Kim

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The gentlemen were delighted. One was visibly French, the other
Russian, but they spoke English not much inferior to the Babu's.
They begged his kind offices. Their native servants had gone sick at
Leh. They had hurried on because they were anxious to bring the
spoils of the chase to Simla ere the skins grew moth-eaten. They
bore a general letter of introduction (the Babu salaamed to it
orientally) to all Government officials. No, they had not met any
other shooting-parties en route. They did for themselves. They had
plenty of supplies. They only wished to push on as soon as might be.
At this he waylaid a cowering hillman among the trees, and after
three minutes' talk and a little silver (one cannot be economical
upon State service, though Hurree's heart bled at the waste) the
eleven coolies and the three hangers-on reappeared. At least the
Babu would be a witness to their oppression.

'My royal master, he will be much annoyed, but these people are
onlee common people and grossly ignorant. If your honours will
kindly overlook unfortunate affair, I shall be much pleased. In a
little while rain will stop and we can then proceed. You have been
shooting, eh? That is fine performance!'

He skipped nimbly from one kilta to the next, making pretence to
adjust each conical basket. The Englishman is not, as a rule,
familiar with the Asiatic, but he would not strike across the wrist
a kindly Babu who had accidentally upset a kilta with a red oilskin
top. On the other hand, he would not press drink upon a Babu were
he never so friendly, nor would he invite him to meat. The
strangers did all these things, and asked many questions - about
women mostly - to which Hurree returned gay and unstudied answers.
They gave him a glass of whitish fluid like to gin, and then more;
and in a little time his gravity departed from him. He became
thickly treasonous, and spoke in terms of sweeping indecency of a
Government which had forced upon him a white man's education and
neglected to supply him with a white man's salary. He babbled tales
of oppression and wrong till the tears ran down his cheeks for the
miseries of his land. Then he staggered off, singing love-songs of
Lower Bengal, and collapsed upon a wet tree-trunk. Never was so
unfortunate a product of English rule in India more unhappily thrust
upon aliens.

'They are all just of that pattern,' said one sportsman to the other
in French. 'When we get into India proper thou wilt see. I should
like to visit his Rajah. One might speak the good word there. It is
possible that he has heard of us and wishes to signify his good-
will.'

'We have not time. We must get into Simla as soon as may be,' his
companion replied. 'For my own part, I wish our reports had been
sent back from Hilas, or even Leh.'

'The English post is better and safer. Remember we are given all
facilities - and Name of God! - they give them to us too! Is it
unbelievable stupidity?'

'It is pride - pride that deserves and will receive punishment.'

'Yes! To fight a fellow-Continental in our game is something. There
is a risk attached, but these people - bah! It is too easy.'

'Pride - all pride, my friend.'

'Now what the deuce is good of Chandernagore being so close to
Calcutta and all,' said Hurree, snoring open-mouthed on the sodden
moss, 'if I cannot understand their French? They talk so
particularly fast! It would have been much better to cut their
beastly throats.'

When he presented himself again he was racked with a headache -
penitent, and volubly afraid that in his drunkenness he might have
been indiscreet. He loved the British Government - it was the source
of all prosperity and honour, and his master at Rampur held the very
same opinion. Upon this the men began to deride him and to quote
past words, till step by step, with deprecating smirks, oily grins,
and leers of infinite cunning, the poor Babu was beaten out of his
defences and forced to speak - truth. When Lurgan was told the tale
later, he mourned aloud that he could not have been in the place of
the stubborn, inattentive coolies, who with grass mats over their
heads and the raindrops puddling in their footprints, waited on the
wea- ther. All the Sahibs of their acquaintance - rough-clad men
joyously returning year after year to their chosen gullies - had
servants and cooks and orderlies, very often hillmen. These Sahibs
travelled without any retinue. Therefore they were poor Sahibs, and
ignorant; for no Sahib in his senses would follow a Bengali's
advice. But the Bengali, appearing from somewhere, had given them
money, and could make shift with their dialect. Used to
comprehensive ill-treatment from their own colour, they suspected a
trap somewhere, and stood by to run if occasion offered.

Then through the new-washed air, steaming with delicious earth-
smells, the Babu led the way down the slopes - walking ahead of the
coolies in pride; walking behind the foreigners in humility. His
thoughts were many and various. The least of them would have
interested his companions beyond words. But he was an agreeable
guide, ever keen to point out the beauties of his royal master's
domain. He peopled the hills with anything thev had a mind to slay -
thar, ibex, or markhor, and bear by Elisha's allowance. He
discoursed of botany and ethnology with unimpeachable inaccuracy,
and his store of local legends - he had been a trusted agent of the
State for fifteen years, remember - was inexhaustible.

'Decidedly this fellow is an original,' said the taller of the two
foreigners. 'He is like the nightmare of a Viennese courier.'

'He represents in little India in transition - the monstrous
hybridism of East and West,' the Russian replied. 'It is we who can
deal with Orientals.'

'He has lost his own country and has not acquired any other. But he
has a most complete hatred of his conquerors. Listen. He confided to
me last night,' said the other.

Under the striped umbrella Hurree Babu was straining ear and brain
to follow the quick-poured French, and keeping both eyes on a kilta
full of maps and documents - an extra-large one with a double red
oil-skin cover. He did not wish to steal anything. He only desired
to know what to steal, and, incidentally, how to get away when he
had stolen it. He thanked all the Gods of Hindustan, and Herbert
Spencer, that there remained some valuables to steal.

On the second dav the road rose steeply to a grass spur above the
forest; and it was here, about sunset, that they came across an aged
lama - but they called him a bonze - sitting cross-legged above a
mysterious chart held down by stones, which he was explaining to a
young man, evidently a neophyte, of singular, though unwashen,
beauty. The striped umbrella had been sighted half a march away, and
Kim had suggested a halt till it came up to them.

'Ha!' said Hurree Babu, resourceful as Puss-in-Boots. 'That is
eminent local holy man. Probably subject of my royal master.'

'What is he doing? It is very curious.'

'He is expounding holy picture - all hand-worked.'

The two men stood bareheaded in the wash of the afternoon sunlight
low across the gold-coloured grass. The sullen coolies, glad of the
check, halted and slid down their loads.

'Look!' said the Frenchman. 'It is like a picture for the birth of a
religion - the first teacher and the first disciple. Is he a
Buddhist?'

'Of some debased kind,' the other answered. 'There are no true
Buddhists among the Hills. But look at the folds of the drapery.
Look at his eyes - how insolent! Why does this make one feel that we
are so young a people?' The speaker struck passionately at a tall
weed. 'We have nowhere left our mark yet. Nowhere! That, do you
understand, is what disquiets me.' He scowled at the placid face,
and the monumental calm of the pose.

'Have patience. We shall make your mark together - we and you young
people. Meantime, draw his picture.'

The Babu advanced loftily; his back out of all keeping with his
deferential speech, or his wink towards Kim.

'Holy One, these be Sahibs. My medicines cured one of a flux, and I
go into Simla to oversee his recovery. They wish to see thy picture
-'

'To heal the sick is always good. This is the Wheel of Life,' said
the lama, 'the same I showed thee in the hut at Ziglaur when the
rain fell.'

'And to hear thee expound it.'

The lama's eyes lighted at the prospect of new listeners. 'To
expound the Most Excellent Way is good. Have they any knowledge of
Hindi, such as had the Keeper of Images?'

'A little, maybe.'

Hereat, simply as a child engrossed with a new game, the lama threw
back his head and began the full-throated invocation of the Doctor
of Divinity ere he opens the full doctrine. The strangers leaned on
their alpenstocks and listened. Kim, squatting humbly, watched the
red sunlight on their faces, and the blend and parting of their long
shadows. They wore un-English leggings and curious girt-in belts
that reminded him hazily of the pictures in a book in St Xavier's
library "The Adventures of a Young Naturalist in Mexico" was its
name. Yes, they looked very like the wonderful M. Sumichrast of that
tale, and very unlike the 'highly unscrupulous folk' of Hurree
Babu's imagining. The coolies, earth-coloured and mute, crouched
reverently some twenty or thirty yards away, and the Babu, the slack
of his thin gear snapping like a marking-flag in the chill breeze,
stood by with an air of happy proprietorship.

'These are the men,' Hurree whispered, as the ritual went on and the
two whites followed the grass-blade sweeping from Hell to Heaven and
back again. 'All their books are in the large kilta with the reddish
top - books and reports and maps - and I have seen a King's letter
that either Hilas or Bunar has written. They guard it most
carefully. They have sent nothing back from Hilas or Leh. That is
sure.'

'Who is with them?'

'Only the beegar-coolies. They have no servants. They are so close
they cook their own food.'

'But what am I to do?'

'Wait and see. Only if any chance comes to me thou wilt know where
to seek for the papers.'

'This were better in Mahbub Ali's hands than a Bengali's,' said Kim
scornfully.

'There are more ways of getting to a sweetheart than butting down a
wall.'

'See here the Hell appointed for avarice and greed. Flanked upon the
one side by Desire and on the other by Weariness.' The lama warmed
to his work, and one of the strangers sketched him in the quick-
fading light.

'That is enough,' the man said at last brusquely. 'I cannot
understand him, but I want that picture. He is a better artist than
I. Ask him if he will sell it.'

'He says "No, sar,"' the Babu replied. The lama, of course, would no
more have parted with his chart to a casual wayfarer than an
archbishop would pawn the holy vessels of his cathedral. All Tibet
is full of cheap reproductions of the Wheel; but the lama was an
artist, as well as a wealthy Abbot in his own place.

'Perhaps in three days, or four, or ten, if I perceive that the
Sahib is a Seeker and of good understanding, I may myself draw him
another. But this was used for the initiation of a novice. Tell him
so, hakim.'

'He wishes it now - for money.'

The lama shook his head slowly and began to fold up the Wheel. The
Russian, on his side, saw no more than an unclean old man haggling
over a dirty piece of paper. He drew out a handful of rupees, and
snatched half-jestingly at the chart,which tore in the lama's grip.
A low murmur of horror went up from the coolies - some of whom were
Spiti men and, by their lights, good Buddhists. The lama rose at the
insult; his hand went to the heavy iron pencase that is the priest's
weapon,and the Babu danced in agony.

'Now you see - you see why I wanted witnesses. They are highly
unscrupulous people. Oh, sar! sar! You must not hit holyman!'

'Chela! He has defiled the Written Word!'

It was too late. Before Kim could ward him off, the Russian struck
the old man full on the face. Next instant he was rolling over and
over downhill with Kim at his throat. The blow had waked every
unknown Irish devil in the boy's blood, and the sudden fall of his
enemy did the rest. The lama dropped to his knees, half-stunned; the
coolies under their loads fled up the hill as fast as plainsmen run
aross the level. They had seen sacrilege unspeakable, and it behoved
them to get away before the Gods and devils of the hills took
vengeance. The Frenchman ran towards the lama, fumbling at his
revolver with some notion of making him a hostage for his companion.
A shower of cutting stones - hillmen are very straight shots - drove
him away, and a coolie from Ao-chung snatched the lama into the
stampede. All came about as swiftly as the sudden mountain-darkness.

'They have taken the baggage and all the guns,' yelled the
Frenchman, firing blindly into the twilight.

'All right, sar! All right! Don't shoot. I go to rescue,' and
Hurree, pounding down the slope, cast himself bodily upon the
delighted and astonished Kim, who was banging his breathless foe's
head against a boulder.

'Go back to the coolies,' whispered the Babu in his ear. 'They have
the baggage. The papers are in the kilta with the red top, but look
through all. Take their papers, and specially the murasla [King's
letter]. Go! The other man comes!'

Kim tore uphill. A revolver-bullet rang on a rock by his side, and
he cowered partridge-wise.

'If you shoot,' shouted Hurree, 'they will descend and annihilate
us. I have rescued the gentleman, sar. This is particularly
dangerous.'

'By Jove!' Kim was thinking hard in English. 'This is dam'-tight
place, but I think it is self-defence.' He felt in his bosom for
Mahbub's gift, and uncertainly - save for a few practice shots in
the Bikanir desert, he had never used the little gun -pulled the
trigger.

'What did I say, sar!' The Babu seemed to be in tears. 'Come down
here and assist to resuscitate. We are all up a tree, I tell you.'

The shots ceased. There was a sound of stumbling feet, and Kim
hurried upward through the gloom, swearing like a cat - or a
country-bred.

'Did they wound thee, chela?' called the lama above him.

'No. And thou?' He dived into a clump of stunted firs.

'Unhurt. Come away. We go with these folk to Shamlegh-under-the-
Snow.'

'But not before we have done justice,' a voice cried. 'I have got
the Sahibs' guns - all four. Let us go down.'

'He struck the Holy One - we saw it! Our cattle will be barren- our
wives will cease to bear! The snows will slide upon us as we go home
... Atop of all other oppression too!'

The little fir-clump filled with clamouring coolies - panic-
stricken, and in their terror capable of anything. The man from
Ao-chung clicked the breech-bolt of his gun impatiently, and made as
to go downhill.

'Wait a little, Holy One; they cannot go far. Wait till I return,'
said he.

'It is this person who has suffered wrong,' said the lama, his hand
over his brow.

'For that very reason,' was the reply.

'If this person overlooks it, your hands are clean. Moreover, ye
acquire merit by obedience.'

'Wait, and we will all go to Shamlegh together,' the man insisted.

For a moment, for just so long as it needs to stuff a cartridge into
a breech-loader, the lama hesitated. Then he rose to his feet, and
laid a finger on the man's shoulder.

'Hast thou heard? I say there shall be no killing - I who was Abbot
of Such-zen. Is it any lust of thine to be re-born as a rat,or a
snake under the eaves - a worm in the belly of the most mean beast?
Is it thy wish to -'

The man from Ao-chung fell to his knees, for the voice boomed like a
Tibetan devil-gong.

'Ai! ai!' cried the Spiti men.'Do not curse us - do not curse him.
It was but his zeal, Holy One! . . . Put down the rifle, fool!'

'Anger on anger! Evil on evil! There will be no killing. Let the
priest-beaters go in bondage to their own acts. Just and sure is the
Wheel, swerving not a hair! They will be born many times - in
torment.' His head drooped, and he leaned heavily on Kim's shoulder.

'I have come near to great evil, chela,' he whispered in that dead
hush under the pines. 'I was tempted to loose the bullet; and truly,
in Tibet there would have been a heavy and a slow death for them ...
He struck me across the face ... upon the flesh ...' He slid to the
ground, breathing heavily, and Kim could hear the over-driven heart
bump and check.

'Have they hurt him to the death?' said the Ao-chung man, while the
others stood mute.

Kim knelt over the body in deadly fear. 'Nay,' he cried
passionately, 'this is only a weakness.' Then he remembered that he
was a white man, with a white man's camp-fittings at his service.
'Open the kiltas! The Sahibs may have a medicine.'

'Oho! Then I know it,' said the Ao-chung man with a laugh. 'Not for
five years was I Yankling Sahib's shikarri without knowing that
medicine. I too have tasted it. Behold!'

He drew from his breast a bottle of cheap whisky - such as is sold
to explorers at Leh - and cleverly forced a little between the
lama's teeth.

'So I did when Yankling Sahib twisted his foot beyond Astor. Aha! I
have already looked into their baskets - but we will make fair
division at Shamlegh. Give him a little more. It is good medicine.
Feel! His heart goes better now. Lay his head down and rub a little
on the chest. If he had waited quietly while I accounted for the
Sahibs this would never have come. But perhaps the Sahibs may chase
us here. Then it would not be wrong to shoot them with their own
guns, heh?'

'One is paid, I think, already,' said Kim between his teeth. 'I
kicked him in the groin as we went downhill. Would I had killed
him!'

'It is well to be brave when one does not live in Rampur,' said one
whose hut lay within a few miles of the Rajah's rickety palace. 'If
we get a bad name among the Sahibs, none will employ us as shikarris
any more.'

'Oh, but these are not Angrezi Sahibs - not merry-minded men like
Fostum Sahib or Yankling Sahib. They are foreigners - they cannot
speak Angrezi as do Sahibs.'

Here the lama coughed and sat up, groping for the rosary.

'There shall be no killing,' he murmured. 'Just is the Wheel! Evil
on evil -'

'Nay, Holy One. We are all here.' The Ao-chung man timidly patted
his feet. 'Except by thy order, no one shall be slain. Rest awhile.
We will make a little camp here, and later, as the moon rises, we go
to Shamlegh-under-the-Snow.'

'After a blow, ' said a Spiti man sententiously, 'it is best to
sleep.'

'There is, as it were, a dizziness at the back of my neck, and a
pinching in it. Let me lay my head on thy lap, chela. I am an old
man, but not free from passion . . . We must think of the Cause of
Things.'

'Give him a blanket. We dare not light a fire lest the Sahibs see.'

'Better get away to Shamlegh. None will follow us to Shamlegh.'

This was the nervous Rampur man.

'I have been Fostum Sahib's shikarri, and I am Yankling Sahib's
shikarri. I should have been with Yankling Sahib now but for this
cursed beegar [the corvee]. Let two men watch below with the guns
lest the Sahibs do more foolishness. I shall not leave this Holy
One.'

They sat down a little apart from the lama, and, after listening
awhile, passed round a water-pipe whose receiver was an old Day and
Martin blacking-bottle. The glow of the red charcoal as it went from
hand to hand lit up the narrow, blinking eyes, the high Chinese
cheek-bones, and the bull-throats that melted away into the dark
duffle folds round the shoulders. They looked like kobolds from some
magic mine - gnomes of the hills in conclave. And while they talked,
the voices of the snow-waters round them diminished one by one as
the night- frost choked and clogged the runnels.'

'How he stood up against us!' said a Spiti man admiring. 'I remember
an old ibex, out Ladakh-way, that Dupont Sahib missed on a shoulder-
shot, seven seasons back, standing up just like him. Dupont Sahib
was a good shikarri.'

'Not as good as Yankling Sahib.' The Ao-chung man took a pull at the
whisky-bottle and passed it over. 'Now hear me - unless any other
man thinks he knows more.'

The challenge was not taken up.

'We go to Shamlegh when the moon rises. There we will fairly divide
the baggage between us. I am content with this new little rifle and
all its cartridges.'

'Are the bears only bad on thy holding? said a mate, sucking at the
pipe.

'No; but musk-pods are worth six rupees apiece now, and thy women
can have the canvas of the tents and some of the cooking-gear. We
will do all that at Shamlegh before dawn. Then we all go our ways,
remembering that we have never seen or taken service with these
Sahibs, who may, indeed, say that we have stolen their baggage.'

'That is well for thee, but what will our Rajah say?'

'Who is to tell him? Those Sahibs, who cannot speak our talk, or
the Babu, who for his own ends gave us money? Will he lead an army
against us? What evidence will remain? That we do not need we shall
throw on Shamlegh-midden, where no man has yet set foot.'

'Who is at Shamlegh this summer?' The place was only a grazing centre
of three or four huts.

'The Woman of Shamlegh. She has no love for Sahibs, as we know. The
others can be pleased with little presents; and here is enough for
us all.' He patted the fat sides of the nearest basket.

'But - but -'

'I have said they are not true Sahibs. All their skins and heads
were bought in the bazar at Leh. I know the marks. I showed them to
ye last march.'

'True. They were all bought skins and heads. Some had even the moth
in them.'

That was a shrewd argument, and the Ao-chung man knew his fellows.

'If the worst comes to the worst, I shall tell Yankling Sahib, who
is a man of a merry mind, and he will laugh. We are not doing any
wrong to any Sahibs whom we know. They are priest-beaters. They
frightened us. We fled! Who knows where we dropped the baggage? Do
ye think Yankling Sahib will permit down-country police to wander
all over the hills, disturbing his game? It is a far cry from Simla
to Chini, and farther from Shamlegh to Shamlegh-midden.'

'So be it, but I carry the big kilta. The basket with the red top
that the Sahibs pack themselves every morning.'

'Thus it is proved,' said the Shamlegh man adroitly, 'that they are
Sahibs of no account. Who ever heard of Fostum Sahib, or Yankling
Sahib, or even the little Peel Sahib that sits up of nights to shoot
serow - I say, who, ever heard of these Sahibs coming into the hills
without a down-country cook, and a bearer, and - and all manner of
well-paid, high-handed and oppressive folk in their tail? How can
they make trouble? What of the kilta?'

'Nothing, but that it is full of the Written Word - books and papers
in which they wrote, and strange instruments, as of worship.'

'Shamlegh-midden will take them all.'

'True! But how if we insult the Sahibs' Gods thereby! I do not like
to handle the Written Word in that fashion. And their brass idols
are beyond my comprehension. It is no plunder for simple hill-folk.'

'The old man still sleeps. Hst! We will ask his chela.' The Ao-chung
man refreshed himself, and swelled with pride of leadership.

'We have here,' he whispered, 'a kilta whose nature we do not know.'

'But I do,' said Kim cautiously. The lama drew breath in natural,
easy sleep, and Kim had been thinking of Hurree's last words. As a
player of the Great Game, he was disposed just then to reverence the
Babu. 'It is a kilta with a red top full of very wonderful things,
not to be handled by fools.'

'I said it; I said it,' cried the bearer of that burden. 'Thinkest
thou it will betray us?'

'Not if it be given to me. I can draw out its magic. Otherwise it
will do great harm.'

'A priest always takes his share.' Whisky was demoralizing the Ao-
chung man.

'It is no matter to me.' Kim answered, with the craft of his mother-
country. 'Share it among you, and see what comes!'

'Not I. I was only jesting. Give the order. There is more than
enough for us all. We go our way from Shamlegh in the dawn.'

They arranged and re-arranged their artless little plans for another
hour, while Kim shivered with cold and pride. The humour of the
situation tickled the Irish and the Oriental in his soul. Here were
the emissaries of the dread Power of the North, very possibly as
great in their own land as Mahbub or Colonel Creighton, suddenly
smitten helpless. One of them, he privately knew, would be lame for
a time. They had made promises to Kings. Tonight they lay out
somewhere below him, chartless, foodless, tentless, gunless - except
for Hurree Babu, guideless. And this collapse of their Great Game
(Kim wondered to whom they would report it), this panicky bolt into
the night, had come about through no craft of Hurree's or
contrivance of Kim's, but simply, beautifully, and inevitably as the
capture of Mahbub's fakir-friends by the zealous young policeman at
Umballa.

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