Kim

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'I am rebuked,' said the Kamboh meekly. 'I am thy debtor for the
life of my son. Thou art a miracle-worker - I know it.'

'Show me the cuts.' Kim bent over the Mahratta's neck, his heart
nearly choking him; for this was the Great Game with a vengeance.
'Now, tell thy tale swiftly, brother, while I say a charm.'

'I come from the South, where my work lay. One of us they slew by
the roadside. Hast thou heard?' Kim shook his head. He, of course,
knew nothing of E's predecessor, slain down South in the habit of an
Arab trader. 'Having found a certain letter which I was sent to
seek, I came away. I escaped from the city and ran to Mhow. So sure
was I that none knew, I did not change my face. At Mhow a woman
brought charge against me of theft of jewellery in that city which I
had left. Then I saw the cry was out against me. I ran from Mhow by
night, bribing the police, who had been bribed to hand me over
without question to my enemies in the South. Then I lay in old
Chitor city a week, a penitent in a temple, but I could not get rid
of the letter which was my charge. I buried it under the Queen's
Stone, at Chitor, in the place known to us all.'

Kim did not know, but not for worlds would he have broken the
thread.

'At Chitor, look you, I was all in Kings' country; for Kotah to the
east is beyond the Queen's law, and east again lie Jaipur and
Gwalior. Neither love spies, and there is no justice. I was hunted
like a wet jackal; but I broke through at Bandakui, where I heard
there was a charge against me of murder in the city I had left - of
the murder of a boy. They have both the corpse and the witnesses
waiting.'

'But cannot the Government protect?'

'We of the Game are beyond protection. If we die, we die. Our names
are blotted from the book. That is all. At Bandakui, where lives one
of Us, I thought to slip the scent by changing my face, and so made
me a Mahratta. Then I came to Agra, and would have turned back to
Chitor to recover the letter. So sure I was I had slipped them.
Therefore I did not send a tar [telegram] to any one saying where
the letter lay. I wished the credit of it all.'

Kim nodded. He understood that feeling well.

'But at Agra, walking in the streets, a man cried a debt against me,
and approaching with many witnesses, would hale me to the courts
then and there. Oh, they are clever in the South! He recognized me
as his agent for cotton. May he burn in Hell for it!'

'And wast thou?'

'O fool! I was the man they sought for the matter of the letter! I
ran into the Fleshers' Ward and came out by the House of the Jew,
who feared a riot and pushed me forth. I came afoot to Somna Road -
I had only money for my tikkut to Delhi - and there, while I lay in
a ditch with a fever, one sprang out of the bushes and beat me and
cut me and searched me from head to foot. Within earshot of the te-
rain it was!'

'Why did he not slay thee out of hand?'

'They are not so foolish. If I am taken in Delhi at the instance of
lawyers, upon a proven charge of murder, my body is handed over to
the State that desires it. I go back guarded, and then - I die
slowly for an example to the rest of Us. The South is not my
country. I run in circles - like a goat with one eye. I have not
eaten for two days. I am marked' - he touched the filthy bandage on
his leg - 'so that they will know me at Delhi.'

'Thou art safe in the te-rain, at least.'

'Live a year at the Great Game and tell me that again! The wires
will be out against me at Delhi, describing every tear and rag upon
me. Twenty - a hundred, if need be - will have seen me slay that
boy. And thou art useless!'

Kim knew enough of native methods of attack not to doubt that the
case would be deadly complete - even to the corpse. The Mahratta
twitched his fingers with pain from time to time. The Kamboh in his
corner glared sullenly; the lama was busy over his beads; and Kim,
fumbling doctor-fashion at the man's neck, thought out his plan
between invocations.

'Hast thou a charm to change my shape? Else I am dead. Five - ten
minutes alone, if I had not been so pressed, and I might -'

'Is he cured yet, miracle-worker?' said the Kamboh jealously. 'Thou
hast chanted long enough.'

'Nay. There is no cure for his hurts, as I see, except he sit for
three days in the habit of a bairagi.' This is a common penance,
often imposed on a fat trader by his spiritual teacher.

'One priest always goes about to make another priest,' was the
retort. Like most grossly superstitious folk, the Kamboh could not
keep his tongue from deriding his Church.

'Will thy son be a priest, then? It is time he took more of my
quinine.'

'We Jats are all buffaloes,' said the Kamboh, softening anew.

Kim rubbed a finger-tip of bitterness on the child's trusting little
lips. 'I have asked for nothing,' he said sternly to the father,
'except food. Dost thou grudge me that? I go to heal another man.
Have I thy leave - Prince?'

Up flew the man's huge paws in supplication. 'Nay - nay. Do not mock
me thus.'

'It pleases me to cure this sick one. Thou shalt acquire merit by
aiding. What colour ash is there in thy pipe-bowl? White. That is
auspicious. Was there raw turmeric among thy foodstuffs?'

'I - I -'

'Open thy bundle!'

It was the usual collection of small oddments: bits of cloth, quack
medicines, cheap fairings, a clothful of atta - greyish, rough-
ground native flour - twists of down-country tobacco, tawdry pipe-
stems, and a packet of curry-stuff, all wrapped in. a quilt. Kim
turned it over with the air of a wise warlock, muttering a
Mohammedan invocation.

'This is wisdom I learned from the Sahibs,' he whispered to the
lama; and here, when one thinks of his training at Lurgan's, he
spoke no more than the truth. 'There is a great evil in this man's
fortune, as shown by the Stars, which - which troubles him. Shall I
take it away?'

'Friend of the Stars, thou hast done well in all things. Let it be
at thy pleasure. Is it another healing?'

'Quick! Be quick!' gasped the Mahratta. 'The train may stop.'

'A healing against the shadow of death,' said Kim, mixing the
Kamboh's flour with the mingled charcoal and tobacco ash in the red-
earth bowl of the pipe. E, without a word, slipped off his turban
and shook down his long black hair.

'That is my food - priest,' the jat growled.

'A buffalo in the temple! Hast thou dared to look even thus far?'
said Kim. 'I must do mysteries before fools; but have a care for
thine eyes. Is there a film before them already? I save the babe,
and for return thou - oh, shameless!' The man flinched at the direct
gaze, for Kim was wholly in earnest.

'Shall I curse thee, or shall I -' He picked up the outer cloth of
the bundle and threw it over the bowed head. 'Dare so much as to
think a wish to see, and - and - even I cannot save thee. Sit!

Be dumb!'

'I am blind - dumb. Forbear to curse! Co - come, child; we will
play a game of hiding. Do not, for my sake, look from under the
cloth.'

'I see hope,' said E23. 'What is thy scheme?'

'This comes next,' said Kim, plucking the thin body-shirt. E23
hesitated, with all a North-West man's dislike of baring his body.

'What is caste to a cut throat?' said Kim, rending it to the waist.
'We must make thee a yellow Saddhu all over. Strip - strip
swiftly, and shake thy hair over thine eyes while I scatter the ash.
Now, a caste-mark on thy forehead.' He drew from his bosom the
little Survey paint-box and a cake of crimson lake.

'Art thou only a beginner?' said E23, labouring literally for the
dear life, as he slid out of his body-wrappings and stood clear in
the loin-cloth while Kim splashed in a noble caste-mark on the ash-
smeared brow.

'But two days entered to the Game, brother,' Kim replied. 'Smear
more ash on the bosom.'

'Hast thou met - a physician of sick pearls?' He switched out his
long, tight-rolled turban-cloth and, with swiftest hands, rolled it
over and under about his loins into the intricate devices of a
Saddhu's cincture.

'Hah! Dost thou know his touch, then? He was my teacher for a
while. We must bar thy legs. Ash cures wounds. Smear it again.'

'I was his pride once, but thou art almost better. The Gods are
kind to us! Give me that.'

It was a tin box of opium pills among the rubbish of the Jat's
bundle. E23 gulped down a half handful. 'They are good against
hunger, fear, and chill. And they make the eyes red too,' he
explained. 'Now I shall have heart to play the Game. We lack only
a Saddhu's tongs. What of the old clothes?'

Kim rolled them small, and stuffed them into the slack folds of his
tunic. With a yellow-ochre paint cake he smeared the legs and the
breast, great streaks against the background of flour, ash, and
turmeric.

'The blood on them is enough to hang thee, brother.'

'Maybe; but no need to throw them out of the window ... It is
finished.' His voice thrilled with a boy's pure delight in the Game.
'Turn and look, O jat!'

'The Gods protect us,' said the hooded Kamboh, emerging like a
buffalo from the reeds. 'But - whither went the Mahratta? What hast
thou done?'

Kim had been trained by Lurgan Sahib; E23, by virtue of his
business, was no bad actor. In place of the tremulous, shrinking
trader there lolled against the corner an all but naked, ash-
smeared, ochre-barred, dusty-haired Saddhu, his swollen eyes - opium
takes quick effect on an empty stomach - luminous with insolence and
bestial lust, his legs crossed under him, Kim's brown rosary round
his neck, and a scant yard of worn, flowered chintz on his
shoulders. The child buried his face in his amazed father's arms.

'Look up, Princeling! We travel with warlocks, but they will not
hurt thee. Oh, do not cry ... What is the sense of curing a child
one day and killing him with fright the next?'

'The child will be fortunate all his life. He has seen a great
healing. When I was a child I made clay men and horses.'

'I have made them too. Sir Banas, he comes in the night and makes
them all alive at the back of our kitchen-midden,' piped the child.

'And so thou art not frightened at anything. Eh, Prince?'

'I was frightened because my father was frightened. I felt his arms
shake.'

'Oh, chicken-man!' said Kim, and even the abashed Jat laughed. 'I
have done a healing on this poor trader. He must forsake his gains
and his account-books, and sit by the wayside three nights to
overcome the malignity of his enemies. The Stars are against him.'

'The fewer money-lenders the better, say I; but, Saddhu or no
Saddhu, he should pay for my stuff on his shoulders.'

'So? But that is thy child on thy shoulder - given over to the
burning-ghat not two days ago. There remains one thing more. I did
this charm in thy presence because need was great.I changed his
shape and his soul. None the less, if, by any chance, O man from
Jullundur, thou rememberest what thou hast seen, either among the
elders sitting under the village tree, or in thine own house, or in
company of thy priest when he blesses thy cattle, a murrain will
come among the buffaloes, and a fire in thy thatch, and rats in the
corn-bins, and the curse of our Gods upon thy fields that they may
be barren before thy feet and after thy ploughshare.' This was part
of an old curse picked up from a fakir by the Taksali Gate in the
days of Kim's innocence. It lost nothing by repetition.

'Cease, Holy One! In mercy, cease!' cried the Jat. 'Do not curse
the household. I saw nothing! I heard nothing! I am thy cow!' and
he made to grab at Kim's bare foot beating rhythmically on the
carriage floor. 'But since thou hast been permitted to aid me in the
matter of a pinch of flour and a little opium and such trifles as I
have honoured by using in my art, so will the Gods return a
blessing,' and he gave it at length, to the man's immense relief. It
was one that he had learned from Lurgan Sahib.

The lama stared through his spectacles as he had not stared at the
business of disguisement. 'Friend of the Stars,' he said at last,
'thou hast acquired great wisdom. Beware that it do not give birth
to pride. No man having the Law before his eyes speaks hastily of
any matter which he has seen or encountered.'

'No - no - no, indeed,' cried the farmer, fearful lest the master
should be minded to improve on the pupil. E23, with relaxed mouth,
gave himself up to the opium that is meat, tobacco, and medicine to
the spent Asiatic.

So, in a silence of awe and great miscomprehension, they slid into
Delhi about lamp-lighting time.

Chapter 12

Who hath desired the Sea - the sight of salt-water unbounded?
The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber
wind-hounded?
The sleek-barrelled swell before storm - grey, foamless, enormous,
and growing?
Stark calm on the lap of the Line - or the crazy-eyed hurricane
blowing?
His Sea in no showing the same - his Sea and the same 'neath all
showing -
His Sea that his being fulfils?
So and no otherwise - so and no otherwise hill-men desire their
Hills!

The Sea and the Hills.

'I have found my heart again,' said E23, under cover of the
platform's tumult. 'Hunger and fear make men dazed, or I might have
thought of this escape before. I was right. They come to hunt for
me. Thou hast saved my head.'

A group of yellow-trousered Punjab policemen, headed by a hot and
perspiring young Englishman, parted the crowd about the carriages.
Behind them, inconspicuous as a cat, ambled a small fat person who
looked like a lawyer's tout.

'See the young Sahib reading from a paper. My description is in his
hand,' said E23. 'Thev go carriage by carriage, like fisher-folk
netting a pool.'

When the procession reached their compartment, E23 was counting his
beads with a steady jerk of the wrist; while Kim jeered at him for
being so drugged as to have lost the ringed fire-tongs which are the
Saddhu's distinguishing mark. The lama, deep in meditation, stared
straight before him; and the farmer, glancing furtively, gathered up
his belongings.

'Nothing here but a parcel of holy-bolies,' said the Englishman
aloud, and passed on amid a ripple of uneasiness; for native police
mean extortion to the native all India over.

'The trouble now, ' whispered E23, 'lies in sending a wire as to the
place where I hid that letter I was sent to find. I cannot go to the
tar-office in this guise.'

'Is it not enough I have saved thy neck?'

'Not if the work be left unfinished. Did never the healer of sick
pearls tell thee so? Comes another Sahib! Ah!'

This was a tallish, sallowish District Superintendent of Police -
belt, helmet, polished spurs and all - strutting and twirling his
dark moustache.

'What fools are these Police Sahibs!' said Kim genially.

E23 glanced up under his eyelids. 'It is well said,' he muttered in
a changed voice. 'I go to drink water. Keep my place.'

He blundered out almost into the Englishman's arms, and was bad-
worded in clumsy Urdu.

'Tum mut? You drunk? You mustn't bang about as though Delhi
station belonged to you, my friend.'

E23, not moving a muscle of his countenance, answered with a stream
of the filthiest abuse, at which Kim naturally rejoiced. It reminded
him of the drummer-boys and the barrack- sweepers at Umballa in the
terrible time of his first schooling.

'My good fool,' the Englishman drawled. 'Nickle-jao! Go back to
your carriage.'

Step by step, withdrawing deferentially and dropping his voice, the
yellow Saddhu clomb back to the carriage, cursing the D.S.P. to
remotest posterity, by - here Kim almost jumped - by the curse of
the Queen's Stone, by the writing under the Queen's Stone, and by an
assortment of Gods "with wholly, new names.

'I don't know what you're saving,' - the Englishman flushed angrily
- 'but it's some piece of blasted impertinence. Come out of that!'

E23, affecting to misunderstand, gravely produced his ticket, which
the Englishman wrenched angrily from his hand.

'Oh, zoolum! What oppression!' growled the Jat from his corner.
'All for the sake of a jest too.' He had been grinning at the
freedom of the Saddhu's tongue. 'Thy charms do not work well today,
Holy One!'

The Saddhu followed the policeman, fawning and supplicating. The
ruck of passengers, busy, with their babies andtheir bundles, had
not noticed the affair. Kim slipped outbehind him; for it flashed
through his head that he had heardthis angry, stupid Sahib
discoursing loud personalities to an oldlady near Umballa three
years ago.

'It is well', the Saddhu whispered, jammed in the calling,
shouting, bewildered press - a Persian greyhound between his feet
and a cageful of yelling hawks under charge of a Rajput falconer in
the small of his back. 'He has gone now to send word of the letter
which I hid. Thev told me he was in Peshawur. I might have known
that he is like the crocodile - always at the other ford. He has
saved me from present calamity, but I owe my life to thee.'

'Is he also one of Us?' Kim ducked under a Mewar camel-driver's
greasy armpit and cannoned off a covey of jabbering Sikh matrons.

'Not less than the greatest. We are both fortunate! I will make
report to him of what thou hast done. I am safe under his
protection.'

He bored through the edge of the crowd besieging the carriages, and
squatted by the bench near the telegraph-office.

'Return, or they take thy place! Have no fear for the work, brother
- or my life. Thou hast given me breathing-space, and Strickland
Sahib has pulled me to land. We may work together at the Game yet.
Farewell!'

Kim hurried to his carriage: elated, bewildered, but a little
nettled in that he had no key to the secrets about him.

'I am only a beginner at the Game, that is sure. I could not have
leaped into safety as did the Saddhu. He knew it was darkest under
the lamp. I could not have thought to tell news under pretence of
cursing ... and how clever was the Sahib! No matter, I savcd the
life of one ... Where is the Kamboh gone, Holy One?' he whispered,
as he took his seat in the now crowded compartment.

'A fear gripped him,' the lama replied, with a touch of tender
malice. 'He saw thee change the Mahratta to a Saddhu in the
twinkling of an eye, as a protection against evil. That shook him.
Then he saw the Saddhu fall sheer into the hands of the polis - all
the effect of thy art. Then he gathered up his son and fled; for he
said that thou didst change a quiet trader into an impudent bandier
of words with the Sahibs, and he feared a like fate. Where is the
Saddhu?'

'With the polis,' said Kim . . . 'Yet I saved the Kamboh's child.'

The lama snuffed blandly.

'Ah, chela, see how thou art overtaken! Thou didst cure the
Kamboh's child solely to acquire merit. But thou didst put a spell
on the Mahratta with prideful workings - I watched thee - and with
sidelong glances to bewilder an old old man and a foolish farmer:
whence calamity and suspicion.'

Kim controlled himself with an effort beyond his years. Not more
than any other youngster did he like to eat dirt or to be misjudged,
but he saw himself in a cleft stick. The train rolled out of Delhi
into the night.

'It is true,' he murmured. 'Where I have offended thee I have done
wrong.'

'It is more, chela. Thou hast loosed an Act upon the world, and as
a stone thrown into a pool so spread the consequences thou canst not
tell how far.'

This ignorance was well both for Kim's vanity and for the lama's
peace of mind, when we think that there was then being handed in at
Simla a code-wire reporting the arrival of E23 at Delhi, and, more
important, the whereabouts of a letter he had been commissioned to -
abstract. Incidentally, an over-zealous policeman had arrested, on
charge of murder done in a far southern State, a horribly indignant
Ajmir cotton-broker, who was explaining himself to a Mr Strickland
on Delhi platform, while E23 was paddling through byways into the
locked heart of Delhi city. In two hours several telegrams had
reached the angry minister of a southern State reporting that all
trace of a somewhat bruised Mahratta had been lost; and by the time
the leisurely train halted at Saharunpore the last ripple of the
store Kim had helped to heave was lapping against the steps of a
mosque in far-away Roum - where it disturbed a pious man at prayers.

The lama made his in ample form near the dewy bougainvillea-trellis
near the platform, cheered by the clear sunshine and the presence of
his disciple. 'We will put these things behind us,' he said,
indicating the brazen engine and the gleaming track. 'The jolting of
the te-rain - though a wonderful thing - has turned my bones to
water. We will use clean air henceforward.'

'Let us go to the Kulu woman's house' said Kim, and stepped forth
cheerily under the bundles. Early morning Saharunpore-way is clean
and well scented. He thought of the other mornings at St Xavier's,
and it topped his already thrice-heaped contentment.

'Where is this new haste born from? Wise men do not run about like
chickens in the sun. We have come hundreds upon hundreds of koss
already, and, till now, I have scarcely been alone with thee an
instant. How canst thou receive instruction all jostled of crowds?
How can I, whelmed by a flux of talk, meditate upon the Way?'

'Her tongue grows no shorter with the years, then?' the disciple
smiled.

'Nor her desire for charms. I remember once when I spoke of the
Wheel of Life' - the lama fumbled in his bosom for his latest copy -
'she was only curious about the devils that besiege children. She
shall acquire merit by entertaining us - in a little while - at an
after-occasion - softly, softly. Now we will wander loose-foot,
waiting upon the Chain of Things. The Search is sure.'

So they travelled very easily across and among the broad bloomful
fruit-gardens - by way of Aminabad, Sahaigunge, Akrola of the Ford,
and little Phulesa - the line of the Siwaliks always to the north,
and behind them again the snows. After long, sweet sleep under the
dry stars came the lordly, leisurely passage through a waking
village - begging-bowl held forth in silence, but eyes roving in
defiance of the Law from sky's edge to sky's edge. Then would Kim
return soft-footed through the soft dust to his master under the
shadow of a mango-tree or the thinner shade of a white Doon siris,
to eat and drink at ease. At mid-day, after talk and a little
wayfaring, they slept; meeting the world refreshed when the air was
cooler. Night found them adventuring into new territory - some
chosen village spied three hours before across the fat land, and
much discussed upon the road.

There they told their tale - a new one each evening so far as Kim
was concerned - and there were they made welcome, either by priest
or headman, after the custom of the kindly East.

When the shadows shortened and the lama leaned more heavily upon
Kim, there was always the Wheel of Life to draw forth, to hold flat
under wiped stones, and with a long straw to expound cycle by cycle.
Here sat the Gods on high - and they were dreams of dreams. Here was
our Heaven and the world of the demi-Gods - horsemen fighting among
the hills. Here were the agonies done upon the beasts, souls
ascending or descending the ladder and therefore not to be
interfered with. Here were the Hells, hot and cold, and the abodes
of tormented ghosts. Let the chela study the troubles that come from
over-eating - bloated stomach and burning bowels. Obediently, then,
with bowed head and brown finger alert to follow the pointer, did
the chela study; but when they came to the Human World, busy and
profitless, that is just above the Hells, his mind was distracted;
for by the roadside trundled the very Wheel itself, eating,
drinking, trading, marrying, and quarrelling - all warmly alive.
Often the lama made the living pictures the matter of his text,
bidding Kim - too ready - note how the flesh takes a thousand
shapes, desirable or detestable as men reckon, but in truth of no
account either way; and how the stupid spirit, bond-slave to the
Hog, the Dove, and the Serpent - lusting after betel-nut, a new yoke
of oxen, women, or the favour of kings - is bound to follow the body
through all the Heavens and all the Hells, and strictly round again.
Sometimes a woman or a poor man, watching the ritual - it was
nothing less - when the great yellow chart was unfolded, would throw
a few flowers or a handful of cowries upon its edge. It sufficed
these humble ones that they had met a Holy One who might be moved to
remember them in his prayers.

'Cure them if they are sick,' said the lama, when Kim's sporting
instincts woke. 'Cure them if they have fever, but by no means work
charms. Remember what befell the Mahratta.'

'Then all Doing is evil?' Kim replied, lying out under a big tree at
the fork of the Doon road, watching the little ants run over his
hand.

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