 11. Part 2. They all piled into it a couple of hours later, and slept through the heat of the day. The cambo plied Kim with 10,000 questions as to the lama's walk and work in life, and received some curious answers. Kim was content to be where he was, to look out upon the flat north-western landscape, and to talk to the changing mob of fellow passengers. Even today tickets and ticket clippings 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 travelers 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 cambo. But at Somner 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 marata, as far as Kim could judge, by the cock of the tight turban. His face was cut, his muslin upper garment was badly torn, and one leg was bandaged. He told them that a country cart had upset and nearly slain him. He was going to Delhi, where his son lived. Kim watched him closely. If, as he asserted, he had been rolled over and over on the earth, there should have been signs of gravel rash on the skin. But all his injuries seemed clean cuts, and a mere fall from a cart could not cast a man into such extremity of terror. As with shaking fingers he knotted up the torn cloth about his neck, he laid bare an amulet of the kind called Keeper Up of the Heart. Now amulets are common enough, but they are not generally strung on square plaited copper wire, and still fewer amulets bare black enamel on silver. There were none except the cambo 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 Maratha's face changed altogether at the site, and he disposed the amulet fairly on his breast. Yes! he went on to the cambo. I was in haste, and the cart, driven by a bastard, bound its wheel in a water-cut, and besides the harm done to me, there was lost a full dish of tarquian. I was not a son of the charm—a lucky man, that day. "'That was a great loss,' said the cambo, withdrawing interest. His experience of binaries had made him suspicious. "'Who cooked it?' said Kim. "'A woman!' the Maratha raised his eyes. "'But all women can cook tarquian,' said the cambo. "'It is a good curry, as I know.' "'Oh, yes, it is a good curry,' said the Maratha. "'And cheap,' said Kim. But what about caste?' "'Oh, there is no caste when men go, look for tarquian,' the Maratha replied in the prescribed cadence. "'Of whose service art thou?' "'Of the service of this holy one,' Kim pointed to the happy drowsy lama, who woke up with a jerk at the well-loved word. "'Ah, he was sent from heaven to aid me. He is called friend of all the world. He is also called 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 cambo made haste to prepare a pipe, lest the Maratha should beg. "'And who is that?' the Maratha asked, glancing sideways nervously. "'One whose child I we have cured, who lies under great depth to us. "'Sit by the window, man from Jalandur. Here is a sick one.' "'Hmph! I have no desire to mix with chance-met wastrels. My ears are not long. I am not a woman wishing to overhear secrets.' The jat slid himself heavily into a far corner. "'Aren't thou any thing of a healer?' "'I am ten leagues deep in calamity,' cried the Maratha, picking up the cue. "'This man is cut and bruised all over. I go about to cure him,' came retorted. "'None interfered between thy babe and me.' "'I am rebuked,' said the cambo meekly. "'I am thy debtor for the life of my son. Thou art a miracle worker. I know it. "'Show me the cuts.' Kim bent over the Maratha'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 came from the south, where my work lay. One of us they slew by the roadside. "'Has thou heard?' Kim shook his head. He, of course, knew nothing of E.23's predecessor, slain down south in the habits 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 Mahau. So sure was I that none knew. I did not change my face. At Mahau a woman brought charge against me of theft of jewelry in that city which I had left. Then I saw the cry was out against me. I ran from Mahau by night, bribing the police, who had been bribed to hand me over without questions to my enemies in the south. Then I lay in old Chittor 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 Chittor, in the place known to us all.' Kim did not know. But not for worlds would he have broken the thread. At Chittor, look you, I was all in King's country. For Kota 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, when I heard there was a charge against me of murder in the city I had left, of the murder of a boy. They have both the corpse and the witnesses waiting. But cannot the government protect? We have the game of 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 marata. Then I came to Agra, and would have turned back to Chittor to recover the letter. So sure I was I had slipped them. Therefore I did not send a tar, telegram, to any one, saying where the letter lay. I wished the credit of it all." Kim nodded. He understood that feeling well. But at Agra, walking in the streets, a man cried a debt against me, and approaching with many witnesses, would hail me to the courts, then and there. Oh, they are clever in the south. He recognized me as his agent for cotton. May he burn in hell for it! And was thou? Oh, fool! I was the man they sought for the matter of the letter. I ran into the flesh's ward, and came out by the house of the Jew, who feared a riot, and pushed me forth. I came afoot to some narrowed. I had only money for my ticket 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, with an earshot of the terrain it was. Why did he not slay the out of hand? They are not so foolish. If I am taken in Delhi at the insistence 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 they will know me at Delhi. Thou art safe in the terrain, at least. Live a year at the great game, and tell me that again. The wires will be out against me at Delhi, describing every tear and rag upon me twenty, a hundred, if need be, will have seen me slay that boy. And thou art useless." Kim knew enough of native methods of attack not to doubt that the case would be deadly complete, even to the corpse. The Maratha twitched his fingers with pain from time to time. The cambo in his corner glared sullenly. The lama was busy over his beads, and Kim, fumbling doctor fashion at the man's neck, thought out his plan between invocations. Has Thou a charm to change my shape? Else I am dead. Five, ten minutes alone, if I had not been so pressed, then I might. Is he cured yet, miracle worker, said the cambo, jealously, though has chanted long enough. Nay, there is no cure for his hurts, as I see, except he sit for three days in the habits of a bay ragi. This is a common penance, often imposed on a fat trader by his spiritual teacher. One priest always goes about to make another priest, was the retort. Like most grossly superstitious folk, the cambo could not keep his tongue from deriding his church. Will thy son be a priest, then? It is time he took more of my quinine. We jats are all buffaloes, said the cambo, softening anew. Him 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. Thus thou grudge me that? I go to heal another man. Have I they leave, prince?" Up flew the man's huge paws in supplication. Nay, nay, do not mock me thus. It pleases me to cure this sick one. Thou shalt acquire merit by aiding. What colour ash is there in thy pipe-bowl? White? That is auspicious. Was there raw turmeric among thy foodstuffs? Aye, aye. Open thy bundle. It was the usual collection of small oddments. Bits of cloth, quack medicines, cheap fairings, a cloth full of utter, grayish, rough-gray on native flour, twists of down-country tobacco, tawdry pipe-stems, and a packet of curry-stuff, all wrapped in a quilt. Kim turned it over with the air of a wise warlock, muttering a Muhammadan invocation. This is wisdom I learned from the Saebes," he whispered to the lama, and here, when one thinks of his training at Lurgan's, he spoke no more than the truth. There is a great evil in this man's fortune, as shown by the stars which troubles him. Shall I take it away?" "'Friend of the stars, thou hast done well in all things. Let it be at thy pleasure. Is it another healing?' "'Quick, quick,' gasped the Maratha. The train may stop. A healing against the shadow of death,' said Kim, mixing the cambeau's flour with the mingled charcoal and tobacco ash in the red earth-bowl of the pipe. E-23, without a word, slipped off his turban and shook down his long black hair. "'That is my food, priest,' the jat growled. "'A buffalo in the temple, hast thou dead to look even thus far?' said Kim. "'I must do mysteries before fools, but have a care for thine eyes. Is there a film before them already? I save the babe, and for return thou, oh, shameless!' The man flinched at the direct gaze, for Kim was wholly in earnest. "'Shall I curse thee, or shall I?' he picked up the outer cloth of the bundle, and threw it over the bowed head. Dare so much as to think a wish to see, and even I cannot save thee. Sit, be dumb!' "'I am blind, dumb, for bear to curse. Come, child, we will play a game of hiding. Do not, for my sake, look from under the cloth.' "'I see hope,' said E-23. "'What is thy scheme?' "'This comes next,' said Kim, plucking the thin bodyshirt. E-23 hesitated, with all a north-west man's dislike of bearing his body. "'What is cast to a cut throat?' said Kim, rending it to the waist. "'We must make thee a yellow sadhu all over, strip, stripped swiftly, and shake thy hair over thine eyes, while I scatter the ash. Now a cast mark on thy forehead.' He drew from his bosom the little survey paint-box, and a cake of crimson lake. "'Are thou only a beginner?' said E-23, laboring literally for the dear life, as he slid out of his body-wrappings, and stood clear in the loincloth, while Kim splashed a noble cast mark on the ash-smeared brow. "'But two days entered to the game, brother,' Kim replied. "'Smear more ash on the bosom. Has thou met a physician of sick pearls?' He switched out his long, tight-rolled turban-cloth, and, with swiftest hands, rolled it over and about his loins into the intricate devices of a sadhu-sincture. "'Ha! Does thou know his touch, then? He was my teacher for a while. We must bar thy legs. Ash-cure's wounds, smear it again. I was his pride once, but thou art almost better. The gods are kind to us. Give me that!' It was a tin-box of opium-pills among the rubbish of the jats-bundle. E-23 gulped down a half-handful. "'They are good against hunger, fear and chill. And they shall make the eyes red, too,' he explained. Now I shall have heart to play the game. We lack only a sadhu's tongs. What of the old clothes?' Kim rolled them small, and stuffed them into the slack-folds of his tunic. With a yellow ochre paint-cake he smeared the legs and the breast great streaks against the background of flour, ash, and turmeric. The blood on them is enough to hang thee, brother.' "'Maybe. But no need to throw them out of the window. It is finished.' His voice thrilled with the boy's pure delight in the game. "'Turn around and look, O' Jat!' "'The gods protect us,' said the hooded cumbo, emerging like a buffalo from the reeds. But wither went the marata. What huts thou done?' Kim had been trained by Lurgan Saib, and E-23 by virtue of his business was no bad actor. In place of the tremulous shrinking trader there lulled against the corner an all-but-naked ash-smeared ochre-barred dusty-haired sadhu. 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 chints on his shoulders. The child buried his face in his amazed father's arms. "'Look, O' Prinsling, we travel with warlocks, but they will not hurt thee.' "'Oh, do not cry. What is the sense of curing a child one day and killing him with fright the next?' "'The child will be fortunate all his life. He has seen a great healing. When I was a child I made claymen and horses. I have made them, too. Dear Banas, he comes in the night and makes them all alive at the back of our kitchen-midden,' piped the child. "'And so, thou art not frightened at any thing, O' Prins? I was frightened because my father was frightened. I felt his arms shake.' "'Oh, chicken man,' said Kim, and even the abashed jat laughed. I have done a healing on this poor trader. He must forgive his gains and his account-books, and sit by the wayside three nights to overcome the malignity of his enemies. The stars are against him.' "'The fewer the moneylenders, the better, I say. But, Sardu or Sardu, he should pay for my stuff on his shoulders.' "'So? But that is thy child on thy shoulder, given over to the burning gat 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. Nonetheless, if by any chance, O man from Jalandur, 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 moraine will come among the buffaloes, and a fire in thy thatch, and rats in thy corn bin, and the curse of our gods upon thy fields, that they may be barren before thy feet, and after thy plowshare.' This was part of an old curse picked up from a fakir at the taxali gate in the days of Kim's innocence. It lost nothing by repetition. "'Seize, holy one, in mercy cease!' cried the jat. Do not curse the household. I saw nothing, I heard nothing, I am thy cow.' And he made to grab at Kim's bare foot, beating rhythmically on the carriage-floor. "'But since thou hast been permitted to aid me in the matter of a pinch of flour, and a little opium, and such trifles, as I have honoured by using in my art, so will the gods return a blessing,' and he gave it at length to the man's immense relief. It was one that he had overheard from Lugansaib. The lama stared through his spectacles, as he had not stared at the business of a disguisement. "'Friend of the stars,' he said at last, "'thou hast a quiet great wisdom. Beware that it does not give birth to pride. No man having the law before his eye 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. E-23, with relaxed mouth, gave himself up to the opium that is meat, tobacco, and medicine to the spent Asiatic. So in a silence of awe and great miscomprehension they slid into deli about lamp-lighting time." CHAPTER XI Who hath desired the sea, the sight of salt water unbounded, the heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber wind hounded, the sleek-barrelled swell before storm, grey, foamless, enormous, and growing, Stark calm on the lap of the line, or the crazy-eyed hurricane blowing. His sea in no showing the same, his sea in the same neath all showing, his sea that his being fulfills, so and no otherwise, so and no otherwise hillmen desire their hills. The sea and the hills. "'I have found my heart again,' said E-23, under the 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 has saved my head.'" A group of yellow-trousered, Punjab policemen, headed by a hot and perspiring young Englishman, parted the crowd about the carriages. Behind them, inconspicuous as a cat, ambled a small fat person who looked like a lawyer's tout. "'See, the young saib, reading from a paper. My description is in his hand,' said E-23. "'They go, carriage by carriage, like fisherfolk, netting a pool.'" When the procession reached their compartment, E-23 was counting his beads with a steady jerk of the wrist, while Kim jeered at him for being so drugged as to lost the ringed fire-tongues which are the sadhu's distinguishing mark. The lama, deep in meditation, stared straight before him, and the farmer, glancing furtively, gathered up his belongings. "'Nothing here but a parcel of holy-boleys,' said the Englishman aloud, and passed on a mead a ripple of uneasiness, for native police mean extortion to the native all India over. "'The trouble now,' whispered E-23, "'lies in sending a wire as to the place where I hid that letter I was sent to find. "'I cannot go to the tar-office in this disguise. "'Is it not enough I have saved thy neck? "'Not if the work be left unfinished. "'Never did the healer of sick pearls tell thee so? "'comes another saib, ha!' This was a tallish, salawish district superintendent of police, belt, helmet, polished spurs and all, strutting and twirling his dark moustache. "'What fools are these police-saibs?' said Kim, genially. E-23 glanced up on his eyelids. "'It is well said,' he muttered in a changed voice. "'I go to drink water, keep my place.' He blundered out almost into the Englishman's arms, and was badly worded in clumsy erdue. "'I'm not! You drunk! You mustn't bang about as though Delhi station belonged to my friend.' E-23, not moving a muscle of his countenance, answered with a stream of the filthiest abuse, at which Kim naturally rejoined. It reminded him of the drummer-boys and the barrack-sweepers at Ambala in the terrible time of his first schooling. "'My good fellow!' the Englishman drawled. "'Nickel-jow, go back to your carriage.' Step by step, withdrawing deferentially and dropping his voice, the yellow sardu clomped back onto the carriage, cursing the DSP to remotest posterity. By, here Kim almost jumped, by the curse of the Queen's Stone, by the writing under the Queen's Stone, and by an assortment of gods with wholly new names. "'I don't know what you're saying,' the Englishman flushed angrily, but it's some piece of blasted impertinence. Come out of that!' E-23, affecting to misunderstand, gravely produced his ticket, which the Englishman wrenched angrily from his hand. "'Oh, Zulum, 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 sardu's tongue. "'Thy charms do not work well to-day, holy one.' The sardu followed the policeman, forning and supplicating. The ruck of passengers, busy with their babies and their bundles, had not noticed the affair. Kim slipped out behind him, for it flashed through his head that he had heard this angry, stupid, saib, discursing loud personalities to an old lady near Umballa three years ago. "'It is well,' the sardu whispered, jammed in the calling, shouting in bewildered press, a Persian greyhound beneath his feet, and a cage full of yelling hawks, under charge of a Rajput falconer in the small of his back. "'He has gone now to send word of the letter which I hid. They told me he was in Peshwa. I might have known that he is like the crocodile, always at the Ford. He has saved me from my present calamity, but I owe my life to thee.' "'Is he also one of us?' Kim ducked under a Miwa camel-driver's greasy armpit, and canoned off a covey of jabbering Sikh matrons. "'Not less than the greatest. We are both fortunate. I will make report to him of what thou hast done. I am safe under his protection.' He bored through the edge of the crowd, besieging the carriages, and squatted by the bench near the telegraph office. "'Return, or they take thy place. I have no fear for the work, brother, or my life. Thou hast given me a breathing-space, and Strickland Saib has pulled me to land. We may work together at the game yet. Farewell!' Kim hurried to his carriage, elated, bewildered, but a little netdled, in that he had no key to the secrets about him. I am only a beginner at the great game, that is sure. I could not have leapt into safety, as did the Sadhu. He knew it was darkest under the lamp. I could not have thought to tell news under pretence of cursing. How clever was the Saib! No matter. I saved the life of one. Where is the cambo gone, holy one?' He whispered, as he took his seat in the now crowded compartment. "'A fear gripped him,' the lama replied, with a touch of tender malice. "'He saw thee change the Maratha to a Sadhu, in the twinkling of an eye, as a protection against evil. That shook him. Then he saw the Sadhu fall sheer into the hands of the Paulus. All the effect of thy art.' Then he gathered up his son and fled, for he said that thou dischanged a quiet traitor into an impudent bandier of words with Saibs. And he feared a like fate. Where is the Sadhu?' "'With the Paulus,' said Kim. Yet I saved the cambo's child.' The lama snuffed blandly. "'Oh, Chela, see how thou art overtaken. Thou discure the cambo's child solely to acquire merit. But thou disput a spell on the Maratha with prideful workings. I watched thee, and with side-long glances, to bewilder an old man and a foolish farmer, whence calamity and suspicion.' Kim controlled himself with an effort beyond his years. Not more than any other youngster did he like to eat dirt or to be misjudged. But he saw himself in a cleft stick. The train rolled out of Delhi into the night. "'It is true,' he murmured. "'Where I have offended thee, I have done wrong.' "'It is more, Chela. Thou hast loosed an act upon the world as a stone thrown into a pool, so spread the consequences. Thou canst not tell how far!' This ignorance was well both for Kim's vanity and for the lama's peace of mind, when we think that there was then being handled in its similar a code wire reporting the arrival of E-23 at Delhi, and, more important, the whereabouts of a letter he had been commissioned to abstract.' Incidentally an overt zealous policeman had arrested, on the 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 E-23 was paddling through by-ways 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 Maratha had been lost. And by the time the leisurely train halted at Saranapur the last ripple of the stone Kim helped to heave was lapping against the steps of a mosque in far away room, where it disturbed a pious man at prayers. The lama made his in ample form near the Dewey Bougainvillea trellis, near the platform, cheered by the clear sunshine and the presence of his disciple. We will put these things behind us," he said, indicating the brazen engine and the gleaming track. The jolting of the terrain, though a wonderful thing, has turned my bones to water. We will use clean air hence forward. Let us go to the Kula Woman's house," said Kim, and stepped forth cheerily under the bundles. Early next morning Saranapur weighs clean and well scented. He thought of the other mornings at St. Xavier's, and it topped his already thrice-heaped contentment. Where is all this new haste-board from? Wise men do not run about like chickens in the sun. We have come hundreds upon hundreds of course already, and till now I have scarcely been alone with thee at instant. How canst thou receive instructions all jostled of crowds? How can I, whirled by a flux of talk, meditate upon the way? Her tongue grows no shorter with the years, then," the disciple smiled. Nor her desire for charms! I remember once when I spoke of the wheel of life," the lama fumbled in his bosom for his latest copy. She was only curious about the devils that beseeched children. She shall acquire merit by entertaining us, in a little while, at and after occasion. Softly, softly, now we will wander loose-foot, waiting upon the chain of things, the search is sure. So they travelled very easily across and among the broad, bloomful fruit gardens, by way of Aminabad, Sahayganj, Acrola of the Ford, and Little Puhulesa, the line of the Sahaywaleks all was to the north, and behind them again the snows. After long sweet sleep under the dry stars came the lordly, leisurely passage, through a waking village, begging-bowl held forth in silence, but eyes roving in defiance of the law, from sky's edge to sky's edge. Then would Kim return, soft-footed, through the dust his master, under the shadow of a mango-tree, or the thinner shade of a white dune cirrus, 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 disgust upon the road. There they told their tale, a new one each evening so far as Kim was concerned, and there they were made welcome, either by priest or headman, after the custom of the kindly east. When the shadows shortened and the lama leaned more heavily upon Kim, there was always the wheel of life to draw forth, to hold flat under wiped stones, and with a long straw to expound cycle by cycle. There 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 down 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 chalice study the troubles that came from overeating, bloated stomach, and burning bowels. Obediently then, with bowed head and brown finger alert to follow the pointer, did the chalice 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 to thousand shapes, desirable or detestable, as men reckon, but in truth of no account either way. And how the stupid spirit, bond-slave to the hog, the dove and the serpent, lusting off the beetle-nut, a new yoke of oxen, women, or the favour of kings, is bound to follow the body through all the heavens and all the hells, and strictly round again. Sometimes a woman or a poor man watching the ritual, it was nothing else. When the great yellow chart was unfolded, would throw a few flowers or a hound full of cowries upon its edge. It sufficed these humble ones that they had met a holy one who might be moved to remember them in his prayers. Cure them if they are sick! said the lama when Kim's sporting instincts spoke. Cure them if they have fever! But by no means work charms! Remember what befell the marata! Then all doing is evil? Kim replied, lying out under a big tree at the fork of the Dune Road, watching the little ants run over his hand. To abstain from action is well, except to acquire merit. At the gates of learning we were taught that to abstain from action was unbefitting a saib, and I am a saib. 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 botial. We be all souls seeking escape. No matter what thy wisdom learned among saibs, when we came to my river thou will be freed from all illusion at my side. High my bones ache for that river as they ache in the terrain, but my spirits sit above my bones waiting. The search is sure. I am answered. Is it permitted to ask a question? The lama inclined his stately head. I ate thy bread for three years, as thou knowest. Holy one! whence came there is much wealth as men counted in botial. The lama returned with composure. In my own place I have the illusion of honor. I ask for that I need. I am not concerned with the account. That is for my monastery. The black high seats in the monastery and the novices all in order. And he told stories tracing with a finger in the dust of the immense and sumptuous ritual of avalanche guarded cathedrals, of processions and devil dances, of the changing of monks and nuns into swine, of holy cities fifteen thousand feet in the air, of intrigue between monastery and monastery, of voices among the hills and of the mysterious mirage that dances on dry snow. He spoke even of Lhasa and of the Delai Lama whom he had seen and adored. Each long perfect day rose behind Kim for a barrier to cut him off from his race and his mother tongue. He slipped back to thinking and dreaming in the vernacular, and mechanically followed the lama's ceremonial observances at eating, drinking, and the like. The old man's mind turned more and more to his monastery as his eyes turned to the steadfast snows. His river troubled him nothing. Now and again indeed he would gaze long and long at a tuft or a twig, expecting, he said, the earth to cleave and deliver its blessing. But he was content to be with his disciple, at ease in the temperate wind that comes down from the dune. This was not Ceylon, nor Budagaya, nor Bombay, nor some grass-tangled ruins that he seemed to have stumbled upon two years ago. He spoke of those places as a scholar removed from vanity, as a seeker walking in humility, as an old man wise and temperate, illuminating knowledge with brilliant insight, bit by bit, disconnectedly, each tail 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 overeating, nor lying in 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, Sahayganj, Akrola of the Ford, and Little Fulesa, where Kim gave the soulless woman a blessing. 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 white-whiskered servitor, Aline Dry Aurya, begging them to bring the honour of their presence to his mistress, distressed in her mind that the lama had neglected her so long. Now do I remember! the lama spoke as though it were a wholly new proposition. She is virtuous, but an inordinate talker. Kim was sitting on the edge of a cow's manger, telling stories to a village smith's children. She will only ask for another son for her daughter. I have not forgotten her, he said. Let her acquire merit. Send word that we will come. They covered eleven miles through the fields in two days, and were overwhelmed with attentions at the end, for the old lady held a fine tradition of hospitality to which she forced her son-in-law, who was under the thumb of his women-folk, and brought peace by borrowing of the money-lender. Age had not weakened her tongue or her memory, and 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 still art the shameless beggar-brat of the parao! she shrilled. I have not forgotten thee. Wash ye and eat. The father of my daughter's son is gone away a while, so we poor women are dumb and useless. For proof she harangued the entire household unsparingly, till food and drink were brought. And in the evening, the smoke-scented evening, copper-done and turquoise across the fields, it pleased her to order her palanquin to be set down in the untidy forecourt by smoky torchlight, and there, behind not too closely drawn curtains, she gossiped. Had the Holy One come alone, I should have received him otherwise, but with this rogue who can be too careful? Maharani, said Kim, choosing as always the amplest title, is it my fault that none other than a Sa'ib, a polis Sa'ib, called the Maharani, whose face he jutt, that was on the pilgrimage, when we travel thou knows the proverb, called the Maharani a breaker of hearts and a dispenser of delights? To remember that, I 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 Banaras? I would have gone there again this year, but my daughter, I have only two sons. Fie! Such is the effect of these low planes. Now in Kulu men are elephants. But I would ask the Holy One, stand aside, rogue, a charm against most lamentable windy collics, that in mango time overtake my daughter's eldest. Two years back he gave me a powerful spell. Oh, Holy One! said Kim, bubbling with mirth at the lama's rueful face. It is true, I gave her one against wind. Teeth, teeth, teeth! snapped the old woman. Cure them if they are sick, Kim quoted relishingly, but by no means work charms. Remember what befell the Maratha. That was two rains ago she wearied me with her continued importunity. The lama groaned as the unjust judge had groaned before him. Thus it comes. Take note, my chala, 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. I, and to whom else should I talk, the boy's mother knew nothing, and the father, in the nights of the cold weather it was, pray to the gods, said he, first soothed and turning over snored. I gave her the charm. What is an old man to do? To abstain from action is well, except to acquire merit. Oh, chala, if thou desertest me, I am all alone. He found his milk-teeth easily at any rate, said the old lady, but all priests are alike. Kim coughed severely. Being young he did not approve of her flippancy. To importune the wise out of season is to invite calamity. There is a talking-miner, the thrust came back with the well-remembered snap of the jeweled 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 fist into his belly, which was like a half-grown gourd and cry, here is the pain, ye would forgive. I am half-minded to take the Hakim's medicine. He sells it cheap, and certainly it makes him as fat as Shiv's own bull. He does not deny remedies, but I doubted for the child, because of the inauspicious colour of the bottles. The lama, under cover of the monologue, had faded out into the darkness toward the room prepared. Though hast angered him be like, said Kim, not he. He is weary, and I forgot being a grandmother. None but a grandmother should ever oversee a child. Mothers are only fit for bearing. Tomorrow, when he sees how my daughter's son is grown, he will write the charms. Then, too, he can judge of the new Hakim's drugs. Who is the Hakim, Maharani? I wonderer, as thou art, but a most sober Bengali from Dhaka, a master of medicine. He relieved me of an oppression after meat by means of a small pill that wrought like devil unchained. He travels about now, vending preparations of great value. He has even papers printed in Angrizi, telling what things he has done for weak-backed men and slack women. He has been here four days, but hearing ye were coming, Hakim's and priests are snake and tiger the world over, he has, I take it, gone to cover. While she drew breath after this volley, the ancient servant, sitting on rebuke on the edge of the torchlight, muttered, This house is a cattle-pound, as it were, for all charlatans and priests. Let the boy stop eating mangoes, but who can argue with a grandmother? He raised his voice respectfully. Saeba, the Hakim, sleeps after his meat. He is in the quarters behind the dove-cot. Kim bristled like an expected terrier. To out-face and down-talk a Calcutta-tort Bengali, a voluble Dhaka drug-vender would be a good game. It was not seemingly that the lama, and incidentally himself, should be thrown aside for such a one. He knew those curious-busted English advertisements at the backs of native newspapers. Saint 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 Uria, not anxious to play off one parasite against the other, slunk away towards a dove-cot. Yes, said Kim, with measured scorn, their stock-in-trade is a little coloured water, and a very great shamelessness. Their prey are broken-down kings and overfed Bengalis. Their profit is in children who are not yet born. The old lady chuckled. Do not be envious. Charms are better, eh? I never gain said it. See that thy holy one writes me a good amulet by the morning. None but the ignorant deny. A thick heavy voice boomed through the darkness as a figure came to rest, squatting. None but the ignorant deny the value of charms. None but the ignorant deny the value of medicine. A rat found a piece of turmeric, said he, I will open a grocer's shop. Kim retorted. Battle was fairly joined now, and they heard the old lady stiffen to attention. The priest's son knows the names of his nurse and three gods, says he, hear me, or I will curse you, by the three million great ones. Decidedly this invisible had an arrow too in his quiver. He went on, I am but a teacher of the alphabet. I have learned all the wisdom of the Saibs. The Saibs never grow old. They dance and they play like children when they are grandfathers. A strong-backed breed piped the voice inside the palanquin. I have, too, our drugs which loosen humours of the head in hot and angry men. Zinnah, well compounded when the moon stands in the proper house. Leer low earths I have, Alpen from China, that makes a man renew his youth and astonish his household. Zafron from Kashmir, and the best ass-lep of Kabul. Many people have died before. That I surely believe, said Kim. They knew the value of my drugs. I do not give my sick the mere ink in which a charm is written, but hot and rending drugs which descend and wrestle with the evil. Very mightily they do so, sighed the old lady. The voice launched into an immense tale of misfortune and bankruptcy, studied 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, with the maybe the son of this house shall go. He shall indeed. If our neighbour's brat can in a few years make an F.A. First Arts. She used the English word, of which she had heard so often. How much more shall children clever as some that I know bear away prizes at rich Calcutta. Never, said the voice, have I seen such a child, born in an auspicious hour, and but for that colic which alas turning into black colors may carry him off like a pigeon, destined to many years he is enviable. Hi, my, 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 Chaukada, watchman, in my old age. Up, up, take up the palanquin. Let the Hakim and the young priest settle between them where their charms or medicine most avail. Oh, worthless people, fetch tobacco for the guests, and round the homestead I go. The palanquin reeled off, followed by straggling torches and a horde of dogs. Twenty villages know the Saeba, 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. Nonetheless she made a great parade of her formal inspections, the riot of which could be heard half way to Masuri. End of Chapter 12 Part 1 CHAPTER XII. Kim relaxed as one auger must when he meets another. The Hakim, still squatting, slid over his hooker with a friendly foot, and Kim pulled at the good weed. The hangar's aunt expected grave professional debate, and perhaps a little free doctoring. To discuss medicine before the ignorant is of one piece with teaching the peacock to sing, said the Hakim. True courtesy, Kim echoed, is very often inattention. These, be it understood, were company manners designed to impress. Hi, I have an ulcer on my leg, cried a scallion. Look at it. Get hence, remove, said the Hakim. Is it the habit of the place to pester honoured guests? He crowed in like buffaloes. If the Saeba knew, Kim began, I, I come away. They are meat for our mistress. When her young shaitans, colleagues are cured, perhaps we poor people may be suffered too. 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 honour of this house, go!" And he drove the underlings before him. Said the Hakim hardly more than shaping the words with his lips. How do you do, Mr. Ohara? I am jolly glad to see you again. Kim's hand clenched about the pipe-stem. Anywhere on the open road, perhaps, he would not have been astonished, but here, in this quiet back-water of life, he was not prepared for hurry, Babu. It annoyed him, too, that he had been hoodwinked. Ah-ha! I told you at luck now! How I shall rise again, and you shall not know me! But how much did you bet, eh? He chewed leisurely upon a few cardamom seeds, but he breathed uneasily. But why come here, Babuji? Ah! That is the question, as Shakespeare hath it. I come to congratulate you on your extraordinary efficient performance at Delhi. Oh! I tell you, we were all proud of you. It was very neat and handy. Our mutual friend, he is an old friend of mine. He has been in some damn tight places. Now he will be in some more. He told me, I tell Mr. Lurgam, 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, nonetheless, of departmental praise, ensnaring praise from an equal of work appreciated by fellow workers. Earth has nothing on the same plane to compare with it. But, cried the Oriental in him, Babus do not travel far to retail compliments. Tell thy tale, Babu! he said authoritatively. Oh! it is nothing. Only I was at similar, when the wire came in about what our mutual friend said he had hidden, and old Crichton! he looked to see how Kim would take this piece of audacity. The Colonel Saib, the boy from St. Xavier's, corrected. Of course. He found me at the loose string, and I had to go down to Chittow 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 quiet just now, and says Sardu-disguise suits him to the ground. Well, I hear what you have done so well so quickly upon the instantaneous spur of the moment. I tell our mutual, you take the bali bun, by Jove. It was splendid. I come to tell you so. The frogs were busy in the ditches, and the moon slid to her setting. Some happy servant had gone out to commune with the night, and to beat upon a drum. Kim's next sentence was in the vernacular. How dost thou follow us? Oh, ah! that was nothing. I know from our mutual friend that you go to Saranpur. So I come on. Red llamas are not inconspicuous persons. I buy myself my drug-box, and I am very good doctor, really. I go to Acrola of the Forden here 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 duly. They have great recollections of the old llamas' visits here. I know old ladies cannot keep their hands from medicine. So I am a doctor, and you hear my talk? I think it is very good. My word, Mr. Ohara, they know about you and the llama for fifty miles the common people. So I come. Do you mind? Babuji said Kim, looking up at the broad grinning face. I am a saib. My dear Mr. Ohara, and I hope to play the great game. You are subordinate to me departmentally at present. Then why talk like an ape in a tree? Men do not come after one from Simla and change their dress for the sake of a few sweet words. I am not the child. Talk Hindi, and let us get to the yoke 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 very disconcerting of the Europeans, Mr. Ohara. You should know a heap better at your time of life. But I want to know, said Kim, laughing, if it is the great game I may help. How can I do anything if you book Babu all round the shop? Hari Babu reached for the pipe, and sucked it till it gurgled again. Now I will speak in vernacular. You sit tight, Mr. Ohara. It concerns the pedigree of a white stallion. Still? That was finished long ago. When every one 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 was given the stallion's pedigree by Mahbub Ali. Upon them, because of that news, and ere they were ready, fell our army. Aye! Eight thousand men with guns, I remember that night. But the war was not pushed. That is the government custom. The troops were recalled, because the government believed the five kings were cowed. And it is not cheap to feed men among the high passes. Hilas and Buna, rajas with guns, undertook for a price to guard the passes against oil coming from the north. They protested both fear and friendship. He broke off with a giggle into English. Of course, I tell you this unofficially, to elucidate political situation, Mr. Ohara. Officially, I am debarred from criticising 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 Buna 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 Le, became a clerk of accounts in the army. When the troops were withdrawn, I was left behind to pay the coolies who made new roads in the hills. This road-making was part of the bond between Buna, Hilas, and the government. So, and then, I tell you, it was jolly beastly coal up there to after summer, said Haribabu confidently. I was afraid these Buna men would got my throat every night for the pay-chest. My native seapoy guard, they laughed at me. By Jove, I was such a fearful man. Never mind that. I go on quill-o-quilly. 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 send word that the roads for which I was paying money to the diggers were being made for the feet of strangers and enemies. Four. For the Russians. The thing was an open jest among the coolies. Then I was called down to tell what I knew by speech of tongue. Mahbub came south, too. See the end? Over the passes this year after snow-melting. He shivered afresh. Come, two strangers, under cover of shooting wild goats. They bear guns, but they bear also chains and levels and compasses. Oh, the things get clearer. They are well received by Hillas and Buna. They make great promises. They speak as the mouthpiece of a Kaiser with gifts. Up the valleys, down the valleys they go, saying, Here is a place to build a breast-work. Here can you pitch a fort. Here can you hold the road against an army. The very road 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 Buna and Hillas. When all the evil is done, look you, when those two strangers with the levels and compasses make the five kings to believe that a great army would sweep up the passes tomorrow or the next day, he'll people are all fools. Come, see order to me, Hari Babu. Go north and see what those strangers do. I say to Crichton Saab, this is not the lawsuit that we go about to collect evidence. Hari returned to his English with a jerk. By Jove, I say, what the deuce do you not issue demie-official 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 Crichton, he laughed at me. It is all your beastly English pride. You think no one dare conspire. That is all Tommy Rott. Kim smoked slowly, revolving the business, so far as he understood it, in his quick mind. Then now ghost forth to follow the strangers. No, to meet them. They are coming into similar to sell their horns and heads to be dressed at Calcutta. They are exclusively sporting gentlemen, and they are allowed special facilities by the Government. Of course, we always do that. It is our British pride. Then what is to fear from them? By Jove, they are not black people. I do all sorts of things with black people, of course. They are Russians, and highly unscrupulous people. I do not want to consort with them without a witness. Will they kill thee? Oh, that is nothing. I am good enough Herbert Spencerian, I trust, to meet a little thing like death, which is all in my fate, you know. But they may beat me. Why? Harry Babu snapped his fingers with irritation. Of course, I shall affiliate myself to their camp in supernumerary capacity, or perhaps interpreter, or person mentally impotent and hungry, or some such thing. Then I must pick up what I can, I suppose. That is easy for me as playing Mr. Doctor to the old lady. Only, only you see, Mr. Ohara, I am unfortunately Asiatic, which is serious detriment in some respects. And, also so, I am Bengali, a fearful man. God made the hair and the Bengali. What shame! said Kim, quoting the proverb. It was process of evolution, I think, from primal necessity, but the fact remains in all the sui bono. I am awfully fearful. I remember once they wanted to cut off my head on the road to Lhasa. No, I have never reached Lhasa. I sat down and cried, Mr. Ohara, 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 unofficial intent, to which you 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 opinion of you since I met my friend at Delhi, and also I will embody your name in my official report when matter is finally adjudicated. It will be a great feather in your cap. That is why I come, really. The end of the tale, I think, is true. But what of the four part? About the five kings? There is ever so much truth in it. A lot more than you would suppose, said Hari, earnestly. You come, eh? I go from here straight down into the doom. It is very verdant and painted meads. I shall go to Masuri, to good old Masuri praha, as the gentlemen and ladies say. Then by Rambhor into Chini. That is the only way they can come. I do not like waiting in the cold, but we must wait for them. I want to walk with them to Simla. You see, one Russian is a Frenchman, and I know my French pretty well. I have friends in Chandanangur. He would certainly rejoice to see the hills again, said Kim meditatively. All his speech these ten days past has been of little else. If we go together... Oh, ah! We can be quite strangers on the road, if your lama prefers. I shall just be four or five miles ahead. There is no Hari for Hari. That is a European pan, 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 nearly morning now. He yawned ponderously, and with never a civil word, lumbered off to his sleeping place. But Kim slept little, and his thoughts ran in Hindustani. Well, is the game called Great? I was four days a scallion 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 Maratha, 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 Mabub Ali. Also to Crichton Saib. But chiefly to the Holy One. He is right, a great and a wonderful world. And I am Kim, Kim, Kim, alone, one person, in the middle of it all. But I will see these strangers with their levels and chains. What was the upshot of last night's babble? said the Lama after his horizons. There came a strolling cellar of drugs, a hangar on, of the Sahibas. Him I abolished by arguments and prayers, proving that our charms are worthier than his coloured waters. Alas! my charms is the virtuous woman still bent upon a new one. Very strictly. Then it must be written, or she will deafen me with her clamour. He fumbled at his pencase. In the plains, said Kim, are always too many people. In the hills, as I understand, there are fewer. Oh, the hills, and the snows upon the hills. The Lama tore off a tiny square of paper fit to go in an amulet. But what dost thou know of the hills? They are very close. Kim thrust open the door and looked at the long peaceful line of the Himalayas, flushed in morning gold. Except in the dress of a Sahib, I have never set foot among them. The Lama snuffed the wind wistfully. If we go north, Kim put the question to the waking sunrise, would not much midday heat be avoided by walking among the lower hills at least? Is the charm made, Holy One? I have written the names of seven silly devils, not one of whom is worth a grain of dust in the eye. Dust do foolish women drag us from the way. Hari Babu came out from behind the dove-cot, washing his teeth with ostentatious ritual. Full fleshed, heavy-haunched, bull-necked, and deep-voiced, he did not look like a fearful man. Kim signed almost imperceptibly that matters were in good train, and when the morning toilette was over, Hari Babu, in flowery speech, came to do honour to the Lama. They ate, of course, apart, and afterwards the old lady more or less veiled behind a window, returned to the vital business of green mango-collects 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 sulfur and carried in a snakeskin was a sound remedy for cholera. But the symbolism interested him far more than the science. Hari Babu deferred to these views with enchanting politeness, so that the Lama called him a courteous physician. Hari 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 Saebes, 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 law of meditation. Kim looked on with envy. The Hari Babu of his knowledge, oily, effusive, and nervous, was gone. Gone, too, was the brazen drug vendor 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 incidents of taxation, rack-renting, funeral ceremonies, her son-in-law, this by illusion easy to be followed, the care of the young, and the age's lack of decency. And Kim, as interested in the life of this world, as she soon to leave it, squatted with his feet under the hem of his robe, drinking all in. While the Lama demolished one after another, every theory of body-curing put together by Harry Babu. At noon the Babu strapped up his brass-bound drug-box, took his paint-leather shoes of ceremony in one hand, a gay, blue, and white umbrella in the other, and set off northwards to the dune, where he said he was in demand among the lesser kings of those parts. We will go in the cool of the evening, Cheyla, said the Lama. That doctor, learned in physics and courtesy, affirms that the people among these lower hills are devout, generous, and much in need of a teacher, in a very short time. So, says the Hakeem, we come to cool air and the smell of pines. You go to the hills? And by Kulu Road? Oh, thrice-happy, shrewd the old lady. But that I am a little pressed with the care of the homestead, I would take Pallan Quinn. But that would be shameless, and my reputation would be cracked. Oh, I know the road. Every march of the road I know. You will find charity throughout. It is not denied to the well-looking. I will give orders for provision, a servant to set you forth upon your journey. No, then I will at least cook you good food. What a woman is the Sahiba! said the white-beeried orrier 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! He rubbed his slim stomach. There were cakes, there were sweet meats, there was cold foul stewed to rags with rice and prunes, enough to burden Kim like a mule. I am old and useless, she said. None now love me, and none respect, but there are few to compare with me when I call on the gods and squat to my cooking-pots. Come again, old people of goodwill. Only one a disciple, come again. The room is always prepared, the welcome is always ready. See, the woman do not follow thy chayla too openly. I know the women of Kulu. Take heed, chayla, lest he run away when he smells his hills again. High! Do not tilt the rice-bag upside down. Bless the household holy one, and forgive thy servant her stupidities." She wiped her red old eyes on a corner of her veil, and clocked, throttlingly. Woman, 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 shores of this life, but nonetheless, chayla, she is virtuous, kindly, hospitable, of a whole and zealous heart, who shall say she does not a quiet merit? Not I, holy one, said Kim, re-slinging the bountiful provision on his shoulders. In my mind, behind my eyes, I have tried to picture such and one altogether freed from the wheel, desiring nothing, causing nothing, and none as it were. I'd, oh, imp! the lama almost laughed aloud. I cannot make the picture, nor I, but there are many, many millions of lives before her. She will get wisdom a little. It may be in each one. And will she forget how to make stews with saffron upon that road? Thy mind is said 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 morning 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 the snow waters, and the sound of the trees for a little while. The hakim said that at any time we may return to the plains, for we do no more than skirt the pleasant places. The hakim is full of learning, but he is in no way proud. I spoke to him when thou was talking to the saiba of a certain dizziness that lays hold upon the back of my neck in the night, and he said it rose from excessive heat to be cured by cool air. Upon consideration I marveled that I had not thought of such a simple remedy. Does thou tell him of thy search? said kim a little jealously. He preferred to sway the lama by his own speech, not through the wiles of Haribabu. Ah, sureedly! I told him of my dream, and of the manner by which I had acquired merit by causing thee to be taught wisdom. Thou didst not say I was a saib? What need? I have told thee many times we be but two souls seeking escape. He said, and he is just therein, that the river of healing will break forth even as I dreamed at my feet, if need be. Having found the way, sees thou, that shall free me from the wheel, need I trouble to find a way about the mere fields of the earth, which are illusion, that were senseless. I have my dreams night upon night repeated. I have the Jakata, and I have thee friend of all the world. It was written in thy horoscope, that the red bull on a green field, I have not forgotten, should bring thee to honour. But who but I saw that prophecy accomplished? Indeed, I was the instrument. Thou shalt find me my river, being in return the instrument. The search is sure. He set his ivory-yellow face, serene and untroubled, toward the beckoning hills, his shadow shouldering fast before him in the dust. CHAPTER XIII. PART I. Who hath desired the sea, the immense, contemptuous surges, the shudder, the stumble, the swerve ere the star-stabbing boughsprit emerges, the orderly clouds of the trains, and the ridged roaring sapphire thereunder, unheralded cliff-lurking floors, and the headsels, low-vollying thunder. His sea in no wonder the same, his sea in the same in each wonder, his sea that his being fulfills, so and no otherwise, so and no otherwise, hillmen desire their hills. The sea and the hills. Who goes to the hills goes to his mother. They had crossed the cywalex and the half-tropical dune, left Masuri behind them, and headed north along the narrow hill-roads. Day after day they struck deeper into the huddled mountains, and day after day Kim watched the lama return to a man's strength. Among the terraces of the dune he had leaned on the boy's shoulder, ready to profit by wayside halts. Under the great ramp to Masuri he drew himself altogether as an old hunter faces a well-remembered bank, and where he should have sunk exhausted swung his long draperies about him, drew a deep double-lungful of the diamond air, and walked as only a hill-man can. Kim, plain-spread and plain-fed, sweated and panted, astonished. This is my country, said the lama. Beside Sujsen, this is flatter than a rice-field. And with steady, driving strokes from the loins he strode upwards. But it was on the steep downhill marches, three thousand feet in three hours, that he went utterly away from Kim, whose back arched with holding back, and whose big toe was nigh cut off by his grass sandal-string, through the speckled shadow of the great Deodar forests, through oak-feathered and plumed with ferns, birch, ilex, rhododendron, and pine, out on the bare hillside slippery sun-burnt grass, and back into the woodland's cool-thugane, till oak gave way to bamboo and palm of the valley. The lama swung untiring. Glancing back in the twilight of 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 speety and coulou, would stretch out his hands yearningly towards the high snows of the horizon. In the dawns they flared windy red above stark blue as Kedarnath and Badrinath, kings of that wilderness, took the first sunlight. All day long they lay like molten silver under the sun, and at evening put on their jewels again. At first they breathed temperately upon the travellers, winds good to meet when one crawled over some gigantic hogs-back. But in a few days, at a height of nine or ten thousand feet, those breezes bit. And Kim kindly allowed a village of hillmen to acquire merit by giving him a rough blanket-coat. The lama was mildly surprised that anyone should object to the knife-edged breezes which had cut the years off his shoulders. These are but the lower hills, chailer! There is no cold till we come to the true hills. Air and water are good, and the people are devout enough, but the food is very bad, Kim growled, and we walk as though we were mad or English. It freezes at night, too. Our little may be, but only enough to make old bones rejoice in the sun. We must not always delight in soft beds and rich food. We might at least keep to the road. Kim had all a plainsman's affection for the well-trodden track, not six feet wide, that snaked among the mountains, but the lama, being Tibetan, could not refrain from shortcuts over spurs and the rims of gravel-strewn slopes. As he explained to his limping disciple, a man bred among mountains can prophesy the course of a mountain road, and though low-lying clouds might be a hindrance to a short-cutting stranger, they made no earthly difference to a thoughtful man. Thus, after long hours of what would be reckoned very fair mountaineering in civilised countries, they would pant over a saddle-back, sidle-past a few landslips, and drop through forest at an angle of forty-five onto the road again. Along their track lay the villages of the hill-folk. Mard 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 three thousand-foot glissade, jammed into a corner between cliffs that funneled 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 esquimo, would flock out and adore. The plains, kindly and gentle, had treated the lama as a holy man among holy men, but the hills worshipped him as one in the confidence of all their devils. Theirs was an almost obliterated Buddhism, overlaid with a nature-worship fantastic as their own landscapes, elaborate as the terracing of their tiny fields, but they recognised the big hat, the clicking rosary, and the rare Chinese texts for great authority, and they respected the man beneath the hat. We see thee come down over the black breasts of yore, said a better who gave them cheese, sour milk, and stone-hard bread one evening. We do not use that often, except when carving cows stray in summer. There is a summer wind amongst those stones that casts men down on the stillest day, but what should such folk care for the devil of yore? Then did Kim, aching in every fibre, dizzy with looking down, foot sore with cramping desperate toes in inadequate crannies, take joy in the day's march. Such joy as a boy of St. Xavier's, who had won the quarter-mile on the flat, might take in the praises of his friends. The hills sweated the gee and sugar-suit off his bones, the dry air taken sobbingly at the head of cruel passes, firmed and built out his upper ribs, and the tilted levels put new hard muscles into calf and thigh. They meditated often on the wheel of life. The more so since, as the lama said, they were freed from its visible temptations. Except the grey eagle and an occasional far-seen bear grubbing and rooting on the hillside, a vision of a furious painted leopard met at dawn in a still valley devouring a goat, and now and again a bright-coloured bird. They were alone with the winds and the grass singing under the wind. The women of the smoky huts over whose roofs the two walked as they descended the mountains were unlovely and unclean, wives of many husbands and afflicted with goiter. 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 on the road, the courteous Dakar physician, who paid for his food in ointments, good for goiter, and councils 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 Ladeck and Tibet. He said they could return to the plains at any moment. Meanwhile, for such as loved mountains, yonder road might amuse. This was not at all revealed in a breath, but at evening encounters on the stone threshing floors when, patients disposed of, the doctor would smoke an alarma snuff, while Kim watched the wee cows grazing on the housetops, or threw his soul after his eye across the deep blue gulfs between range and range. And there were torques apart in the dark woods, when the doctor would seek herbs, and Kim, as a budding physician, must accompany him. You see, Mr. Ohara, I do not know what the doosanal I shall do when I find our sporting friends, but if you will kindly keep with insight of my umbrella, which is a fine fixed point for cadastral survey, I shall feel much better. Kim looked out across the jungle of peaks. This is not my country, Hakim. Easier, I think, to find one laos in a bare skin. Oh, that is my strong points. There is no hurry for hurry. They were at Le, not so long ago. They said they had come down from the Karakarum with their heads and horns and all. I am only afraid they will have sent back all their letters and compromising things from Le into Russian territory. 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 Serenaga, or Abbottabad. That is their short road. Down the river by Banji 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 Le. Ah, it is cold there, and down the Indus to Hanle. I know that road. And then down you see to Bushahar and Chini Valley. That disaster tamed 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 knotted like a wind-blown hair-bell down the valleys and round the mountainsides, 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 away. The lama would throw a careless finger backward at the ridges, and the umbrella would expand itself in compliments. They crossed the snowy pass in cold moonlight, when the lama, mildly chaffing Kim, went through up to his knees like a bacteria and camel, the snow-bread shag-haired sort that come into the Kashmir Sarai. They dipped across beds of light snow and snow-powdered shale, where they took refuge from a gale in a camp of Tibetan hurrying down tiny sheep, each laden with a bag of borax. They came out upon grassy shoulders, still snow speckled, and through forest to grass anew. For all their marchings, Kedanath and Baderanath were not impressed, and it was only after days of travel that Kim, uplifted upon some insignificant ten-thousand-foot hummock, could see that a shoulder-knot or horn of the two great lords had ever so slightly changed outline. At last they entered a world within a world, a valley of leagues where the high hills were fashioned of the mere rubble and refuse from off the knees of the mountains. Here one day's march carried them no farther. It seemed that a dreamer's cloaked 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 table-land running far into the valley. Three days later it was a dim fold in the earth to the southward. Surely the gods live here, said Kim, beaten down by the silence and the appalling sweep and dispersal of the cloud-shadows after rain. This is no place for men. Long and long ago, said the lama as to himself, it was asked of the Lord whether the world were everlasting. To 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 no illusion, Ceyla. These are the true hills. They are like my hills, by such said, never were such hills. Above them, still enormously above them, earth towered away towards the snow-line, where from east to west across hundreds of miles ruled, as with a ruler, the last of the bold birches stopped. Above that, in scarps and blocks upheaved, the rocks strove to fight their heads above the white smother. Above these again, changeless since the world's beginning, but changing to every mood of sun and cloud, lay out the eternal snow. They could see blots and blurs on its face, where storm and wandering woolly wire got up to dance. Below them as they stood, the forest slid away in a sheet to blue-green for mile upon mile. Below the forest was a village in its sprinkle of terraced fields and steep grazing grounds. Below the village they knew, through 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 sutlouge. As usual, the lama had led Kim by cow-track and by-road, far from the main route along which Haribabu, 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. Haribabu was no game-shot. The snick of a trigger made him change colour, but, as he himself would have said, he was fairly efficient 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. Haribabu had seen all he wanted to see when he sat on the threshing floor of Zyglau, twenty miles away as the eagle flies, and forty by road. That is to say, two small dots, which one day were just below the snow-line, and the next had moved downwards, 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 Zyglau till the storm should be over-past, an oily, wet, but always smiling Bengali, talking the best of English with the vilest of phrases, was ingratiating himself with two sudden and rather rheumatic foreigners. He had arrived, revolving many wild schemes, on the heels of a thunderstorm, which had split a pine over against their camp, and so convinced a dozen or two forcibly-impressed baggage-coolies the day was inauspicious for further travel that, with one accord, they had thrown down their loads and jibbed. They were subjects of a hill-rager who farmed out their services, as is the custom, for his private gain, and, to add to their personal distresses, the strange Saibs had already threatened them with rifles. The most of them knew rifles and Saibs of old. They were trackers and shikaris of the northern valleys, keen after bear and wild goat, but they had never been thus treated in their lives. So the forest took them to her bosom, and, for all oaths and clamour, refused to restore. There was no need to feign madness, or the babu had thought of another means of securing a welcome. He wrung out his wet clothes, slipped on his patent leather shoes, opened the blue and white umbrella, and, with mincing gates and a heart beating against his tonsils, appeared as, agent for his royal highness, the Raja of Rampour, gentlemen. What can I do for you, please? The gentlemen were delighted. One was visibly French, the other Russian, but they spoke English, not much inferior to the babus. They begged his kind offices. Their native servants had gone sick at Le. They had hurried on, because they were anxious to bring the spoils of the chase to similar ere the skins grew moth-eaten. They bore a general letter of introduction—the babu salam to it orientally—to all government officials. No, they had not met any other shooting parties en route. They did for themselves. They had plenty of supplies they only wished to push on as soon as might be. At this he waylaid a cowering hill-man among the trees, and, after three minutes' talk, in a little silver—one cannot be economical upon state service, though Harry's heart bled at the waist—the eleven coolies and the three hangers on reappeared. At least the babu would be a witness to their oppression. My royal master, he will be much annoyed, but these people are only common people, and grossly ignorant. If your honours will kindly overlook unfortunate affair, I shall be much pleased. In a little while rain will stop, and we can then proceed. You have been shooting, eh? That is fine performance. He skipped nimbly from one kilter to the next, making pretense 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 accidentally upset a kilter with a red oil-skinned top. On the other hand, he would not press drink upon a babu, were he never so friendly, nor would he invite him to meet. The strangers did all these things and asked many questions, about women mostly, to which Huddy 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 wrongs till the tears ran down his cheeks for the miseries of his land. Then he staggered off, singing love songs of lower Bengal, and collapsed upon a wet tree-trunk. Never was so unfortunate a product of English rule in India more unhappily thrust upon aliens. There 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 raja. One might speak the good word there. It is possible that he has heard of us and wishes to signify his good will. We have not time. We must get into Simla as soon as may be, his companion replied. For my own part, I wish our reports had been sent back from Hillas or even Le. The English post is better and safer. Remember, we are given all facilities and name of God. They gave them to us too. Is it unbelievable stupidity? It is pride. Pride that deserves a more received punishment. Yes, to fight a fellow continental in our game is something. There is risk attached, but these people, bah, it is too easy. Pride, all pride, my friend. Now, what the deuce is good of Chandanagur being so close to Calcutta and all, said Hari, snoring open mouthed on the sudden moss. If I cannot understand their French, they talk so particularly fast. It would have been much better to cut their beastly throats. When he presented himself again, he was wracked with a headache, penitent and voluably 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 Rampour held the very same opinion. Upon this the men began to deride him, and to quote past words, till step by step, with depreciating smirks, oily grins and leers of infinite cunning, the poor Babu was beaten out of his defences and forced to speak truth. When Lurigum 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 footsteps waited on the weather. All the Saibs of their acquaintance, rough-clad men joyously returning year after year to their chosen gullies, had servants and cooks and orderlies very often hillmen. These Saibs travelled without any retinue. Therefore they were poor Saibs and ignorant, for no Saib 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 a comprehensive ill-treatment from their own colour, they suspected a trap somewhere and stood by to run if occasion offered. Then through the new washed air, steaming with delicious earth-smells, the Babu led the way down the slopes, walking ahead of the coolies in pride, walking behind the foreigners in humility. His thoughts were many and various. The least of them would have interested his companions beyond words. But he was an agreeable guide, ever keen to point out the beauties of his royal master's domain. He peopled the hills with anything they had a mind to slay, thar, ibex, or makur, and bear by Alisha's allowance. He discoursed of botany and ethnology with unimpeachable inaccuracy, and his store of local legends, he had been a trusted agent of the state for fifteen years, remember, was inexhaustible. Decidedly this fellow is an original, said the taller of the two foreigners. He is like the nightmare of a Viennese courier. He represents in little India in transition the monstrous hybridism of East and West. The Russian replied, it is we who can deal with orientals. He has lost his own country, and has not acquired any other, but he has a most complete hatred of his conquerors. Listen, he confided to me last night, said the other. Under the striped umbrella Hari Babu was straining ear and brain to follow the quick-poured French, and keeping both eyes on a kilter full of maps and documents, an over-large one with a double red oil-skin cover. He did not wish to steal anything, he only desired to know what to steal, and incidentally how to get away when he had stolen it. He thanked all the gods of Hindustan and Herbert Spencer that there remained some valuables to steal.