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com

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

BY RUDYARD KIPLING

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 hunt it for myself.
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 buy from
refreshment-rooms. They carry their food in bundles and pots, and buy sweets from the
native sweetmeat-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 Nasirabad, when the big
black-browed 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 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 under side
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, 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.
"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 were travelling back along this line within any days?"
"Within ten," I said.
"Can'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 I think of it. It's this way. He leaves Delhi on
the 23rd for Bombay. That means he'll be running through Ajmir about the night of the
23rd."
"But I'm going into the Indian Desert," I explained.
"Well /and/ good," said he. "You'll be changing at Marwar Junction to
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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? 'T won'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 'Backwoodsman.' "
"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 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 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 stay in
those parts by two days. I ask you as a stranger--going to 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 saw 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-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."
"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 'Backwoodsman.' There's a real one knocking about here, and it
might lead to trouble."
"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."
"What did he do to his father's widow, then?"
"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?"
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. 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
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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 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 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 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.
"Tickets again?" said he.
"No," said I. "I am to tell you that he is 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 impidence. Did he say that I was to give
you anything? 'Cause 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 correspondents of newspapers, and might, if they
blackmailed 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.
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. 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 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 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 punka-pulling machines, carriage couplings, and unbreakable swords
and axletrees 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 clamour to have the glories of their last dance more fully described; strange
ladies rustle in and say, "I want a hundred lady's cards printed /at once/, please," which
is manifestly part of an Editor's duty; and every dissolute ruffian that ever tramped the
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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 copyboys are whining,
"/kaa-pi chay-ha-yeh/" ("Copy wanted"), like tired bees, and most of the paper is as
blank as Modred'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 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.
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 96 degrees to almost 84 degrees
for half an hour, and in that chill--you have no idea how cold is 84 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.
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 /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 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 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.
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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 seed 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 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.
I was not pleased, because I wished to go to sleep, not to squabble with loafers. "What
do you want?" I asked.
"Half an hour's talk with you, cool and comfortable, in the office," said the red-bearded
man. "We'd /like/ 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
favour, because we found out you did us a bad turn about Degumber 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, Sir, let me introduce you to Brother Peachey Carnehan, that's
him, and Brother Daniel Dravot, 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, proof-reader, street-preacher, and correspondents of the 'Backwoodsman'
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 up."
I watched the test. The men were absolutely sober, so I gave them each a tepid whisky-
and-soda.
"Well /and/ good," said Carnehan 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. 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. /Therefore/ we are going away to be Kings."
"Kings in our own right," muttered Dravot.
"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 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-/whack/. They call it Kafiristan. 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 we'll be the
thirty-third and fourth. It's a mountaineous country, the women of those parts are very
beautiful."
"But that is provided against in the Contrack," said Carnehan.
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"Neither Women nor Liqu-or, 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, '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."
"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."
"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 bookcases.
"Are you at all in earnest?" I said.
"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."
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 "Encyclopaedia Britannica," and the men
consulted them.
"See here!" said Dravot, his thumb on the map. "Up to Jagdallak, Peachey and me know
the road. We was there with Robert'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."
I handed him Wood on the "Sources of the Oxus." Carnehan was deep in the
"Encyclopaedia."
"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!"
"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 'United
Services' Institute.' Read what Bellew says."
"Blow Bellew!" said Carnehan. "Dan, they're a stinkin' lot of heathens, but this book
here says they think they're related to us English."
I smoked while the men poured over Raverty, Wood, the maps, and the
"Encyclopaedia."
"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-bye to you."
"You /are/ 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."
"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 govern it."
"Would two lunatics make a Contrack like that?" said Carnehan, with subdued pride,
showing me a greasy half-sheet of notepaper on which was written the following. I
copied it, then and there, as a curiosity.
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This Contracx between me and you persuing witnesseth in the name of God--Amen
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.
Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan.
Daniel Dravot.
Both Gentlemen at Large.
"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 /are/ loafers, Dan, until we
get out of India,--and /do/ you think that we would sign a Contrack 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 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.
The Kumharsen Serai is the great foursquare 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 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 Serai
watched them with shrieks 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 Usbeg in
broken Hindi. "They foretell future events."
"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 diverted into the hands of other robbers just across
the Border, and whose misfortunes were the laughing-stock of the bazaar. "Ohe, priest,
whence come you and whither do you go?"
"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
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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 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, /Huzrut/," said the
Eusufzai 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! Hazar Mir Khan," he yelled to his servant, "drive out the
camels, but let me first mount my own."
He leaped 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 Serai till we
reached open road and the priest halted.
"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. 'T 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 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 camelbags and tell me what you feel."
I felt the butt of a Martini, and another and another.
"Twenty of 'em," said Dravot, placidly. "Twenty of 'em and ammunition to correspond,
under the whirligigs and the mud dolls."
"Heaven help you if you are caught with those things!" I said. "A Martini is worth her
weight in silver among the Pathans."
"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?"
"Have you got everything you want?" I asked, overcome with astonishment.
"Not yet, but we shall soon. Give us a momento of your kindness, /Brother/. 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.
"Good-bye," said Dravot, giving me 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.
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 proved 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.
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 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."
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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 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!"
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 gray 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 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!"
I was more than a little astonished, and expressed my feelings accordingly.
"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!"
"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, Dravot
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 Carnehan. "That comes afterward, 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
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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.
"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."
"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 sheepskin
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."
"Take some more whisky," I said, very slowly. "What did you and Daniel Dravot do
when the camels could go no farther because of the rough roads that led into
Kafiristan?"
"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 mountaineous 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 he had journeyed.
"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
mountaineous 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.
"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
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where he 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 round 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 respectfuly 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 haughty, and eats it slow. That was how he 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?"
"Take some more whisky 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 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 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 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 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.
"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
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Carnehan went back to Dravot, who had got into another valley, all snow and ice and
most mountaineous. 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 manoeuvre 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 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."
At the risk of throwing the creature out of 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 learned the way of it from a blind beggar in the Punjab."
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 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 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 priests 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.
"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
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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 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 pounds weight, like a
hoop of a barrel.
" '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 afterward, 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 priests 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.'
" 'It's against all the law,' I says, 'holding a Lodge without warrant from any one; and
you know we never held office in any Lodge.'
" 'It's a master stroke o' policy,' says Dravot. 'It means running the country as easy as a
four-wheeled bogie 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 a Lodge-room. The women must make aprons as
you show them. I'll hold a levee of Chiefs to-night and Lodge to-morrow.'
"I was fair run 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 officer's chairs, and painted the black pavement with white squares,
and did what we could to make things regular.
"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 Passed 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 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,
Holly Dilworth, Pikky Kergan, that was Bazaar-master when I was at Mhow, 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 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
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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 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 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 clamouring to
be raised.
" '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 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 /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!'
"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 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 about, and I just waited for orders.
"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.
"I stayed in Ghorband a month, and gave the Governor there 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 man-loads of very bad
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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.
" '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, Serjeant 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
shipshape 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, it's big! It's big, I tell you!
But there's so much to be done in every place--Bashkai, Khawak, Shu, 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, Peachey, in
the way I want to be helped.'
" '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.
" '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, 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 those tinware rifles from
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Ghorband--but I know what you're driving at. I take it Kings always feel oppressed that
way.'
" '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.'
" 'For Gord's sake leave the women alone!' I says. 'We've both got all the work we can,
though I /am/ a fool. Remember the Contrack, and keep clear o' women.'
" '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 out like chicken and ham.'
" '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 of 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; and no women.'
" 'Who's talking o' /women/?' says Dravot. 'I said /wife/--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.'
" 'Do you remember that Bengali woman I kept at Mogul Serai when I was a 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 in the running-shed
too!'
" '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.'
" 'For the last time o' 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, 'specially when they've got a
new raw Kingdom to work over.'
" '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 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. 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?' 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
ask the girls. That's how 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 better mind. He walked out of the
Council-room, and the others sat still, looking at the ground.
" '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 knows everything? How
can daughters of men marry Gods or Devils? It's not proper.'
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"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.
" '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 half-way down the hill, and I heard the girl crying 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 they are a-heartening of her up down in the temple.'
" 'Hearten her very tender, then,' says Dravot, 'or I'll hearten you with the 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 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.
" 'What is up, Fish?' I say to the Bashkai man, who was wrapped up in his furs and
looking splendid to behold.
" '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, 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.'
" '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.'
" 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.
" 'For the last time, drop it, Dan,' says I, in a whisper; 'Billy Fish here says that there
will be a row.'
" 'A row among my people!' says Dravot. 'Not much. Peachey, 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.'
"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 lot of priests went down to the little
temple to bring up the girl, and the horns blew 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.
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" '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.
" '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.
" 'God A'mighty!' says Dan, 'what is the meaning o' this?'
" 'Come back! Come away!' says Billy Fish. 'Ruin and Mutiny is the matter. We'll break
for Bashkai if we can.'
"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.
" '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.
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 to the bottom of the valley alive.
"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."
"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.'
" '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, 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.
" '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 o' 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 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-way as if they
wanted to ask something, but they never said a word. At noon we came to the top of a
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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
are waiting for us.'
"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.
" '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!'
" '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 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 punka-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?"
The momentary shift of my eyes had broken the clear current.
"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.
"But do you know what they did to Peachey between two pine-trees? They
crucified him, Sir, as Peachey's hand will show. They used wooden pegs
for his hands and feet; but he didn't die. He hung there and screamed,
and they took him down next day, and said it was a miracle that he
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wasn't dead. They took him down--poor old Peachey that hadn't done
them any harm--that 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.
"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 know Dravot, Sir! You knew Right Worshipful Brother Dravot! 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 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.
"You be'old now," said Carnehan, "the Emperor in his 'abit as he lived --the King of
Kafiristan with his crown upon his head. Poor old Daniel that was a monarch once!"
I shuddered, for, in spite of defacements manifold, I recognised 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 whisky, 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 Poorhouse 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."
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:
"The Son of Man 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 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 recognise, 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.