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<pre>
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Man Who Would Be King, by Rudyard Kipling
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Title: The Man Who Would Be King
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<div class="title">
<h1>The Man Who Would be King</h1>
<p>By</p>
<p>Rudyard Kipling</p>
<p class="publisher">Published by Brentano’s at 31 Union Square New York</p>
</div>
<div class="content">
<h1>THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING</h1>
<p class="quote">“Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found
worthy.”</p>
<p>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-courts, 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 and hunt it for myself.</p>
<p>The beginning of everything was in a railway train upon the road
to Mhow 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 patronize
refreshment-rooms. They carry their food in bundles and pots, and
buy sweets from the native sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the
roadside water. That is why in the hot weather Intermediates are
taken out of the carriages dead, and in all weathers are most
properly looked down upon.</p>
<p>My particular Intermediate happened to be empty till I reached
Nasirabad, when a huge gentleman in shirt-sleeves entered, and,
following the custom of Intermediates, passed the time of day. He
was a wanderer and a vagabond like myself, but with an educated
taste for whiskey. 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 million,”
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 lath 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, which is the turning-off place from the Bombay to the Mhow
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.</p>
<p>“We might threaten a Station-master, and make him send a
wire on tick,” said my friend, “but that’d mean
inquiries for you and for me, and I’ve got my hands full
these days. Did you say you are travelling back along this line
within any days?”</p>
<p>“Within ten,” I said.</p>
<p>“Can’t you make it eight?” said he.
“Mine is rather urgent business.”</p>
<p>“I can send your telegram within ten days if that will
serve you,” I said.</p>
<p>“I couldn’t trust the wire to fetch him now I think
of it. It’s this way. He leaves Delhi on the 23d for Bombay.
That means he’ll be running through Ajmir about the night of
the 23d.”</p>
<p>“But I’m going into the Indian Desert,” I
explained.</p>
<p>“Well <i>and</i> good,” said he. “You’ll be
changing at Marwar Junction to get into Jodhpore
territory — you must do that — and he’ll be coming
through Marwar Junction in the early morning of the 24th by the
Bombay Mail. Can you be at Marwar Junction on that time?
’Twon’t be inconveniencing 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 <i>Backwoodsman</i>.”</p>
<p>“Have you ever tried that trick?” I asked.</p>
<p>“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 <i>must</i> give him a word
o’ 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 was 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 swell he is. You’ll find
him sleeping like a gentleman with all his luggage round him in a
second-class compartment. 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 stay in those parts by two days. I ask you as a
stranger — going to the West,” he said with emphasis.</p>
<p>“Where have <i>you</i> come from?” said I.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>Englishmen are not usually softened by appeals to the memory of
their mothers, but for certain reasons, which will be fully
apparent, I saw fit to agree.</p>
<p>“It’s more than a little matter,” said he,
“and that’s why I ask 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-haired 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.”</p>
<p>“I’ll give the message if I catch him,” I
said, “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
<i>Backwoodsman</i>. There’s a real one knocking about here, and it
might lead to trouble.”</p>
<p>“Thank you,” said he simply, “and when will
the swine be gone? I can’t starve because he’s ruining
my work. I wanted to get hold of the Degumber Rajah down here about
his father’s widow, and give him a jump.”</p>
<p>“What did he do to his father’s widow,
then?”</p>
<p>“Filled 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 going into the State to get hush-money for
it. They’ll try to poison me, same as they did in Chortumna
when I went on the loot there. But you’ll give the man at
Marwar Junction my message?”</p>
<p>He got out at a little roadside station, and I reflected. I had
heard, more than once, of men personating correspondents of
newspapers and bleeding small Native States with threats of
exposure, but I had never met any of the caste 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 on their peculiar methods of government, and do their
best to choke correspondents with champagne, or drive them out of
their mind with four-in-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. Native States were created by
Providence in order to supply picturesque scenery, tigers and
tall-writing. 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 Harun-al-Raschid. When I left
the train I did business with divers Kings, and in eight days
passed through many changes of life. Sometimes I wore dress-clothes
and consorted with Princes and Politicals, 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 a flapjack, and
drank the running water, and slept under the same rug as my
servant. It was all in a day’s work.</p>
<p>Then I headed for the Great Indian Desert upon the proper date,
as I had promised, and the night Mail set me down at Marwar
Junction, where a funny little, happy-go-lucky, native managed
railway runs to Jodhpore. The Bombay Mail from Delhi makes a short
halt at Marwar. She arrived 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.</p>
<p>“Tickets again?” said he.</p>
<p>“No,” said I. “I am to tell you that he is
gone South for the week. He is gone South for the week!”</p>
<p>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 impudence. Did he say that I
was to give you anything? — ’Cause I
won’t.”</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Later on I reflected that two gentlemen like my friends could
not do any good if they foregathered and personated correspondents
of newspapers, and might, if they “stuck up” one of the
little rat-trap 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 Degumber
borders.</p>
<p>Then I became respectable, and returned to an Office where there
were no Kings and no incidents except the daily manufacture of a
newspaper. A newspaper office seems to attract every conceivable
sort of person, to the prejudice of discipline. Zenana-mission
ladies arrive, and beg that the Editor will instantly abandon all
his duties to describe a Christian prize-giving in a back-slum of a
perfectly inaccessible village; Colonels who have been overpassed
for commands sit down and sketch the outline of a series of ten,
twelve, or twenty-four leading articles on Seniority <i>versus</i>
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 special patronage of the editorial
We; stranded theatrical companies troop 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
punkah-pulling machines, carriage couplings and unbreakable swords
and axle-trees call with specifications in their pockets and hours
at their disposal; tea-companies enter and elaborate their
prospectuses with the office pens; secretaries of ball-committees
clamor to have the glories of their last dance more fully
expounded; strange ladies rustle in and say:— “I want a
hundred lady’s cards printed <i>at once</i>, please,” which is
manifestly part of an Editor’s duty; and every dissolute
ruffian that ever tramped 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 Mister Gladstone is calling
down brimstone upon the British Dominions, and the little black
copy-boys are whining, “<i>kaa-pi chayha-yeh</i>” (copy
wanted) like tired bees, and most of the paper is as blank as
Modred’s shield.</p>
<p>But that is the amusing part of the year. There are other six
months wherein 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 of
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
as with a garment, and you sit down and write:— “A
slight increase of sickness is reported from the Khuda Janta 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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>That is the dark half of the moon, and, as the advertisements
say, “must be experienced to be appreciated.”</p>
<p>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 96° to almost
84° for almost half an hour, and in that chill — you have no
idea how cold is 84° on the grass until you begin to pray for
it — a very tired man could set off to sleep ere the heat
roused him.</p>
<p>One 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 latest possible minute in order to catch the
telegram. It was a pitchy black night, as stifling as a June night
can be, and the <i>loo</i>, 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 pretence. It was a shade cooler in the
press-room than the office, so I sat there, while the type ticked
and clicked, and the night-jars 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 <i>loo</i> 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, was 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.</p>
<p>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 foreheads. “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 the Degumber State,”
said the smaller of the two. He was the man I had met in the Mhow
train, and his fellow was the red-bearded man of Marwar Junction.
There was no mistaking the eyebrows of the one or the beard of the
other.</p>
<p>I was not pleased, because I wished to go to sleep, not to
squabble with loafers. “What do you want?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Half an hour’s talk with you cool and comfortable,
in the office,” said the red-bearded man. “We’d
<i>like</i> some drink — the Contrack doesn’t begin yet,
Peachey, so you needn’t look — but what we really want is
advice. We don’t want money. We ask you as a favor, because
you did us a bad turn about Degumber.”</p>
<p>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, Sir, let me introduce to you
Brother Peachey Carnehan, that’s him, and Brother Daniel
Dravot, that is <i>me</i>, and the less said about our professions the
better, for we have been most things in our time. Soldier, sailor,
compositor, photographer, proof-reader, street-preacher, and
correspondents of the <i>Backwoodsman</i> when we thought the paper wanted
one. Carnehan is sober, and so am I. Look at us first and see
that’s sure. It will save you cutting into my talk.
We’ll take one of your cigars apiece, and you shall see us
light.” I watched the test. The men were absolutely sober, so
I gave them each a tepid peg.</p>
<p>“Well <i>and</i> good,” said Carnehan of the eyebrows,
wiping the froth from his mustache. “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.”</p>
<p>They certainly were too big for the office. Dravot’s beard
seemed to fill half the room and Carnehan’s shoulders the
other half, as they sat on the big table. Carnehan 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 lift a spade, nor
chip a rock, nor look for oil, nor anything like that without all
the Government 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 Contrack on
that. <i>Therefore</i>, we are going away to be Kings.”</p>
<p>“Kings in our own right,” muttered Dravot.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“Neither drunk nor sunstruck,” said Dravot.
“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 the world that two strong men can Sar-a-<i>whack</i>. They
call it Kafiristan. By my reckoning its the top right-hand corner
of Afghanistan, not more than three hundred miles from Peshawar.
They have two and thirty heathen idols there, and we’ll be
the thirty-third. It’s a mountainous country, and the women
of those parts are very beautiful.”</p>
<p>“But that is provided against in the Contrack,” said
Carnehan. “Neither Women nor Liquor, Daniel.”</p>
<p>“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 — ‘D’ 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 Dy-nasty.”</p>
<p>“You’ll be cut to pieces before you’re 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.”</p>
<p>“That’s more like,” said Carnehan. “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 are fools
and to show us your books.” He turned to the book-cases.</p>
<p>“Are you at all in earnest?” I said.</p>
<p>“A little,” said Dravot, sweetly. “As big a
map as you have got, even if it’s all blank where Kafiristan
is, and any books you’ve got. We can read, though we
aren’t very educated.”</p>
<p>I uncased the big thirty-two-miles-to-the-inch map of India, and
two smaller Frontier maps, hauled down volume INF-KAN of the
<i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>, and the men consulted them.</p>
<p>“See here!” said Dravot, his thumb on the map.
“Up to Jagdallak, Peachey and me know the road. We was there
with Roberts’s Army. We’ll have to turn off to the
right at Jagdallak through Laghmann territory. Then we get among
the hills — fourteen thousand feet — fifteen
thousand — it will be cold work there, but it don’t look
very far on the map.”</p>
<p>I handed him Wood on the <i>Sources of the Oxus</i>. Carnehan was deep
in the <i>Encyclopædia</i>.</p>
<p>“They’re a mixed lot,” said Dravot,
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 Jagdallak to Ashang. H’mm!”</p>
<p>“But all the information about the country is as sketchy
and inaccurate as can be,” I protested. “No one knows
anything about it really. Here’s the file of the <i>United
Services’ Institute</i>. Read what Bellew says.”</p>
<p>“Blow Bellew!” said Carnehan. “Dan,
they’re an all-fired lot of heathens, but this book here says
they think they’re related to us English.”</p>
<p>I smoked while the men pored over <i>Raverty, Wood</i>, the maps and
the <i>Encyclopædia</i>.</p>
<p>“There is no use your waiting,” said Dravot,
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 Serai we’ll say good-by to
you.”</p>
<p>“You <i>are</i> two 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.”</p>
<p>“Next week we shall be hard at work ourselves, thank
you,” said Dravot. “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, and you can come up and help us to govern
it.”</p>
<p>“Would two lunatics make a Contrack like that!” said
Carnehan, 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:—</p>
<p class="contract">This Contract between me and you persuing witnesseth in the name
of God — Amen and so forth.</p>
<p class="contract-clause">(One) That me and you will settle
this matter together: <span style="font-style:normal">i.e.</span>, to be Kings of Kafiristan.</p>
<p class="contract-clause">(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.</p>
<p class="contract-clause">(Three) That we conduct ourselves
with Dignity and Discretion, and if one of us gets into trouble the
other will stay by him.</p>
<p class="contract-clause">Signed by you and me this day.<br />
Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan.<br />
Daniel Dravot.<br />
Both Gentlemen at Large.</p>
<p>“There was no need for the last article,” said
Carnehan, blushing modestly; “but it looks regular. Now you
know the sort of men that loafers are — we <i>are</i> loafers, Dan,
until we get out of India — and <i>do</i> you think that we could sign
a Contrack like that unless we was in earnest? We have kept away
from the two things that make life worth having.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>I left them still poring over the maps and making notes on the
back of the “Contrack.” “Be sure to come down to
the Serai to-morrow,” were their parting words.</p>
<p>The Kumharsen Serai is the great four-square sink of humanity
where 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. Balkh and Bokhara there meet
Bengal and Bombay, and try to draw eye-teeth. You can buy ponies,
turquoises, Persian pussy-cats, saddle-bags, fat-tailed sheep and
musk in the Kumharsen Serai, and get many strange things for
nothing. In the afternoon I went down there to see whether my
friends intended to keep their word or were lying about drunk.</p>
<p>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 Serai
watched them with shrieks of laughter.</p>
<p>“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 honor or have his head cut off. He came in here
this morning and has been behaving madly ever since.”</p>
<p>“The witless are under the protection of God,”
stammered a flat-cheeked Usbeg in broken Hindi. “They
foretell future events.”</p>
<p>“Would they could have foretold that my caravan would have
been cut up by the Shinwaris almost within shadow of the
Pass!” grunted the Eusufzai agent of a Rajputana
trading-house whose goods had been feloniously diverted into the
hands of other robbers just across the Border, and whose
misfortunes were the laughing-stock of the bazar.
“Ohé, priest, whence come you and whither do you
go?”</p>
<p>“From Roum have I come,” shouted the priest, waving
his whirligig; “from Roum, blown by the breath of a hundred
devils across the sea! O 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 camels shall not gall, the sons shall not fall sick, and
the wives 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 Kahn be upon his labors!” He spread out the
skirts of his gaberdine and pirouetted between the lines of
tethered horses.</p>
<p>“There starts a caravan from Peshawar to Kabul in twenty
days, <i>Huzrut</i>,” said the Eusufzai trader. “My camels go
therewith. Do thou also go and bring us good luck.”</p>
<p>“I will go even now!” shouted the priest. “I
will depart upon my winged camels, and be at Peshawar in a day! Ho!
Hazar Mir Khan,” he yelled to his servant “drive out
the camels, but let me first mount my own.”</p>
<p>He leaped on the back of his beast as it knelt, and turning
round to me, cried:—</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>Then the light broke upon me, and I followed the two camels out
of the Serai till we reached open road and the priest halted.</p>
<p>“What d’ you think o’ that?” said he in
English. “Carnehan can’t talk their patter, so
I’ve made him my servant. He makes a handsome servant.
’Tisn’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
Jagdallak, and then we’ll see if we can get donkeys for our
camels, and strike into Kafiristan. Whirligigs for the Amir, O Lor!
Put your hand under the camel-bags and tell me what you
feel.”</p>
<p>I felt the butt of a Martini, and another and another.</p>
<p>“Twenty of ’em,” said Dravot, placidly.</p>
<p>“Twenty of ’em, and ammunition to correspond, under
the whirligigs and the mud dolls.”</p>
<p>“Heaven help you if you are caught with those
things!” I said. “A Martini is worth her weight in
silver among the Pathans.”</p>
<p>“Fifteen hundred rupees of capital — every rupee we
could beg, borrow, or steal — are invested on these two
camels,” said Dravot. “We won’t get caught.
We’re going through the Khaiber with a regular caravan.
Who’d touch a poor mad priest?”</p>
<p>“Have you got everything you want?” I asked,
overcome with astonishment.</p>
<p>“Not yet, but we shall soon. Give us a momento of your
kindness, <i>Brother</i>. You did me a service yesterday, and that time in
Marwar. 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.</p>
<p>“Good-by,” said Dravot, giving me his hand
cautiously. “It’s the last time we’ll shake hands
with an Englishman these many days. Shake hands with him,
Carnehan,” he cried, as the second camel passed me.</p>
<p>Carnehan 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
attested that they were complete to the native mind. There was just
the chance, therefore, that Carnehan and Dravot would be able to
wander through Afghanistan without detection. But, beyond, they
would find death, certain and awful death.</p>
<p>Ten days later a native friend of mine, giving me the news of
the day from Peshawar, wound up his letter with:— “There
has been much laughter here on account of a certain mad priest who
is going in his estimation to sell petty gauds 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 Summer caravan that goes to Kabul. The merchants are pleased
because through superstition they imagine that such mad fellows
bring good-fortune.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 there 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!”</p>
<p>I went back to the office, the man following with groans of
pain, and I turned up the lamp.</p>
<p>“Don’t you know me?” he gasped, dropping into
a chair, and he turned his drawn face, surmounted by a shock of
gray hair, to the light.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“I don’t know you,” I said, handing him the
whiskey. “What can I do for you?”</p>
<p>He took a gulp of the spirit raw, and shivered in spite of the
suffocating heat.</p>
<p>“I’ve come back,” he repeated; “and I
was the King of Kafiristan — me and Dravot — crowned Kings
we was! In this office we settled it — you setting there and
giving us the books. I am Peachey — Peachey Taliaferro
Carnehan, and you’ve been setting here ever since — O
Lord!”</p>
<p>I was more than a little astonished, and expressed my feelings
accordingly.</p>
<p>“It’s true,” said Carnehan, 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 Dravot
— poor Dan — oh, poor, poor Dan, that would never take
advice, not though I begged of him!”</p>
<p>“Take the whiskey,” 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, Dravot dressed as a
mad priest and you his servant. Do you remember that?”</p>
<p>“I ain’t mad — yet, but I will 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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“No, don’t look there. Look at <i>me</i>,” said
Carnehan.</p>
<p>“That comes afterwards, but for the Lord’s sake
don’t distrack me. We left with that caravan, me and Dravot,
playing all sorts of antics to amuse the people we were with.
Dravot used to make us laugh in the evenings when all the people
was cooking their dinners — cooking their dinners, and …
what did they do then? They lit little fires with sparks that went
into Dravot’s beard, and we all laughed — fit to die.
Little red fires they was, going into Dravot’s big red
beard — so funny.” His eyes left mine and he smiled
foolishly.</p>
<p>“You went as far as Jagdallak with that caravan,” I
said at a venture, “after you had lit those fires. To
Jagdallak, where you turned off to try to get into
Kafiristan.”</p>
<p>“No, 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 Dravot’s. When we left the caravan,
Dravot took off all his clothes and mine too, and said we would be
heathen, because the Kafirs didn’t allow Mohammedans to talk
to them. So we dressed betwixt and between, and such a sight as
Daniel Dravot I never saw yet nor expect to see again. He burned
half his beard, and slung a sheep-skin over his shoulder, and
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
mountaineous country, and our camels couldn’t go along any
more because of the mountains. They were tall and black, and coming
home I saw them fight like wild goats — there are lots of goats
in Kafiristan. And these mountains, they never keep still, no more
than the goats. Always fighting they are, and don’t let you
sleep at night.”</p>
<p>“Take some more whiskey,” I said, very slowly.
“What did you and Daniel Dravot do when the camels could go
no further because of the rough roads that led into
Kafiristan?”</p>
<p>“What did which do? There was a party called Peachey
Taliaferro Carnehan that was with Dravot. Shall I tell you about
him? He died out there in the cold. Slap from the bridge fell old
Peachey, turning and twisting in the air like a penny whirligig
that you can sell to the Amir — No; they was two for three
ha’pence, those whirligigs, or I am much mistaken and woful
sore. And then these camels were no use, and Peachey said to
Dravot — ‘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 among 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.
Dravot up and dances in front of them, singing, — ‘Sell
me four mules.’ Says the first man, — ‘If you are
rich enough to buy, you are rich enough to rob;’ but before
ever he could put his hand to his knife, Dravot breaks his neck
over his knee, and the other party runs away. So Carnehan loaded
the mules with the rifles that was taken off the camels, and
together we starts forward into those bitter cold mountainous
parts, and never a road broader than the back of your
hand.”</p>
<p>He paused for a moment, while I asked him if he could remember
the nature of the country through which he had journeyed.</p>
<p>“I am 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 how Dravot 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 Carnehan, was imploring of Dravot not to sing and
whistle so loud, for fear of bringing down the tremenjus
avalanches. But Dravot says that if a King couldn’t sing it
wasn’t worth being 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.</p>
<p>“Then ten men with bows and arrows ran down that valley,
chasing twenty men with bows and arrows, and the row was tremenjus.
They was fair men — fairer than you or me — with yellow
hair and remarkable well built. Says Dravot, 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 we was sitting. The other men began to
run, but Carnehan and Dravot sits on the boxes picking them off at
all ranges, up and down the valley. Then we goes up to the ten men
that had run across the snow too, and they fires a footy little
arrow at us. Dravot he shoots above their heads and they all falls
down flat. Then he walks over them and kicks them, and then he
lifts them up and shakes hands all around to make them friendly
like. He calls them and gives them the boxes to carry, and waves
his hand for all the world as though he was King already. They
takes 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.
Dravot he goes to the biggest — a fellow they call
Imbra — and lays a rifle and a cartridge at his feet, rubbing
his nose respectful with his own nose, patting him on the head, and
saluting in front of it. He turns round to the men and nods his
head, and says, — ‘That’s all right. I’m in
the know too, and these old jim-jams 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 haughty, 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. But we tumbled from one of
those damned rope-bridges, you see, and you couldn’t expect a
man to laugh much after that.”</p>
<p>“Take some more whiskey and go on,” I said.
“That was the first village you came into. How did you get to
be King?”</p>
<p>“I wasn’t King,” said Carnehan. “Dravot
he was the King, and a handsome man he looked with the gold crown
on his head and all. Him and the other party stayed in that
village, and every morning Dravot sat by the side of old Imbra, and
the people came and worshipped. That was Dravot’s order. Then
a lot of men came into the valley, and Carnehan and Dravot 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 Dravot says, — ‘Now what is the
trouble between you two villages?’ and the people points to a
woman, as fair as you or me, that was carried off, and Dravot takes
her back to the first village and counts up the dead — eight
there was. For each dead man Dravot pours a little milk on the
ground and waves his arms like a whirligig and, ‘That’s
all right,’ says he. Then he and Carnehan takes the big boss
of each village by the arm and walks them down into 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 o’ the
line. Then all the people comes down and shouts like the devil and
all, and Dravot 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 Dravot
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.</p>
<p>“Next week they was all turning up the land in the valley
as quiet as bees and much prettier, and the priests heard all the
complaints and told Dravot in dumb show what it was about.
‘That’s just the beginning,’ says Dravot.
‘They think we’re gods.’ He and Carnehan 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 baccy-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 Carnehan says, — ‘Send ’em to the old valley
to plant,’ and takes ’em there and gives ’em some
land that wasn’t took before. They were a poor lot, and we
blooded ’em with a kid before letting ’em into the new
Kingdom. That was to impress the people, and then they settled down
quiet, and Carnehan went back to Dravot who had got into another
valley, all snow and ice and most mountainous. There was no people
there and the Army got afraid, so Dravot shoots one of them, and
goes on till he finds some people in a village, and the Army
explains that unless the people wants to be killed they had better
not shoot their little matchlocks; for they had matchlocks. We
makes friends with the priest and I stays there alone with two of
the Army, teaching the men how to drill, and a thundering big Chief
comes across the snow with kettledrums and horns twanging, because
he heard there was a new god kicking about. Carnehan sights for the
brown of 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 Carnehan shakes hands with
him and whirls his arms about, same as Dravot used, and very much
surprised that Chief was, and strokes my eyebrows. Then Carnehan
goes alone to the Chief, and asks him in dumb show if he had an
enemy he hated. ‘I have,’ says the Chief. So Carnehan
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 manœuvre
about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a
great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes
into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the
brown of the enemy. So we took that village too, 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
eighteen hundred yards away, I drops a bullet near him standing on
the snow, and all the people falls flat on their faces. Then I
sends a letter to Dravot, wherever he be by land or by
sea.”</p>
<p>At the risk of throwing the creature out of train I
interrupted, — “How could you write a letter up
yonder?”</p>
<p>“The letter? — Oh! — The letter! Keep looking at
me between the eyes, please. It was a string-talk letter, that
we’d learned the way of it from a blind beggar in the
Punjab.”</p>
<p>I remember that there had once 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 cypher 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 failed.</p>
<p>“I sent that letter to Dravot,” said Carnehan;
“and told him to come back because this Kingdom was growing
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,
Er-Heb. The priest at Er-Heb 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 Dravot, who had been away two or three months, and I kept my
people quiet.</p>
<p>“One morning I heard the devil’s own noise of drums
and horns, and Dan Dravot marches down the hill with his Army and a
tail of hundreds of men, and, which was the most amazing — a
great gold crown on his head. ‘My Gord, Carnehan,’ says
Daniel, ‘this is a tremenjus business, and we’ve got
the whole 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; and more than that, I’ve got the key of the
whole show, as you’ll see, and I’ve got a crown for
you! I told ’em to make two of ’em at a place called
Shu, 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.’</p>
<p>“One of the men opens a black hair bag 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 pound weight, like a hoop of
a barrel.</p>
<p>“‘Peachey,’ says Dravot, ‘we don’t
want to fight no more. The Craft’s the trick so help
me!’ and he brings forward that same Chief that I left at
Bashkai — Billy Fish we called him afterwards, because he was
so like Billy Fish that drove the big tank-engine at Mach on the
Bolan in the old days. ‘Shake hands with him,’ says
Dravot, 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. ‘A Fellow Craft he is!’ I says to
Dan. ‘Does he know the word?’ ‘He does,’
says Dan, ‘and all the priests know. It’s a miracle!
The Chiefs and the priest can work a Fellow Craft Lodge in a way
that’s very like ours, and they’ve cut the marks on the
rocks, 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 we’ll raise the head priests and the Chiefs of
the villages.’</p>
<p>“‘It’s against all the law,’ I says,
‘holding a Lodge without warrant from any one; and we never
held office in any Lodge.’</p>
<p>“‘It’s a master-stroke of policy,’ says
Dravot. ‘It means running the country as easy as a
four-wheeled bogy on a down grade. We can’t stop to inquire
now, or they’ll turn against us. I’ve forty Chiefs at
my heel, 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 the Lodge-room. The
women must make aprons as you show them. I’ll hold a levee of
Chiefs tonight and Lodge to-morrow.’</p>
<p>“I was fair rim off my legs, but I wasn’t such a
fool as not to see what a pull this Craft business gave us. I
showed the priests’ families how to make aprons of the
degrees, but for Dravot’s apron the blue border and marks was
made 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 officers’ chairs, and painted the black
pavement with white squares, and did what we could to make things
regular.</p>
<p>“At the levee which was held that night on the hillside
with big bonfires, Dravot gives out that him and me were gods and
sons of Alexander, and Past Grand-Masters in the Craft, and was
come to make Kafiristan a country where every man should eat in
peace and drink in quiet, and specially obey us. Then the Chiefs
come round to shake hands, and they was 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, Holly Dilworth, Pikky Kergan that was Bazar-master when I was
at Mhow, and so on, and so on.</p>
<p>“<i>The</i> most amazing miracle 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 come in from
beyond the village of Bashkai. The minute Dravot 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
Dravot was sitting on. ‘It’s all up now,’ I says.
‘That comes of meddling with the Craft without
warrant!’ Dravot 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
Dravot’s apron, cut into the stone. Not even the priests of
the temple of Imbra knew it was there. The old chap falls flat on
his face at Dravot’s feet and kisses ’em. ‘Luck
again,’ says Dravot, 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 virtue of the
authority vested in me by my own right hand and the help of
Peachey, I declare myself Grand-Master of all Freemasonry in
Kafiristan in this the Mother Lodge o’ the country, and King
of Kafiristan equally with Peachey!’ At that he puts on his
crown and I puts on mine — I was doing Senior Warden — and
we opens the Lodge in most ample form. It was a 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, Peachey and Dravot 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 clamoring to be raised.</p>
<p>“‘In another six months,’ says Dravot,
‘we’ll hold another Communication and see how you are
working.’ Then he asks them about their villages, and learns
that they was fighting one against the other and were fair 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 Dravot. ‘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 you’re white people — sons
of Alexander — and not like common, black Mohammedans. You are
<i>my</i> 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!’</p>
<p>“I can’t tell all we did for the next six months
because Dravot 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 to go out with some of the Army
and see what the other villages were doing, and make ’em
throw rope-bridges across the ravines which cut up the country
horrid. Dravot 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 him about,
and I just waited for orders.</p>
<p>“But Dravot 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 any one could
come across the hills with a complaint and Dravot 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 Pikky Kergan
from Shu, and an old Chief we called Kafuzelum — it was like
enough to his real name — and hold councils with ’em when
there was any fighting to be done in small villages. That was his
Council of War, and the four priests of Bashkai, Shu, Khawak, and
Madora was his Privy Council. Between the lot of ’em they
sent me, with forty men and twenty rifles, and sixty men carrying
turquoises, into the Ghorband country to buy those hand-made
Martini rifles, that come out of the Amir’s workshops at
Kabul, from one of the Amir’s Herati regiments that would
have sold the very teeth out of their mouths for turquoises.</p>
<p>“I stayed in Ghorband a month, and gave the Governor the
pick of my baskets for hush-money, and bribed the colonel of the
regiment some more, and, between the two and the tribes-people, we
got more than a hundred hand-made Martinis, a hundred good Kohat
Jezails that’ll throw to six hundred yards, and forty
manloads of very bad ammunition for the rifles. I came back with
what I had, and distributed ’em among the men that the Chiefs
sent in to me to drill. Dravot was too busy to attend to those
things, but the old Army that we first made helped me, and we
turned out five hundred men that could drill, and two hundred that
knew how to hold arms pretty straight. Even those cork-screwed,
hand-made guns was a miracle to them. Dravot talked big about
powder-shops and factories, walking up and down in the pine wood
when the winter was coming on.</p>
<p>“‘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 two million of ’em in these hills. The villages are
full o’ little children. Two million people — two hundred and
fifty thousand fighting men — and all English! They only want
the rifles and a little drilling. Two hundred and fifty thousand
men, ready to cut in on Russia’s right flank when she tries
for India! Peachey, man,’ he says, chewing his beard in great
hunks, ‘we shall be Emperors — Emperors of the Earth!
Rajah Brooke will be a suckling to us. I’ll treat with the
Viceroy on equal terms. I’ll ask him to send me twelve picked
English — twelve that I know of — to help us govern a bit.
There’s Mackray, Sergeant-pensioner at
Segowli — many’s the good dinner he’s given me, and
his wife a pair of trousers. There’s Donkin, the Warder of
Tounghoo Jail; there’s hundreds that I could lay my hand on
if I was in India. The Viceroy shall do it for me. I’ll send
a man through in the spring for those men, and I’ll write for
a dispensation from the Grand Lodge for what I’ve done as
Grand-Master. That — and all the Sniders that’ll 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 driblets — 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 Dravot.” Oh, its big! It’s big, I tell you!
But there’s so much to be done in every place — Bashkai,
Khawak, Shu, and everywhere else.’</p>
<p>“‘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.’</p>
<p>“‘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, Peachey, in the way I want to be
helped.’</p>
<p>“‘Go to your blasted priests, then!’ I said,
and I was sorry when I made that remark, but it did hurt me sore to
find Daniel talking so superior when I’d drilled all the men,
and done all he told me.</p>
<p>“‘Don’t let’s quarrel, Peachey,’
says Daniel without cursing. ‘You’re a King too, and
the half of this Kingdom is yours; but can’t you see,
Peachey, we want cleverer men than us now — three or four of
’em that we can scatter about for our Deputies? It’s a
hugeous 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
here’s the winter coming on and all.’ He put half his
beard into his mouth, and it was as red as the gold of his
crown.</p>
<p>“‘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 those tinware rifles from Ghorband — but I know what
you’re driving at. I take it Kings always feel oppressed that
way.’</p>
<p>“‘There’s another thing too,’ says
Dravot, 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. I want a wife.’</p>
<p>“‘For Gord’s sake leave the women
alone!’ I says. ‘We’ve both got all the work we
can, though I <i>am</i> a fool. Remember the Contrack, and keep clear
o’ women.’</p>
<p>“‘The Contrack only lasted till such time as we was
Kings; and Kings we have been these months past,’ says
Dravot, weighing his crown in his hand. ‘You go get a wife
too, Peachey — a nice, strappin’, plump girl
that’ll keep you warm in the winter. They’re prettier
than English girls, and we can take the pick of ’em. Boil
’em once or twice in hot water, and they’ll come as
fair as chicken and ham.’</p>
<p>“‘Don’t tempt me!’ I says. ‘I will
not have any dealings with a woman not till we are a dam’
side more settled than we are now. I’ve been doing the work
o’ two men, and you’ve been doing the work o’
three. Let’s lie off a bit, and see if we can get some better
tobacco from Afghan country and run in some good liquor; but no
women.’</p>
<p>“‘Who’s talking o’ <i>women</i>?’ says
Dravot. ‘I said <i>wife</i> — a Queen to breed a King’s
son for the King. A Queen out 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.’</p>
<p>“‘Do you remember that Bengali woman I kept at Mogul
Serai when I was plate-layer?’ says I. ‘A fat lot
o’ good she was to me. She taught me the lingo and one or two
other things; but what happened? She ran away with the Station
Master’s servant and half my month’s pay. Then she
turned up at Dadur Junction in tow of a half-caste, and had the
impidence to say I was her husband — all among the drivers of
the running-shed!’</p>
<p>“‘We’ve done with that,’ says Dravot.
‘These women are whiter than you or me, and a Queen I will
have for the winter months.’</p>
<p>“‘For the last time o’ asking, Dan, do
<i>not</i>,’ I says. ‘It’ll only bring us harm. The
Bible says that Kings ain’t to waste their strength on women,
’specially when they’ve got a new raw Kingdom to work
over.’</p>
<p>“‘For the last time of answering, I will,’
said Dravot, and he went away through the pine-trees looking like a
big red devil. The low sun hit his crown and beard on one side, and
the two blazed like hot coals.</p>
<p>“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. Dravot damned them all round.
‘What’s wrong with me?’ he shouts, standing by
the idol Imbra. ‘Am I a dog or am I not enough of a man for
your wenches? Haven’t I put the shadow of my hand over this
country? Who stopped the last Afghan raid?’ It was me really,
but Dravot was too angry to remember. ‘Who bought your guns?
Who repaired the bridges? Who’s the Grand-Master of the sign
cut in the stone?’ 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 ask the
girls. That’s how it’s done at home, and these people
are quite English.’</p>
<p>“‘The marriage of a 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 better mind. He walked out of
the Council-room, and the others sat still, looking at the
ground.</p>
<p>“‘Billy Fish,’ says I 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 know everything? How can
daughters of men marry gods or devils? It’s not
proper.’</p>
<p>“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 undeceive them.</p>
<p>“‘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.’</p>
<p>“‘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 half-way down the hill, and I heard a girl
crying fit to die. One of the priests told us that she was being
prepared to marry the King.</p>
<p>“‘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 they are a-heartening of her up down in the
temple.’</p>
<p>“‘Hearten her very tender, then,’ says Dravot,
‘or I’ll hearten you with the butt of a gun so that
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 any means comfortable, for I knew that
dealings with a woman 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 Dravot 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.</p>
<p>“‘What is up, Fish?’ I says to the Bashkai
man, who was wrapped up in his furs and looking splendid to
behold.</p>
<p>“‘I can’t rightly say,’ says he;
‘but if you can induce the King to drop all this nonsense
about marriage, you’ll be doing him and me and yourself a
great service.’</p>
<p>“‘That I do believe,’ says I. ‘But sure,
you know, Billy, as well as me, having 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.’</p>
<p>“‘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
to-day. I have twenty of my men with me, and they will follow me.
We’ll go to Bashkai until the storm blows over.’</p>
<p>“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. Dravot came out with his crown on his head, swinging his
arms and stamping his feet, and looking more pleased than
Punch.</p>
<p>“‘For the last time, drop it, Dan,’ says I in
a whisper. ‘Billy Fish here says that there will be a
row.’</p>
<p>“‘A row among my people!’ says Dravot.
‘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. ‘Call up all the Chiefs and priests,
and let the Emperor see if his wife suits him.’</p>
<p>“There was no need to call any one. They were all there
leaning on their guns and spears round the clearing in the centre
of the pine wood. A deputation of priests went down to the little
temple to bring up the girl, and the horns blew up fit to wake the
dead. Billy Fish saunters 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 Dravot, and behind me was
twenty men of the regular Army. Up comes the girl, and a strapping
wench she was, covered with silver and turquoises but white as
death, and looking back every minute at the priests.</p>
<p>“‘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 down goes her face in the side of Dan’s
flaming red beard.</p>
<p>“‘The slut’s 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 catches hold of
Dan by the shoulders and drags him into the Bashkai lot, while the
priests howls in their lingo, — ‘Neither god nor devil
but a man!’ I was all taken aback, for a priest cut at me in
front, and the Army behind began firing into the Bashkai men.</p>
<p>“‘God A-mighty!’ says Dan. ‘What is the
meaning o’ this?’</p>
<p>“‘Come back! Come away!’ says Billy Fish.
‘Ruin and Mutiny is the matter. We’ll break for Bashkai
if we can.’</p>
<p>“I tried to give some sort of orders to my men — the
men o’ the regular Army — but it was no use, so I fired
into the brown of ’em 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 Bashkai troops stuck to Billy Fish
all they were worth, but their matchlocks wasn’t half as good
as the Kabul breech-loaders, and four of them dropped. Dan was
bellowing like a bull, for he was very wrathy; and Billy Fish had a
hard job to prevent him running out at the crowd.</p>
<p>“‘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 Dravot’s protestations. He was swearing
horribly 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 to the bottom of the valley alive.</p>
<p>“‘Then they stopped firing and the horns in the
temple blew again. ‘Come away — for Gord’s sake
come away!’ says Billy Fish. ‘They’ll send
runners out to all the villages before ever we get to Bashkai. I
can protect you there, but I can’t do anything
now.’</p>
<p>“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 priests 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.</p>
<p>“‘All right, Dan,’ says I; ‘but come
along now while there’s time.’</p>
<p>“‘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, missionary’s-pass-hunting hound!’ He sat
upon a rock and called me every foul name he could lay tongue to. I
was too heart-sick to care, though it was all his foolishness that
brought the smash.</p>
<p>“‘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.’</p>
<p>“‘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!’</p>
<p>“‘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.</p>
<p>“‘There’s no hope o’ getting
clear,’ said Billy Fish. ‘The priests will 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.</p>
<p>“Next morning we 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-wise as if they wanted to
ask something, but they said never 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!</p>
<p>“‘The runners have been very quick,’ says
Billy Fish, with a little bit of a laugh. ‘They are waiting
for us.’</p>
<p>“Three or four men began to fire from the enemy’s
side, and a chance shot took Daniel in the calf of the leg. That
brought him to his senses. He looks across the snow at the Army,
and sees the rifles that we had brought into the country.</p>
<p>“‘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. Carnehan,’ says he, ‘shake hands with me and go
along with Billy. Maybe they won’t kill you. I’ll go
and meet ’em alone. It’s me that did it. Me, the
King!’</p>
<p>“‘Go!’ says I. ‘Go to Hell, Dan.
I’m with you here. Billy Fish, you clear out, and we two will
meet those folk.’</p>
<p>“‘I’m a Chief,’ says Billy Fish, quite
quiet. ‘I stay with you. My men can go.’</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>The punkah-coolies 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. Carnehan 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?”</p>
<p>The momentary shift of my eyes had broken the clear current.</p>
<p>“What was you pleased to say?” whined Carnehan.
“They took them without any sound. Not a little whisper all
along the snow, not though the King knocked down the first man that
set hand on him — not though old Peachey fired his last
cartridge into the brown of ’em. Not a single solitary sound
did those swines make. They just closed up, tight, and I tell you
their furs stunk. There was a man called Billy Fish, a good friend
of us all, and they cut his throat, Sir, then and 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?’ But Peachey, Peachey Taliaferro, 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 o’ one of those cunning rope-bridges.
Kindly let me have the paper-cutter, 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.
‘D’you suppose I can’t die like a
gentleman?’ He turns to Peachey — Peachey that was crying
like a child. ‘I’ve brought you to this,
Peachey,’ says he. ‘Brought you out of your happy life
to be killed in Kafiristan, where you was late Commander-in-Chief
of the Emperor’s forces. Say you forgive me, Peachey.’
‘I do,’ says Peachey. ‘Fully and freely do I
forgive you, Dan.’ ‘Shake hands, Peachey,’ 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, you beggars,’ he shouts; and they
cut, and old Dan fell, turning round and round and round, twenty
thousand miles, for he took half an hour to fall till he struck the
water, and I could see his body caught on a rock with the gold
crown close beside.</p>
<p>“But do you know what they did to Peachey between two
pine-trees? They crucified him, sir, as Peachey’s hands will
show. They used wooden pegs for his hands and his feet; and he
didn’t die. He hung there and screamed, and they took him
down next day, and said it was a miracle that he wasn’t dead.
They took him down — poor old Peachey that hadn’t done
them any harm — that hadn’t done them
any…”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“They 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 on the snow, and told him to go home,
and Peachey came home in about a year, begging along the roads
quite safe; for Daniel Dravot he walked before and
said:— ‘Come along, Peachey. It’s a big thing
we’re doing.’ The mountains they danced at night, and
the mountains they tried to fall on Peachey’s head, but Dan
he held up his hand, and Peachey 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 Peachey
was starving, never would Peachey sell the same. You knew Dravot,
sir! You knew Right Worshipful Brother Dravot! Look at him
now!”</p>
<p>He fumbled in the mass of rags round his bent waist; brought out
a black horsehair bag embroidered with silver thread; and shook
therefrom on to my table — the dried, withered head of Daniel
Dravot! The morning sun that had long been paling the lamps struck
the red beard and blind sunken eyes; struck, too, a heavy circlet
of gold studded with raw turquoises, that Carnehan placed tenderly
on the battered temples.</p>
<p>“You behold now,” said Carnehan, “the Emperor
in his habit as he lived — the King of Kafiristan with his
crown upon his head. Poor old Daniel that was a monarch
once!”</p>
<p>I shuddered, for, in spite of defacements manifold, I recognized
the head of the man of Marwar Junction. Carnehan 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 set in the Poor-house till I get my health.
No, thank you, I can’t wait till you get a carriage for me.
I’ve urgent private affairs — in the south — at
Marwar.”</p>
<p>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 dolorously 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:—</p>
<p class="song">“The Son of Man goes forth to war,<br />
A golden crown to gain;</p>
<p class="song">His blood-red banner streams afar—<br />
Who follows in his train?”</p>
<p>I waited to hear no more, but put the poor wretch 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 to the missionary.</p>
<p>Two days later I inquired after his welfare of the
Superintendent of the Asylum.</p>
<p>“He was admitted suffering from sun-stroke. He died early
yesterday morning,” said the Superintendent. “Is it
true that he was half an hour bareheaded in the sun at
midday?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” said I, “but do you happen to know if
he had anything upon him by any chance when he died?”</p>
<p>“Not to my knowledge,” said the Superintendent.</p>
<p>And there the matter rests.</p>
</div>
<pre>
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