 Part 1 The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy to follow. I have been fellow to a beggar again and again, under circumstances which prevented either of us finding out whether the other was worthy. I have still to be brother to a prince, though I once came near to kinship with what might have been a veritable king, and was promised the reversion of a kingdom, army, law-court, revenue and policy all complete. But to-day I greatly fear that my king is dead, and if I want a crown I must go hunt for it myself. The beginning of everything was in a railway train, upon the road to Moe from Ajmir. There had been a deficit in the budget, which necessitated travelling, not second class, which is only half as dear as first class, but by intermediate, which is very awful indeed. There are no cushions in the intermediate class, and the population are either intermediate, which is Eurasian, or native, which for a long night journey is nasty, or loafer, which is amusing, though intoxicated. Intermediates do not buy from refreshment-rooms, they carry their food in bundles and pots, and buy sweets from the native sweet-meat-sellers, and drink the roadside water. This is why in hot weather intermediates are taken out of the carriages dead, and in all weathers are most properly looked down upon. My particular intermediate happened to be empty till I reached Nazirabad, when the big, black-browed gentlemen in shirt-sleeves entered, and following the custom of intermediates past the time of day. He was a wanderer and a vagabond like myself, but was an educated taste for whisky. He told tales of things he had seen and done, of out-of-the-way corners of the empire into which he had penetrated, and of adventures in which he risked his life for a few days' food. If India was filled with men like you and me not knowing more than the crows where they'd get their next day's rations, it isn't seventy millions of revenue the land would be paying, it's seven hundred millions," said he, and as I looked at his mouth and chin I was disposed to agree with him. We talked politics, the politics of loaferdom that sees things from the underside where the loth and plaster is not smoothed off, and we talked postal arrangements, because my friend wanted to send a telegram back from the next station to Ajmir, the turning-off place from the Bombay to the Mow line as you travel westward. My friend had no money beyond eight annas which he wanted for dinner, and I had no money at all owing to the hitch in the budget before mentioned. Further, I was going into a wilderness, where, though I should resume touch with the treasury, there were no telegraph offices. I was therefore unable to help him in any way. We might threaten a station-master and make him send a wire on tick," said my friend, but that had mean inquiries for you and for me, and I've got my hands full these days. Did you say you were travelling back along this line within any days? Within ten, I said. Couldn't you make it eight? said he. Mine is rather urgent business. I can send your telegrams within ten days, if that will serve you, I said. I couldn't trust the wire to fetch him now, think of it. It's this way. He leaves Delhi on the twenty-third for Bombay. That means he'll be running through Ajmir about the night of the twenty-third. But I'm going into the Indian desert," I explained. Well, and good," said he, you'll be changing at Marwar Junction to get into Jodhpur territory. You must do that, and he'll be coming through Marwar Junction in the early morning of the twenty-fourth by the Bombay Mail. Can you be at Marwar Junction on that time? Try being convenience in you, because I know that there's precious few pickings to be got out of these central India states, even though you pretend to be correspondent of the backwardsmen. Have you ever tried that trick? I asked. Again and again, but the residents find you out, and then you get escorted to the border before you've time to get your knife into them. But about my friend here. I must give him a word of mouth to tell him what's come to me, or else he won't know where to go. I would take it more than kind of you if you were to come out of central India in time to catch him at Marwar Junction, and say to him, he has gone south for the week. He'll know what that means. He's a big man with a red beard and a great swirly-ish. You'll find him sleeping like a gentleman with all his luggage round him in a second class apartment. But don't you be afraid? Slip down the window and say, he has gone south for the week, and he'll tumble. It's only cutting your time of staying those parts for two days. I ask you, as a stranger, go into the west," he said, with emphasis. Where have you come from? said I. From the east, said he, and I am hoping that you will give him the message on the square for the sake of my mother as well as your own. Englishmen are not usually softened by appeals to the memory of their mothers, but for certain reasons which will be fully apparent, I soar fit to agree. It's more than a little matter," said he, and that's why I asked you to do it, and now I know that I can depend on you doing it. A second-class carriage at Marwar Junction and a red-air man asleep in it. You'll be sure to remember. I get out at the next station, and I must hold on there till he comes or sends me what I want. I'll give him the message if I catch him, I say, and for the sake of your mother as well as mine, I'll give you a word of advice. Don't try to run the Central India States just now, as the correspondent of the back woodsman. There's a real one knocking about here, and it might lead to trouble. Thank you," he said simply, and when will a swine be gone? I can't starve, because he's ruining my work. I wanted to get hold of the de Gumba-Roger down here about his father's widow, and give him a jump. What did he do to his father's widow, then? He pulled her up with red pepper and slippered her to death as she hung from a beam. I found that out myself, and I'm the only man that would dare go in into the state to get hush-money for it. They'll try to poison me, same as they did in Chautamna when I went on the loop there. But you'll give the man at Marwar Junction my message. He got out at a little roadside station, and I reflected. I had heard more than once of men personating correspondence of newspapers and bleeding small native states with threats of exposure, but I had never met any of the cast before. They lead a hard life, and generally die with great suddenness. The native states have a wholesome horror of English newspapers, which may throw light upon their peculiar methods of government, and do their best to choke correspondence with champagne, or drive them out of their mind with foreign-hand barouches. They do not understand that nobody cares a straw for the internal administration of native states so long as oppression and crime are kept within decent limits, and the ruler is not drugged, drunk, or diseased from one end of the year to the other. They are the dark places of the earth full of unimaginable cruelty, touching the railway and the telegraph on one side, and on the other, the days of Haroun al-Rashid. When I left the train I did business with diverse kings, and in eight days passed through many changes of life. Sometimes I wore dress-clothes and consorted with princes and politicles, drinking from crystal and eating from silver. Sometimes I lay out upon the ground and devoured what I could get from a plate made of leaves, and drank the running water, and slept under the same rug as my servant. It was all in the day's work. Then I headed for the great Indian desert upon the proper date, as I had promised, and the night-male set me down at Mawar Junction, where a funny little happy-go-lucky native managed railway runs to Jodhpur. The Bombay mail from Delhi makes a short halt at Mawar. She arrived just as I got in, and I had just time to hurry to her platform and go down the carriages. There was only one second-class on the train. I slipped the window and looked down upon a flaming red beard, half covered by a railway rug. That was my man, fast asleep, and I dug him gently in the ribs. He woke with a grunt, and I saw his face in the light of the lamps. It was a great and shining face. "'Tick it again,' said he. "'No,' said I, I am to tell you that he has gone south for the week. He has gone south for the week.' The train had begun to move out. The red man rubbed his eyes. "'He has gone south for the week,' he repeated. "'Now that's just like his impedance. Did you say that I was to give you anything, because I won't?' He didn't, I said, and dropped away and watched the red lights die out in the dark. It was horribly cold, because the wind was blowing off the sands. I climbed into my own train, not an intermediate carriage this time, and went to sleep. If the man with the beard had given me a rupee I should have kept it as a memento of a rather curious affair, but the consciousness of having done my duty was my only reward. Later on I reflected that two gentlemen like my friends could not do any good if they foregathered and personated correspondence of newspapers, and might, if they blackmailed one of the little raptrap states of Central India or Southern Rajputana, get themselves into serious difficulties. I therefore took some trouble to describe them as accurately as I could remember to people who would be interested in deporting them, and succeeded so I was later informed in having them headed back from the Degomba borders. Then I became respectable and returned to an office where there were no kings and no incidents outside the daily manufacture of a newspaper. A newspaper office seems to attract every conceivable sort of person to the prejudice of discipline. The Narnamishan ladies arrive, and beg that the editor will instantly abandon all his duties to describe a Christian prize-giving in a back-slam of a perfectly inaccessible village. Those who have been overpassed for command sit down and sketch the outline of a series of ten, twelve, or twenty-four leading articles on seniority versus selection. Missionaries wish to know why they have not been permitted to escape from their regular vehicles of abuse, and swear at a brother-missionary under the special patronage of the editorial we. Stranded theatrical companies troupe are up to explain that they cannot pay for their advertisements, but on their return from New Zealand or Tahiti will do so with interest. Inventors of patent, poncho-pulling machines, carriage-couplings and unbreakable swords and axeltrees call with specifications in their pockets and ours at their disposal. Tea companies enter and elaborate their prospectuses with the office pens. Secretaries of ball-committees clamour to have the glories of their last dance more fully described. Strange ladies rustle in and say, I want a hundred ladies' cards printed at once, please, which is manifestly part of an editor's duty, and every dissolute ruffian that ever trampled the Grand Trunk Road makes it his business to ask for employment as a proof-reader. And all the time the telephone bell is ringing madly, and kings are being killed on the Continent, and empires are saying, you're another, and Mr Gladstone is calling down Brimstone upon the British Dominions, and the little black copy-boys are whining, capi chai haie, copy-wanted, like tired bees, and most of the paper is as blank as moderate's shield. But that is the amusing part of the year. There are six other months when none ever come to call, and the thermometer walks inch by inch up to the top of the glass, and the office is darkened to just above reading-light, and the press-machines are red-hot to touch, and nobody writes anything but accounts of amusements in the hill-stations or obituary notices. Then the telephone becomes a tinkling terror, because it tells you of the sudden deaths of men and women that you knew intimately, and the prickly heat covers you with a garment, and you sit down and write, A slight increase of sickness is reported from the Khudajanta Khan district, the outbreak is purely sporadic in its nature, and thanks to the energetic efforts of the district authorities is now almost at an end. It is, however, with deep regret we record the death, etc. Then the sickness really breaks out, and the less recording and reporting the better for the peace of the subscribers. But the empires and the kings continue to divert themselves as selfishly as before, and the foreman thinks that a daily paper really ought to come out once in twenty-four hours, and all the people at the hill-stations in the middle of their amusements say, Good gracious! Why can't the paper be sparkling? I'm sure there's plenty going on up here. That is the dark half of the moon, and, as the advertisements say, must be experienced to be appreciated. It was in that season, and a remarkably evil season, that the paper began running the last issue of the week on Saturday night, which is to say Sunday morning after the custom of a London paper. This was a great convenience, for immediately after the paper was put to bed, the dawn would lower the thermometer from ninety-six degrees to almost eighty-four degrees for half an hour, and in that chill, you have no idea how cold is eighty-four degrees on the grass until you begin to pray for it, a very tired man could get off to sleep ere the heat roused him. On Saturday night it was my pleasant duty to put the paper to bed alone. A king or courtier or a courtesan or a community was going to die or get a new constitution or do something that was important on the other side of the world, and the paper was to be held open till the last possible minute in order to catch the telegram. It was a pitchy black night, as stifling as a June night can be, and the loo, the red-hot wind from the westward, was booming among the tinder-dry trees, and pretending that the rain was on its heels. Now and again a spot of almost boiling water would fall on the dust with the flop of a frog, but all our weary world knew that was only pretense. It was a shade cooler in the press-room than the office, saw us out there while the type ticked and clicked, and the night-jarls hooted at the windows, and the all but naked compositors wiped the sweat from their foreheads and called for water. The thing that was keeping us back whatever it was would not come off, though the loo dropped and the last type was set, and the whole round earth stood still in the choking heat with its finger on its lip to wait the event. I drowsed and wondered whether the telegraph was a blessing, and whether this dying man or struggling people might be aware of the inconvenience the delay was causing. There was no special reason beyond the heat and worry to make tension, but as the clock-hands crept up to three o'clock, and the machines spun their fly-wheels two and three times to see that all was in order before I said the word that would set them off, I could have shrieked aloud. Then the roar and rattle of the wheels shivered the quiet into little bits. I rose to go away, but two men in white clothes stood in front of me. The first one said, It's him. The second said, So it is. And they both laughed almost as loudly as the machinery roared and mopped their furrids. We see there was a light burning across the road, and we were sleeping in that ditch there for coolness, and I said to my friend here, The office is open. Let's come along and speak to him as turned us back from Degamba State, said the smaller of the two. He was the man I had met in the Moe train, and his fellow was the red-bearded man of Mawa Junction. There was no mistaking the eyebrows of the one or the beard of the other. I was not pleased, because I wished to go to sleep, not to squabble with loafers. What do you want? I asked. Of an hour's talk with you, cool and comfortable in the office, said the red-bearded man. We'd like some drink. The contract doesn't begin yet, Peachy, so you needn't look, but what we really want is advice. We don't want money. We ask you as a favour, because we found out you did us a bad turn about Degamba State. I led from the press room to the stifling office with the maps on the walls, and the red-haired man rubbed his hands. That's something like, said he, this was the proper shop to come to. Now, so let me introduce you to brother Peachy Carnahan, that's him, and brother Daniel Dravert, that is me, and the less said about our professions, the better. For we have been most things in our time, soldier, sailor, compositor, photographer, proofreader, street preacher, and correspondence of the back woodsman, when we thought the paper wanted one. Carnahan is sober, so am I. Look at us first, and see that sure. It will save you cutting into my talk. We'll take one of your cigars, a piece, and you shall see us lie up. I watched the test. The men were absolutely sober, so I gave them each a tepid whiskey and soda. Well and good, said Carnahan of the eyebrows, wiping the froth from his moustache. Let me talk now, Dan. We have been all over India, mostly on foot. We have been boiler-fitters, engine-drivers, petty-contractors, and all that, and we have decided that India isn't big enough for such as us. They certainly were too big for the office. Dravert's beard seemed to fill half the room, and Carnahan's shoulders the other half, as they sat on the big table. Carnahan continued, The country isn't half worked out, because they that governs it won't let you touch it. They spend all their blessed time in governing it, and you can't live to spade nor chipper-rock nor look for oil nor anything like that, without all the governments saying, leave it alone and let us govern. Therefore, such as it is, we will let it alone, and go away to some other place where a man isn't crowded and can come to his own. We are not little men, and there is nothing that we are afraid of except drink, and we have signed a contract on that. Therefore, we are going away to be kings. Kings in our own right, muttered Dravert. Yes, of course, I said. You've been tramping in the sun, and it's a very warm night, and hadn't you better sleep over the notion? Come to-morrow. Neither drunk nor sunstruck, said Dravert. We have slept over the notion half a year, and require to see books and atlases, and we have decided that there is only one place now in a world that two strong men can sour a whack. They call it Kaffiristan. By my reckoning, it's the top right-hand corner of Afghanistan, not more than three hundred miles from Peshawar. They have two and thirty heathen idols there, and will be the thirty-third and fourth. It's a mountainous country, and the women of those parts are very beautiful. But that is provided against in the contract, said Kanahan, neither women nor liquor, Daniel. And that's all we know, except that no one has gone there, and they fight, and in any place where they fight a man who knows how to drill men can always be a king. We shall go to those parts and say to any king we find, do you want to vanquish your foes? And we will show him how to drill men, for that we know better than anything else. Then we will subvert that king and seize his throne and establish a dynasty. You'll be cut to pieces before your fifty miles across the border, I said. You have to travel through Afghanistan to get to that country. It's one mass of mountains and peaks and glaciers, and no Englishman has been through it. The people are utter brutes, and even if you reached them you couldn't do anything. That's more like, said Kanahan. If you could think us a little more mad, we would be more pleased. We have come to you to know about this country, to read a book about it, and to be shown maps. We want you to tell us that we're fools, and to show us your books." He turned to the bookcases. Are you at all in earnest? I said. A little, said Dravert, sweetly. As big a map as you've got, even if it's all blank weka for his darnies, and any books you've got. We can read that we aren't very educated. I uncased the big thirty-two miles to the inch map of India, and two smaller frontier maps, hauled down volume inf to Kan of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and the men consulted them. See here! said Dravert, with his thumb on the map. Up to Jagdallik, Peachy and me know the road. We was there with Robert's army. We'll have to turn off to the right at Jagdallik through Lagman territory. Then we get among the hills, fourteen thousand feet, fifteen thousand. It'll be cold work there, but it doesn't look very far on the map. I handed him wood on the sources of the oxus. Carnahan was deep in the Encyclopedia. There a mixed lot, said Dravert reflectively, and it won't help us to know the names of their tribes. The more tribes, the more they'll fight, and the better for us. From Jagdallik to Ashang. But all the information about the countries as sketchy and inaccurate as can be, I protested. No one knows anything about it, really. Here's the file of the United Services Institute. Read what Belyu says. Blow Belyu! said Carnahan. Dan, they're a stinking lot of eathens, but this book here says they think they're related to us English. I smoked, while the men poured over Ravarty, Wood, the maps, and the Encyclopedia. There is no use you're waiting! said Dravert politely. It's about four o'clock now. We'll go before six o'clock, if you want to sleep, and we won't steal any of the papers. Don't you sit up. We're two harmless lunatics, and if you come to-morrow evening, down to the Sarai, we'll say good-bye to you. You are too fools, I answered. You'll be turned back at the frontier, or cut up the minute you set foot in Afghanistan. Do you want any money, or a recommendation, down country? I can help you to the chance of work next week. Next week we shall be hard at work ourselves. Thank you, said Dravert. It isn't so easy being a king as it looks. When we've got our kingdom in going order, we'll let you know you can come up and help us govern it. Would two lunatics make a contract like that? said Carnahan, with subdued pride, showing me a greasy half-sheet of note-paper, on which was written the following. I copied it, then and there, as a curiosity. This contracts between me and you pursuing witnesses in the name of God, our men, and so forth. One, that me and you will settle this matter together, i.e., to be kings of Kafiristan. Two, that you and me will not, while this matter is being settled, look at any liquor nor any woman, black, white or brown, so as to get mixed up with one or the other harmful. Three, that we conduct ourselves with dignity and discretion, and if one of us gets into trouble, the other will stay by him. Signed by you and me this day, P.C. Taliaferro Carnahan, Daniel Dravert, both gentlemen at large. There was no need for the last article, said Carnahan, blushing modestly, but it looks regular. Now you know the sort of men that loafers are. We are loafers, Dan, until we get out of India. And do you think that we would sign a contract like that, unless we was in earnest? We have kept away from the two things that make life worth having. You won't enjoy your lives much longer if you are going to try this idiotic adventure. Don't set the office on fire, I said, and go away before nine o'clock. I left them still pouring over the maps and making notes on the back of the contract. Be sure to come down to the Sarai tomorrow, with their parting words. The Man Who Would Be King, by Rajad Kipling, Part II The Kumhar Sen Sarai is the great four-square-sink of humanity, with the strings of camels and horses from the north load and unload. All the nationalities of Central Asia may be found there, and most of the folk of India proper. Bulk and Bokhara there meet Bengal and Bombay, and try to draw eye-teeth. You can buy ponies, turquoise's, Persian pussy-cats, saddlebags, fat-tailed sheep, and musk in the Kumhar Sen Sarai, and get many strange things for nothing. In the afternoon I went down to see whether my friends intended to keep their word or were lying there drunk. A priest attired in fragments of ribbons and rags stalked up to me, gravely twisting a child's paper whirligig. Behind him was his servant, bending under the load of a crate of mud-toys. The two were loading up two camels, and the inhabitants of the Sarai watched them with treaks of laughter. The priest is mad, said a horse dealer to me. He is going up to Kabul to sell toys to the Amir. He will either be raised to honour or have his head cut off. He came in here this morning and has been behaving madly ever since. The witless are under the protection of God, stammered a flat-cheeked Uzbek in broken Hindi. They foretell future events. Would they could have foretold that my caravan would have been cut up by the shinwaries almost within shadow of the pass? Granted the Yusufsai agent of a Rajputana trading-house, whose goods had been diverted into the hands of other robbers just across the border, and whose misfortunes were the laughing-stock of the bazaar. Oh, priest, whence come you and wither do you go? From room have I come, shouted the priest, waving his whirligig. From room, blown by the breath of a hundred devils across the sea, all thieves, robbers, liars, the blessing of Pir Khan on pigs, dogs, and perjurers. Who will take the protected of God to the north to sell charms that are never still to the Amir? The camel shall not gall, the sun shall not fall sick, and the wife shall remain faithful while they are away of the men who give me place in their caravan. Who will assist me to slipper the king of the roos with a golden slipper with a silver heel? The protection of Pir Khan be upon his labours. He spread out the skirts of his gabardine and pirouetted between the lines of tethered horses. There starts a caravan from Peshawar to Kabul in twenty days, Hussrut, said the Yusufsai trader. My camels go therewith. Do thou also go and bring us good luck? I will go even now, shouted the priest. I will depart upon my winged camels, and be at Peshawar in a day. Ho! Hazir Mir Khan, he yelled his servant, drive out the camels, but let me first mount my own. He leapt on the back of his beast as it knelt, and, turning round to me, cried, Come thou also, sahib, a little along the road, and I will sell thee a charm, an amulet that shall make thee king of Kafiristan. Then the light broke upon me, and I followed the two camels out of the sarai, till we reached open road, and the priest halted. What do you think of that? said he in English. Khan Han can't talk there, Pada, so I've made him my servant. He makes a handsome servant. It isn't for nothing that I've been knocking about the country for fourteen years. Didn't I do that talk neat? We'll hitch on to a caravan at Peshawar till we get to Jagdalak, and then we'll see if we can get donkeys for our camels, and strike into Kafiristan. Whirly gigs for the Amir, oh, law! Put your hand under the camel-bags, and tell me what you feel. I felt the butt of a martini, and another, and another. Twenty of them, said Dravert placidly, twenty of them, and ammunition to correspond, under the whirly gigs in the mud-dolls. Heaven help you if you are caught with those things, I said. A martini is worth our weight in silver among the Pathans. Fifteen hundred rupees of capital. Every rupee we could beg, borrow, or steal are invested on those two camels, said Dravert. We won't get caught. We're going through the Kaiba with a regular caravan. Who touch a poor mad priest! Have you got everything you want? I asked, overcome with astonishment. Not yet, but we shall soon. Give us a memento of your kindness, brother. You did me a service yesterday, and that time in Marwell. Half my kingdom shall you have, as the saying is. I slipped a small charm compass from my watch-chain, and handed it up to the priest. Goodbye, said Dravert, giving me hand cautiously. It's the last time we'll shake hands with an Englishman these many days. Shake answered him, Kaunahen. He cried, as the second camel passed me. Kaunahen leaned down and shook hands. Then the camels passed away along the dusty road, and I was left alone to wonder. My eye could detect no failure in the disguises. The scene in the serai proved that they were complete to the native mind. There was just a chance, therefore, that Kaunahen and Dravert would be able to wonder through Afghanistan without detection. But beyond, they would find death, certain and awful death. Ten days later a native correspondent, giving me the news of the day from Peshawar, wound up his letter with, There has been much laughter here, on the account of a certain mad priest, who is going in his estimation to sell pretty gourds and insignificant trinkets, which he ascribes as great charms, to H.H. the Amir of Bokhara. He passed through Peshawar, and associated himself to the second Samakaravan that goes to Kabul. The merchants are pleased, because through superstition they imagine that such mad fellows bring good fortune. The two then were beyond the border. I would have prayed for them, but that night a real king died in Europe, and demanded an obituary notice. The wheel of the world swings through the same phases again and again. Summer passed and winter thereafter, and came and passed again. The daily paper continued and I with it, and upon the third summer there fell a hot night, a night issue, and a strained waiting for something to be telegraphed from the other side of the world, exactly as had happened before. A few great men had died in the past two years. The machines worked with more clatter, and some of the trees in the office garden were a few feet taller. But that was all the difference. I passed over to the press-room, and went through just such a scene as I have already described. The nervous tension was stronger than it had been two years before, and I felt the heat more acutely. At three o'clock I cried, print off, and turned to go. When they crept to my chair, what was left of a man? He was bent into a circle, his head was sunk between his shoulders, and he moved his feet one over the other like a bear. I could hardly see whether he walked or crawled this rag-wrapped, whining cripple who addressed me by name, crying that he was come back. Can you give me a drink? he whimpered. For the Lord's sake, give me a drink! I went back to the office the man following with groans of pain, and I turned up the lamp. Don't you know me? he gasped, dropping into a chair, and he turned his drawn face surmounted by a shock of grey hair to the light. I looked at him intently. Once before had I seen eyebrows that met over the nose in an inch-broad black band, but for the life of me I could not tell where. I don't know you, I said, handing him the whisky. What can I do for you? He took a gulp of the spirit, raw, and shivered in spite of the suffocating heat. I've come back, he repeated, and I was the king of Kephoristan, me and Dravert, crowned kings we was. In this office we sailed it, you sitting there and giving us the books. I'm Peachy, Peachy to Aliaferro Garnan, and you've been sitting here ever since, oh Lord. I was more than a little astonished and expressed my feelings accordingly. It's true, said Garnan, with a dry cackle, nursing his feet which were wrapped in rags. True as gospel kings we were, with crowns upon our heads, me and Dravert. Poor Dan, oh poor poor Dan, that would never take advice, not though I begged of him. Take the whisky, I said, and take your own time. Tell me all you can recollect of everything, from beginning to end. You got across the border on your camels, Dravert dressed as a mad priest and you his servant. Do you remember that? I ain't mad, yet, but I shall be that way soon. Of course I remember. Keep looking at me, or maybe my words will go all to pieces. Keep looking at me in my eyes, and don't say anything. I leaned forward and looked into his face as steadily as I could. He dropped one hand upon the table, and I grasped it by the wrist. It was twisted like a bird's claw, and upon the back was a ragged, red, diamond-shaped scar. No, don't look there. Look at me, said Conor, and that comes afterward. But for the Lord's sake, don't distract me. We left with that caravan, me and Dravert playing all sorts of antics to amuse the people we were with. Dravert used to make us laugh in the evenings, when all the people was cooking their dinners. What did they do then? They lit little fires with sparks that went in at Dravert's beard, and we all laughed, fit to die. Little red fires, they was going in at Dravert's big red beard. So funny. His eyes left mine, and he smiled foolishly. You went as far as Jagdallak with that caravan, I said at adventure, after you lit those fires, to Jagdallak where you turned off to try to get into Kaffiristan. Ah, we didn't, neither. What are you talking about? We turned off before Jagdallak, because we heard the roads was good. But they wasn't good enough for our two camels, mine and Dravert's. When we left the caravan, Dravert took off all his clothes, and mine too, and said we would be heathen, because the kaffirs didn't allow Mohammedans to talk to them. So we dressed, betwixt and between, and at such a sight as Daniel Dravert I never saw yet, nor it's but to see again. He burned off his beard, and slung a sheepskin over his shoulder, shaved his head into patterns. He shaved mine too, and made me wear outrageous things to look like a heathen. That was in a most mountainous country, and our camels couldn't go along anymore because of the mountains. They were tall and black. Coming home I saw them fight like wild goats. There are lots of goats in Kaffiristan. And these mountains they never keep still, no more than the goats. Always fighting they are, and don't let you sleep at night. Take some more whisky, I said very slowly. What did you and Daniel Dravert do when the camels could go no farther because of the rough roads that led into Kaffiristan? What did which do? There was a party called Peachy Telya Ferro-Carnen that was with Dravert. Shall I tell you about him? He died out there in the cold. Slap from the bridge fell old Peachy, turning and twisting in the air like a penny whirly gig that you can sell to the Amir. No, they was two for three eightons, those whirly gigs, or I am much mistaken and woeful saw. And then these camels were no use, and Peachy said to Dravert, for the Lord's sake, let's get out of this before our heads are chopped off. And with that they killed the camels all along the mountains, not having anything in particular to eat, but first they took off the boxes with the guns and the ammunition till two men came along driving four mules. Dravert up and dances in front of them singing, sell me four mules, says the first man, if you're rich enough to buy you're rich enough to rob, but before ever he could put his hand to his knife Dravert breaks his neck over his knee and the other party runs away. So Carnen loaded the mules with rifles that was taken off the camels, and together we start forward into those bitter cold mountainous parts and never a road broader than the back of your hand. He paused for a moment while I asked him if he could remember the nature of the country through which they'd journeyed. I'm telling you as straight as I can, but my head isn't as good as it might be. They drove nails through it to make me hear better our Dravert died. The country was mountainous and the mules were most contrary, and the inhabitants was dispersed and solitary. They went up and up and down and down, and that other party, Carnen, was imploring of Dravert not to sing and whistle so loud for fear of bringing down the tremendous avalanches. But Dravert says that if a king couldn't sing it wasn't worth being a king and whacked the mules over the rump and never took no heed for ten cold days. We came to a big level valley all among the mountains, and the mules were near dead, so we killed them, not having anything in special for them or us to eat. We sat upon the boxes and played odd and even with the cartridges that was jolted out. Then ten men with bows and arrows ran down that valley, chasing twenty men with bows and arrows, and the row was tremendous. They were fair men, fairer than you or me, were yellow air and remarkable well-built. Says Dravert, unpacking the guns, this is the beginning of the business, we'll fight for the ten men. And with that he fires two rifles at the twenty men, and drops one of them at two hundred yards from the rock where he was sitting. The other men began to run, but Carnion and Dravert sits on the boxes, picking them off at all ranges up and down the valley. Then we go up to the ten men that had run across the snow too, and they fire as a footy little arrow at us. Dravert, he shoots above their heads and they all fall down flat. Then he walks over them and kicks them, and then he lifts them up and shakes hands all round to make them friendly like. He calls them and gives them the boxes to carry, and waves his end for all the worlds or so he was king already. They take the boxes and him across the valley, and up the hill into a pine-wood on the top, where there was half a dozen big stone idols. Dravert, he goes to the biggest, a fellow they call Imbra, and they's a rifle and a cartridge at his feet, rubbing his nose respectfully with his own nose, patting him on the head, and nods his head and says, That's all right, I'm in the know too, and these old Jimjams are my friends. Then he opens his mouth and points down it, and when the first man brings him food he says no, and when the second man brings him food he says no, but when one of the old priests and the boss of the village brings him food he says yes, very naughty, and eats it slow. That was how we came to our first village without any trouble, just as though we had tumbled from the skies. We tumbled from one of those damned rope bridges you see, and you couldn't expect a man to laugh much after that. And take some more whiskey and go on, I said. That was the first village you came into. How did you get to be king? I wasn't king, said Carnaghen. Dravert, he was the king and handsome man he looked with a gold crown on his head and all. Him and the other party stayed in that village, and every morning Dravert set by the side of Old Embra, and the people came and worshipped. That was Dravert's order. Then a lot of men came into the valley and Carnaghen and Dravert picks them off with the rifles before they knew where they was, and runs down into the valley and up again the other side and finds another village, same as the first one, and the people all falls down flat on their faces, and Dravert says, Now, what is the trouble between you two villages? And the people point to a woman, as fair as you or me, that was carried off, and Dravert takes her back to the first village and counts up the dead. Eight there was. For each dead man Dravert pulls a little milk on the ground and waves his arms like a whirligig, and that's all right, says he. Then he and Carnaghen take the big boss of each village by the arm and walks them down the valley, and shows them how to scratch a line with a spear right down the valley, and gives each a sod of turf from both sides of the line. Then all the people comes down and shouts like the devil and all, and Dravert says, Go and dig the land and be fruitful and multiply, which they did though they didn't understand. Then we asks the names of things in their lingo, bread and water and fire and idols and such, and Dravert leads the priest of each village up to the idol and says he must sit there and judge the people, and if anything goes wrong he is to be shot. Next week there was all turning up the land in the valley as quiet as bees and much prettier, and the priest said all the complaints and told Dravert in dumb show what it was about. That's just the beginning, says Dravert. They think we're gods. He and Carnaghen picks out twenty good men and shows them how to click off a rifle and form fours and advance in line, and they was very pleased to do so, and clever to see the hang of it. Then he takes out his pipe and his backy pouch and leaves one at one village and one at the other, and off we two goes to see what was to be done in the next valley. That was all rock, and there was a little village there and Carnaghen says send them to the old valley to plant and take some there and give them some land that wasn't took before. They were a poor lot and we bloodied them with a kid before letting them into the new kingdom. That was to impress the people, and they settle down quiet and Carnaghen went back to Dravert who had gone to another valley, all snow and ice and most mountainous. There was no people there and the army got afraid, so Dravert shoots one of them and goes on till he finds some people in a village, and the army explains that unless the people wanted to be killed they had put enough shoot their little matchlocks for they had matchlocks. We make friends with the priest and I stayed there alone with two of the army teaching the men how to drill, and a thundering big chief comes across the snow with kettle drums and horns twanging because he heard there was a new god kicking about. Carnaghen cites for the brown and the men half a mile across the snow and wings one of them. Then he sends a message to the chief that unless he wished to be killed he must come and shake hands with me and leave his arms behind. The chief comes alone first and Carnaghen shakes hands with him and whirls his arms about same as Dravert used and very much surprised that chief was and strokes my eyebrows. Then Carnaghen goes alone to the chief and asks him in dumb show if he had an enemy he hated. I have says the chief, so Carnaghen weeds out the pick of his men and sets the two of the army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can maneuver about as well as volunteers. So he marches with the chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain and the chief's men rushes into a village and takes it. We three martinis firing into the brown of the enemy. So we took that village to and I gives the chief a rag from my coat and says occupy till I come which was scriptural. By way of a reminder when me and the army was 1800 yards away I drops a bullet near him standing on the snow and all the people falls flat on their faces. Then I send a letter to Dravert where every bee by land or by sea. At the risk of throwing the creature out of his train I interrupted. How could you write a letter up yonder? The letter? Oh, the letter. Keep looking at me between the eyes please. It was a string talk letter that we'd learnt the way of it from a blind beggar in the Punjab. I remember that there once had come to the office a blind man with a knotted twig and a piece of string which he wound round the twig according to some cipher of his own. He could, after the lapse of days or hours, repeat the sentence which he had reeled up. He had reduced the alphabet to eleven primitive sounds and tried to teach me his method, but I could not understand. I sent that letter to Dravert, said Carnahan, and told him to come back because this kingdom was going too big for me to handle. And then I struck for the first valley to see how the priests were working. They called the village we took along with the chief, Bashkai, and the first village we took, Urheb. The priests at Urheb was doing all right, but they had a lot of pending cases about land to show me and some men from another village had been firing arrows at night. I went out and looked for that village and fired four rounds at it from a thousand yards. That used all the cartridges I cared to spend, and I waited for Dravert, who had been away two or three months, and I kept my people quiet. One morning I heard the devil's own noise of drums and horns, and Dan Dravert marches down the hill with his army and a tale of hundreds of men, and, which was the most amazing, a great gold crown on his head. My gold, Carnahan, says Daniel, this is a tremendous business and we've got the old country as far as it's worth having. I am the son of Alexander by Queen Semiramis, and you're my younger brother and a god too. It's the biggest thing we've ever seen. I've been marching and fighting for six weeks with the army, and every footy little village for fifty miles has come in rejoiceful. Among that I've got the key of the old show, as you'll see, and I've got a crown for you. I told them to make two of them at a place called Shoe, where the gold lies in the rock like suet in mutton. Gold I've seen, and turquoise I've kicked out of the cliffs, and there's garnets in the sands of the river, and here's a chunk of amber that a man brought me. Call up all the priests and here, take your crown. One of the men opens a black airbag and I slips the crown on. It was too small and too heavy, but I wore it for the glory. Hammered gold, it was five pounds weight like a hoop of a barrel. Peachy, says Dramat, we don't want to fight no more. The crafts, the tricks, so help me. And he brings forward that same chief that I left at Bashkai, Billy Fish, we called him afterward, because he was so like Billy Fish that drove the big tank engine at Mach on the Boulan in the old days. Shake hands with him, says Dramat, and I shook hands, and nearly dropped for Billy Fish gave me the grip. I said nothing but tried him with the fellow-craft grip. He answers all right, and I tried the master's grip, but that was a slip. Fellow-craft? Yes, I said to Dan. Does he know the word? He does, says Dan, and all the priests know. It's a miracle. The chiefs and the priests can work a fellow-craft lodge in a way that's very like ours, and they've cut the marks on the rock, but they don't know the third degree and they've come to find out. It's Gord's truth. I've known these long years that the Afghans knew up to the fellow-craft degree, but this is a miracle. A god and a grand master of the craft, am I, and a lodge in the third degree I will open, and will raise the head priest and the chiefs of the villages. It's against all the law, I says, old in a lodge without warrant from anyone, and you know we never held office in any lodge. It's a master's stroke of policy, says Dravert. It means running the country as easy as a four-wheeled bogey on a downgrade. We can't stop to inquire now, or they'll turn against us. Our forty chiefs at my hill, and passed and raised according to their merit, they shall be. Billet these men on the villages, and see that we run up a lodge of some kind. The temple of Imbra will do for a lodge-room. The women must make aprons as you show them. I'll hold a levy of chiefs tonight, and lodge tomorrow. I was fair run off my legs, but I wasn't such a fool as not to see what a pool this craft business gave us. I showed the priest's families how to make aprons of the degrees, but for Dravert's apron the blue border and marks was made out of turquoise lumps on white hide, not cloth. We took a great square stone in the temple for the master's chair, and little stones for the officer's chairs, and painted the black pavement with white squares, and did what we could to make things regular. At the levy, which was held that night on the hillside with big bonfires, Dravert gives out that him and me were gods and sons of Alexander, and past grand masters in the craft, and was come to make Café Ristan a country where every man should eat in peace and drink in quiet, and especially obey us. Then the chiefs come round to shake hands, and they were so hairy and white and fair it was just shaking hands with old friends. We gave them names according as they was like men we had known in India, Billy Fish, Olly Dilworth, Picky Kergan, that was Bizarre Master when I was at Moe, and so on and so on. The most amazing miracles was at Lodge next night. One of the old priests was watching us continuous, and I felt uneasy for I knew we'd have to fudge the ritual, and I didn't know what the men knew. The old priest was a stranger coming from beyond the village of Bashkai. The minute Dravert puts on the master's apron that the girls had made for him, the priest fetches a whoop and a howl and tries to overturn the stone that Dravert was sitting on. He's all up now, I said. That comes of meddling with the craft without warrant. Dravert never winked an eye, not when ten priests took and tilted over the grand master's chair, which was to say the Stone of Imbra. The priest begins rubbing the bottom end of it to clear away the black dirt, and presently he shows all the other priests, the master's mark, same as was on Dravert's apron, cut into the stone. Not even the priest of the Temple of Imbra knew it was there. The old chap falls flat on his face at Dravert's feet and kisses him. "'Luck again,' says Dravert, across the lodge to me. They say it's the missing mark that no one could understand the why of. We're more than safe now.' Then he bangs the butt of his gun for a gavel, and says, By the virtue of the authority vested in me by my own right hand and the help of Pichi, I declare myself grand master of all Freemasonry and Kaffiristan, in this the mother lodge of the country, and king of Kaffiristan equally with Pichi. At that he puts on his crown, and I puts on mine. I was doing senior warden, and we opened the lodge in most ample form. It was an amazing miracle. The priests moved in lodge through the first two degrees, almost without telling, as if the memory was coming back to them. After that, Pichi and Dravert raised, such as was worthy, high priests and chiefs of far-off villages. Billy Fish was the first, and I can tell you we scared the soul out of him. It was not in any way according to ritual, but it served our turn. We didn't raise more than ten of the biggest men, because we didn't want to make the degree common, and they was clamouring to be raised. In another six months, says Dravert, we'll hold another communication and see how you're working. Then he asks them about their villages, and learns that they was fighting one against the other and were sick and tired of it, and when they wasn't doing that they was fighting with the Mohammedans. You can fight those when they come into our country, says Dravert. Tell off every tenth man of your tribes for a frontier guard, and send two hundred at a time to this valley to be drilled. Nobody is going to be shot or speared any more so long as he does well, and I know that you won't cheat me, because your white people, sons of Alexander, are not like common black Mohammedans. You are my people, and by God, says he, running off into English at the end. I'll make a damned fine nation of you, or I'll die in the making. Six months, because Dravert did a lot I couldn't see the hang of, and he learned their lingo in a way I never could. My work was to help the people plough, and now and again go out with some of the army and see what the other villages were doing, and make them throw rope bridges across the ravines, which cut up the country horrid. Dravert was very kind to me, but when he walked up and down in the pine wood, pulling that bloody red beard of his with both fists, I knew he was thinking plans I could not advise about, and I just waited for orders. But Dravert never showed me disrespect before the people. They were afraid of me and the army, but they loved Dan. He was the best of friends with the priests and the chiefs, but anyone could come across the hills with a complain, and Dravert would hear him out fair and call four priests together and say what was to be done. He used to call in Billy Fish from Bashkai, and Picky Curgan from Shoe, and an old chief we called Cthuzulam, it was like enough to his real name, and old councils with them while there was any fighting to be done in small villages. That was his council of war, and the four priests of Bashkai, Shu, Karwak and Madora was his privy council. Between the lot of them, they sent me with 40 men and 20 rifles, and 60 men carrying turquoise into the Goreband country to buy those handmade martini rifles that come out of the Amir's workshops at Kabul, from one of the Amir's Iraqi regiments that would have sold the very teeth out of their mouths for turquoises. I stayed in Goreband a month, and gave the governor there the pick of my baskets for hush money, and bribed the colonel of the regiments and more, and between the two and the tribe's people we got more than a hundred handmade martinis, a hundred good co-archesiles that I'll throw to 600 yards, and 40 man loads of very bad ammunition for the rifles. I came back with what I had, and distributed them among the men that the chief sent me into drill. Dravert was too busy to attend to those things, but the old army that we first made helped me, and we turned out 500 men that could drill, and 200 that knew how to do old arms pretty straight. Even those corkscrewed and made guns was a miracle to them. Dravert talked big about powder shops and factories, walking up and down in the pinewood when the winter was coming on. I won't make a nation, says he. I'll make an empire. These men aren't niggers, they're English. Look at their eyes, look at their mouths, look at the way they stand up. They sit on chairs in their own houses. They're the lost tribes or something like it, and they've grown to be English. I'll take a census in the spring if the priests don't get frightened. There must be a fair too many of them in these hills. The villages are full of little children, too many in people, 250,000 fighting men, and all English. They only want the rifles and a little drilling. 250,000 men ready to cut in on Russia's riot flank when she tries for India. Peachy man, he says, chewing his beard in great unks. We shall be emperors, emperors of the earth. Raja Brook will be a suckling to us. I'll treat with the vice-roy on equal terms. I'll ask him to send me twelve pickled English, twelve that I know of, to help us govern a bit. There's McCray, sergeant pensioner at St. Gowley. Many's the good dinner he's given me, and his wife a pair of trousers. There's Donkin, the warder of Tungu Jail. There's hundreds that I could lay my hand on if I was in India. The vice-roy shall do it for me. I'll send a man through in the spring for those men, and I'll write for the dispensation from the Grand Lodge for what I've done as Grand Master. That and all the Sniders that will be thrown out when the native troops in India take up the Martini. They'll be worn smooth, but they'll do for fighting in these hills. Twelve English, a hundred thousand Sniders run through the Amir's country in Dribblitz. I'd be content with twenty thousand in one year, and we'd be an empire. When everything was ship-shape, I'd hand over the crown, this crown I'm wearing now, to Queen Victoria on my knees, and she'd say, Rise up, Sir Daniel Dravert. Oh, it's big, it's big, I tell you. But there's so much to be done in every place—bashkai, koak, shoe, and everywhere else. What is it? I says. There are no more men coming in to be drilled this autumn. Look at those fat black clouds, they're bringing the snow. It isn't that, says Daniel, putting his hand very hard on my shoulder. And I don't wish to say anything that's against you, for no other living man would have followed me and made me what I am as you have done. You're a first-class commander-in-chief, and the people know you, but it's a big country, and somehow you can't help me, Peachy, in the way I want to be helped. Go to your blasted priest, then, I said. And I was sorry when I made that remark, but it did hurt me so to find Daniel talking so superior when I'd drilled all the men and done all he told me. Don't let's quarrel, Peachy, says Daniel, without cursing. You're a king too, and half of this kingdom is yours. But can't you see, Peachy, we want cleverer men than us now—three or four of them that we can scatter about for our deputies. It's a huge, just great state, and I can't always tell the right thing to do, and I haven't time for all I want to do, and it's the winter coming on and all. He put half his beard into his mouth, all red like the gold of his crown. I'm sorry, Daniel, says I. I've done all I could. I've drilled the men and shown the people how to stack their oats better, and I've brought in these tinware rifles from Gulband. But I know where you're driving at. I take it kings always feel oppressed that way. There's another thing too, says Javet, walking up and down. The winter's coming, and these people won't be giving much trouble, and if they do, we can't move about. Now, I want a wife. For God's sake, leave the women alone, I says. We've both got all the work we can, though I am a fool. Remember the contract and keep clear of women. The contract only lasted till such time as we was kings, and kings we have been these months past, says Javet, weighing the crown in his hand. You go get a wife too, Peachy, an ice-strapping plump girl that'll keep you warm in the winter. They're prettier than English girls, and we can take the pick of them. Boil them once or twice in hot water, they'll come out like chicken and am. Don't tempt me, I says. I will not have any dealings with a woman, not till we're a damn side more settled than we are now. I've been doing the work of two men, and you've been doing the work of three. Let's lie off a bit, see if we can get some better tobacco from Afghan country, and run in some good liquor and no women. Who's talking of women, says Javet. I said, wife, a queen to breed a king's son for the king. A queen of the strongest tribe that'll make them your blood brothers and that'll lie by your side and tell you all the people thinks about you and their own affairs. That's what I want. Do you remember that Bengali woman I kept at Mogul Surai when I was a plate-layer, says I. A fat lot of good she was to me. She taught me the lingo and one or two other things. But what happened? She ran away with a station master's servant and half my month's pay. Then she turned up at Dadu a junction in tow of an off-caste and had the impudence to say I was her husband, all among the drivers in the running shed too. We've done with that, says Javet. These women are whiter than you or me, and a queen I will have for the winter months. For the last time I'm asking Dan, do not, I says. It'll only bring us harm. The Bible says that kings ain't to waste their strength on women, especially when they've got a new royal kingdom to work with. For the last time of answering, I will, said Javet. And he went away through the pine trees, looking like a big red devil, the sun being on his crown and beard and all. But getting a wife was not as easy as Dan thought. He put it before the council, and there was no answer till Billy Fish said that he'd better ask the girls. Javet damned them all round. What's wrong with me, he shouts, standing by the idle Imbra? Am I a dog, or am I not enough of a man for your winches? Haven't I put the shadow of my hand over this country? Who's stopped the last Afghan raid? It was me, really, but Javet was too angry to remember. Who bought your guns? Who repaired the bridges? Who's the grandmaster of the sign cut in the stone? says he. And he thumped his hand on the block that he used to sit on in lodge and at council, which opened like lodge always. Billy Fish said nothing, and no more did the others. Keep your hair on, Dan, said I, and asked the girls. And so it's done at home, and these people are quite English. The marriage of the king is a matter of state, says Dan, in a white-hot rage, for he could feel, I hope, that he was going against his bit of mind. He walked out of the council room, and the others sat still, looking at the ground. Billy Fish says aye to the chief of Bashkai. What's the difficulty here? A straight answer to a true friend. You know, says Billy Fish, how should a man tell you who knows everything? How can daughters of men marry gods or devils? It's not proper. I remembered something like that in the Bible, but if after seeing us as long as they had, they still believed we were gods, it wasn't for me to deceive them. A god can do anything, says I. If the king is fond of a girl, he'll not let her die. She'll have to, said Billy Fish. There are all sorts of gods and devils in these mountains, and now and again a girl marries one of them and isn't seen any more. Besides, you two know the mark cut in the stone, only the gods know that. We thought you were men till you showed the sign of the master. I wished, then, that we had explained about the loss of the genuine secrets of a master mason at the first go-off, but I said nothing. All that night there was a blowing of horns in a little dark temple halfway down the hill, and I heard the girl cry and fit to die. One of the priests told us that she was being prepared to marry the king. I'll have no nonsense of that kind, says Dan. I don't want to interfere with your customs, but I'll take my own wife. The girl's a little bit afraid, says the priest. She thinks she's going to die, and there are heartening of her up down in the temple. Hearten her very tender, then, says Dravert, or I'll hearten you with a butt of a gun so you'll never want to be heartened again. He licked his lips, did Dan, and stayed up walking about more than half the night, thinking of the wife that he was going to get in the morning. I wasn't by any means comfortable, for I knew that dealings with the women in foreign parts, though you was a crowned king twenty times over, could not but be risky. I got up very early in the morning, while Dravert was asleep, and I saw the priests talking together in whispers, and the chiefs talking together too, and they looked at me out of the corners of their eyes. What is up fish, I say to the Bashkai man, it was wrapped up in his furs and looking splendid to be old. I can't rightly say, says he, but if you can make the king drop all this nonsense about marriage, you'll be doing him and me and yourself a great service. That I do believe, says I, but sure you know, Billy, as well as me, I've been fought against and for us, that the king and me are nothing more than two of the finest men that God Almighty ever made. Nothing more, I do assure you. That may be, says Billy Fish, and yet I should be sorry if it was. He sinks his head upon his great fur cloak for a minute and thinks. King, says he, be you man or god or devil, I'll stick by you today. I have twenty of my men with me, and they will follow me. We'll go to Bashkai until the storm blows over. A little snow had fallen in the night, and everything was white, except the greasy fat clouds that blew down and down from the north. Dravert came out with his crown on his head, swinging his arms and stamping his feet and looking more pleased and punch. For the last time, drop it, Dan, says I, and a whisper. Billy Fish here says that there will be a row. A row among my people, says Dravert, not much. Peachy, you're a fool not to get a wife too. Where's the girl? says he, with a voice as loud as the braying of a jackass. Calm up, all the chiefs and priests, and let the emperor see if his wife suits him. There was no need to call anyone. They were all there, leaning on their guns and spears round the clearing in the centre of the pine wood. A lot of the priests went down to the little temple to bring up the girl, and the horns blew for it to wake the dead. Billy Fish sawn us round and gets as close to Daniel as he could, and behind him stood his twenty men with matchlocks, not a man of them under six feet. I was next to Dravert, and behind me was twenty men of the regular army. Up comes the girl, and a strap in which she was covered with silver and turquoise, but white as death, and looking back every minute at the priests. She'll do, said Dan, looking her over. What's to be afraid of, lass? Come and kiss me. He puts his arm round her. She shuts her eyes, gives a bit of a squeak, and Dan goes her face in the side of Dan's flaming red beard. The sluts bitten me, says he, clapping his hand to his neck, and sure enough his hand was red with blood. Billy Fish and two of his matchlock men catch his hold of Dan by the shoulders and drags him into the bash-kai lot, while the priests howl in their lingo, neither god nor devil but a man. I was all taken aback, for a priest cut up me in front, and the army began firing into the bash-kai men. God almighty, says Dan, what is the meaning of this? Come back, come away, says Billy Fish. Ruin and mutiny is the matter, we'll break for bash-kai if we can. I tried to give some sort of orders to my men, the men of the regular army, but it was no use, so I fired into the brown oven with an English martini, and drilled three beggars in a line. The valley was full of shouting, howling creatures, and every soul was shrieking, not a god nor a devil but only a man. The bash-kai troops stuck to Billy Fish, all they were worth, but their matchlocks wasn't half as good as the Kabul breechloaders, and four of them dropped. Dan was bellowing like a bull, for he was very rothy, and Billy Fish had a hard job to prevent him running out at the crowd. We can't stand, says Billy Fish, make a run for it down the valley, the whole place is against us. The matchlock men ran, and we went down the valley in spite of Dravid. He was swearing horrible and crying out that he was a king. The priests rolled great stones on us, and the regular army fired hard, and there wasn't more than six men not counting Dan, Billy Fish and me, that came down at the bottom of the valley alive. Then they stopped firing, and the horns in the temple blew again. Come away for good sake, come away, says Billy Fish. They'll send runners out to all the villages before ever we get to bash-kai. I can protect you there, but I can't do anything now. My own notion is that Dan began to go mad in his head from that hour. He stared up and down like a stuck pig. Then he was all for walking back alone, and killing the priest with his bare hands, which he could have done. An emperor am I, says Daniel, and next year I shall be a knight of the queen. All right, Dan, says I, but come along now while there's time. It's your fault, says he, for not looking after your army better. There was mutiny in the midst, and you didn't know. You damned engine-driving plate-laying missionaries pass unenowned. He sat upon a rock and called me every foul name that you'd lay tongue to. I was too heart-sick to care, though it was all his foolishness that brought the smash. I'm sorry, Dan, says I, but there's no accounting for natives. This business is our fifty-seven. Maybe we'll make something out of it yet when we've got to Bashkai. Let's get to Bashkai then, says Dan, and by God, when I come back here again, I'll sweep the valley so there isn't a bug in a blanket left. We walked all that day, and all that night Dan was stumping up and down on the snow, chewing his beard and muttering to himself. There's no hope of getting clear, said Billy Fish. The priests have sent runners to the villages to say that you are only men. Why didn't you stick on as gods till things was more settled? I'm a dead man, says Billy Fish, and he throws himself down on the snow and begins to pray to his gods. Next morning he was in a cruel, bad country. All up and down, no level ground at all, and no food either. The six Bashkai men looked at Billy Fish hungry way as if they wanted to ask something, but they never said a word. At noon we came to the top of a flat mountain, all covered with snow, and when we climbed up into it, behold, there was an army in position waiting in the middle. The runners have been very quick, says Billy Fish, with a little bit of a laugh. They're waiting for us. Three or four men began to fire from the enemy's side, and a chance shot took Daniel in the car for the leg. That brought him to his senses. He looks across the snow at the army and sees the rifles that we brought into the country. We're done for, says he. They are Englishmen, these people, and it's my blasted nonsense that has brought you to this. Get back, Billy Fish, and take your men away. You've done what you could, and now cut for it. Can't earn, says he, shake hands with me and go along with Billy. Maybe they won't kill you. I'll go and meet them alone. It's me that did it, me, the king. Go, says I. Go to hell, Dan. I'm with you here. Billy Fish, you clear out, and we two will meet those folk. I'm a chief, says Billy Fish, quite quiet. I'll stay with you. My men can go. The Bashkai fellows didn't wait for a second word, but ran off, and Dan and me and Billy Fish walked across to where the drums were drumming, and the horns were horning. It was cold, awful cold. I've got that cold in the back of my head now. There's a lump of it there. The punkakulis had gone to sleep. Two kerosene lamps were blazing in the office, and the perspiration poured down my face and splashed on the blotter as I leaned forward. Carnahan was shivering, and I feared that his mind might go. I wiped my face, took a fresh grip of the piteously mangled hands, and said, what happened after that? The momentary shift of my eyes had broken the clear current. What was you pleased to say? Wind, Carnahan. They took him without any sound. Not a little whisper all along the snow. Not though the king knocked down the first men that sat hand on him. Not though old peachy fired his last cartridge into the brown of them. Not a single solitary sound did those swines make. They just closed up tight, and I'd tell you they're first stunk. There was a man called Billy Fish, a good friend of us all, and they cut his throat, sir, then in there like a pig. And the king kicks up the bloody snow and says, we've had a dashed fine run for our money, what's coming next? A peachy. Peachy tell you, Pharaoh. I tell you, sir, in confidence as betwixt two friends, he lost his head, sir. No, he didn't, neither. The king lost his head. So he did all along one of those cunning rope bridges. He kindly let me have the papercut, sir. It tilted this way. They marched him a mile across that snow to a rope bridge over a ravine with a river at the bottom. You may have seen such. They prodded him behind like an ox. Damn your eyes, says the king. Do you suppose I can't die like a gentleman? He turns to peachy. Peachy, that was crying like a child. I've brought you to this, peachy, he says. Brought you out of your happy life to be killed in Kaferistown, where you was late commander-in-chief of the emperor's forces. Say you forgive me, peachy. I do, says peachy. Fully and freely I do forgive you, Dan. Shake hands, peachy, says he. I'm going now. Out he goes, looking neither right nor left, and when he was plumb in the middle of those dizzy dancing ropes, cut your buggers, he shouts, and they cut. An old Dan fell, turning round and round and round 20,000 miles for he took half an hour to fall till he struck the water, and I could see his body caught in a rock with a gold crown close beside. But do you know what they did to peachy between two pine trees? They crucified him, sir, as peachy's hand will show. They used wooden pegs for his hands and feet, but he didn't die. He hung there and screamed, and I took him down the next day and said it was a miracle that he wasn't dead. They took him down. Poor old peachy, they hadn't done them any harm, they hadn't done them any. He rocked to and fro and wept bitterly, wiping his eyes with the back of his scarred hands, and moaning like a child for some ten minutes. I was cruel enough to feed him up in the temple, because they said he was more of a god than old Daniel that was a man. Then they turned him out in the snow and told him to go home. And peachy came home in about a year, begging along the roads quite safe. For Daniel Dravert he walked before and said, come along peachy, it's a big thing we're doing. The mountains, they danced at night, and the mountains they tried to fall on peachy's head, but then he held up his hand, and peachy came along, bent double. He never let go of Dan's hand, and he never let go of Dan's head. They gave it to him as a present in the temple to remind him not to come again, and though the crown was pure gold and peachy was starving, never would peachy sell the same. You know Dravert sir, you knew right worshipful brother Dravert, look at him now. He fumbled in the mass of rags round his bent waist, brought out a black horsehair bag embroidered with silver thread, and shook there from unto my table the dried, withered head of Daniel Dravert. The morning sun that had long been pailing the lamps struck the red beard and blind sunken eyes, struck too a heavy circlet of gold studded with raw turquoises that Carnahan placed tenderly on the battered temples. You be old now, said Carnahan. The emperor in his abbey as he lived, the king of Caférestown with his crown upon his head. Poor old Daniel, that was a monarch once. I shuddered. For in spite of defacement's manifold I recognised the head of the man of Mawar Junction. Carnahan rose to go. I attempted to stop him. He was not fit to walk abroad. Let me take away the whiskey, and give me a little money. He gasped. I was a king once. I'll go to the deputy commissioner and ask to sit in the poor house till I get my elf. No, thank you. I can't wait till you get a carriage from me. I've heard you in private affairs, in the south, at Mawar. He shambled out of the office and departed in the direction of the deputy commissioner's house. That day at noon I had occasion to go down the blinding hot mall, and I saw a crooked man crawling along the white dust of the roadside, his hat in his hand, quavering dolerously after the fashion of street singers at home. There was not a soul in sight, and he was out of all possible earshot of the houses, and he sang through his nose, turning his head from right to left. The son of God goes forth to war, a golden crown to gain, his blood red banner streams afar, who follows in his train. I waited to hear no more, but put the poor rich into my carriage, and drove him off to the nearest missionary for eventual transfer to the asylum. He repeated the hymn twice while he was with me, whom he did not in the least recognize, and I left him singing it to the missionary. Two days later I inquired after his welfare of the superintendent of the asylum. He was admitted suffering from sunstroke. He died early yesterday morning, said the superintendent. Is it true that he was half an hour bareheaded in the sun at midday? Yes, said I. But do you happen to know if he had anything upon him by any chance when he died? Not to my knowledge, said the superintendent. And there the matter rests. End of part three. End of The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling.