seven Brothers, which is Hindi and Tantric. It is popularly supposed to

be extinct Society, but I have written notes to show it is still extant. You see, it is all my invention. Verree

good. Sat Bhai has many members, and perhaps before they jollywellcutyourthroat they may give you

just a chance of life. That is useful, anyhow. And moreover, these foolish natives if they are not too excited

they always stop to think before they kill a man who says he belongs to any speecific organization. You

see? You say then when you are in tight place, "I am Son of the Charm", and you get perhaps ah your

second wind. That is only in extreme instances, or to open negotiations with a stranger. Can you quite see?

Verree good. But suppose now, I, or any one of the Department, come to you dressed quite different. You

would not know me at all unless I choose, I bet you. Some day I will prove it. I come as Ladakhi trader oh,

anything and I say to you: "You want to buy precious stones?" You say: "Do I look like a man who buys

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

'Of course it is. You say: "Let me see the tarkeean." Then I say: "It was cooked by a woman, and perhaps it is

bad for your caste." Then you say: "There is no caste when men go to look for tarkeean." You stop a little

between those words, "to look". That is thee whole secret. The little stop before the words.'

'That is all right. Then I will show you my turquoise if there is time, and then you know who I am, and then

we exchange views and documents and thoseall things. And so it is with any other man of us. We talk

sometimes about turquoises and sometimes about tarkeean, but always with that little stop in the words. It is

verree easy. First, "Son of the Charm", if you are in a tight place. Perhaps that may help you perhaps not.

Then what I have told you about the tarkeean, if you want to transact offeecial business with a strange man.

Of course, at present, you have no offeecial business. You are ah ha! supernumerary on probation. Quite

unique specimen. If you were Asiatic of birth you might be employed right off; but this halfyear of leave is

to make you de~Englishized, you see? The lama he expects you, because I have demioffeecially informed

him you have passed all your examinations, and will soon obtain Government appointment. Oh ho! You are

on actingallowance, you see: so if you are called upon to help Sons of the Charm mind you jollywell try.

Now I shall say goodbye, my dear fellow, and I hope you ah will come out topside all raight.'

Hurree Babu stepped back a pace or two into the crowd at the entrance of Lucknow station and was gone.

Kim drew a deep breath and hugged himself all over. The nickelplated revolver he could feel in the bosom

of his sadcoloured robe, the amulet was on his neck; begginggourd, rosary, and ghostdagger (Mr Lurgan

had forgotten nothing) were all to hand, with medicine, paintbox, and compass, and in a worn old

pursebelt embroidered with porcupine quill patterns lay a month's pay. Kings could be no richer. He

bought sweetmeats in a leafcup from a Hindu trader, and ate them with glad rapture till a policeman ordered

'Now am I alone all alone,' he thought. 'In all India is no one so alone as I! If I die today, who shall bring the

news and to whom? If I live and God is good, there will be a price upon my head, for I am a Son of the

A very few white people, but many Asiatics, can throw themselves into a mazement as it were by repeating

their own names over and over again to themselves, letting the mind go free upon speculation as to what is

called personal identity. When one grows older, the power, usually, departs, but while it lasts it may descend

He squatted in a corner of the clanging waitingroom, rapt from all other thoughts; hands folded in lap, and

pupils contracted to pin points. In a minute in another halfsecond he felt he would arrive at the solution

of the tremendous puzzle; but here, as always happens, his mind dropped away from those heights with a rush

A longhaired Hindu bairagi [holy man], who had just bought a ticket, halted before him at that moment and

'I also have lost it,' he said sadly. 'It is one of the Gates to the Way, but for me it has been shut many years.'

'Thou wast wondering there in thy spirit what manner of thing thy soul might be. The seizure came of a

'There are no Gods there. I have proved them. I go to Prayag [Allahabad] for the fifth time seeking the

'I too am a Seeker,' said Kim, using one of the lama's pet words. 'Though' he forgot his Northern dress for

The old fellow slipped the bairagi's crutch under his armpit and sat down on a patch of ruddy leopard's skin as

'Go in hope, little brother,' he said. 'It is a long road to the feet of the One; but thither do we all travel.'

Kim did not feel so lonely after this, and ere he had sat out twenty miles in the crowded compartment, was

cheering his neighbours with a string of most wonderful yarns about his own and his master's magical gifts.

Benares struck him as a peculiarly filthy city, though it was pleasant to find how his cloth was respected. At

least onethird of the population prays eternally to some group or other of the many million deities, and so

reveres every sort of holy man. Kim was guided to the Temple of the Tirthankars, about a mile outside the

city, near Sarnath, by a chancemet Punjabi farmer a Kamboh from Jullundurway who had appealed in

vain to every God of his homestead to cure his small son, and was trying Benares as a last resort.

'Thou art from the North?' he asked, shouldering through the press of the narrow, stinking streets much like

'Ay, I know the Punjab. My mother was a pahareen, but my father came from Amritzar by Jandiala,' said

'Jandiala Jullundur? Oho! Then we be neighbours in some sort, as it were.' He nodded tenderly to the

'They are all most holy and most greedy,' said the Jat with bitterness. 'I have walked the pillars and trodden

the temples till my feet are flayed, and the child is no whit better. And the mother being sick too ... Hush,

then, little one ... We changed his name when the fever came. We put him into girl's clothes. There was

nothing we did not do, except I said to his mother when she bundled me off to Benares she should have

come with me I said Sakhi Sarwar Sultan would serve us best. We know His generosity, but these

The child turned on the cushion of the huge corded arms and looked at Kim through heavy eyelids.

'The Gods have given him a good mind, at least' said the father proudly. 'To think he should have listened so

cleverly. Yonder is thy Temple. Now I am a poor man many priests have dealt with me but my son is my

Kim considered for a while, tingling with pride. Three years ago he would have made prompt profit on the

situation and gone his way without a thought; but now, the very respect the Jat paid him proved that he was a

man. Moreover, he had tasted fever once or twice already, and knew enough to recognize starvation when he

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

Kim halted at the carved outer door of the temple. A whiteclad Oswal banker from Ajmir, his sins of usury

'I am chela to Teshoo Lama, an Holy One from Bhotiyal within there. He bade me come. I wait. Tell him.'

'Do not forget the child,' cried the importunate Jat over his shoulder, and then bellowed in Punjabi; 'O Holy

One O disciple of the Holy One O Gods above all the Worlds behold affliction sitting at the gate!' That

The Oswal, at peace with mankind, carried the message into the darkness behind him, and the easy,

uncounted Eastern minutes slid by; for the lama was asleep in his cell, and no priest would wake him. When

the click of his rosary again broke the hush of the inner court where the calm images of the Arhats stand, a

novice whispered, 'Thy chela is here,' and the old man strode forth, forgetting the end of that prayer.

Hardly had the tall figure shown in the doorway than the Jat ran before him, and, lifting up the child, cried:

'What is now?' The lama's eyes turned to Kim. It was noticeable he spoke far clearer Urdu than long ago,

'What! Have they made thee a healer? Wait here,' said the lama, and he sat down by the Jat upon the lowest

step of the temple, while Kim, looking out of the corner of his eyes, slowly opened the little betelbox. He

had dreamed dreams at school of returning to the lama as a Sahib of chaffing the old man before he

revealed himself boy's dreams all. There was more drama in this abstracted, brow puckered search

through the tabloidbottles, with a pause here and there for thought and a muttered invocation between

whiles. Quinine he had in tablets, and dark brown meatlozenges beef most probably, but that was not his

business. The little thing would not eat, but it sucked at a lozenge greedily, and said it liked the salt taste.

'Take then these six.' Kim handed them to the man. 'Praise the Gods, and boil three in milk; other three in

water. After he has drunk the milk give him this' (it was the half of a quinine pill), 'and wrap him warm. Give

him the water of the other three, and the other half of this white pill when he wakes. Meantime, here is

It was as much as Kim could remember of his own treatment in a bout of autumn malaria if you except the

'But the price the price,' said the Jat, and threw back his sturdy shoulders. 'My son is my son. Now that he

will be whole again, how shall I go back to his mother and say I took help by the wayside and did not even

'They are alike, these Jats,' said Kim softly. 'The Jat stood on his dunghill and the King's elephants went by.

The Jat burst into a roar of laughter, stifled with apologies to the lama. 'It is the saying of my own country the

very talk of it. So are we Jats all. I will come tomorrow with the child; and the blessing of the Gods of the

Homesteads who are good little Gods be on you both ... Now, son, we grow strong again. Do not spit it

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

He moved away, crooning and mumbling. The lama turned to Kim, and all the loving old soul of him looked

'To heal the sick is to acquire merit; but first one gets knowledge. That was wisely done, O Friend of all the

'I was made wise by thee, Holy One,' said Kim, forgetting the little play just ended; forgetting St Xavier's;

forgetting his white blood; forgetting even the Great Game as he stooped, Mohammedanfashion, to touch

his master's feet in the dust of the Jain temple. 'My teaching I owe to thee. I have eaten thy bread three years.

'Herein is my reward. Enter! Enter! And is all well?' They passed to the inner court, where the afternoon sun

sloped golden across. 'Stand that I may see. So!' He peered critically. 'It is no longer a child, but a man,

ripened in wisdom, walking as a physician. I did well I did well when I gave thee up to the armed men on

'Ay,' said Kim. 'Dost thou remember when I leapt off the carriage the first day I went to '

'The Gates of Learning? Truly. And the day that we ate the cakes together at the back of the river by Nucklao.

'Good reason,' quoth Kim. 'I was then a scholar in the Gates of Learning, and attired as a Sahib. Do not

The lama smiled. 'First by means of letters from the kindly priest whom we met in the camp of armed men;

but he is now gone to his own country, and I sent the money to his brother.' Colonel Creighton, who had

succeeded to the trusteeship when Father Victor went to England with the Mavericks, was hardly the

Chaplain's brother. 'But I do not well understand Sahibs' letters. They must be interpreted to me. I chose a

surer way. Many times when I returned from my Search to this Temple, which has always been a nest to me,

there came one seeking Enlightenment a man from Leh that had been, he said, a Hindu, but wearied of all

'Very fat; but I perceived in a little his mind was wholly given up to useless things such as devils and

charms and the form and fashion of our teadrinkings in the monasteries, and by what road we initiated the

novices. A man abounding in questions; but he was a friend of thine, chela. He told me that thou wast on the

'Yes, that am I a scribe, when I am a Sahib, but it is set aside when I come as thy disciple. I have

'As it were a novice?' said the lama, nodding his head. 'Art thou freed from the schools? I would not have thee

'But first I come to wander with thee. Therefore I am here. Who begs for thee, these days?' he went on

'Very often I beg myself; but, as thou knowest, I am seldom here, except when I come to look again at my

disciple. From one end to another of Hind have I travelled afoot and in the terain. A great and a wonderful

He looked round the little clean cell complacently. A low cushion gave him a seat, on which he had disposed

himself in the cross legged attitude of the Bodhisat emerging from meditation; a black teakwood table, not

twenty inches high, set with copper teacups, was before him. In one corner stood a tiny altar, also of heavily

carved teak, bearing a coppergilt image of the seated Buddha and fronted by a lamp, an incenseholder, and

'The Keeper of the Images in the Wonder House acquired merit by giving me these a year since,' he said,

following Kim's eye. 'When one is far from one's own land such things carry remembrance; and we must

reverence the Lord for that He showed the Way. See!' He pointed to a curiouslybuilt mound of coloured rice

crowned with a fantastic metal ornament. 'When I was Abbot in my own place before I came to better

knowledge I made that offering daily. It is the Sacrifice of the Universe to the Lord. Thus do we of Bhotiyal

offer all the world daily to the Excellent Law. And I do it even now, though I know that the Excellent One is

'It is well done, Holy One,' Kim murmured, sinking at ease on the cushions, very happy and rather tired.

'And also,' the old man chuckled, 'I write pictures of the Wheel of Life. Three days to a picture. I was busied

on it or it may be I shut my eyes a little when they brought word of thee. It is good to have thee here: I

will show thee my art not for pride's sake, but because thou must learn. The Sahibs have not all this world's

He drew from under the table a sheet of strangely scented yellow Chinese paper, the brushes, and slab of

Indian ink. In cleanest, severest outline he had traced the Great Wheel with its six spokes, whose centre is the

conjoined Hog, Snake, and Dove (Ignorance, Anger, and Lust), and whose compartments are all the Heavens

and Hells, and all the chances of human life. Men say that the Bodhisat Himself first drew it with grains of

rice upon dust, to teach His disciples the cause of things. Many ages have crystallized it into a most

wonderful convention crowded with hundreds of little figures whose every line carries a meaning. Few can

translate the picture parable; there are not twenty in all the world who can draw it surely without a copy: of

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

'I have written it for many years,' said the lama. 'Time was when I could write it all between one

lamplighting and the next. I will teach thee the art after due preparation; and I will show thee the meaning

'The Road and our Search. I was but waiting for thee. It was made plain to me in a hundred dreams notably

one that came upon the night of the day that the Gates of Learning first shut that without thee I should never

find my River. Again and again, as thou knowest, I put this from me, fearing an illusion. Therefore I would

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

ripe and auspicious. From the Hills to the Sea, from the Sea to the Hills have I gone, but it was vain. Then I

He told Kim the story of the elephant with the legiron, as he had told it so often to the Jam priests.

'Further testimony is not needed,' he ended serenely. 'Thou wast sent for an aid. That aid removed, my Search

'What matters, Friend of all the World? The Search, I say, is sure. If need be, the River will break from the

ground before us. I acquired merit when I sent thee to the Gates of Learning, and gave thee the jewel that is

Wisdom. Thou didst return, I saw even now, a follower of Sakyamuni, the Physician, whose altars are many

in Bhotiyal. It is sufficient. We are together, and all things are as they were Friend of all the World Friend

Then they talked of matters secular; but it was noticeable that the lama never demanded any details of life at

St Xavier's, nor showed the faintest curiosity as to the manners and customs of Sahibs. His mind moved all in

the past, and he revived every step of their wonderful first journey together, rubbing his hands and chuckling,

Kim watched the last dusty sunshine fade out of the court, and played with his ghostdagger and rosary. The

clamour of Benares, oldest of all earth's cities awake before the Gods, day and night, beat round the walls as

the sea's roar round a breakwater. Now and again, a Jain priest crossed the court, with some small offering to

the images, and swept the path about him lest by chance he should take the life of a living thing. A lamp

twinkled, and there followed the sound of a prayer. Kim watched the stars as they rose one after another in

the still, sticky dark, till he fell asleep at the foot of the altar. That night he dreamed in Hindustani, with never

'Holy One, there is the child to whom we gave the medicine,' he said, about three o'clock in the morning,

when the lama, also waking from dreams, would have fared forth on pilgrimage. 'The Jat will be here at the

'I am well answered. In my haste I would have done a wrong.' He sat down on the cushions and returned to

his rosary. 'Surely old folk are as children,' he said pathetically. 'They desire a matter behold, it must be

done at once, or they fret and weep! Many times when I was upon the Road I have been ready to stamp with

my feet at the hindrance of an oxcart in the way, or a mere cloud of dust. It was not so when I was a man a

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

unknowing, who can rein in the effect of that Cause? Does the Wheel hang still if a child spin it or a

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

'We cannot walk far on such stuff.' Kim felt all the European's lust for fleshmeat, which is not accessible in

a Jain temple. Yet, instead of going out at once with the beggingbowl, he stayed his stomach on slabs of

cold rice till the full dawn. It brought the farmer, voluble, stuttering with gratitude.

'In the night the fever broke and the sweat came, he cried. 'Feel here his skin is fresh and new! He esteemed

the salt lozenges, and took milk with greed.' He drew the cloth from the child's face, and it smiled sleepily at

Kim. A little knot of Jain priests, silent but allobservant, gathered by the temple door. They knew, and Kim

knew that they knew, how the old lama had met his disciple. Being courteous folk, they had not obtruded

themselves overnight by presence, word, or gesture. Wherefore Kim repaid them as the sun rose.

'Thank the Gods of the Jains, brother,' he said, not knowing how those Gods were named. 'The fever is indeed

'Look! See!' The lama beamed in the background upon his hosts of three years. 'Was there ever such a chela?

Now the Jains officially recognize all the Gods of the Hindu creed, as well as the Lingam and the Snake.

They wear the Brahminical thread; they adhere to every claim of Hindu castelaw. But, because they knew

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

because he collogued long of nights with the headpriest as freethinking a metaphysician as ever split one

'True,' said the lama to all the Jains. 'We go now together upon the Search whereof I have often spoken. I

waited till my chela was ripe. Behold him! We go North. Never again shall I look upon this place of my rest,

'Go,' Kim whispered. 'Meet us again under the big railway bridge, and for the sake of all the Gods of our

Punjab, bring food curry, pulse, cakes fried in fat, and sweetmeats. Specially sweetmeats. Be swift!'

The pallor of hunger suited Kim very well as he stood, tall and slim, in his sandcoloured, sweeping robes,

one hand on his rosary and the other in the attitude of benediction, faithfully copied from the lama. An

English observer might have said that he looked rather like the young saint of a stainedglass window,

Long and formal were the farewells, thrice ended and thrice renewed. The Seeker he who had invited the

lama to that haven from far away Tibet, a silverfaced, hairless ascetic took no part in it, but meditated, as

always, alone among the images. The others were very human; pressing small comforts upon the old man a

betelbox, a fine new iron pencase, a foodbag, and suchlike warning him against the dangers of the

world without, and prophesying a happy end to the Search. Meantime Kim, lonelier than ever, squatted on the

'But it is my own fault,' he concluded. 'With Mahbub, I ate Mahbub's bread, or Lurgan Sahib's. At St Xavier's,

three meals a day. Here I must jollywell look out for myself. Besides, I am not in good training. How I

The lama, both hands raised, intoned a final blessing in ornate Chinese. 'I must lean on thy shoulder,' said he,

The weight of a sixfoot man is not light to steady through miles of crowded streets, and Kim, loaded down

with bundles and packages for the way, was glad to reach the shadow of the railway bridge.

'Here we eat,' he said resolutely, as the Kamboh, bluerobed and smiling, hove in sight, a basket in one hand

'Fall to, Holy Ones!' he cried from fifty yards. (They were by the shoal under the first bridgespan, out of

sight of hungry priests.) 'Rice and good curry, cakes all warm and well scented with king [asafoetida), curds

and sugar. King of my fields,' this to the small son 'let us show these holy men that we Jats of Jullundur

can pay a service . . . I had heard the Jams would eat nothing that they had not cooked, but truly' he looked

'And we,' said Kim, turning his back and heaping a leafplatter for the lama, 'are beyond all castes.'

They gorged themselves on the good food in silence. Nor till he had licked the last of the sticky sweetstuff

'If our roads lie together,' he said roughly, 'I go with thee. One does not often find a worker of miracles, and

the child is still weak. But I am not altogether a reed.' He picked up his lathi a fivefoot malebamboo

ringed with bands of polished iron and flourished it in the air. 'The Jats are called quarrelsome, but that is

The lama gazed placidly upstream, where in long, smudged perspective the ceaseless columns of smoke go

up from the burning ghats by the river. Now and again, despite all municipal regulations, the fragment of a

'But for thee,' said the Kamboh to Kim, drawing the child into his hairy breast, 'I might today have gone

thither with this one. The priests tell us that Benares is holy which none doubt and desirable to die in.

But I do not know their Gods, and they ask for money; and when one has done one worship a shavedhead

vows it is of none effect except one do another. Wash here! Wash there! Pour, drink, lave, and scatter flowers

but always pay the priests. No, the Punjab for me, and the soil of the Jullundurdoab for the best soil in it.

'I have said many times in the Temple, I think that if need be, the River will open at our feet. We will

therefore go North,' said the lama, rising. 'I remember a pleasant place, set about with fruittrees, where one

can walk in meditation and the air is cooler there. It comes from the Hills and the snow of the Hills.'

'How should I know? Didst thou not no, that was after the Army rose out of the earth and took thee away. I

abode there in meditation in a room against the dovecot except when she talked eternally.'

'How does the spirit move thy master? Does he go afoot, for the sake of past sins?' the Jat demanded

'No,' said Kim. 'I will beg a tikkut for the terain.' One does not own to the possession of money in India.

'Then, in the name of the Gods, let us take the firecarriage. My son is best in his mother's arms. The

Government has brought on us many taxes, but it gives us one good thing the terain that joins friends and

They all piled into it a couple of hours later, and slept through the heat of the day. The Kamboh plied Kim

with ten thousand questions as to the lama's walk and work in life, and received some curious answers. Kim

was content to be where he was, to look out upon the flat NorthWestern landscape, and to talk to the

changing mob of fellowpassengers. Even today, tickets and ticket clipping are dark oppression to Indian

rustics. They do not understand why, when they have paid for a magic piece of paper, strangers should punch

great pieces out of the charm. So, long and furious are the debates between travellers and Eurasian ticket

collectors. Kim assisted at two or three with grave advice, meant to darken counsel and to show off his

wisdom before the lama and the admiring Kamboh. But at Somna Road the Fates sent him a matter to think

upon. There tumbled into the compartment, as the train was moving off, a mean, lean little person a

Mahratta, so far as Kim could judge by the cock of the tight turban. His face was cut, his muslin

uppergarment was badly torn, and one leg was bandaged. He told them that a countrycart had upset and

nearlv slain him: he was going to Delhi, where his son lived. Kim watched him closely. If, as he asserted, he

had been rolled over and over on the earth, there should have been signs of gravelrash on the skin. But all

his injuries seemed clean cuts, and a mere fall from a cart could not cast a man into such extremity of terror.

As, with shaking fingers, he knotted up the torn cloth about his neck he laid bare an amulet of the kind called

a keeperup of the heart. Now, amulets are common enough, but they are not generally strung on

squareplaited copper wire, and still fewer amulets bear black enamel on silver. There were none except the

Kamboh and the lama in the compartment, which, luckily, was of an old type with solid ends. Kim made as to

scratch in his bosom, and thereby lifted his own amulet. The Mahratta's face changed altogether at the sight,

'Yes,' he went on to the Kamboh, 'I was in haste, and the cart, driven by a bastard, bound its wheel in a

watercut, and besides the harm done to me there was lost a full dish of tarkeean. I was not a Son of the

'That was a great loss,' said the Kamboh, withdrawing interest. His experience of Benares had made him

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

'Oh, there is no caste where men go to look for tarkeean,' the Mahratta replied, in the prescribed cadence.

'Of the service of this Holy One.' Kim pointed to the happy, drowsy lama, who woke with a jerk at the

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

of the Stars. He walks as a physician his time being ripe. Great is his wisdom.'

'And a Son of the Charm,' said Kim under his breath, as the Kamboh made haste to prepare a pipe lest the

'One whose child I we have cured, who lies under great debt to us. Sit by the window, man from Jullundur.

'Humph! I have no desire to mix with chancemet wastrels. My ears are not long. I am not a woman wishing

'Art thou anything of a healer? I am ten leagues deep in calamity,' cried the Mahratta, picking up the cue.

'This man is cut and bruised all over. I go about to cure him,' Kim retorted. 'None interfered between thy babe

'I am rebuked,' said the Kamboh meekly. 'I am thy debtor for the life of my son. Thou art a miracleworker

'Show me the cuts.' Kim bent over the Mahratta's neck, his heart nearly choking him; for this was the Great

Game with a vengeance. 'Now, tell thy tale swiftly, brother, while I say a charm.'

'I come from the South, where my work lay. One of us they slew by the roadside. Hast thou heard?' Kim

shook his head. He, of course, knew nothing of E's predecessor, slain down South in the habit of an Arab

trader. 'Having found a certain letter which I was sent to seek, I came away. I escaped from the city and ran to

Mhow. So sure was I that none knew, I did not change my face. At Mhow a woman brought charge against

me of theft of jewellery in that city which I had left. Then I saw the cry was out against me. I ran from Mhow

by night, bribing the police, who had been bribed to hand me over without question to my enemies in the

South. Then I lay in old Chitor city a week, a penitent in a temple, but I could not get rid of the letter which

was my charge. I buried it under the Queen's Stone, at Chitor, in the place known to us all.'

'At Chitor, look you, I was all in Kings' country; for Kotah to the east is beyond the Queen's law, and east

again lie Jaipur and Gwalior. Neither love spies, and there is no justice. I was hunted like a wet jackal; but I

broke through at Bandakui, where I heard there was a charge against me of murder in the city I had left of

'We of the Game are beyond protection. If we die, we die. Our names are blotted from the book. That is all.

At Bandakui, where lives one of Us, I thought to slip the scent by changing my face, and so made me a

Mahratta. Then I came to Agra, and would have turned back to Chitor to recover the letter. So sure I was I

had slipped them. Therefore I did not send a tar [telegram] to any one saying where the letter lay. I wished the

'But at Agra, walking in the streets, a man cried a debt against me, and approaching with many witnesses,

would hale me to the courts then and there. Oh, they are clever in the South! He recognized me as his agent

'O fool! I was the man they sought for the matter of the letter! I ran into the Fleshers' Ward and came out by

the House of the Jew, who feared a riot and pushed me forth. I came afoot to Somna Road I had only

money for my tikkut to Delhi and there, while I lay in a ditch with a fever, one sprang out of the bushes and

beat me and cut me and searched me from head to foot. Within earshot of the te rain it was!'

'They are not so foolish. If I am taken in Delhi at the instance of lawyers, upon a proven charge of murder,

my body is handed over to the State that desires it. I go back guarded, and then I die slowly for an example

to the rest of Us. The South is not my country. I run in circles like a goat with one eye. I have not eaten for

two days. I am marked' he touched the filthy bandage on his leg 'so that they will know me at Delhi.'

'Live a year at the Great Game and tell me that again! The wires will be out against me at Delhi, describing

every tear and rag upon me. Twenty a hundred, if need be will have seen me slay that boy. And thou art

Kim knew enough of native methods of attack not to doubt that the case would be deadly complete even to

the corpse. The Mahratta twitched his fingers with pain from time to time. The Kamboh in his corner glared

sullenly; the lama was busy over his beads; and Kim, fumbling doctorfashion at the man's neck, thought out

'Hast thou a charm to change my shape? Else I am dead. Five ten minutes alone, if I had not been so

'Is he cured yet, miracleworker?' said the Kamboh jealously. 'Thou hast chanted long enough.'

'Nay. There is no cure for his hurts, as I see, except he sit for three days in the habit of a bairagi.' This is a

'One priest always goes about to make another priest,' was the retort. Like most grossly superstitious folk, the

Kim rubbed a fingertip of bitterness on the child's trusting little lips. 'I have asked for nothing,' he said

sternly to the father, 'except food. Dost thou grudge me that? I go to heal another man. Have I thy leave

'It pleases me to cure this sick one. Thou shalt acquire merit by aiding. What colour ash is there in thy

pipebowl? White. That is auspicious. Was there raw turmeric among thy foodstuffs?'

It was the usual collection of small oddments: bits of cloth, quack medicines, cheap fairings, a clothful of atta

greyish, rough ground native flour twists of downcountry tobacco, tawdry pipe stems, and a packet of

currystuff, all wrapped in. a quilt. Kim turned it over with the air of a wise warlock, muttering a

'This is wisdom I learned from the Sahibs,' he whispered to the lama; and here, when one thinks of his

training at Lurgan's, he spoke no more than the truth. 'There is a great evil in this man's fortune, as shown by

'Friend of the Stars, thou hast done well in all things. Let it be at thy pleasure. Is it another healing?'

'A healing against the shadow of death,' said Kim, mixing the Kamboh's flour with the mingled charcoal and

tobacco ash in the red earth bowl of the pipe. E, without a word, slipped off his turban and shook down his

'A buffalo in the temple! Hast thou dared to look even thus far?' said Kim. 'I must do mysteries before fools;

but have a care for thine eyes. Is there a film before them already? I save the babe, and for return thou oh,

'Shall I curse thee, or shall I ' He picked up the outer cloth of the bundle and threw it over the bowed head.

'I am blind dumb. Forbear to curse! Co come, child; we will play a game of hiding. Do not, for my sake,

'This comes next,' said Kim, plucking the thin bodyshirt. E23 hesitated, with all a NorthWest man's dislike

'What is caste to a cut throat?' said Kim, rending it to the waist. 'We must make thee a yellow Saddhu all

over. Strip strip swiftly, and shake thy hair over thine eyes while I scatter the ash. Now, a castemark on

thy forehead.' He drew from his bosom the little Survey paintbox and a cake of crimson lake.

'Art thou only a beginner?' said E23, labouring literally for the dear life, as he slid out of his bodywrappings

and stood clear in the loincloth while Kim splashed in a noble castemark on the ash smeared brow.

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

'Hast thou met a physician of sick pearls?' He switched out his long, tightrolled turbancloth and, with

swiftest hands, rolled it over and under about his loins into the intricate devices of a Saddhu's cincture.

'Hah! Dost thou know his touch, then? He was my teacher for a while. We must bar thy legs. Ash cures

'I was his pride once, but thou art almost better. The Gods are kind to us! Give me that.'

It was a tin box of opium pills among the rubbish of the Jat's bundle. E23 gulped down a half handful. 'They

are good against hunger, fear, and chill. And they make the eyes red too,' he explained. 'Now I shall have

heart to play the Game. We lack only a Saddhu's tongs. What of the old clothes?'

Kim rolled them small, and stuffed them into the slack folds of his tunic. With a yellowochre paint cake he

smeared the legs and the breast, great streaks against the background of flour, ash, and turmeric.

'Maybe; but no need to throw them out of the window ... It is finished.' His voice thrilled with a boy's pure

'The Gods protect us,' said the hooded Kamboh, emerging like a buffalo from the reeds. 'But whither went

Kim had been trained by Lurgan Sahib; E23, by virtue of his business, was no bad actor. In place of the

tremulous, shrinking trader there lolled against the corner an all but naked, ash smeared, ochrebarred,

dustyhaired Saddhu, his swollen eyes opium takes quick effect on an empty stomach luminous with

insolence and bestial lust, his legs crossed under him, Kim's brown rosary round his neck, and a scant yard of

worn, flowered chintz on his shoulders. The child buried his face in his amazed father's arms.

'Look up, Princeling! We travel with warlocks, but they will not hurt thee. Oh, do not cry ... What is the sense

'The child will be fortunate all his life. He has seen a great healing. When I was a child I made clay men and

'I have made them too. Sir Banas, he comes in the night and makes them all alive at the back of our

'Oh, chickenman!' said Kim, and even the abashed Jat laughed. 'I have done a healing on this poor trader. He

must forsake his gains and his accountbooks, and sit by the wayside three nights to overcome the malignity

'The fewer moneylenders the better, say I; but, Saddhu or no Saddhu, he should pay for my stuff on his

'So? But that is thy child on thy shoulder given over to the burningghat not two days ago. There remains

one thing more. I did this charm in thy presence because need was great.I changed his shape and his soul.

None the less, if, by any chance, O man from Jullundur, thou rememberest what thou hast seen, either among

the elders sitting under the village tree, or in thine own house, or in company of thy priest when he blesses

thy cattle, a murrain will come among the buffaloes, and a fire in thy thatch, and rats in the cornbins, and

the curse of our Gods upon thy fields that they may be barren before thy feet and after thy ploughshare.' This

was part of an old curse picked up from a fakir by the Taksali Gate in the days of Kim's innocence. It lost

'Cease, Holy One! In mercy, cease!' cried the Jat. 'Do not curse the household. I saw nothing! I heard nothing!

I am thy cow!' and he made to grab at Kim's bare foot beating rhythmically on the carriage floor. 'But since

thou hast been permitted to aid me in the matter of a pinch of flour and a little opium and such trifles as I

have honoured by using in my art, so will the Gods return a blessing,' and he gave it at length, to the man's

The lama stared through his spectacles as he had not stared at the business of disguisement. 'Friend of the

Stars,' he said at last, 'thou hast acquired great wisdom. Beware that it do not give birth to pride. No man

having the Law before his eyes speaks hastily of any matter which he has seen or encountered.'

'No no no, indeed,' cried the farmer, fearful lest the master should be minded to improve on the pupil.

E23, with relaxed mouth, gave himself up to the opium that is meat, tobacco, and medicine to the spent

So, in a silence of awe and great miscomprehension, they slid into Delhi about lamplighting time.

'I have found my heart again,' said E23, under cover of the platform's tumult. 'Hunger and fear make men

dazed, or I might have thought of this escape before. I was right. They come to hunt for me. Thou hast saved

A group of yellowtrousered Punjab policemen, headed by a hot and perspiring young Englishman, parted

the crowd about the carriages. Behind them, inconspicuous as a cat, ambled a small fat person who looked

'See the young Sahib reading from a paper. My description is in his hand,' said E23. 'Thev go carriage by

When the procession reached their compartment, E23 was counting his beads with a steady jerk of the wrist;

while Kim jeered at him for being so drugged as to have lost the ringed firetongs which are the Saddhu's

distinguishing mark. The lama, deep in meditation, stared straight before him; and the farmer, glancing

'Nothing here but a parcel of holybolies,' said the Englishman aloud, and passed on amid a ripple of

'The trouble now, ' whispered E23, 'lies in sending a wire as to the place where I hid that letter I was sent to

'Not if the work be left unfinished. Did never the healer of sick pearls tell thee so? Comes another Sahib! Ah!'

This was a tallish, sallowish District Superintendent of Police belt, helmet, polished spurs and all strutting

E23 glanced up under his eyelids. 'It is well said,' he muttered in a changed voice. 'I go to drink water. Keep

He blundered out almost into the Englishman's arms, and was bad worded in clumsy Urdu.

'Tum mut? You drunk? You mustn't bang about as though Delhi station belonged to you, my friend.'

E23, not moving a muscle of his countenance, answered with a stream of the filthiest abuse, at which Kim

naturally rejoiced. It reminded him of the drummerboys and the barrack sweepers at Umballa in the

Step by step, withdrawing deferentially and dropping his voice, the yellow Saddhu clomb back to the

carriage, cursing the D.S.P. to remotest posterity, by here Kim almost jumped by the curse of the Queen's

Stone, by the writing under the Queen's Stone, and by an assortment of Gods "with wholly, new names.

'I don't know what you're saving,' the Englishman flushed angrily 'but it's some piece of blasted

E23, affecting to misunderstand, gravely produced his ticket, which the Englishman wrenched angrily from

'Oh, zoolum! What oppression!' growled the Jat from his corner. 'All for the sake of a jest too.' He had been

grinning at the freedom of the Saddhu's tongue. 'Thy charms do not work well today, Holy One!'

The Saddhu followed the policeman, fawning and supplicating. The ruck of passengers, busy, with their

babies andtheir bundles, had not noticed the affair. Kim slipped outbehind him; for it flashed through his

head that he had heardthis angry, stupid Sahib discoursing loud personalities to an oldlady near Umballa three

'It is well', the Saddhu whispered, jammed in the calling, shouting, bewildered press a Persian greyhound

between his feet and a cageful of yelling hawks under charge of a Rajput falconer in the small of his back.

'He has gone now to send word of the letter which I hid. Thev told me he was in Peshawur. I might have

known that he is like the crocodile always at the other ford. He has saved me from present calamity, but I

'Is he also one of Us?' Kim ducked under a Mewar cameldriver's greasy armpit and cannoned off a covey of

'Not less than the greatest. We are both fortunate! I will make report to him of what thou hast done. I am safe

He bored through the edge of the crowd besieging the carriages, and squatted by the bench near the

'Return, or they take thy place! Have no fear for the work, brother or my life. Thou hast given me

breathingspace, and Strickland Sahib has pulled me to land. We may work together at the Game yet.

Kim hurried to his carriage: elated, bewildered, but a little nettled in that he had no key to the secrets about

'I am only a beginner at the Game, that is sure. I could not have leaped into safety as did the Saddhu. He

knew it was darkest under the lamp. I could not have thought to tell news under pretence of cursing ... and

how clever was the Sahib! No matter, I savcd the life of one ... Where is the Kamboh gone, Holy One?' he

'A fear gripped him,' the lama replied, with a touch of tender malice. 'He saw thee change the Mahratta to a

Saddhu in the twinkling of an eye, as a protection against evil. That shook him. Then he saw the Saddhu fall

sheer into the hands of the polis all the effect of thy art. Then he gathered up his son and fled; for he said

that thou didst change a quiet trader into an impudent bandier of words with the Sahibs, and he feared a like

'Ah, chela, see how thou art overtaken! Thou didst cure the Kamboh's child solely to acquire merit. But thou

didst put a spell on the Mahratta with prideful workings I watched thee and with sidelong glances to

Kim controlled himself with an effort beyond his years. Not more than any other youngster did he like to eat

dirt or to be misjudged, but he saw himself in a cleft stick. The train rolled out of Delhi into the night.

'It is more, chela. Thou hast loosed an Act upon the world, and as a stone thrown into a pool so spread the

This ignorance was well both for Kim's vanity and for the lama's peace of mind, when we think that there was

then being handed in at Simla a codewire reporting the arrival of E23 at Delhi, and, more important, the

whereabouts of a letter he had been commissioned to abstract. Incidentally, an overzealous policeman had

arrested, on charge of murder done in a far southern State, a horribly indignant Ajmir cottonbroker, who

was explaining himself to a Mr Strickland on Delhi platform, while E23 was paddling through byways into

the locked heart of Delhi city. In two hours several telegrams had reached the angry minister of a southern

State reporting that all trace of a somewhat bruised Mahratta had been lost; and by the time the leisurely train

halted at Saharunpore the last ripple of the store Kim had helped to heave was lapping against the steps of a

The lama made his in ample form near the dewy bougainvilleatrellis near the platform, cheered by the clear

sunshine and the presence of his disciple. 'We will put these things behind us,' he said, indicating the brazen

engine and the gleaming track. 'The jolting of the terain though a wonderful thing has turned my bones

'Let us go to the Kulu woman's house' said Kim, and stepped forth cheerily under the bundles. Early morning

Saharunporeway is clean and well scented. He thought of the other mornings at St Xavier's, and it topped

'Where is this new haste born from? Wise men do not run about like chickens in the sun. We have come

hundreds upon hundreds of koss already, and, till now, I have scarcely been alone with thee an instant. How

canst thou receive instruction all jostled of crowds? How can I, whelmed by a flux of talk, meditate upon the

'Nor her desire for charms. I remember once when I spoke of the Wheel of Life' the lama fumbled in his

bosom for his latest copy 'she was only curious about the devils that besiege children. She shall acquire

merit by entertaining us in a little while at an afteroccasion softly, softly. Now we will wander

So they travelled very easily across and among the broad bloomful fruitgardens by way of Aminabad,

Sahaigunge, Akrola of the Ford, and little Phulesa the line of the Siwaliks always to the north, and behind

them again the snows. After long, sweet sleep under the dry stars came the lordly, leisurely passage through a

waking village beggingbowl held forth in silence, but eyes roving in defiance of the Law from sky's edge

to sky's edge. Then would Kim return softfooted through the soft dust to his master under the shadow of a

mangotree or the thinner shade of a white Doon siris, to eat and drink at ease. At midday, after talk and a

little wayfaring, they slept; meeting the world refreshed when the air was cooler. Night found them

adventuring into new territory some chosen village spied three hours before across the fat land, and much

There they told their tale a new one each evening so far as Kim was concerned and there were they made

When the shadows shortened and the lama leaned more heavily upon Kim, there was always the Wheel of

Life to draw forth, to hold flat under wiped stones, and with a long straw to expound cycle by cycle. Here sat

the Gods on high and they were dreams of dreams. Here was our Heaven and the world of the demiGods

horsemen fighting among the hills. Here were the agonies done upon the beasts, souls ascending or

descending the ladder and therefore not to be interfered with. Here were the Hells, hot and cold, and the

abodes of tormented ghosts. Let the chela study the troubles that come from overeating bloated stomach

and burning bowels. Obediently, then, with bowed head and brown finger alert to follow the pointer, did the

chela study; but when they came to the Human World, busy and profitless, that is just above the Hells, his

mind was distracted; for by the roadside trundled the very Wheel itself, eating, drinking, trading, marrying,

and quarrelling all warmly alive. Often the lama made the living pictures the matter of his text, bidding

Kim too ready note how the flesh takes a thousand shapes, desirable or detestable as men reckon, but in

truth of no account either way; and how the stupid spirit, bondslave to the Hog, the Dove, and the Serpent

lusting after betelnut, a new yoke of oxen, women, or the favour of kings is bound to follow the body

through all the Heavens and all the Hells, and strictly round again. Sometimes a woman or a poor man,

watching the ritual it was nothing less when the great yellow chart was unfolded, would throw a few

flowers or a handful of cowries upon its edge. It sufficed these humble ones that they had met a Holy One

'Cure them if they are sick,' said the lama, when Kim's sporting instincts woke. 'Cure them if they have fever,

'Then all Doing is evil?' Kim replied, lying out under a big tree at the fork of the Doon road, watching the

'At the Gates of Learning we were taught that to abstain from action was unbefitting a Sahib. And I am a

'Friend of all the World,' the lama looked directly at Kim 'I am an old man pleased with shows as are

children. To those who follow the Way there is neither black nor white, Hind nor Bhotiyal. We be all souls

seeking escape. No matter what thy wisdom learned among Sahibs, when we come to my River thou wilt be

freed from all illusion at my side. Hai! My bones ache for that River, as they ached in the terain; but my

'There is much wealth, as men count it, in Bhotiyal,' the lama returned with composure. 'In my own place I

have the illusion of honour. I ask for that I need. I am not concerned with the account. That is for my

monastery. Ai! The black high seats in the monastery, and novices all in order!'

And he told stories, tracing with a finger in the dust, of the immense and sumptuous ritual of

avalancheguarded cathedrals; of processions and devildances; of the changing of monks and nuns into

swine; of holy cities fifteen thousand feet in the air; of intrigue between monastery and monastery; of voices

among the hills, and of that mysterious mirage that dances on dry snow. He spoke even of Lhassa and of the

Each long, perfect day rose behind Kim for a barrier to cut him off from his race and his mothertongue. He

slipped back to thinking and dreaming in the vernacular, and mechanically followed the lama's ceremonial

observances at eating, drinking, and the like. The old man's mind turned more and more to his monastery as

his eyes turned to the steadfast snows. His River troubled him nothing. Now and again, indeed, he would

gaze long and long at a tuft or a twig, expecting, he said, the earth to cleave and deliver its blessing; but he

was content to be with his disciple, at ease in the temperate wind that comes down from the Doon. This was

not Ceylon, nor Buddh Gaya, nor Bombay, nor some grasstangled ruins that he seemed to have stumbled

upon two years ago. He spoke of those places as a scholar removed from vanity, as a Seeker walking in

humility, as an old man, wise and temperate, illumining knowledge with brilliant insight. Bit by bit,

disconnectedly, each tale called up by some wayside thing, he spoke of all his wanderings up and down Hind;

till Kim, who had loved him without reason, now loved him for fifty good reasons. So they enjoyed

themselves in high felicity, abstaining, as the Rule demands, from evil words, covetous desires; not over

eating, not lying on high beds, nor wearing rich clothes. Their stomachs told them the time, and the people

brought them their food, as the saying is. They were lords of the villages of Aminabad, Sahaigunge, Akrola

But news travels fast in India, and too soon shuffled across the cropland, bearing a basket of fruits with a

box of Kabul grapes and gilt oranges, a whitewhiskered servitor a lean, dry Oorya begging them to

bring the honour of their presence to his mistress, distressed in her mind that the lama had neglected her so

'Now do I remember' the lama spoke as though it were a wholly new proposition. 'She is virtuous, but an

Kim was sitting on the edge of a cow's manger, telling stories to a village smith's children.

'She will only ask for another son for her daughter. I have not forgotten her,' he said. 'Let her acquire merit.

They covered eleven miles through the fields in two days, and were overwhelmed with attentions at the end;

for the old lady held a fine tradition of hospitality, to which she forced her soninlaw, who was under the

thumb of his womenfolk and bought peace by borrowing of the moneylender. Age had not weakened her

tongue or her memory, and from a discreetly barred upper window, in the hearing of not less than a dozen

servants, she paid Kim compliments that would have flung European audiences into unclean dismay.

'But thou art still the shameless beggarbrat of the parao,' she shrilled. 'I have not forgotten thee. Wash ye

and eat. The father of my daughter's son is gone away awhile. So we poor women are dumb and useless.'

For proof, she harangued the entire household unsparingly till food and drink were brought; and in the

evening the smokescented evening, copperdun and turquoise across the fields it pleased her to order

her palanquin to be set down in the untidy forecourt by smoky torchlight; and there, behind not too closely

'Had the Holy One come alone, I should have received him otherwise; but with this rogue, who can be too

'Maharanee,' said Kim, choosing as always the amplest title, 'is it my fault that none other than a Sahib a

polisSahib called the Maharanee whose face he ' 'Chutt! That was on the pilgrimage. When we travel

'To remember that! It was true. So he did. That was in the time of the bloom of my beauty.' She chuckled like

a contented parrot above the sugar lump. 'Now tell me of thy goings and comings as much as may be

without shame. How many maids, and whose wives, hang upon thine eyelashes? Ye hail from Benares? I

would have gone there again this year, but my daughter we have only two sons. Phaii! Such is the effect of

these low plains. Now in Kulu men are elephants. But I would ask thy Holy One stand aside, rogue a

charm against most lamentable windy colics that in mangotime overtake my daughter's eldest. Two years

"'Cure them if they are sick,"' Kim quoted relishingly, "'but by no means work charms. Remember what

'That was two Rains ago; she wearied me with her continual importunity.' The lama groaned as the Unjust

judge had groaned before him. 'Thus it comes take note, my chela that even those who would follow the

Way are thrust aside by idle women. Three days through, when the child was sick, she talked to me.'

'Arre! 1 6and to whom else should I talk? The boy's mother knew nothing, and the father in the nights of

the cold weather it was "Pray to the Gods," said he, forsooth, and turning over, snored!'

'He found his milkteeth easily at any rate,' said the old lady. 'But all priests are alike.'

Kim coughed severely. Being young, he did not approve of her flippancy. 'To importune the wise out of

'There is a talking mynah' the thrust came back with the well remembered snap of the jewelled forefinger

'over the stables which has picked up the very tone of the family priest. Maybe I forget honour to my

guests, but if ye had seen him double his fists into his belly, which was like a halfgrown gourd, and cry:

"Here is the pain!" ye would forgive. I am half minded to take the hakim's medicine. He sells it cheap, and

certainly it makes him fat as Shiv's own bull. He does not deny remedies, but I doubted for the child because

The lama, under cover of the monologue, had faded out into the darkness towards the room prepared.

'Not he. He is wearied, and I forgot, being a grandmother. (None but a grandmother should ever oversee a

child. Mothers are only fit for bearing.) Tomorrow, when he sees how my daughter's son is grown, he will

'A wanderer, as thou art, but a most sober Bengali from Dacca a master of medicine. He relieved me of an

oppression after meat by means of a small pill that wrought like a devil unchained. He travels about now,

vending preparations of great value. He has even papers, printed in Angrezi, telling what things he has done

for weakbacked men and slack women. He has been here four days; but hearing ye were coming (hakims

and priests are snake and tiger the world over) he has, as I take it, gone to cover.'

While she drew breath after this volley, the ancient servant, sitting unrebuked on the edge of the torchlight,

muttered: 'This house is a cattlepound, as it were, for all charlatans and priests. Let the boy stop eating

mangoes ... but who can argue with a grandmother?' He raised his voice respectfully: 'Sahiba, the hakim

Kim bristled like an expectant terrier. To outface and down talk a Calcuttataught Bengali, a voluble Dacca

drugvendor, would be a good game. It was not seemly that the lama, and incidentally himself, should be

thrown aside for such an one. He knew those curious bastard English advertisements at the backs of native

newspapers. St Xavier's boys sometimes brought them in by stealth to snigger over among their mates; for the

language of the grateful patient recounting his symptoms is most simple and revealing. The Oorya, not

unanxious to play off one parasite against the other, slunk away towards the dovecote

'Yes,' said Kim, with measured scorn. 'Their stockintrade is a little coloured water and a very great

shamelessness. Their prey are brokendown kings and overfed Bengalis. Their profit is in children who are

not born.' The old lady chuckled. 'Do not be envious. Charms are better, eh? I never gainsaid it. See that thy

'None but the ignorant deny' a thick, heavy voice boomed through the darkness, as a figure came to rest

squatting 'None but the ignorant deny the value of charms. None but the ignorant deny the value of

'A rat found a piece of turmeric. Said he: "I will open a grocer's shop,"' Kim retorted.

'The priest's son knows the names of his nurse and three Gods. Says he: "Hear me, or I will curse you by the

three million Great Ones."' Decidedly this invisible had an arrow or two in his quiver. He went on: 'I am but a

'The Sahibs never grow old. They dance and they play like children when they are grandfathers. A

'I have, too, our drugs which loosen humours of the head in hot and angry men. Sina well compounded when

the moon stands in the proper House; yellow earths I have arplan from China that makes a man renew his

youth and astonish his household; saffron from Kashmir, and the best salep of Kabul. Many people have died

'They knew the value of my drugs. I do not give my sick the mere ink in which a charm is written, but hot and

The voice launched into an immense tale of misfortune and bankruptcy, studded with plentiful petitions to the

Government. 'But for my fate, which overrules all, I had been now in Government employ. I bear a degree

from the great school at Calcutta whither, maybe, the son of this House shall go.'

'He shall indeed. If our neighbour's brat can in a few years be made an F A' (First Arts she used the English

word, of which she had heard so often), 'how much more shall children clever as some that I know bear away

'Never,' said the voice, 'have I seen such a child! Born in an auspicious hour, and but for that colic which,

alas! turning into black cholers, may carry him off like a pigeon destined to many years, he is enviable.'

'Hai mai!' said the old lady. 'To praise children is inauspicious, or I could listen to this talk. But the back of

the house is unguarded, and even in this soft air men think themselves to be men, and women we know ...

The child's father is away too, and I must be chowkedar [watchman] in my old age. Up! Up! Take up the

palanquin. Let the hakim and the young priest settle between them whether charms or medicine most avail.

Ho! worthless people, fetch tobacco for the guests, and round the homestead go I!'

The palanquin reeled off, followed by straggling torches and a horde of dogs. Twenty villages knew the

Sahiba her failings, her tongue, and her large charity. Twenty villages cheated her after immemorial

custom, but no man would have stolen or robbed within her jurisdiction for any gift under heaven. None the

less, she made great parade of her formal inspections, the riot of which could be heard halfway to

Kim relaxed, as one augur must when he meets another. The hakim, still squatting, slid over his hookah with

a friendly foot, and Kim pulled at the good weed. The hangerson expected grave professional debate, and

'To discuss medicine before the ignorant is of one piece with teaching the peacock to sing,' said the hakim.

'Get hence! Remove!' said the hakim. 'Is it the habit of the place to pester honoured guests? Ye crowd in like

'Ai! Ai! Come away. They are meat for our mistress. When her young Shaitan's colics are cured perhaps we

'The mistress fed thy wife when thou wast in jail for breaking the moneylender's head. Who speaks against

her?' The old servitor curled his white moustaches savagely in the young moonlight. 'I am responsible for the

Said the hakim, hardly more than shaping the words with his lips: 'How do you do, Mister O'Hara? I am jolly

Kim's hand clenched about the pipestem. Anywhere on the open road, perhaps, he would not have been

astonished; but here, in this quiet backwater of life, he was not prepared for Hurree Babu. It annoyed him,

'Ah ha! I told you at Lucknow resurgam I shall rise again and you shall not know me. How much did you

'Ah! Thatt is the question, as Shakespeare hath it. I come to congratulate you on your extraordinary effeecient

performance at Delhi. Oah! I tell you we are all proud of you. It was verree neat and handy. Our mutual

friend, he is old friend of mine. He has been in some dam'tight places. Now he will be in some more. He

told me; I tell Mr Lurgan; and he is pleased you graduate so nicely. All the Department is pleased.'

For the first time in his life, Kim thrilled to the clean pride (it can be a deadly pitfall, none the less) of

Departmental praise ensnaring praise from an equal of work appreciated by fellow workers. Earth has

nothing on the same plane to compare with it. But, cried the Oriental in him, Babus do not travel far to retail

'Oah, it is nothing. Onlee I was at Simla when the wire came in about what our mutual friend said he had

hidden, and old Creighton ' He looked to see how Kim would take this piece of audacity.

'The Colonel Sahib,' the boy from St Xavier's corrected. 'Of course. He found me at a loose string, and I had

to go down to Chitor to find that beastly letter. I do not like the South too much railway travel; but I drew

good travelling allowance. Ha! Ha! I meet our mutual at Delhi on the way back. He lies quiett just now, and

says Saddhudisguise suits him to the ground. Well, there I hear what you have done so well, so quickly,

upon the instantaneous spur of the moment. I tell our mutual you take the bally bun, by Jove! It was splendid.

The frogs were busy in the ditches, and the moon slid to her setting. Some happy servant had gone out to

commune with the night and to beat upon a drum. Kim's next sentence was in the vernacular.

'Oah. Thatt was nothing. I know from our mutual friend you go to Saharunpore. So I come on. Red Lamas are

not inconspicuous persons. I buy myself my drugbox, and I am very good doctor really. I go to Akrola of

the Ford, and hear all about you, and I talk here and talk there. All the common people know what you do. I

knew when the hospitable old lady sent the dooli. They have great recollections of the old lama's visits here. I

know old ladies cannot keep their hands from medicines. So I am a doctor, and you hear my talk? I think it

is verree good. My word, Mister O'Hara, they know about you and the lama for fifty miles the common

'Then why talk like an ape in a tree? Men do not come after one from Simla and change their dress, for the

sake of a few sweet words. I am not a child. Talk Hindi and let us get to the yolk of the egg. Thou art here

speaking not one word of truth in ten. Why art thou here? Give a straight answer.'

'That is so verree disconcerting of the Europeans, Mister O'Hara. you should know a heap better at your time

'But I want to know,' said Kim, laughing. 'If it is the Game, I may help. How can I do anything if you bukh

'Now I will speak vernacular. You sit tight, Mister O'Hara . . . It concerns the pedigree of a white stallion.'

'When everyone is dead the Great Game is finished. Not before. Listen to me till the end. There were Five

Kings who prepared a sudden war three years ago, when thou wast given the stallion's pedigree by Mahbub

'But the war was not pushed. That is the Government custom. The troops were recalled because the

Government believed the Five Kings were cowed; and it is not cheap to feed men among the high Passes.

HilaS and Bunar Rajahs with guns undertook for a price to guard the Passes against all coming from the

North. They protested both fear and friendship.' He broke off with a giggle into English: "Of course, I tell you

this unoffeecialiv to elucidate political situation, Mister O'Hara. Offeecially, I am debarred from criticizing

any action of superiors. Now I go on. This pleased the Government, anxious to avoid expense, and a bond

was made for so many rupees a month that Hilas and Bunar should guard the Passes as soon as the State's

troops were withdrawn. At that time it was after we two met I, who had been selling tea in Leh, became a

clerk of accounts in the Army. When the troops were withdrawn, I was left behind to pay the coolies who

made new roads in the Hills. This roadmaking was part of the bond between Bunar, Hilas, and the

'I tell you, it was jollybeastly cold up there too, after summer,' said Hurree Babu confidentially. 'I was afraid

these Bunar men would cut my throat every night for thee paychest. My native sepoyguard, they laughed

at me! By Jove! I was such a fearful man. Nevar mind thatt. I go on colloquially ... I send word many times

that these two Kings were sold to the North; and Mahbub Ali, who was yet farther North, amply confirmed it.

Nothing was done. Only my feet were frozen, and a toe dropped off. I sent word that the roads for which I

was paying money to the diggers were being made for the feet of strangers and enemies.'

'For the Russians. The thing was an open jest among the coolies. Then I was called down to tell what I knew

by speech of tongue. Mahbub came South too. See the end! Over the Passes this year after snowmelting'

he shivered afresh come two strangers under cover of shooting wild goats. They bear guns, but they bear

'They are well received by Hilas and Bunar. They make great promises; they speak as the mouthpiece of a

Kaisar with gifts. Up the valleys, down the valleys go they, saying, "Here is a place to build a breastwork;

here can ye pitch a fort. Here can ye hold the road against an army" the very roads for which I paid out the

rupees monthly. The Government knows', but does nothing. The three other Kings, who were not paid for

guarding the Passes, tell them by runner of the bad faith of Bunar and Hilas. When all the evil is done, look

you when these two strangers with the levels and the compasses make the Five Kings to believe that a great

army will sweep the Passes tomorrow or the next day Hillpeople are all fools comes the order to me,

Hurree Babu, "Go North and see what those strangers do." I say to Creighton Sahib, "This is not a lawsuit,

that we go about to collect evidence."'Hurree returned to his English with a jerk: "'By Jove," I said, "why the

dooce do you not issue demioffeecial orders to some brave man to poison them, for an example? It is, if you

permit the observation, most reprehensible laxity on your part." And Colonel Creighton, he laughed at me! It

is all your beastly English pride. You think no one dare conspire! That is all tommyrott.'

Kim smoked slowly, revolving the business, so far as he understood it, in his quick mind.

'No. To meet them. They are coming in to Simla to send down their horns and heads to be dressed at Calcutta.

They are exclusively sporting gentlemen, and they are allowed special faceelities by the Government. Of

'By Jove, they are not black people. I can do all sorts of things with black people, of course. They are

Russians, and highly unscrupulous people. I I do not want to consort with them without a witness.'

'Oah, thatt is nothing. I am good enough Herbert Spencerian, I trust, to meet little thing like death, which is

Hurree Babu snapped his fingers with irritation. 'Of course I shall affeeliate myself to their camp in

supernumerary capacity as perhaps interpreter, or person mentally impotent and hungree, or some such thing.

And then I must pick up what I can, I suppose. That is as easy for me as playing Mister Doctor to the old

lady. Onlee onlee you see, Mister O'Hara, I am unfortunately Asiatic, which is serious detriment in some

'It was process of Evolution, I think, from Primal Necessity, but the fact remains in all the cui bono. I am, oh,

awfully fearful! I remember once they wanted to cut off my head on the road to Lhassa. (No, I have never

reached to Lhassa.) I sat down and cried, Mister O'Hara, anticipating Chinese tortures. I do not suppose these

two gentlemen will torture me, but I like to provide for possible contingency with European assistance in

emergency.' He coughed and spat out the cardamoms. 'It is purely unoffeecial indent, to which you can say

"No, Babu". If you have no pressing engagement with your old man perhaps you might divert him; perhaps

I can seduce his fancies I should like you to keep in Departmental touch with me till I find those sporting

coves. I have great opeenion of you since I met my friend at Delhi. And also I will embody your name in my

offeecial report when matter is finally adjudicated. It will be a great feather in your cap. That is why I come

'About the Five Kings? Oah! there is ever so much truth in it. A lots more than you would suppose,' said

Hurree earnestly. 'You come eh? I go from here straight into the Doon. It is verree verdant and painted

meads. I shall go to Mussoorie to good old Munsoorie Pahar, as the gentlemen and ladies say. Then by

Rampur into Chini. That is the only way they can come. I do not like waiting in the cold, but we must wait

for them. I want to walk with them to Simla. You see, one Russian is a Frenchman, and I know my French

'He would certainly rejoice to see the Hills again,' said Kim meditatively. 'All his speech these ten days past

'Oah! We can be quite strangers on the road, if your lama prefers. I shall just be four or five miles ahead.

There is no hurry for Hurree that is an Europe pun, ha! ha! and you come after. There is plenty of time;

they will plot and survey and map, of course. I shall go tomorrow, and you the next day, if you choose. Eh?

You go think on it till morning. By Jove, it is near morning now.' He yawned ponderously, and with never a

civil word lumbered off to his sleepingplace. But Kim slept little, and his thoughts ran in Hindustani:

'Well is the Game called great! I was four days a scullion at Quetta, waiting on the wife of the man whose

book I stole. And that was part of the Great Game! From the South God knows how far came up the

Mahratta, playing the Great Game in fear of his life. Now I shall go far and far into the North playing the

Great Game. Truly, it runs like a shuttle throughout all Hind. And my share and my joy' he smiled to the

darkness'I owe to the lama here. Also to Mahbub Ali also to Creighton Sahib, but chiefly to the Holy One.

He is right a great and a wonderful world and I am Kim Kim Kim alone one person in the

middle of it all. But I will see these strangers with their levels and chains . . .'

'There came a strolling seller of drugs a hangeron of the Sahiba's. Him I abolished by arguments and

'Then it must be written, or she will deafen me with her clamour.' He fumbled at his pencase.

'In the Plains,' said Kim, 'are always too many people. In the Hills, as I understand, there are fewer.'

'Oh! the Hills, and the snows upon the Hills.' The lami tore off a tiny square of paper fit to go in an amulet.

'They are very close.' Kim thrust open the door and looked at the long, peaceful line of the Himalayas flushed

in morning gold. 'Except in the dress of a Sahib, I have never set foot among them.'

'If we go North,' Kim put the question to the waking sunrise 'would not much midday heat be avoided

'I have written the names of seven silly devils not one of whom is worth a grain of dust in the eye. Thus do

Hurree Babu came out from behind the dovecote washing his teeth with ostentatious ritual. Fullfleshed,

heavyhaunched, bullnecked, and deepvoiced, he did not look like 'a fearful man'. Kim signed almost

imperceptibly that matters were in good train, and when the morning toilet was over, Hurree Babu, in flowery

speech, came to do honour to the lama. They ate, of course, apart, and afterwards the old lady, more or less

veiled behind a window, returned to the vital business of greenmango colics in the young. The lama's

knowledge of medicine "was, of course, sympathetic only. He believed that the dung of a black horse, mixed

with sulphur, and carried in a snake skin, was a sound remedy for cholera; but the symbolism interested him

far more than the science. Hurree Babu deferred to these views with enchanting politeness, so that the lama

called him a courteous physician. Hurree Babu replied that he was no more than an inexpert dabbler in the

mysteries; but at least he thanked the Gods therefore he knew when he sat in the presence of a master. He

himself had been taught by the Sahibs, who do not consider expense, in the lordly halls of Calcutta; but, as he

was ever first to acknowledge, there lay a wisdom behind earthly wisdom the high and lonely lore of

meditation. Kim looked on with envy. The Hurree Babu of his knowledge oily, effusive, and nervous was

gone; gone, too, was the brazen drugvendor of overnight. There remained polished, polite, attentive a

sober, learned son of experience and adversity, gathering wisdom from the lama's lips. The old lady confided

to Kim that these rare levels were beyond her. She liked charms with plenty of ink that one could wash off in

water, swallow, and be done with. Else what was the use of the Gods? She liked men and women, and she

spoke of them of kinglets she had known in the past; of her own youth and beauty; of the depredations of

leopards and the eccentricities of love Asiatic; of the incidence of taxation, rackrenting, funeral ceremonies,

her soninlaw (this by allusion, easy to be followed), the care of the young, and the age's lack of decency.

And Kim, as interested in the life of this world as she soon to leave it, squatted with his feet under the hem of

his robe, drinking all in, while the lama demolished one after another every theory of bodycuring put

At noon the Babu strapped up his brassbound drugbox, took his patentleather shoes of ceremony in one

hand, a gay blueandwhite umbrella in the other, and set off northwards to the Doon, where, he said, he was

'We will go in the cool of the evening, chela,' said the lama. 'That doctor, learned in physic and courtesy,

affirms that the people among these lower hills are devout, generous, and much in need of a teacher. In a very

'Ye go to the Hills? And by Kulu road? Oh, thrice happy!' shrilled the old lady. 'But that I am a little pressed

with the care of the homestead I would take palanquin ... but that would be shameless, and my reputation

would be cracked. Ho! Ho! I know the road every march of the road I know. Ye will find charity

throughout it is not denied to the welllooking. I will give orders for provision. A servant to set you forth

'What a woman is the Sahiba!' said the whitebearded Oorya, when a tumult rose by the kitchen quarters.

'She has never forgotten a friend: she has never forgotten an enemy in all her years. And her cookery wah!'

There were cakes, there were sweetmeats, there was cold fowl stewed to rags with rice and prunes enough

'I am old and useless,' she said. 'None now love me and none respect but there are few to compare with

me when I call on the Gods and squat to my cookingpots. Come again, O people of good will. Holy One and

disciple, come again. The room is always prepared; the welcome is always ready ... See the women do not

follow thy chela too openly. I know the women of Kulu. Take heed, chela, lest he run away when he smells

his Hills again ... Hai! Do not tilt the ricebag upside down ... Bless the household, Holy One, and forgive thy

'Women talk,' said the lama at last, 'but that is a woman's infirmity. I gave her a charm. She is upon the Wheel

and wholly given over to the shows of this life, but none the less, chela, she is virtuous, kindly, hospitable

'Not I, Holy One,' said Kim, reslinging the bountiful provision on his shoulders. 'In my mind behind my

eyes I have tried to picture such an one altogether freed from the Wheel desiring nothing, causing nothing

'Nor I. But there are many, many millions of lives before her. She will get wisdom a little, it may be, in each

'Thy mind is set on things unworthy. But she has skill. I am refreshed all over. When we reach the lower hills

I shall be yet stronger. The hakim spoke truly to me this morn when he said a breath from the snows blows

away twenty years from the life of a man. We will go up into the Hills the high hills up to the sound of

snowwaters and the sound of the trees for a little while. The hakim said that at any time we may return to

the Plains, for we do no more than skirt the pleasant places. The hakim is full of learning; but he is in no way

proud. I spoke to him when thou wast talking to the Sahiba of a certain dizziness that lays hold upon the

back of my neck in the night, and he said it rose from excessive heat to be cured by cool air. Upon

'Didst thou tell him of thy Search?' said Kim, a little jealously. He preferred to sway the lama by his own

'Assuredly. I told him of my dream, and of the manner by which I had acquired merit by causing thee to be

'What need? I have told thee many times we be but two souls seeking escape. He said and he is just herein

that the River of Healing will break forth even as I dreamed at my feet, if need be. Having found the

Way, seest thou, that shall free me from the Wheel, need I trouble to find a way about the mere fields of earth

which are illusion? That were senseless. I have my dreams, night upon night repeated; I have Fataka; and I

have thee, Friend of all the World. It was written in thy horoscope that a Red Bull on a green field I have

not forgotten should bring thee to honour. Who but I saw that prophecy accomplished? Indeed, I was the

instrument. Thou shalt find me my River, being in return the instrument. The Search is sure!'

He set his ivoryyellow face, serene and untroubled, towards the beckoning Hills; his shadow shouldering far

They had crossed the Siwaliks and the halftropical Doon, left Mussoorie behind them, and headed north

along the narrow hillroads. Day after day they struck deeper into the huddled mountains, and day after day

Kim watched the lama return to a man's strength. Among the terraces of the Doon he had leaned on the boy's

shoulder, ready to profit by wayside halts. Under the great ramp to Mussoorie he drew himself together as an

old hunter faces a wellremembered bank, and where he should have sunk exhausted swung his long

draperies about him, drew a deep doublelungful of the diamond air, and walked as only a hillman can. Kim,

plainsbred and plainsfed, sweated and panted astonished. 'This is my country,' said the lama. 'Beside

Suchzen, this is flatter than a ricefield'; and with steady, driving strokes from the loins he strode upwards.

But it was on the steep downhill marches, three thousand feet in three hours, that he went utterly away from

Kim, whose back ached with holding back, and whose big toe was nigh cut off by his grass sandalstring.

Through the speckled shadow of the great deodarforests; through oak feathered and plumed with ferns;

birch, ilex, rhododendron, and pine, out on to the bare hillsides' slippery sunburnt grass, and back into the

woodlands' coolth again, till oak gave way to bamboo and palm of the valley, the lama swung untiring.

Glancing back in the twilight at the huge ridges behind him and the faint, thin line of the road whereby they

had come, he would lay out, with a hillman's generous breadth of vision, fresh marches for the morrow; or,

halting in the neck of some uplifted pass that gave on Spiti and Kulu, would stretch out his hands yearningly

towards the high snows of the horizon. In the dawns they flared windyred above stark blue, as Kedar nath

and Badrinath kings of that wilderness took the first sunlight. All day long they lay like molten silver

under the sun, and at evening put on their jewels again. At first they breathed temperately upon the travellers,

winds good to meet when one crawled over some gigantic hog'sback; but in a few days, at a height of nine

or ten thousand feet, those breezes bit; and Kim kindly allowed a village of hillmen to acquire merit by giving

him a rough blanketcoat. The lama was mildly surprised that anyone should object to the knifeedged

'These are but the lower hills, chela. There is no cold till we come to the true Hills.'

'Air and water are good, and the people are devout enough, but the food is very bad,' Kim growled; 'and we

'A little, maybe; but only enough to make old bones rejoice in the sun. We must not always delight in soft

Kim had all a plainsman's affection for the welltrodden track, not six feet wide, that snaked among the

mountains; but the lama, being Tibetan, could not refrain from short cuts over spurs and the rims of

gravelstrewn slopes. As he explained to his limping disciple, a man bred among mountains can prophesy the

course of a mountainroad, and though lowlying clouds might be a hindrance to a shortcutting stranger,

they made no earthly difference to a thoughtful man. Thus, after long hours of what would be reckoned very

fair mountaineering in civilized countries, they would pant over a saddleback, sidle past a few landslips, and

drop through forest at an angle of forty five onto the road again. Along their track lay the villages of the

hillfolk mud and earth huts, timbers now and then rudely carved with an axe clinging like swallows' nests

against the steeps, huddled on tiny flats halfway down a threethousandfoot glissade; jammed into a

corner between cliffs that funnelled and focused every wandering blast; or, for the sake of summer pasture,

cowering down on a neck that in winter would be ten feet deep in snow. And the people the sallow, greasy,

duffle clad people, with short bare legs and faces almost Esquimaux would flock out and adore. The

Plains kindly and gentle had treated the lama as a holy man among holy men. But the Hills worshipped

him as one in the confidence of all their devils. Theirs was an almost obliterated Buddhism, overlaid with a

natureworship fantastic as their own landscapes, elaborate as the terracing of their tiny fields; but they

recognized the big hat, the clicking rosary, and the rare Chinese texts for great authority; and they respected

'We saw thee come down over the black Breasts of Eua,' said a Betah who gave them cheese, sour milk, and

stonehard bread one evening. 'We do not use that often except when calving cows stray in summer. There

is a sudden wind among those stones that casts men down on the stillest day. But what should such folk care

Then did Kim, aching in every fibre, dizzy with looking down, footsore with cramping desperate toes into

inadequate crannies, take joy in the day's march such joy as a boy of St Xavier's who had won the

quartermile on the flat might take in the praises of his friends. The hills sweated the ghi and sugar suet off

his bones; the dry air, taken sobbingly at the head of cruel passes, firmed and built out his upper ribs; and the

They meditated often on the Wheel of Life the more so since, as the lama said, they were freed from its

visible temptations. Except the grey eagle and an occasional farseen bear grubbing and rooting on the

hillside; a vision of a furious painted leopard met at dawn in a still valley devouring a goat; and now and

again a bright coloured bird, they were alone with the winds and the grass singing under the wind. The

women of the smoky huts over whose roofs the two walked as they descended the mountains, were unlovely

and unclean, wives of many husbands, and afflicted with goitre. The men were woodcutters when they were

not farmers meek, and of an incredible simplicity. But that suitable discourse might not fail, Fate sent them,

overtaking and overtaken upon the road, the courteous Dacca physician, who paid for his food in ointments

good for goitre and counsels that restore peace between men and women. He seemed to know these hills as

well as he knew the hill dialects, and gave the lama the lie of the land towards Ladakh and Tibet. He said they

could return to the Plains at any moment. Meantime, for such as loved mountains, yonder road might amuse.

This was not all revealed in a breath, but at evening encounters on the stone threshing floors, when, patients

disposed of, the doctor would smoke and the lama snuff, while Kim watched the wee cows grazing on the

housetops, or threw his soul after his eyes across the deep blue gulfs between range and range. And there

were talks apart in the dark woods, when the doctor would seek herbs, and Kim, as budding physician, must

'You see, Mister O'Hara, I do not know what the deucean' all I shall do when I find our sporting friends;

but if you will kindly keep within sight of my umbrella, which is fine fixed point for cadastral survey, I shall

Kim looked out across the jungle of peaks. 'This is not my country, hakim. Easier, I think, to find one louse in

'Oah, thatt is my strong points. There is no hurry for Hurree. They were at Leh not so long ago. They said

they had come down from the Karakorum with their heads and horns and all. I am onlee afraid they will have

sent back all their letters and compromising things from Leh into Russian territoree. Of course they will walk

away as far to the East as possible just to show that they were never among the Western States. You do not

know the Hills?' He scratched with a twig on the earth. 'Look! They should have come in by Srinagar or

Abbottabad. Thatt is their short road down the river by Bunji and Astor. But they have made mischief in the

West. So' he drew a furrow from left to right 'they march and they march away East to Leh (ah! it is cold

there), and down the Indus to Hanle (I know that road), and then down, you see, to Bushahr and Chini valley.

That is ascertained by process of elimination, and also by asking questions from people that I cure so well.

Our friends have been a long time playing about and producing impressions. So they are well known from far

off. You will see me catch them somewhere in Chini valley. Please keep your eye on the umbrella.'

It nodded like a windblown harebell down the valleys and round the mountain sides, and in due time the

lama and Kim, who steered by compass, would overhaul it, vending ointments and powders at eventide. 'We

came by such and such a way!' The lama would throw a careless finger backward at the ridges, and the

They crossed a snowy pass in cold moonlight, when the lama, mildly chaffing Kim, went through up to his

knees, like a Bactrian camel the snowbred, shaghaired sort that came into the Kashmir Serai. They

dipped across beds of light snow and snowpowdered shale, where they took refuge from a gale in a camp of

Tibetans hurrying down tiny sheep, each laden with a bag of borax. They came out upon grassy shoulders

still snowspeckled, and through forest, to grass anew. For all their marchings, Kedarnath and Badrinath

were not impressed; and it was only after days of travel that Kim, uplifted upon some insignificant

tenthousandfoot hummock, could see that a shoulderknot or horn of the two great lords had ever so

At last they entered a world within a world a valley of leagues where the high hills were fashioned of a

mere rubble and refuse from off the knees of the mountains. Here one day's march carried them no farther, it

seemed, than a dreamer's clogged pace bears him in a nightmare. They skirted a shoulder painfully for hours,

and, behold, it was but an outlying boss in an outlying buttress of the main pile! A rounded meadow revealed

itself, when they had reached it, for a vast tableland running far into the valley. Three days later, it was a dim

'Surely the Gods live here!' said Kim, beaten down by the silence and the appalling sweep and dispersal of the

'Long and long ago,' said the lama, as to himself, 'it was asked of the Lord whether the world were

everlasting. o this the Excellent One returned no answer ... When I was in Ceylon, a wise Seeker confirmed

that from the gospel which is written in Pali. Certainly, since we know the way to Freedom, the question were

unprofitable, but look, and know illusion, chela! These are the true Hills! They are like my hills by

Above them, still enormously above them, earth towered away towards the snowline, where from east to

west across hundreds of miles, ruled as with a ruler, the last of the bold birches stopped. Above that, in scarps

and blocks upheaved, the rocks strove to fight their heads above the white smother. Above these again,

changeless since the world's beginning, but changing to every mood of sun and cloud, lay out the eternal

snow. They could see blots and blurs on its face where storm and wandering wulliewa got up to dance.

Below them, as they stood, the forest slid away in a sheet of bluegreen for mile upon mile; below the forest

was a village in its sprinkle of terraced fields and steep grazinggrounds. Below the village they knew,

though a thunderstorm worried and growled there for the moment, a pitch of twelve or fifteen hundred feet

gave to the moist valley where the streams gather that are the mothers of young Sutluj.

As usual, the lama had led Kim by cowtrack and byroad, far from the main route along which Hurree

Babu, that 'fearful man', had bucketed three days before through a storm to which nine Englishmen out of ten

would have given full right of way. Hurree was no game shot the snick of a trigger made him change

colour but, as he himself would have said, he was 'fairly effeecient stalker', and he had raked the huge

valley with a pair of cheap binoculars to some purpose. Moreover, the white of worn canvas tents against

green carries far. Hurree Babu had seen all he wanted to see when he sat on the threshingfloor of Ziglaur,

twenty miles away as the eagle flies, and forty by road that is to say, two small dots which one day were

just below the snowline, and the next had moved downward perhaps six inches on the hillside. Once cleaned

out and set to the work, his fat bare legs could cover a surprising amount of ground, and this was the reason

why, while Kim and the lama lay in a leaky hut at Ziglaur till the storm should be overpast, an oily, wet, but

always smiling Bengali, talking the best of English with the vilest of phrases, was ingratiating himself with

two sodden and rather rheumatic foreigners. He had arrived, revolving many wild schemes, on the heels of a

thunderstorm which had split a pine over against their camp, and so convinced a dozen or two forcibly

impressed baggagecoolies the day was inauspicious for farther travel that with one accord they had thrown

down their loads and jibbed. They were subjects of a Hill Rajah who farmed out their services, as is the

custom, for his private gain; and, to add to their personal distresses, the strange Sahibs had already threatened

them with rifles. The most of them knew rifles and Sahibs of old: they were trackers and shikarris of the

Northern valleys, keen after bear and wild goat; but they had never been thus treated in their lives. So the

forest took them to her bosom, and, for all oaths and clamour, refused to restore. There was no need to feign

madness or the Babu had thought of another means of securing a welcome. He wrung out his wet clothes,

slipped on his patentleather shoes, opened the blue andwhite umbrella, and with mincing gait and a heart

beating against his tonsils appeared as 'agent for His Royal Highness, the Rajah of Rampur, gentlemen. What

The gentlemen were delighted. One was visibly French, the other Russian, but they spoke English not much

inferior to the Babu's. They begged his kind offices. Their native servants had gone sick at Leh. They had

hurried on because they were anxious to bring the spoils of the chase to Simla ere the skins grew motheaten.

They bore a general letter of introduction (the Babu salaamed to it orientally) to all Government officials. No,

they had not met any other shootingparties en route. They did for themselves. They had plenty of supplies.

They only wished to push on as soon as might be. At this he waylaid a cowering hillman among the trees, and

after three minutes' talk and a little silver (one cannot be economical upon State service, though Hurree's

heart bled at the waste) the eleven coolies and the three hangerson reappeared. At least the Babu would be a

'My royal master, he will be much annoyed, but these people are onlee common people and grossly ignorant.

If your honours will kindly overlook unfortunate affair, I shall be much pleased. In a little while rain will stop

He skipped nimbly from one kilta to the next, making pretence to adjust each conical basket. The Englishman

is not, as a rule, familiar with the Asiatic, but he would not strike across the wrist a kindly Babu who had

accidentally upset a kilta with a red oilskin top. On the other hand, he would not press drink upon a Babu

were he never so friendly, nor would he invite him to meat. The strangers did all these things, and asked

many questions about women mostly to which Hurree returned gay and unstudied answers. They gave

him a glass of whitish fluid like to gin, and then more; and in a little time his gravity departed from him. He

became thickly treasonous, and spoke in terms of sweeping indecency of a Government which had forced

upon him a white man's education and neglected to supply him with a white man's salary. He babbled tales of

oppression and wrong till the tears ran down his cheeks for the miseries of his land. Then he staggered off,

singing lovesongs of Lower Bengal, and collapsed upon a wet treetrunk. Never was so unfortunate a

'They are all just of that pattern,' said one sportsman to the other in French. 'When we get into India proper

thou wilt see. I should like to visit his Rajah. One might speak the good word there. It is possible that he has

'We have not time. We must get into Simla as soon as may be,' his companion replied. 'For my own part, I

'The English post is better and safer. Remember we are given all facilities and Name of God! they give

'Yes! To fight a fellowContinental in our game is something. There is a risk attached, but these people

'Now what the deuce is good of Chandernagore being so close to Calcutta and all,' said Hurree, snoring

openmouthed on the sodden moss, 'if I cannot understand their French? They talk so particularly fast! It

When he presented himself again he was racked with a headache penitent, and volubly afraid that in his

drunkenness he might have been indiscreet. He loved the British Government it was the source of all

prosperity and honour, and his master at Rampur held the very same opinion. Upon this the men began to

deride him and to quote past words, till step by step, with deprecating smirks, oily grins, and leers of infinite

cunning, the poor Babu was beaten out of his defences and forced to speak truth. When Lurgan was told the

tale later, he mourned aloud that he could not have been in the place of the stubborn, inattentive coolies, who

with grass mats over their heads and the raindrops puddling in their footprints, waited on the wea ther. All

the Sahibs of their acquaintance roughclad men joyously returning year after year to their chosen gullies

had servants and cooks and orderlies, very often hillmen. These Sahibs travelled without any retinue.

Therefore they were poor Sahibs, and ignorant; for no Sahib in his senses would follow a Bengali's advice.

But the Bengali, appearing from somewhere, had given them money, and could make shift with their dialect.

Used to comprehensive illtreatment from their own colour, they suspected a trap somewhere, and stood by

Then through the newwashed air, steaming with delicious earth smells, the Babu led the way down the

slopes walking ahead of the coolies in pride; walking behind the foreigners in humility. His thoughts were

many and various. The least of them would have interested his companions beyond words. But he was an

agreeable guide, ever keen to point out the beauties of his royal master's domain. He peopled the hills with

anything thev had a mind to slay thar, ibex, or markhor, and bear by Elisha's allowance. He discoursed of

botany and ethnology with unimpeachable inaccuracy, and his store of local legends he had been a trusted

'Decidedly this fellow is an original,' said the taller of the two foreigners. 'He is like the nightmare of a

'He represents in little India in transition the monstrous hybridism of East and West,' the Russian replied. 'It

'He has lost his own country and has not acquired any other. But he has a most complete hatred of his

Under the striped umbrella Hurree Babu was straining ear and brain to follow the quickpoured French, and

keeping both eyes on a kilta full of maps and documents an extralarge one with a double red oilskin

cover. He did not wish to steal anything. He only desired to know what to steal, and, incidentally, how to get

away when he had stolen it. He thanked all the Gods of Hindustan, and Herbert Spencer, that there remained

On the second dav the road rose steeply to a grass spur above the forest; and it was here, about sunset, that

they came across an aged lama but they called him a bonze sitting crosslegged above a mysterious chart

held down by stones, which he was explaining to a young man, evidently a neophyte, of singular, though

unwashen, beauty. The striped umbrella had been sighted half a march away, and Kim had suggested a halt

'Ha!' said Hurree Babu, resourceful as PussinBoots. 'That is eminent local holy man. Probably subject of

The two men stood bareheaded in the wash of the afternoon sunlight low across the goldcoloured grass. The

'Look!' said the Frenchman. 'It is like a picture for the birth of a religion the first teacher and the first

'Of some debased kind,' the other answered. 'There are no true Buddhists among the Hills. But look at the

folds of the drapery. Look at his eyes how insolent! Why does this make one feel that we are so young a

people?' The speaker struck passionately at a tall weed. 'We have nowhere left our mark yet. Nowhere! That,

do you understand, is what disquiets me.' He scowled at the placid face, and the monumental calm of the

'Have patience. We shall make your mark together we and you young people. Meantime, draw his picture.'

The Babu advanced loftily; his back out of all keeping with his deferential speech, or his wink towards Kim.

'Holy One, these be Sahibs. My medicines cured one of a flux, and I go into Simla to oversee his recovery.

'To heal the sick is always good. This is the Wheel of Life,' said the lama, 'the same I showed thee in the hut

The lama's eyes lighted at the prospect of new listeners. 'To expound the Most Excellent Way is good. Have

Hereat, simply as a child engrossed with a new game, the lama threw back his head and began the

fullthroated invocation of the Doctor of Divinity ere he opens the full doctrine. The strangers leaned on their

alpenstocks and listened. Kim, squatting humbly, watched the red sunlight on their faces, and the blend and

parting of their long shadows. They wore unEnglish leggings and curious girtin belts that reminded him

hazily of the pictures in a book in St Xavier's library "The Adventures of a Young Naturalist in Mexico" was

its name. Yes, they looked very like the wonderful M. Sumichrast of that tale, and very unlike the 'highly

unscrupulous folk' of Hurree Babu's imagining. The coolies, earthcoloured and mute, crouched reverently

some twenty or thirty yards away, and the Babu, the slack of his thin gear snapping like a markingflag in the

'These are the men,' Hurree whispered, as the ritual went on and the two whites followed the grassblade

sweeping from Hell to Heaven and back again. 'All their books are in the large kilta with the reddish top

books and reports and maps and I have seen a King's letter that either Hilas or Bunar has written. They

guard it most carefully. They have sent nothing back from Hilas or Leh. That is sure.'

'Only the beegarcoolies. They have no servants. They are so close they cook their own food.'

'Wait and see. Only if any chance comes to me thou wilt know where to seek for the papers.'

'See here the Hell appointed for avarice and greed. Flanked upon the one side by Desire and on the other by

Weariness.' The lama warmed to his work, and one of the strangers sketched him in the quick fading light.

'That is enough,' the man said at last brusquely. 'I cannot understand him, but I want that picture. He is a

'He says "No, sar,"' the Babu replied. The lama, of course, would no more have parted with his chart to a

casual wayfarer than an archbishop would pawn the holy vessels of his cathedral. All Tibet is full of cheap

reproductions of the Wheel; but the lama was an artist, as well as a wealthy Abbot in his own place.

'Perhaps in three days, or four, or ten, if I perceive that the Sahib is a Seeker and of good understanding, I

may myself draw him another. But this was used for the initiation of a novice. Tell him so, hakim.'

The lama shook his head slowly and began to fold up the Wheel. The Russian, on his side, saw no more than

an unclean old man haggling over a dirty piece of paper. He drew out a handful of rupees, and snatched

halfjestingly at the chart,which tore in the lama's grip. A low murmur of horror went up from the coolies

some of whom were Spiti men and, by their lights, good Buddhists. The lama rose at the insult; his hand went

to the heavy iron pencase that is the priest's weapon,and the Babu danced in agony.

'Now you see you see why I wanted witnesses. They are highly unscrupulous people. Oh, sar! sar! You

It was too late. Before Kim could ward him off, the Russian struck the old man full on the face. Next instant

he was rolling over and over downhill with Kim at his throat. The blow had waked every unknown Irish devil

in the boy's blood, and the sudden fall of his enemy did the rest. The lama dropped to his knees,

halfstunned; the coolies under their loads fled up the hill as fast as plainsmen run aross the level. They had

seen sacrilege unspeakable, and it behoved them to get away before the Gods and devils of the hills took

vengeance. The Frenchman ran towards the lama, fumbling at his revolver with some notion of making him a

hostage for his companion. A shower of cutting stones hillmen are very straight shots drove him away,

and a coolie from Aochung snatched the lama into the stampede. All came about as swiftly as the sudden

'They have taken the baggage and all the guns,' yelled the Frenchman, firing blindly into the twilight.

'All right, sar! All right! Don't shoot. I go to rescue,' and Hurree, pounding down the slope, cast himself

bodily upon the delighted and astonished Kim, who was banging his breathless foe's head against a boulder.

'Go back to the coolies,' whispered the Babu in his ear. 'They have the baggage. The papers are in the kilta

with the red top, but look through all. Take their papers, and specially the murasla [King's letter]. Go! The

Kim tore uphill. A revolverbullet rang on a rock by his side, and he cowered partridgewise.

'If you shoot,' shouted Hurree, 'they will descend and annihilate us. I have rescued the gentleman, sar. This is

'By Jove!' Kim was thinking hard in English. 'This is dam'tight place, but I think it is selfdefence.' He felt

in his bosom for Mahbub's gift, and uncertainly save for a few practice shots in the Bikanir desert, he had

'What did I say, sar!' The Babu seemed to be in tears. 'Come down here and assist to resuscitate. We are all up

The shots ceased. There was a sound of stumbling feet, and Kim hurried upward through the gloom, swearing

'But not before we have done justice,' a voice cried. 'I have got the Sahibs' guns all four. Let us go down.'

'He struck the Holy One we saw it! Our cattle will be barren our wives will cease to bear! The snows will

The little firclump filled with clamouring coolies panic stricken, and in their terror capable of anything.

The man from Aochung clicked the breechbolt of his gun impatiently, and made as to go downhill.

'It is this person who has suffered wrong,' said the lama, his hand over his brow.

'If this person overlooks it, your hands are clean. Moreover, ye acquire merit by obedience.'

For a moment, for just so long as it needs to stuff a cartridge into a breechloader, the lama hesitated. Then

'Hast thou heard? I say there shall be no killing I who was Abbot of Suchzen. Is it any lust of thine to be

reborn as a rat,or a snake under the eaves a worm in the belly of the most mean beast? Is it thy wish to '

The man from Aochung fell to his knees, for the voice boomed like a Tibetan devilgong.

'Ai! ai!' cried the Spiti men.'Do not curse us do not curse him. It was but his zeal, Holy One! . . . Put down

'Anger on anger! Evil on evil! There will be no killing. Let the priestbeaters go in bondage to their own acts.

Just and sure is the Wheel, swerving not a hair! They will be born many times in torment.' His head

'I have come near to great evil, chela,' he whispered in that dead hush under the pines. 'I was tempted to loose

the bullet; and truly, in Tibet there would have been a heavy and a slow death for them ... He struck me

across the face ... upon the flesh ...' He slid to the ground, breathing heavily, and Kim could hear the

'Have they hurt him to the death?' said the Aochung man, while the others stood mute.

Kim knelt over the body in deadly fear. 'Nay,' he cried passionately, 'this is only a weakness.' Then he

remembered that he was a white man, with a white man's campfittings at his service. 'Open the kiltas! The

'Oho! Then I know it,' said the Aochung man with a laugh. 'Not for five years was I Yankling Sahib's

He drew from his breast a bottle of cheap whisky such as is sold to explorers at Leh and cleverly forced a

'So I did when Yankling Sahib twisted his foot beyond Astor. Aha! I have already looked into their baskets

but we will make fair division at Shamlegh. Give him a little more. It is good medicine. Feel! His heart goes

better now. Lay his head down and rub a little on the chest. If he had waited quietly while I accounted for the

Sahibs this would never have come. But perhaps the Sahibs may chase us here. Then it would not be wrong

'One is paid, I think, already,' said Kim between his teeth. 'I kicked him in the groin as we went downhill.

'It is well to be brave when one does not live in Rampur,' said one whose hut lay within a few miles of the

Rajah's rickety palace. 'If we get a bad name among the Sahibs, none will employ us as shikarris any more.'

'Oh, but these are not Angrezi Sahibs not merryminded men like Fostum Sahib or Yankling Sahib. They

'Nay, Holy One. We are all here.' The Aochung man timidly patted his feet. 'Except by thy order, no one

shall be slain. Rest awhile. We will make a little camp here, and later, as the moon rises, we go to

'There is, as it were, a dizziness at the back of my neck, and a pinching in it. Let me lay my head on thy lap,

chela. I am an old man, but not free from passion . . . We must think of the Cause of Things.'

'I have been Fostum Sahib's shikarri, and I am Yankling Sahib's shikarri. I should have been with Yankling

Sahib now but for this cursed beegar [the corvee]. Let two men watch below with the guns lest the Sahibs do

They sat down a little apart from the lama, and, after listening awhile, passed round a waterpipe whose

receiver was an old Day and Martin blackingbottle. The glow of the red charcoal as it went from hand to

hand lit up the narrow, blinking eyes, the high Chinese cheekbones, and the bullthroats that melted away

into the dark duffle folds round the shoulders. They looked like kobolds from some magic mine gnomes of

the hills in conclave. And while they talked, the voices of the snowwaters round them diminished one by

'How he stood up against us!' said a Spiti man admiring. 'I remember an old ibex, out Ladakhway, that

Dupont Sahib missed on a shoulder shot, seven seasons back, standing up just like him. Dupont Sahib was a

'Not as good as Yankling Sahib.' The Aochung man took a pull at the whiskybottle and passed it over.

'We go to Shamlegh when the moon rises. There we will fairly divide the baggage between us. I am content

'No; but muskpods are worth six rupees apiece now, and thy women can have the canvas of the tents and

some of the cookinggear. We will do all that at Shamlegh before dawn. Then we all go our ways,

remembering that we have never seen or taken service with these Sahibs, who may, indeed, say that we have

'Who is to tell him? Those Sahibs, who cannot speak our talk, or the Babu, who for his own ends gave us

money? Will he lead an army against us? What evidence will remain? That we do not need we shall throw on

'Who is at Shamlegh this summer?' The place was only a grazing centre of three or four huts.

'The Woman of Shamlegh. She has no love for Sahibs, as we know. The others can be pleased with little

presents; and here is enough for us all.' He patted the fat sides of the nearest basket.

'I have said they are not true Sahibs. All their skins and heads were bought in the bazar at Leh. I know the

'If the worst comes to the worst, I shall tell Yankling Sahib, who is a man of a merry mind, and he will laugh.

We are not doing any wrong to any Sahibs whom we know. They are priestbeaters. They frightened us. We

fled! Who knows where we dropped the baggage? Do ye think Yankling Sahib will permit downcountry

police to wander all over the hills, disturbing his game? It is a far cry from Simla to Chini, and farther from

'So be it, but I carry the big kilta. The basket with the red top that the Sahibs pack themselves every morning.'

'Thus it is proved,' said the Shamlegh man adroitly, 'that they are Sahibs of no account. Who ever heard of

Fostum Sahib, or Yankling Sahib, or even the little Peel Sahib that sits up of nights to shoot serow I say,

who, ever heard of these Sahibs coming into the hills without a downcountry cook, and a bearer, and and

all manner of wellpaid, highhanded and oppressive folk in their tail? How can they make trouble? What of

'Nothing, but that it is full of the Written Word books and papers in which they wrote, and strange

'True! But how if we insult the Sahibs' Gods thereby! I do not like to handle the Written Word in that fashion.

And their brass idols are beyond my comprehension. It is no plunder for simple hillfolk.'

'The old man still sleeps. Hst! We will ask his chela.' The Aochung man refreshed himself, and swelled with

'But I do,' said Kim cautiously. The lama drew breath in natural, easy sleep, and Kim had been thinking of

Hurree's last words. As a player of the Great Game, he was disposed just then to reverence the Babu. 'It is a

kilta with a red top full of very wonderful things, not to be handled by fools.'

'I said it; I said it,' cried the bearer of that burden. 'Thinkest thou it will betray us?'

'Not if it be given to me. I can draw out its magic. Otherwise it will do great harm.'

'It is no matter to me.' Kim answered, with the craft of his mother country. 'Share it among you, and see

'Not I. I was only jesting. Give the order. There is more than enough for us all. We go our way from

They arranged and rearranged their artless little plans for another hour, while Kim shivered with cold and

pride. The humour of the situation tickled the Irish and the Oriental in his soul. Here were the emissaries of

the dread Power of the North, very possibly as great in their own land as Mahbub or Colonel Creighton,

suddenly smitten helpless. One of them, he privately knew, would be lame for a time. They had made

promises to Kings. Tonight they lay out somewhere below him, chartless, foodless, tentless, gunless except

for Hurree Babu, guideless. And this collapse of their Great Game (Kim wondered to whom they would

report it), this panicky bolt into the night, had come about through no craft of Hurree's or contrivance of

Kim's, but simply, beautifully, and inevitably as the capture of Mahbub's fakirfriends by the zealous young

'They are there with nothing; and, by Jove, it is cold! I am here with all their things. Oh, they will be angry!

Kim might have saved his pity, for though at that moment the Bengali suffered acutely in the flesh, his soul

was puffed and lofty. A mile down the hill, on the edge of the pineforest, two halffrozen men one

powerfully sick at intervals were varying mutual recriminations with the most poignant abuse of the Babu,

who seemed distraught with terror. They demanded a plan of action. He explained that they were very lucky

to be alive; that their coolies, if not then stalking them, had passed beyond recall; that the Rajah, his master,

was ninety miles away, and, so far from lending them money and a retinue for the Simla journey, would

surely cast them into prison if he heard that they had hit a priest. He enlarged on this sin and its consequences

till they bade him change the subject. Their one hope, said he, was unostentatious flight from village to

village till they reached civilization; and, for the hundredth time dissolved in tears, he demanded of the high

Ten steps would have taken Hurree into the creaking gloom utterly beyond their reach to the shelter and

food of the nearest village, where glibtongued doctors were scarce. But he preferred to endure cold,

bellypinch, bad words, and occasional blows in the company of his honoured employers. Crouched against a

'And have you thought,' said the uninjured man hotly, 'what sort of spectacle we shall present wandering

Hurree Babu had thought of little else for some hours, but the remark was not to his address.

'I promise myself a peculiar pleasure in emptying my revolver into that young bonze when next we meet,'

'Revolvers! Vengeance! Bonzes!' Hurree crouched lower. The war was breaking out afresh. 'Have you no

consideration for our loss? The baggage! The baggage!' He could hear the speaker literally dancing on the

grass. 'Everything we bore! Everything we have secured! Our gains! Eight months' work! Do you know what

that means? "Decidedly it is we who can deal with Orientals!" Oh, you have done well.'

They fell to it in several tongues, and Hurree smiled. Kim was with the kiltas, and in the kiltas lay eight

months of good diplomacy. There was no means of communicating with the boy, but he could be trusted. For

the rest, Hurree could so stagemanage the journey through the hills that Hilas, Bunar, and four hundred

miles of hill roads should tell the tale for a generation. Men who cannot control their own coolies are little

'If I had done it myself,' thought Hurree, 'it would not have been better; and, by Jove, now I think of it, of

course I arranged it myself. How quick I have been! Just when I ran downhill I thought it! Thee outrage was

accidental, but onlee me could have worked it ah for all it was dam'well worth. Consider the moral

effect upon these ignorant peoples! No treaties no papers no written documents at all and me to

interpret for them. How I shall laugh with the Colonel! I wish I had their papers also: but you cannot occupy

At moonrise the cautious coolies got under way. The lama, refreshed by his sleep and the spirit, needed no

more than Kim's shoulder to bear him along a silent, swiftstriding man. They held the shale sprinkled

grass for an hour, swept round the shoulder of an immortal cliff, and climbed into a new country entirely

blocked off from all sight of Chini valley. A huge pastureground ran up fanshaped to the living snow. At

its base was perhaps half an acre of flat land, on which stood a few soil and timber huts. Behind them for,

hill fashion, they were perched on the edge of all things the ground fell sheer two thousand feet to

The men made no motion to divide the plunder till they had seen the lama bedded down in the best room of

'We will send food, ' said the Aochung man, 'and the red topped kilta. By dawn there will be none to give

evidence, one way or the other. If anything is not needed in the kilta see here!'

He pointed through the window opening into space that was filled with moonlight reflected from the snow

'No need to listen for the fall. This is the world's end,' he said, and went out. The lama looked forth, a hand on

either sill, with eyes that shone like yellow opals. From the enormous pit before him white peaks lifted

themselves yearning to the moonlight. The rest was as the darkness of interstellar space.

'These,' he said slowly, 'are indeed my Hills. Thus should a man abide, perched above the world, separated

'Yes; if he has a chela to prepare tea for him, and to fold a blanket for his head, and to chase out calving

A smoky lamp burned in a niche, but the full moonlight beat it down; and by the mixed light, stooping above

'Ai! But now I have let the blood cool, my head still beats and drums, and there is a cord round the back of

'What evil? Thou hast saved the Sahibs from the death they deserved a hundred times.'

'The lesson is not well learnt, chela.' The lama came to rest on a folded blanket, as Kim went forward with his

evening routine. 'The blow was but a shadow upon a shadow. Evil in itself my legs weary apace these latter

days! it met evil in me anger, rage, and a lust to return evil. These wrought in my blood, woke tumult in my

stomach, and dazzled my ears.' Here he drank scalding blocktea ceremonially, taking the hot cup from

Kim's hand. 'Had I been passionless, the evil blow would have done only bodily evil a scar, or a bruise

which is illusion. But my mind was not abstracted, for rushed in straightway a lust to let the Spiti men kill. In

fighting that lust, my soul was torn and wrenched beyond a thousand blows. Not till I had repeated the

Blessings' (he meant the Buddhist Beatitudes) 'did I achieve calm. But the evil planted in me by that

moment's carelessness works out to its end. Just is the Wheel, swerving not a hair! Learn the lesson, chela.'

'It is too high for me,' Kim muttered. 'I am still all shaken. I am glad I hurt the man.'

'I felt that, sleeping upon thy knees, in the wood below. It disquieted me in my dreams the evil in thy soul

working through to mine. Yet on the other hand' he loosed his rosary 'I have acquired merit by saving two

lives the lives of those that wronged me. Now I must see into the Cause of Things.The boat of my soul

Till the dawn, hour after hour, as the moonlight paled on the high peaks, and that which had been belted

blackness on the sides of the far hills showed as tender green forest, the lama stared fixedly at the wall. From

time to time he groaned. Outside the barred door, where discomfited kine came to ask for their old stable,

Shamlegh and the coolies gave itself up to plunder and riotous living. The Aochung man was their leader,

and once they had opened the Sahibs' tinned foods and found that they were very good they dared not turn

When Kim, after a night of bad dreams, stole forth to brush his teeth in the morning chill, a faircoloured

'The others have gone. They left thee this kilta as the promise was. I do not love Sahibs, but thou wilt make

us a charm in return for it. We do not wish little Shamlegh to get a bad name on account of the accident. I

am the Woman of Shamlegh.' She looked him over with bold, bright eyes, unlike the usual furtive glance of

Kim tilted the kilta on the floor a cascade of Surveyinstruments, books, diaries, letters, maps, and queerly

scented native correspondence. At the very bottom was an embroidered bag covering a sealed, gilded, and

illuminated document such as one King sends to another. Kim caught his breath with delight,and reviewed

'The books I do not want. Besides, they are logarithms Survey, I suppose.' He laid them aside. 'The letters I

do not understand, but Colonel Creighton will. They must all be kept. The maps they draw better maps than

me of course. All the native letters oho! and particularly the murasla.' He sniffed the embroidered bag.

'That must be from Hilas or Bunar, and Hurree Babu spoke truth. By Jove! It is a fine haul. I wish Hurree

could know . . . The rest must go out of the window.' He fingered a superb prismatic compass and the shiny

top of a theodolite. But after all, a Sahib cannot very well steal, and the things might be inconvenient

evidence later. He sorted out every scrap of manuscript, every map, and the native letters. They made one

softish slab. The three locked ferrilbacked books, with five worn pocketbooks, he put aside.

'The letters and the murasla I must carry inside my coat and under my belt, and the handwritten books I

must put into the foodbag. It will be very heavy. No. I do not think there is anything more. If there is, the

coolies have thrown it down the khud, so thatt is all right. Now you go too.' He repacked the kilta with all he

meant to lose, and hove it up on to the windowsill. A thousand feet below lay a long, lazy, roundshouldered

bank of mist, as yet untouched by the morning sun. A thousand feet below that was a hundredyearold

pine forest. He could see the green tops looking like a bed of moss when a windeddy thinned the cloud.

The wheeling basket vomited its contents as it dropped. The theodolite hit a jutting cliffledge and exploded

like a shell; the books, inkstands, paintboxes, compasses, and rulers showed for a few seconds like a swarm

of bees. Then they vanished; and, though Kim, hanging half out of the window, strained his young ears, never

'Five hundred a thousand rupees could not buy them,' he thought sorrowfully. 'It was verree wasteful, but I

have all their other stuff everything they did I hope. Now how the deuce am I to tell Hurree Babu, and

whatt the deuce am I to do? And my old man is sick. I must tie up the letters in oilskin. That is something to

do first else they will get all sweated ... And I am all alone!' He bound them into a neat packet, swedging

down the stiff, sticky oilskin at the comers, for his roving life had made him as methodical as an old hunter in

matters of the road. Then with double care he packed away the books at the bottom of the foodbag.

'There is no need.' Kim had completely overlooked the necessity for a little pattertalk. The woman laughed

'None for thee. Thou canst cast a spell by the mere winking of an eye. But think of us poor people when

thou art gone. They were all too drunk last night to hear a woman. Thou art not drunk?'

'I am a priest.' Kim had recovered himself, and, the woman being aught but unlovely, thought best to stand on

'I warned them that the Sahibs will be angry and will make an inquisition and a report to the Rajah. There is

'Is that all thy trouble?' The plan rose fully formed in Kim's mind, and he smiled ravishingly.

'Not all,' quoth the woman, putting out a hard brown hand all covered with turquoises set in silver.

'I can finish that in a breath,' he went on quickly. 'The Babu is the very hakim (thou hast heard of him?) who

'He will tell for the sake of a reward. Sahibs cannot distinguish one hillman from another, but Babus have

He accepted the compliment calmly, as men must in lands where women make the love, tore a leaf from a

notebook, and with a patent indelible pencil wrote in gross Shikast the script that bad little boys use when

they write dirt on walls: 'I have everything that they have written: their pictures of the country, and many

letters. Especially the murasla. Tell me what to do. I am at Shamleghunder theSnow. The old man is

'Indeed no. They are still in the forest across the spur. Our children went to watch them when the light came,

Kim looked his astonishment; but from the edge of the sheeppasture floated a shrill, kitelike trill. A child

tending cattle had picked it up from a brother or sister on the far side of the slope that commanded Chini

'My husbands are also out there gathering wood.' She drew a handful of walnuts from her bosom, split one

'Dost thou not know the meaning of the walnut priest?' she said coyly, and handed him the halfshells.

'Well thought of.' He slipped the piece of paper between them quickly. 'Hast thou a little wax to close them

'There is no payment till service has been rendered. Carry this to the Babu, and say it was sent by the Son of

Kim laughed. 'He is, I have no doubt, very tired and very hungry. The Hills make cold bedfellows. Hai, my'

it was on the tip of his tongue to say Mother, but he turned it to Sister 'thou art a wise and witty woman. By

'True. News was at Ziglaur by midnight, and by tomorrow should be at Kotgarh. The villages are both afraid

'No need. Tell the villages to feed the Sahibs and pass them on, in peace. We must get them quietly away

from our valleys. To steal is one thing to kill another. The Babu will understand, and there will be no

'So be it. After service thou hast said? comes the reward. I am the Woman of Shamlegh, and I hold from

the Rajah. I am no common bearer of babes. Shamlegh is thine: hoof and horn and hide, milk and butter.

She turned resolutely uphill, her silver necklaces clicking on her broad breast, to meet the morning sun fifteen

hundred feet above them. This time Kim thought in the vernacular as he waxed down the oilskin edges of the

'How can a man follow the Way or the Great Game when he is soalways pestered by women? There was

that girl at Akrola of the Ford; and there was the scullion's wife behind the dovecot not counting the others

and now comes this one! When I was a child it was well enough, but now I am a man and they will not

He went out to levy on the village not with a beggingbowl, which might do for downcountry, but in the

manner of a prince. Shamlegh's summer population is only three families four women and eight or nine

men. They were all full of tinned meats and mixed drinks, from ammoniated quinine to white vodka, for they

had taken their full share in the overnight loot. The neat Continental tents had been cut up and shared long

But they considered the lama's presence a perfect safeguard against all consequences, and impenitently

brought Kim of their best even to a drink of chang the barleybeer that comes from Ladakhway. Then

they thawed out in the sun, and sat with their legs hanging over infinite abysses, chattering, laughing, and

smoking. They judged India and its Government solely from their experience of wandering Sahibs who had

employed them or their friends as shikarris. Kim heard tales of shots missed upon ibex, serow, or markhor, by

Sahibs twenty years in their graves every detail lighted from behind like twigs on treetops seen against

lightning. They told him of their little diseases, and, more important, the diseases of their tiny, surefooted

cattle; of trips as far as Kotgarh, where the strange missionaries live, and beyond even to marvellous Simla,

where the streets are paved with silver, and anyone, look you, can get service with the Sahibs, who ride about

in twowheeled carts and spend money with a spade. Presently, grave and aloof, walking very heavily, the

lama joined himself to the chatter under the eaves, and they gave him great room. The thin air refreshed him,

and he sat on the edge of precipices with the best of them, and, when talk languished, flung pebbles into the

void. Thirty miles away, as the eagle flies, lay the next range, seamed and channelled and pitted with little

patches of brush forests, each a day's dark march. Behind the village, Shamlegh hill itself cut off all view to

southward. It was like sitting in a swallow's nest under the eaves of the roof of the world.

>From time to time the lama stretched out his hand, and with a little lowvoiced prompting would point out

'Beyond, where the hills lie thickest, lies Dech'en' (he meant Hanle'), 'the great Monastery.

s'Tagstanrasch'en built it,and of him there runs this tale.' Whereupon he told it: a fantastic piled narrative

of bewitchment and miracles that set Shamlegh agasping. Turning west a little, he speered for the green hills

of Kulu, and sought Kailung under the glaciers.'For thither came I in the old, old days. From Leh I came, over

'And I slept two nights with the priests of Kailung. These are the Hills of my delight! Shadows blessed above

all other shadows! There my eyes opened on this world; there my eyes were opened to this world; there I

found Enlightenment; and there I girt my loins for my Search. Out of the Hills I came the high Hills and the

strong winds. Oh, just is the Wheel!' He blessed them in detail the great glaciers, the naked rocks, the piled

moraines and tumbled shale; dry upland, hidden saltlake, ageold timber and fruitful watershot valley one

after the other, as a dying man blesses his folk; and Kim marvelled at his passion.

'Yes yes. There is no place like our Hills,' said the people of Shamlegh. And they fell to wondering how a

man could live in the hot terrible Plains where the cattle run as big as elephants, unfit to plough on a hillside;

where village touches village, they had heard, for a hundred miles; where folk went about stealing in gangs,

So the still forenoon wore through, and at the end of it Kim's messenger dropped from the steep pasture as

'He joined himself to the idolaters? Nay, I remember he did a healing upon one of them. He has acquired

merit, though the healed employed his strength for evil. Just is the Wheel! What of the hakim?'

'I feared that thou hadst been bruised and and I knew he was wise.' Kim took the waxed walnutshell and

read in English on the back of his note: Your favour received. Cannot get away from present company at

present, but shall take them into Simla. After which, hope to rejoin you. Inexpedient to follow angry

gentlemen. Return by same road you came, and will overtake. Highly gratified about correspondence due to

my forethought. 'He says, Holy One, that he will escape from the idolaters, and will return to us. Shall we

'That may not be, chela. From my bones outward I do desire it, but it is forbidden. I have seen the Cause of

'Why? When the Hills give thee back thy strength day by day? Remember we were weak and fainting down

'I became strong to do evil and to forget. A brawler and a swashbuckler upon the hillsides was I.' Kim bit

back a smile. 'Just and perfect is the Wheel, swerving not a hair. When I was a man a long time ago I did

pilgrimage to Guru Ch'wan among the poplars' (he pointed Bhotanwards), 'where they keep the Sacred

'Quiet, be quiet!' said Shamlegh, all arow. 'He speaks of Jamlin nink'or, the Horse That Can Go Round

'I speak to my chela only,' said the lama, in gentle reproof, and they scattered like frost on south eaves of a

morning. 'I did not seek truth in those days, but the talk of doctrine. All illusion! I drank the beer and ate the

bread of Guru Ch'wan. Next day one said: "We go out to fight Sangor Gutok down the valley to discover"

(mark again how Lust is tied to Anger!) "which Abbot shall bear rule in the valley and take the profit of the

'With our long pencases as I could have shown . . . I say, we fought under the poplars, both Abbots and all the

monks, and one laid open my forehead to the bone. See!' He tilted back his cap and showed a puckered

silvery scar. 'Just and perfect is the Wheel! Yesterday the scar itched, and after fifty years I recalled how it

was dealt and the face of him who dealt it; dwelling a little in illusion. Followed that which thou didst see

strife and stupidity. Just is the Wheel! The idolater's blow fell upon the scar. Then I was shaken in my soul:

my soul was darkened, and the boat of my soul rocked upon the waters of illusion. Not till I came to

Shamlegh could I meditate upon the Cause of Things, or trace the running grassroots of Evil. I strove all the

Kim was genuinely distressed at the old man's sorrow, and Mahbub Ali's phrase slipped out unawares.

'In the dawn,' the lama went on more gravely, ready rosary clicking between the slow sentences, 'came

enlightenment. It is here ... I am an old man . . . hillbred, hillfed, never to sit down among my Hills. Three

years I travelled through Hind, but can earth be stronger than Mother Earth? My stupid body yearned to the

Hills and the snows of the Hills, from below there. I said, and it is true, my Search is sure. So, at the Kulu

woman's house I turned hillward, overpersuaded by myself. There is no blame to the hakim. He following

Desire foretold that the Hills would make me strong. They strengthened me to do evil, to forget my Search.

I delighted in life and the lust of life. I desired strong slopes to climb. I cast about to find them. I measured

the strength of my body, which is evil, against the high Hills, I made a mock of thee when thy breath came

short under Jamnotri. I jested when thou wouldst not face the snow of the pass.'

'But what harm? I was afraid. It was just. I am not a hillman; and I loved thee for thy new strength.'

'More than once I remember' he rested his cheek dolefully on his hand 'I sought thy praise and the

hakim's for the mere strength of my legs. Thus evil followed evil till the cup was full. Just is the Wheel! All

Hind for three years did me all honour. From the Fountain of Wisdom in the Wonder House to' he smiled

'Because we loved thee. It is only the fever of the blow. I myself am still sick and shaken.'

'No! It was because I was upon the Way tuned as are sinen [cymbals] to the purpose of the Law. I

departed from that ordinance. The tune was broken: followed the punishment. In my own Hills, on the edge

of my own country, in the very place of my evil desire, comes the buffet here!' (He touched his brow.) 'As a

novice is beaten when he misplaces the cups, so am I beaten, who was Abbot of Suchzen. No word, look

'We were well matched. Ignorance and Lust met Ignorance and Lust upon the road, and they begat Anger.

The blow was a sign to me, who am no better than a strayed yak, that my place is not here. Who can read the

Cause of an act is halfway to Freedom! "Back to the path," says the Blow. "The Hills are not for thee. Thou

'Our Lord Himself cannot make the Wheel swing backward. And for my merit that I had acquired I gain yet

another sign.' He put his hand in his bosom, and drew forth the Wheel of Life. 'Look! I considered this after I

had meditated. There remains untorn by the idolater no more than the breadth of my fingernail.'

'So much, then, is the span of my life in this body. I have served the Wheel all my days. Now the Wheel

serves me. But for the merit I have acquired in guiding thee upon the Way, there would have been added to

Kim stared at the brutally disfigured chart. From left to right diagonally the rent ran from the Eleventh

House where Desire gives birth to the Child (as it is drawn by Tibetans) across the human and animal

worlds, to the Fifth House the empty House of the Senses. The logic was unanswerable.

'Before our Lord won Enlightenment' the lama folded all away with reverence 'He was tempted. I too

have been tempted, but it is finished. The Arrow fell in the Plains not in the Hills. Therefore, what make we

'Then I must get food from the village. Oh, the weary Road!' Kim felt that he too needed rest.

'That is lawful. Let us eat and go. he Arrow fell in the Plains ... but I yielded to Desire. Make ready, chela.'

Kim turned to the woman with the turquoise headgear who had been idly pitching pebbles over the cliff. She

'I found him like a strayed buffalo in a cornfield the Babu; snorting and sneezing with cold. He was so

hungry that he forgot his dignity and gave me sweet words. The Sahibs have nothing.' She flung out an empty

'I spoke to the Bengali first and to the people of a nearby village after. The Sahibs will be given food as

they need it nor will the people ask money. The plunder is already distributed. The Babu makes lying

"Was never a Bengali yet had one bigger than a dried walnut. But it is no matter ... Now as to walnuts. After

'It is my loss,' Kim began. 'Even now I had planned desirable things in my heart which' there is no need to

go through the compliments proper to these occasions. He sighed deeply . . . 'But my master, led by a vision

Kim shook his head. 'I know my Holy One, and his rage if he be crossed,' he replied impressively. 'His curses

'Pity they did not save him from a broken head! I heard that thou wast the tigerhearted one who smote the

'Hillwoman,' said Kim, with austerity that could not harden the outlines of his young oval face, 'these matters

'The Gods be good to us! Since when have men and women been other than men and women?'

'A priest is a priest. He says he will go upon this hour. I am his chela, and I go with him. We need food for

the Road. He is an honoured guest in all the villages, but' he broke into a pure boy's grin 'the food here is

'Then I curse thee a little not greatly, but enough to remember.' He could not help smiling.

'Thou hast cursed me already by the downdropped eyelash and the uplifted chin. Curses? What should I care

for mere words?' She clenched her hands upon her bosom . . . 'But I would not have thee to go in anger,

thinking hardly of me a gatherer of cowdung and grass at Shamlegh, but still a woman of substance.'

'I think nothing,' said Kim, 'but that I am grieved to go, for I am very weary; and that we need food. Here is

The woman snatched it angrily. 'I was foolish,' said she. 'Who is thy woman in the Plains? Fair or black? I

was fair once. Laughest thou? Once, long ago, if thou canst believe, a Sahib looked on me with favour. Once,

long ago, I wore European clothes at the Mission house yonder.' She pointed towards Kotgarh. 'Once, long

ago. I was Kerlistian and spoke English as the Sahibs speak it. Yes. My Sahib said he would return and

wed me yes, wed me. He went away I had nursed him when he was sick but he never returned. Then I

saw that the Gods of the Kerlistians lied, and I went back to my own people . . . I have never set eyes on a

Sahib since. (Do not laugh at me. The fit is past, little priestling.) Thy face and thy walk and thy fashion of

speech put me in mind of my Sahib, though thou art only a wandering mendicant to whom I give a dole.

Curse me? Thou canst neither curse nor bless!' She set her hands on her hips and laughed bitterly. 'Thy Gods

are lies; thy works are lies; thy words are lies. There are no Gods under all the Heavens. I know it ... But for

awhile I thought it was my Sahib come back, and he was my God. Yes, once I made music on a pianno in the

Missionhouse at Kotgarh. Now I give alms to priests who are heatthen.' She wound up with the English

The woman swept the tall figure with her eyes. 'He walk! He cannot cover half a mile. Whither would old

At this Kim, already perplexed by the lama's collapse and foreseeing the weight of the bag, fairly lost his

'Nothing but something to thee, priest with a Sahib's face. Wilt thou carry him on thy shoulders?'

'I go to the Plains. None must hinder my return. I have wrestled with my soul till I am strengthless. The stupid

'Behold!' she said simply, and drew aside to let Kim see his own utter helplessness. 'Curse me. Maybe it will

give him strength. Make a charm! Call on thy great God. Thou art a priest.' She turned away.

The lama had squatted limply, still holding by the doorpost. One cannot strike down an old man that he

recovers again like a boy in the night. Weakness bowed him to the earth, but his eyes that hung on Kim were

'It is all well,' said Kim. 'It is the thin air that weakens thee. In a little while we go! It is the

mountainsickness. I too am a little sick at stomach,' ... and he knelt and comforted with such poor words as

'Thy Gods useless, heh? Try mine. I am the Woman of Shamlegh.' She hailed hoarsely, and there came out of

a cowpen her two husbands and three others with a dooli, the rude native litter of the Hills, that they use for

carrying the sick and for visits of state. 'These cattle' she did not condescend to look at them 'are thine for

'But we will not go Simlaway. We will not go near the Sahibs,' cried the first husband.

'They will not run away as the others did, nor will they steal baggage. Two I know for weaklings. Stand to the

rearpole, Sonoo and Taree.' They obeyed swiftly. 'Lower now, and lift in that holy man. I will see to the

'Ask the priests. Do not pester me. Lay the foodbag at the foot, it balances better so.'

'Oh, Holy One, thy Hills are kinder than our Plains!' cried Kim, relieved, as the lama tottered to the litter. 'It is

'A woman of illomen. I need thy blessings as much as I do thy curses. It is my order and none of thine. Lift

She beckoned Kim to her hut, and stooped above a battered English cashbox under her cot.

'I do not need anything,' said Kim, angered where he should have been grateful. 'I am already rudely loaded

She looked up with a curious smile and laid a hand on his shoulder. 'At least, thank me. I am foulfaced and a

hillwoman, but, as thy talk goes, I have acquired merit. Shall I show thee how the Sahibs render thanks?' and

'I am but a wandering priest,' said Kim, his eyes lighting in answer. 'Thou needest neither my blessings nor

'Nay. But for one little moment thou canst overtake the dooli in ten strides if thou wast a Sahib, shall I

'How if I guess, though?' said Kim, and putting his arm round her waist, he kissed her on the cheek, adding in

Kissing is practically unknown among Asiatics, which may have been the reason that she leaned back with

'Next time,' Kim went on, 'you must not be so sure of your heatthen priests. Now I say goodbye.' He held

'Goodbye, and and' she was remembering her English words one by one 'you will come back again?

Half an hour later, as the creaking litter jolted up the hill path that leads southeasterly from Shamlegh, Kim

'She has acquired merit beyond all others,' said the lama. 'For to set a man upon the way to Freedom is half as

'Umm,' said Kim thoughtfully, considering the past. 'It may be that I have acquired merit also ... At least she

did not treat me like a child.' He hitched the front of his robe, where lay the slab of documents and maps,

restowed the precious foodbag at the lama's feet, laid his hand on the litter's edge, and buckled down to the

'More than that, they shall be paid in silver,' quoth Kim. The Woman of Shamlegh had given it to him; and it

Two hundred miles north of Chini, on the blue shale of Ladakh, lies Yankling Sahib, the merryminded man,

spyglassing wrathfully across the ridges for some sign of his pet tracker a man from Aochung. But that

renegade, with a new Mannlicher rifle and two hundred cartridges, is elsewhere, shooting muskdeer for the

Up the valleys of Bushahr the farbeholding eagles of the Himalayas swerve at his new blueandwhite

gored umbrella hurries a Bengali, once fat and welllooking, now lean and weatherworn. He has received

the thanks of two foreigners of distinction, piloted not unskilfully to Mashobra tunnel, which leads to the

great and gay capital of India. It was not his fault that, blanketed by wet mists, he conveyed them past the

telegraphstation and European colony of Kotgarh. It was not his fault, but that of the Gods, of whom he

discoursed so engagingly, that he led them into the borders of Nahan, where the Rahah of that State mistook

them for deserting British soldiery. Hurree Babu explained the greatness and glory, in their own country, of

his companions, till the drowsy kinglet smiled. He explained it to everyone who asked many times aloud

variously. He begged food, arranged accommodation, proved a skilful leech for an injury of the groin

such a blow as one may receive rolling down a rockcovered hillside in the dark and in all things

indispensable. The reason of his friendliness did him credit. With millions of fellowserfs, he had learned to

look upon Russia as the great deliverer from the North. He was a fearful man. He had been afraid that he

could not save his illustrious employers from the anger of an excited peasantry. He himself would just as lief

hit a holy man as not, but ... He was deeply grateful and sincerely rejoiced that he had done his 'little possible'

towards bringing their venture to barring the lost baggage a successful issue, he had forgotten the blows;

denied that any blows had been dealt that unseemly first night under the pines. He asked neither pension nor

retaining fee, but, if they deemed him worthy, would they write him a testimonial? It might be useful to him

later, if others, their friends, came over the Passes. He begged them to remember him in their future

greatnesses, for he 'opined subtly' that he, even he, Mohendro Lal Dutt, MA of Calcutta, had 'done the State

They gave him a certificate praising his courtesy, helpfulness, and unerring skill as a guide. He put it in his

waistbelt and sobbed with emotion; they had endured so many dangers together. He led them at high noon

along crowded Simla Mall to the Alliance Bank of Simla, where they wished to establish their identity.

Behold him, too finedrawn to sweat, too pressed to vaunt the drugs in his little brassbound box, ascending

Shamlegh slope, a just man made perfect. Watch him, all Babudom laid aside, smoking at noon on a cot,

while a woman with turquoisestudded headgear points south easterly across the bare grass. Litters, she

says, do not travel as fast as single men, but his birds should now be in the Plains. The holy man would not

stay though Lispeth pressed him. The Babu groans heavily, girds up his huge loins, and is off again. He does

not care to travel after dusk; but his days' marches there is none to enter them in a book would astonish

folk who mock at his race. Kindly villagers, remembering the Dacca drugvendor of two months ago, give

him shelter against evil spirits of the wood. He dreams of Bengali Gods, University textbooks of education,

and the Royal Society, London, England. Next dawn the bobbing blueandwhite umbrella goes forward.

On the edge of the Doon, Mussoorie well behind them and the Plains spread out in golden dust before, rests a

worn litter in which all the Hills know it lies a sick lama who seeks a River for his healing. Villages have

almost come to blows over the honour of bearing it, for not only has the lama given them blessings, but his

disciple good money full onethird Sahibs' prices. Twelve miles a day has the dooli travelled, as the greasy,

rubbed poleends show, and by roads that few Sahibs use. Over the Nilang Pass in storm when the driven

snowdust filled every fold of the impassive lama's drapery; between the black horns of Raieng where they

heard the whistle of the wild goats through the clouds; pitching and strained on the shale below; hardheld

between shoulder and clenched jaw when they rounded the hideous curves of the Cut Road under Bhagirati;

swinging and creaking to the steady jogtrot of the descent into the Valley of the Waters; pressed along the

steamy levels of that locked valley; up, up and out again, to meet the roaring gusts off Kedarnath; set down of

middays in the dun gloom of kindly oak forests; passed from village to village in dawnchill, when even

devotees may be forgiven for swearing at impatient holy men;or by torchlight, when the least fearful think of

ghosts the dooli has reached her last stage. The little hillfolk sweat in the modified heat of the lower

'Ye have acquired merit,' says the lama. 'Merit greater than your knowing. And ye will return to the Hills,' he

'Surely. The high Hills as soon as may be.' The bearer rubs his shoulder, drinks water, spits it out again, and

readjusts his grass sandal. Kim his face is drawn and tired pays very small silver from his belt', heaves

out the foodbag, crams an oilskin packet they are holy writings into his bosom, and helps the lama to his

feet. The peace has come again into the old man's eyes, and he does not look for the hills to fall down and

crush him as he did that terrible night when they were delayed by the flooded river.

The lama raises a hand toward the rampart of the Himalayas. 'Not with you, O blessed among all hills, fell the

'But thou art ten times the stronger man in this good air,' says Kim, for to his wearied soul appeal the

wellcropped, kindly Plains. 'Here, or hereabouts, fell the Arrow, yes. We will go very softly, perhaps, a koss

It was never more than a couple of miles a day now, and Kim's shoulders bore all the weight of it the

burden of an old man, the burden of the heavy foodbag with the locked books, the load of the writings on

his heart, and the details of the daily routine. He begged in the dawn, set blankets for the lama's meditation,

held the weary head on his lap through the noonday heats, fanning away the flies till his wrists ached, begged

again in the evenings, and rubbed the lama's feet, who rewarded him with promise of Freedom today,

'Never was such a chela. I doubt at times whether Ananda more faithfully nursed Our Lord. And thou art a

Sahib? When I was a man a long time ago I forgot that. Now I look upon thee often, and every time I

'Thou hast said there is neither black nor white. Why plague me with this talk, Holy One? Let me rub the

other foot. It vexes me. I am not a Sahib. I am thy chela, and my head is heavy on my shoulders.'

'Patience a little! We reach Freedom together. Then thou and I, upon the far bank of the River, will look back

upon our lives as in the Hills we saw our days' marches laid out behind us. Perhaps I was once a Sahib.'

'I am certain the Keeper of the Images in the Wonder House was in past life a very wise Abbot. But even his

spectacles do not make my eyes see. There fall shadows when I would look steadily. No matter we know

the tricks of the poor stupid carcass shadow changing to another shadow. I am bound by the illusion of

'Half a koss. Ha! I went ten thousand thousand in the spirit. How, we are all lapped and swathed and

swaddled in these senseless things.' He looked at his thin blueveined hand that found the beads so heavy.

Kim thought of the oilskin packet and the books in the food bag. If someone duly authorized would only

take delivery of them the Great Game might play itself for aught he then cared. He was tired and hot in his

'No.' he said almost sternly. 'I am not a dog or a snake to bite when I have learned to love.'

'Not that either. I have moved in one matter without consulting thee. I have sent a message to the Kulu

woman by that woman who gave us the goat's milk this morn, saying that thou wast a little feeble and

wouldst need a litter. I beat myself in mv mind that I did not do it when we entered the Doon. e stay in this

'I am content. She is a woman with a heart of gold, as thou sayest, but a talker something of a talker.'

'She will not weary thee. I have looked to that also. Holy One, my heart is very heavy for my many

carelessnesses towards thee.' An hysterical catch rose in his throat. 'I have walked thee too far: I have not

picked good food always for thee; I have not considered the heat; I have talked to people on the road and left

thee alone ... I have I have ... Hai mai! But I love thee ... and it is all too late ... I was a child . . . Oh, why

was I not a man? . . .' Overborne by strain, fatigue, and the weight beyond his years, Kim broke down and

'What a todo is here!' said the old man gently. 'Thou hast never stepped a hair's breadth from the Way of

Obedience. Neglect me? Child, I have lived on thy strength as an old tree lives on the lime of a new wall. Day

by day, since Shamlegh down, I have stolen strength from thee. Therefore, not through any sin of thine, art

thou weakened. It is the Body the silly, stupid Body that speaks now. Not the assured Soul. Be

comforted! Know at least the devils that thou fightest. They are earthborn children of illusion. We will go

to the woman from Kulu. She shall acquire merit in housing us, and specially in tending me. Thou shalt run

free till strength returns. I had forgotten the stupid Body. If there be any blame, I bear it. But we are too close

to the Gates of Deliverance to weigh blame. I could praise thee, but what need? In a little in a very little

And so he petted and comforted Kim with wise saws and grave texts on that littleunderstood beast, our

Body, who, being but a delusion, insists on posing as the Soul, to the darkening of the Way, and the immense

'Hai! hai! Let us talk of the woman from Kulu. Think you she will ask another charm for her grandsons?

When I was a young man, a very long time ago, I was plagued with these vapours and some others and I

went to an Abbot a very holy man and a seeker after truth, though then I knew it not. Sit up and listen, child

of my soul! My tale was told. Said he to me, "Chela, know this. There are many lies in the world, and not a

few liars, but there are no liars like our bodies, except it be the sensations of our bodies." Considering this I

was comforted, and of his great favour he suffered me to drink tea In his presence. Suffer me now to drink

With a laugh across his tears, Kim kissed the lama's feet, and set about the teamaking.

'Thou leanest on me in the body, Holy One, but I lean on thee for some other things. Dost know it?'

So, when with scufflings and scrapings and a hot air of importance, paddled up nothing less than the Sahiba's

pet palanquin sent twenty miles, with that same grizzled old Oorya servant in charge, and when they reached

the disorderly order of the long white rambling house behind Saharunpore, the lama took his own measures.

Said the Sahiba cheerily from an upper window, after compliments: 'What is the good of an old woman's

advice to an old man? I told thee I told thee, Holy One, to keep an eye upon the chela. How didst thou do

it? Never answer me! I know. He has been running among the women. Look at his eyes hollow and sunk

and the Betraying Line from the nose down! He has been sifted out! Fie! Fie! And a priest, too!'

'Do not jest,' said the lama. 'That time is done. We are here upon great matters. A sickness of soul took me in

the Hills, and him a sickness of the body. Since then I have lived upon his strength eating him.'

'Children together young and old,' she sniffed, but forbore to make any new jokes. 'May this present

hospitality restore ye! Hold awhile and I will come to gossip of the high good Hills.'

At evening time her soninlaw was returned, so she did not need to go on inspection round the farm she

won to the meat of the matter, explained lowvoicedly by the lama. The two old heads nodded wisely

together. Kim had reeled to a room with a cot in it, and was dozing soddenly. The lama had forbidden him to

'I know I know. Who but I?' she cackled. 'We who go down to the burningghats clutch at the hands of

those coming up from the River of Life with full waterjars yes, brimming waterjars. I did the boy wrong.

He lent thee his strength? It is true that the old eat the young daily. Stands now we must restore him.'

'My merit. What is it? Old bag of bones making curries for men who do not ask "Who cooked this?" Now if it

'To think the Holy One remembers that! I must tell his mother. It is most singular honour! "He that had the

'Say grandson, rather. Mothers have not the wisdom of our years. If a child cries they say the heavens are

falling. Now a grandmother is far enough separated from the pain of bearing and the pleasure of giving the

breast to consider whether a cry is wickedness pure or the wind. And since thou speakest once again of wind,

'Sister,' said the lama, using that form of address a Buddhist monk may sometimes employ towards a nun, 'if

'I say, if they comfort thee, I who was Abbot of Suchzen, will make as many as thou mayest desire. I have

'But as he who sleeps there said,' he nodded at the shut door of the guestchamber across the forecourt

'thou hast a heart of gold ... And he is in the spirit my very "grandson" to me'

'Good! I am the Holy One's cow." This was pure Hinduism, but the lama never heeded. 'I am old. I have

borne sons in the body. Oh, once I could please men! Now I can cure them.' He heard her armlets tinkle as

though she bared arms for action. 'I will take over the boy and dose him, and stuff him, and make him all

Wherefore when Kim, aching in every bone, opened his eyes, and would go to the cookhouse to get his

master's food, he found strong coercion about him, and a veiled old figure at the door, flanked by the grizzled

manservant, who told him very precisely the things that he was on no account to do.

'Thou must have? Thou shalt have nothing. What? A locked box in which to keep holy books? Oh, that is

another matter. Heavens forbid I should come between a priest and his prayers! It shall be brought, and thou

They pushed the coffer under his cot, and Kim shut away Mahbub's pistol, the oilskin packet of letters, and

the locked books and diaries, with a groan of relief. For some absurd reason their weight on his shoulders was

'Thine is a sickness uncommon in youth these days: since young folk have given up tending their betters. The

remedy is sleep, and certain drugs,' said the Sahiba; and he was glad to give himself up to the blankness that

She brewed drinks, in some mysterious Asiatic equivalent to the stillroom drenches that smelt pestilently

and tasted worse. She stood over Kim till they went down, and inquired exhaustively after they had come up.

She laid a taboo upon the forecourt, and enforced it by means of an armed man. It is true he was seventy odd,

that his scabbarded sword ceased at the hilt; but he represented the authority of the Sahiba, and loaded wains,

chattering servants, calves, dogs, hens, and the like, fetched a wide compass by those parts. Best of all, when

the body was cleared, she cut out from the mass of poor relations that crowded the back of the buildings

household dogs, we name them a cousin's widow, skilled in what Europeans, who know nothing about it,

call massage. And the two of them, laying him east and west, that the mysterious earthcurrents which thrill

the clay of our bodies might help and not hinder, took him to pieces all one long afternoon bone by bone,

muscle by muscle, ligament by ligament, and lastly, nerve by nerve. Kneaded to irresponsible pulp, half

hypnotized by the perpetual flick and readjustment of the uneasy chudders that veiled their eyes, Kim slid ten

thousand miles into slumber thirtysix hours of it sleep that soaked like rain after drought.

Then she fed him, and the house spun to her clamour. She caused fowls to be slain; she sent for vegetables,

and the sober, slow thinking gardener, nigh as old as she, sweated for it; she took spices, and milk, and

onion, with little fish from the brooks anon limes for sherbets, fat quails from the pits, then chickenlivers

'I have seen something of this world,' she said over the crowded trays, 'and there are but two sorts of women

in it those who take the strength out of a man and those who put it back. Once I was that one, and now I am

this. Nay do not play the priestling with me. Mine was but a jest. If it does not hold good now, it will when

thou takest the road again. Cousin,' this to the poor relation, never wearied of extolling her patroness's

charity 'he is getting a bloom on the skin of a newcurried horse. Our work is like polishing jewels to be

Kim sat up and smiled. The terrible weakness had dropped from him like an old shoe. His tongue itched for

free speech again, and but a week back the lightest word clogged it like ashes. The pain in his neck (he must

have caught it from the lama) had gone with the heavy dengueaches and the evil taste in the mouth. The two

old women, a little, but not much, more careful about their veils now, clucked as merrily as the hens that had

'Hear him! Thy Holy One is well,' she snapped viciously. 'Though that is none of his merit., Knew I a charm

to make him wise, I'd sell my jewels and buy it. To refuse good food that I cooked myself and go roving

into the fields for two nights on an empty belly and to tumble into a brook at the end of it call you that

holiness? Then, when he has nearly broken what thou hast left of my heart with anxiety, he tells me that he

has acquired merit. Oh, how like are all men! No, that was not it he tells me that he is freed from all sin. I

could have told him that before he wetted himself all over. He is well now this happened a week ago but

burn me such holiness! A babe of three would do better. Do not fret thyself for the Holy One. He keeps both

'I do not remember to have seen him. I remember that the days and nights passed like bars of white and black,

'A lethargy that comes by right some few score years later. But it is done now.'

'Maharanee,' Kim began, but led by the look in her eye, changed it to the title of plain love 'Mother, I owe

my life to thee. How shall I make thanks? Ten thousand blessings upon thy house and '

'The house be unblessed!' (It is impossible to give exactly the old lady's word.) 'Thank the Gods as a priest if

thou wilt, but thank me, if thou carest, as a son. Heavens above! Have I shifted thee and lifted thee and

slapped and twisted thy ten toes to find texts flung at my head? Somewhere a mother must have borne thee to

'I had no mother, my mother,' said Kim. 'She died, they tell me, when I was young.'

'Hai mai! Then none can say I have robbed her of any right if when thou takest the road again and this

house is but one of a thousand used for shelter and forgotten, after an easyflung blessing. No matter. I need

no blessings, but but ' She stamped her foot at the poor relation. 'Take up the trays to the house. What is

'I ha have borne a son in my time too, but he died,' whimpered the bowed sisterfigure behind the chudder.

'It is I that am the woman of illomen,' cried the old lady penitently. 'We that go down to the chattris [the big

umbrellas above the burningghats where the priests take their last dues] clutch hard at the bearers of the

chattis [waterjars young folk full of the pride of life, she meant; but the pun is clumsy].When one cannot

dance in the festival one must e'en look out of the window, and grandmothering takes all a woman's time.

Thy master gives me all the charms I now desire for my daughter's eldest, by reason is it? that he is

wholly free from sin. The hakim is brought very low these days. He goes about poisoning my servants for

'That very Dacca man who gave me the pill which rent me in three pieces. He cast up like a strayed camel a

week ago, vowing that he and thou had been bloodbrothers together up Kuluway, and feigning great

anxiety for thy health. He was very thin and hungry, so I gave orders to have him stuffed too him and his

'He eats five times a day, and lances boils for my hinds to save himself from an apoplexy. He is so full of

anxiety for thy health that he sticks to the cookhouse door and stays himself with scraps. He will keep. We

'Send him here, mother' the twinkle returned to Kim's eye for a flash 'and I will try.'

'I'll send him, but to chase him off is an ill turn. At least he had the sense to fish the Holy One out of the

'Priest praising priest? A miracle! If he is any friend of thine (ye squabbled at your last meeting) I'll hale him

here with horseropes and and give him a castedinner afterwards, my son ... Get up and see the world!

She trotted forth to raise a typhoon off the cookhouse, and almost on her shadow rolled in the Babu, robed

as to the shoulders like a Roman emperor, jowled like Titus, bareheaded, with new patent leather shoes, in

'By Jove, Mister O'Hara, but I are jollyglad to see you. I will kindly shut the door. It is a pity you are sick.

'The papers the papers from the kilta. The maps and the murasla!' He held out the key impatiently; for the

'You are quite right. That is correct Departmental view to take. You have got everything?'

'All that was handwritten in the kilta I took. The rest I threw down the hill.' He could hear the key's grate in

the lock, the sticky pull of the slowrending oilskin, and a quick shuffling of papers. He had been annoyed

out of all reason by the knowledge that they lay below him through the sick idle days a burden

incommunicable. For that reason the blood tingled through his body, when Hurree, skipping elephantinely,

'This is fine! This is finest! Mister O'Hara! you have ha! ha! swiped the whole bag of tricks locks, stocks,

and barrels. They told me it was eight months' work gone up the spouts! By Jove, how they beat me! ... Look,

here is the letter from Hilas!' He intoned a line or two of Court Persian, which is the language of authorized

and unauthorized diplomacy. 'Mister Rajah Sahib has just about put his foot in the holes. He will have to

explain offeecially how the deucean'all he is writing loveletters to the Czar. And they are very clever

maps ... and there is three or four Prime Ministers of these parts implicated by the correspondence. By Gad,

sar! The British Government will change the succession in Hilas and Bunar, and nominate new heirs to the

'Just you jollywell bet yourself they are.' He stowed the entire trove about his body, as only Orientals can.

'They are going up to the office, too. The old lady thinks I am permanent fixture here, but I shall go away

with these straight off immediately. Mr Lurgan will be proud man. You are offeecially subordinate to me,

but I shall embody your name in my verbal report. It is a pity we are not allowed written reports. We Bengalis

'Good. That is good. I was very tired. My Holy One was sick, too. And did he fall into '

'Oah yess. I am his good friend, I tell you. He was behaving very strange when I came down after you, and I

thought perhaps he might have the papers. I followed him on his meditations, and to discuss ethnological

points also. You see, I am verree small person here nowadays, in comparison with all his charms. By Jove,

O'Hara, do you know, he is afflicted with infirmity of fits. Yess, I tell you. Cataleptic, too, if not also

epileptic. I found him in such a state under a tree in articulo mortem, and he jumped up and walked into a

'Yes, he might have died, but he is dry now, and asserts he has undergone transfiguration.' The Babu tapped

his forehead knowingly. 'I took notes of his statements for Royal Society in posse. You must make haste

and be quite well and come back to Simla, and I will tell you all my tale at Lurgan's. It was splendid. The

bottoms of their trousers were quite torn, and old Nahan Rajah, he thought they were European soldiers

'One was a Frenchman. Oh, days and days and days! Now all the hill people believe all Russians are all

beggars. By Jove! they had not one dam'thing that I did not get them. And I told the common people oah,

such tales and anecdotes! I will tell you at old Lurgan's when you come up. We will have ah a night out!

It is feather in both our caps! Yess, and they gave me a certificate. That is creaming joke. You should have

seen them at the Alliance Bank identifying themselves! And thank Almighty God you got their papers so

well! You do not laugh verree much, but you shall laugh when you are well. Now I will go straight to the

railway and get out. You shall have all sorts of credits for your game. When do you come along? We are very

The Babu looked shyly down his nose. 'Well, you see, I am fearful man, and I do not like responsibility. You

were sick, you see, and I did not know where deucean'all the papers were, and if so, how many. So when I

had come down here I slipped in private wire to Mahbub he was at Meerut for races and I tell him how

case stands. He comes up with his men and he consorts with the lama, and then he calls me a fool, and is very

'That is what I ask. I only suggest that if anyone steals the papers I should like some good strong, brave men

to rob them back again. You see, they are vitally important, and Mahbub Ali he did not know where you

'Mahbub Ali to rob the Sahiba's house? Thou art mad, Babu,' said Kim with indignation.

'I wanted the papers. Suppose she had stole them? It was only practical suggestion, I think. You are not

'Well,' Hurree shrugged his shoulders 'there is no accounting for thee taste. Mahbub was angry too. He

has sold horses all about here, and he says old lady is pukka [thorough] old lady and would not condescend to

such ungentlemanly things. I do not care. I have got the papers, and I was very glad of moral support from

Mahbub. I tell you, I am fearful man, but, somehow or other, the more fearful I am the more dam'tight

places I get into. So I was glad you came with me to Chini, and I am glad Mahbub was close by. The old lady

'Allah be merciful!' said Kim on his elbow, rejoicing. 'What a beast of wonder is a Babu! And that man

'Oah, thatt was nothing, after they had done beating me; but if I lost the papers it was prettyjolly serious.

Mahbub he nearly beat me too, and he went and consorted with the lama no end. I shall stick to ethnological

investigations henceforwards. Now goodbye, Mister O'Hara. I can catch 4.25 p.m. to Umballa if I am quick.

It will be good times when we all tell thee tale up at Mr Lurgan's. I shall report you offeecially better.

Goodbye, my dear fallow, and when next you are under thee emotions please do not use the Mohammedan

He shook hands twice a Babu to his bootheels and opened the door. With the fall of the sunlight upon

'He robbed them,' thought Kim, forgetting his own share in the game. 'He tricked them. He lied to them like a

Bengali. They give him a chit [a testimonial]. He makes them a mock at the risk of his life I never would

have gone down to them after the pistolshots and then he says he is a fearful man ... And he is a fearful

At first his legs bent like bad pipestems, and the flood and rush of the sunlit air dazzled him. He squatted by

the white wall, the mind rummaging among the incidents of the long dooli journey, the lama's weaknesses,

and, now that the stimulus of talk was removed, his own selfpity, of which, like the sick, he had great store.

The unnerved brain edged away from all the outside, as a raw horse, once rowelled, sidles from the spur. It

was enough, amply enough, that the spoil of the kilta was away off his hands out of his possession. He

tried to think of the lama to wonder why he had tumbled into a brook but the bigness of the world, seen

between the forecourt gates, swept linked thought aside. Then he looked upon the trees and the broad fields,

with the thatched huts hidden among crops looked with strange eyes unable to take up the size and

proportion and use of things stared for a still halfhour. All that while he felt, though he could not put it

into words, that his soul was out of gear with its surroundings a cogwheel unconnected with any

machinery, just like the idle cogwheel of a cheap Beheea sugarcrusher laid by in a corner. The breezes

fanned over him, the parrots shrieked at him, the noises of the populated house behind squabbles, orders,

He did not want to cry had never felt less like crying in his life but of a sudden easy, stupid tears trickled

down his nose, and with an almost audible click he felt the wheels of his being lock up anew on the world

without. Things that rode meaningless on the eyeball an instant before slid into proper proportion. Roads

were meant to be walked upon, houses to belived in, cattle to be driven, fields to be tilled, and men and

women to be talked to. They were all real and true solidly planted upon the feet perfectly comprehensible

clay of his clay, neither more nor less. He shook himself like a dog with a flea in his ear, and rambled out

of the gate. Said the Sahiba, to whom watchful eyes reported this move: 'Let him go. I have done my share.

Mother Earth must do the rest. When the Holy One comes back from meditation, tell him.'

There stood an empty bullockcart on a little knoll half a mile away, with a young banyan tree behind a

lookout, as it were, above some newploughed levels; and his eyelids, bathed in soft air, grew heavy as he

neared it. The ground was good clean dust no new herbage that, living, is halfway to death already, but the

hopeful dust that holds the seeds of all life. He felt it between his toes, patted it with his palms, and joint by

joint, sighing luxuriously, laid him down full length along in the shadow of the woodenpinned cart. And

Mother Earth was as faithful as the Sahiba. She breathed through him to restore the poise he had lost lying so

long on a cot cut off from her good currents. His head lay powerless upon her breast, and his opened hands

surrendered to her strength. The many rooted tree above him, and even the dead manhandled wood beside,

knew what he sought, as he himself did not know. Hour upon hour he lay deeper than sleep.

Towards evening, when the dust of returning kine made all the horizons smoke, came the lama and Mahbub

Ali, both afoot, walking cautiously, for the house had told them where he had gone.

'Allah! What a fool's trick to play in open country!' muttered the horsedealer. 'He could be shot a hundred

'And,' said the lama, repeating a manytimestold tale, 'never was such a chela. Temperate, kindly, wise, of

ungrudging disposition, a merry heart upon the road, never forgetting, learned, truthful, courteous. Great is

'Some of them but I have not yet found a Red Hat's charm for making him overly truthful. He has certainly

'The Sahiba is a heart of gold,' said the lama earnestly. 'She looks upon him as her son.'

'Hmph! Half Hind seems that way disposed. I only wished to see that the boy had come to no harm and was a

free agent. As thou knowest, he and I were old friends in the first days of your pilgrimage together.'

'That is a bond between us.' The lama sat down. 'We are at the end of the pilgrimage.'

'No thanks to thee thine was not cut off for good and all a week back. I heard what the Sahiba said to thee

when we bore thee up on the cot.' Mahbub laughed, and tugged his newly dyed beard.

'I was meditating upon other matters that tide. It was the hakim from Dacca broke my meditations.'

'Otherwise' this was in Pushtu for decency's sake 'thou wouldst have ended thy meditations upon the sultry

side of Hell being an unbeliever and an idolater for all thy child's simplicity. But now, Red Hat, what is to

'This very night,' the words came slowly, vibrating with triumph 'this very night he will be as free as I am

from all taint of sin assured as I am, when he quits this body, of Freedom from the Wheel of Things. I have

a sign' he laid his hand above the torn chart in his bosom 'that my time is short; but I shall have

safeguarded him throughout the years. Remember, I have reached Knowledge, as I told thee only three nights

'It must be true, as the Tirah priest said when I stole his cousin's wife, that I am a Sufi [a freethinker]; for

here I sit, I said Mahbub to himself, 'drinking in blasphemy unthinkable ... I remember the tale. On that, then,

he goes to Fannatu l'Adn [the Gardens of Eden]. But how? Wilt thou slay him or drown him in that wonderful

'I was dragged from no river,' said the lama simply. 'Thou hast forgotten what befell. I found it by

'Oh, ay. True,' stammered Mahbub, divided between high indignation and enormous mirth. 'I had forgotten

'And to say that I would take life is not a sin, but a madness simple. My chela aided me to the River. It is

'Aha! Now I see! That is the right gait for the colt. Certainly he must go forth as a teacher. He is somewhat

'To that end he was prepared. I acquired merit in that I gave alms for his sake. A good deed does not die. He

aided me in my Search. I aided him in his. Just is the Wheel, O horseseller from the North. Let him be a

teacher; let him be a scribe what matter? He will have attained Freedom at the end. The rest is illusion.'

'What matter? When I must have him with me beyond Balkh in six months! I come up with ten lame horses

and three strongbacked men thanks to that chicken of a Babu to break a sick boy by force out of an old

trot's house. It seems that I stand by while a young Sahib is hoisted into Allah knows what of an idolater's

Heaven by means of old Red Hat. And I am reckoned something of a player of the Game myself! But the

'What is the prayer?' said the lama, as the rough Pushtu rumbled into the red beard.

'No matter at all; but now I understand that the boy, sure of Paradise, can yet enter Government service, my

mind is easier. I must get to my horses. It grows dark. Do not wake him. I have no wish to hear him call thee

'He has told me.' Mahbub choked down his touch of spleen and rose laughing. 'I am not altogether of thy

'I thought not. Therefore it will not move thee, sinless, new washed and three parts drowned to boot, when I

call thee a good man a very good man. We have talked together some four or five evenings now, and for all

I am a horsecoper I can still, as the saying is, see holiness beyond the legs of a horse. Yea, can see, too, how

our Friend of all the World put his hand in thine at the first. Use him well, and suffer him to return to the

world as a teacher, when thou hast bathed his legs, if that be the proper medicine for the colt.'

Mahbub stared stupefied at the magnificent insolence of the demand, which across the Border he would have

'Softly softly one foot at a time, as the lame gelding went over the Umballa jumps. I may come to

Paradise later I have workings that way great motions and I owe them to thy simplicity. Thou hast

'So? I think the better of thee. Thy teachings are good. Thou hast turned one man that I know from the path of

strife.' He laughed immensely. 'He came here openminded to commit a dacoity [a house robbery with

'Oh! black shame too. So he thought after he had seen thee and a few others, male and female. So he

'Allah forbid it! Some men are strong in knowledge, Red Hat. Thy strength is stronger still. Keep it I think

With a hitch of his broad Bokhariot belt the Pathan swaggered off into the gloaming, and the lama came

'That person lacks courtesy, and is deceived by the shadow of appearances. But he spoke well of my chela,

who now enters upon his reward. Let me make the prayer! ... Wake, O fortunate above all born of women.

Kim came up from those deep wells, and the lama attended his yawning pleasure; duly snapping fingers to

'I have slept a hundred years. Where ? Holy One, hast thou been here long? I went out to look for thee, but'

he laughed drowsily 'I slept by the way. I am all well now. Hast thou eaten? Let us go to the house. It is

many days since I tended thee. And the Sahiba fed thee well? Who shampooed thy legs? What of the

'Strange the knowledge did not reach out to thee, when all my thoughts were theeward.'

'I cannot see the face, but the voice is like a gong. Has the Sahiba made a young man of thee by her cookery?'

He peered at the crosslegged figure, outlined jetblack against the lemoncoloured drift of light. So does

the stone Bodhisat sit who looks down upon the patent selfregistering turnstiles of the Lahore Museum.

The lama held his peace. Except for the click of the rosary and a faint clopclop of Mahbub's retreating feet,

Out shot the long yellow hand compelling silence. Kim tucked his feet under his robeedge obediently.

'Hear me! I bring news! The Search is finished. Comes now the Reward ... Thus. When we were among the

Hills, I lived on thy strength till the young branch bowed and nigh broke. When we came out of the Hills, I

was troubled for thee and for other matters which I held in my heart. The boat of my soul lacked direction; I

could not see into the Cause of Things. So I gave thee over to the virtuous woman altogether. I took no food.

I drank no water. Still I saw not the Way. They pressed food upon me and cried at my shut door. So I

removed myself to a hollow under a tree. I took no food. I took no water. I sat in meditation two days and two

nights, abstracting my mind; inbreathing and outbreathing in the required manner . . . Upon the second night

so great was my reward the wise Soul loosed itself from the silly Body and went free. This I have never

before attained, though I have stood on the threshold of it. Consider, for it is a marvel!'

'A marvel indeed. Two days and two nights without food! Where was the Sahiba?' said Kim under his breath.

'Yea, my Soul went free, and, wheeling like an eagle, saw indeed that there was no Teshoo Lama nor any

other soul. As a drop draws to water, so my Soul drew near to the Great Soul which is beyond all things. At

that point, exalted in contemplation, I saw all Hind, from Ceylon in the sea to the Hills, and my own Painted

Rocks at Suchzen; I saw every camp and village, to the least, where we have ever rested. I saw them at one

time and in one place; for they were within the Soul. By this I knew the Soul had passed beyond the illusion

of Time and Space and of Things. By this I knew that I was free. I saw thee lying in thy cot, and I saw thee

falling downhill under the idolater at one time, in one place, in my Soul, which, as I say, had touched the

Great Soul. Also I saw the stupid body of Teshoo Lama lying down, and the hakim from Dacca kneeled

beside, shouting in its ear. Then my Soul was all alone, and I saw nothing, for I was all things, having

reached the Great Soul. And I meditated a thousand thousand years, passionless, well aware of the Causes of

all Things. Then a voice cried: "What shall come to the boy if thou art dead?" and I was shaken back and

forth in myself with pity for thee; and I said: "I will return to my chela, lest he miss the Way." Upon this my

Soul, which is the Soul of Teshoo Lama, withdrew itself from the Great Soul with strivings and yearnings

and retchings and agonies not to be told. As the egg from the fish, as the fish from the water, as the water

from the cloud, as the cloud from the thick air, so put forth, so leaped out, so drew away, so fumed up the

Soul of Teshoo Lama from the Great Soul. Then a voice cried: "The River! Take heed to the River!" and I

looked down upon all the world, which was as I had seen it before one in time, one in place and I saw

plainly the River of the Arrow at my feet. At that hour my Soul was hampered by some evil or other whereof

I was not wholly cleansed, and it lay upon my arms and coiled round my waist; but I put it aside, and I cast

forth as an eagle in my flight for the very place of the River. I pushed aside world upon world for thy sake. I

saw the River below me the River of the Arrow and, descending, the waters of it closed over me; and

behold I was again in the body of Teshoo Lama, but free from sin, and the hakim from Decca bore up my

head in the waters of the River. It is here! It is behind the mango tope here even here!'

'Why should I regard? I remember the hakim was concerned for the body of Teshoo Lama. He haled it out of

the holy water in his hands, and there came afterwards thy horseseller from the North with a cot and men,

'I was meditating in that body, and did not hear. So thus the Search is ended. For the merit that I have

acquired, the River of the Arrow is here. It broke forth at our feet, as I have said. I have found it. Son of my

Soul, I have wrenched my Soul back from the Threshold of Freedom to free thee from all sin as I am free,

He crossed his hands on his lap and smiled, as a man may who has won salvation for himself and his beloved.