Produced by Jeffrey Kraus-yao
The Man Who Would be King
By
Rudyard Kipling
Published by Brentano’s at 31 Union Square New York
THE MAN WHO WOULD
BE KING
“Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found worthy.”
The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy
to follow. I have been fellow to a beggar again and again under
circumstances which prevented either of us finding out whether the
other was worthy. I have still to be brother to a Prince, though I once
came near to kinship with what might have been a veritable King and was
promised the reversion of a Kingdom—army, law-courts, revenue and
policy all complete. But, to-day, I greatly fear that my King is dead,
and if I want a crown I must go and hunt it for myself.
The beginning of everything was in a railway train upon the road to
Mhow from Ajmir. There had been a deficit in the Budget, which
necessitated travelling, not Second-class, which is only half as dear
as First-class, but by Intermediate, which is very awful indeed. There
are no cushions in the Intermediate class, and the population are
either Intermediate, which is Eurasian, or native, which for a long
night journey is nasty; or Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated.
Intermediates do not patronize refreshment-rooms. They carry their food
in bundles and pots, and buy sweets from the native sweetmeat-sellers,
and drink the roadside water. That is why in the hot weather
Intermediates are taken out of the carriages dead, and in all weathers
are most properly looked down upon.
My particular Intermediate happened to be empty till I reached
Nasirabad, when a huge gentleman in shirt-sleeves entered, and,
following the custom of Intermediates, passed the time of day. He was a
wanderer and a vagabond like myself, but with an educated taste for
whiskey. He told tales of things he had seen and done, of
out-of-the-way corners of the Empire into which he had penetrated, and
of adventures in which he risked his life for a few days’ food. “If
India was filled with men like you and me, not knowing more than the
crows where they’d get their next day’s rations, it isn’t seventy
millions of revenue the land would be paying—it’s seven hundred
million,” said he; and as I looked at his mouth and chin I was
disposed to agree with him. We talked politics—the politics of
Loaferdom that sees things from the underside where the lath and
plaster is not smoothed off—and we talked postal arrangements because
my friend wanted to send a telegram back from the next station to
Ajmir, which is the turning-off place from the Bombay to the Mhow line
as you travel westward. My friend had no money beyond eight annas which
he wanted for dinner, and I had no money at all, owing to the hitch in
the Budget before mentioned. Further, I was going into a wilderness
where, though I should resume touch with the Treasury, there were no
telegraph offices. I was, therefore, unable to help him in any way.
“We might threaten a Station-master, and make him send a wire on
tick,” said my friend, “but that’d mean inquiries for you and for
me, and I’ve got my hands full these days. Did you say you are
travelling back along this line within any days?”
“Within ten,” I said.
“Can’t you make it eight?” said he. “Mine is rather urgent
business.”
“I can send your telegram 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 23d for Bombay. That means he’ll be
running through Ajmir about the night of the 23d.”
“But I’m going into the Indian Desert,” I explained.
“Well and good,” said he. “You’ll be changing at Marwar
Junction to get into Jodhpore territory—you must do that—and
he’ll be coming through Marwar Junction in the early morning of the
24th by the Bombay Mail. Can you be at Marwar Junction on that time?
’Twon’t be inconveniencing you because I know that there’s
precious few pickings to be got out of these Central India
States—even though you pretend to be correspondent of the
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 compartment. But don’t you be afraid. Slip down the
window, and say:—‘He has gone South for the week,’ and he’ll
tumble. It’s only cutting your time of stay in those parts by two
days. I ask you as a stranger—going to the West,” he said with
emphasis.
“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
ask you to do it—and now I know that I can depend on you doing it. A
second-class carriage at Marwar Junction, and a red-haired man asleep
in it. You’ll be sure to remember. I get out at the next station, and
I must hold on there till he comes or sends me what I want.”
“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. Native States were
created by Providence in order to supply picturesque scenery, tigers
and tall-writing. They are the dark places of the earth, full of
unimaginable cruelty, touching the Railway and the Telegraph on one
side, and, on the other, the days of Harun-al-Raschid. When I left the
train I did business with divers Kings, and in eight days passed
through many changes of life. Sometimes I wore dress-clothes and
consorted with Princes and Politicals, drinking from crystal and eating
from silver. Sometimes I lay out upon the ground and devoured what I
could get, from a plate made of a flapjack, and drank the running
water, and slept under the same rug as my servant. It was all in a
day’s work.
Then I headed for the Great Indian Desert upon the proper date, as I
had promised, and the night Mail set me down at Marwar Junction, where
a funny little, happy-go-lucky, native managed railway runs to
Jodhpore. The Bombay Mail from Delhi makes a short halt at Marwar. She
arrived as I got in, and I had just time to hurry to her platform and
go down the carriages. There was only one second-class on the train. I
slipped the window and looked down upon a flaming red beard, half
covered by a railway rug. That was my man, fast asleep, and I dug him
gently in the ribs. He woke with a grunt and I saw his face in the
light of the lamps. It was a great and shining face.
“Tickets again?” said he.
“No,” said I. “I am to tell you that he is gone South for the
week. He is 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
impudence. 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 “stuck up” one of the little
rat-trap states of Central India or Southern Rajputana, get themselves
into serious difficulties. I therefore took some trouble to describe
them as accurately as I could remember to people who would be
interested in deporting them; and succeeded, so I was later informed,
in having them headed back from the Degumber borders.
Then I became respectable, and returned to an Office where there were
no Kings and no incidents except the daily manufacture of a newspaper.
A newspaper office seems to attract every conceivable sort of person,
to the prejudice of discipline. Zenana-mission ladies arrive, and beg
that the Editor will instantly abandon all his duties to describe a
Christian prize-giving in a back-slum of a perfectly inaccessible
village; Colonels who have been overpassed for commands sit down and
sketch the outline of a series of ten, twelve, or twenty-four leading
articles on Seniority 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
punkah-pulling machines, carriage couplings and unbreakable swords and
axle-trees call with specifications in their pockets and hours at their
disposal; tea-companies enter and elaborate their prospectuses with the
office pens; secretaries of ball-committees clamor to have the glories
of their last dance more fully expounded; strange ladies rustle in and
say:—“I want a hundred lady’s cards printed at once, please,”
which is manifestly part of an Editor’s duty; and every dissolute
ruffian that ever tramped the Grand Trunk Road makes it his business to
ask for employment as a proof-reader. And, all the time, the
telephone-bell is ringing madly, and Kings are being killed on the
Continent, and Empires are saying, “You’re another,” and Mister
Gladstone is calling down brimstone upon the British Dominions, and the
little black copy-boys are whining, “kaa-pi chayha-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 other six months
wherein none ever come to call, and the thermometer walks inch by inch
up to the top of the glass, and the office is darkened to just above
reading light, and the press machines are red-hot of touch, and nobody
writes anything but accounts of amusements in the Hill-stations or
obituary notices. Then the telephone becomes a tinkling terror, because
it tells you of the sudden deaths of men and women that you knew
intimately, and the prickly-heat covers you as with a garment, and you
sit down and write:—“A slight increase of sickness is reported from
the Khuda Janta Khan District. The outbreak is purely sporadic in its
nature, and, thanks to the energetic efforts of the District
authorities, is now almost at an end. It is, however, with deep regret
we record the death, etc.”
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° to almost 84° for almost
half an hour, and in that chill—you have no idea how cold is 84° on
the grass until you begin to pray for it—a very tired man could set
off to sleep ere the heat roused him.
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, was aware of the inconvenience the delay was causing. There was
no special reason beyond the heat and worry to make tension, but, as
the clock-hands crept up to three o’clock and the machines spun their
fly-wheels two and three times to see that all was in order, before I
said the word that would set them off, I could have shrieked aloud.
Then the roar and rattle of the wheels shivered the quiet into little
bits. I rose to go away, but two men in white clothes stood in front of
me. The first one said:—“It’s him!” The second said—“So it
is!” And they both laughed almost as loudly as the machinery roared,
and mopped their foreheads. “We see there was a light burning across
the road and we were sleeping in that ditch there for coolness, and I
said to my friend here, the office is open. Let’s come along and
speak to him as turned us back from the Degumber State,” said the
smaller of the two. He was the man I had met in the Mhow train, and his
fellow was the red-bearded man of Marwar Junction. There was no
mistaking the eyebrows of the one or the beard of the other.
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 favor,
because you did us a bad turn about Degumber.”
I led from the press-room to the stifling office with the maps on the
walls, and the red-haired man rubbed his hands. “That’s something
like,” said he. “This was the proper shop to come to. Now, Sir, let
me introduce to you Brother Peachey Carnehan, that’s him, and Brother
Daniel Dravot, that is 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.” I watched the test. The
men were absolutely sober, so I gave them each a tepid peg.
“Well and good,” said Carnehan of the eyebrows, wiping the froth
from his mustache. “Let me talk now, Dan. We have been all over
India, mostly on foot. We have been boiler-fitters, engine-drivers,
petty contractors, and all that, and we have decided that India isn’t
big enough for such as us.”
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
its the top right-hand corner of Afghanistan, not more than three
hundred miles from Peshawar. They have two and thirty heathen idols
there, and we’ll be the thirty-third. It’s a mountainous country,
and the women of those parts are very beautiful.”
“But that is provided against in the Contrack,” said Carnehan.
“Neither Women nor Liquor, Daniel.”
“And that’s all we know, except that no one has gone there, and
they fight, and in any place where they fight a man who knows how to
drill men can always be a King. We shall go to those parts and say to
any King we find—‘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 book-cases.
“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 Encyclopædia
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 Roberts’s Army.
We’ll have to turn off to the right at Jagdallak through Laghmann
territory. Then we get among the hills—fourteen thousand
feet—fifteen thousand—it will be cold work there, but it don’t
look very far on the map.”
I handed him Wood on the Sources of the Oxus. Carnehan was deep in the
Encyclopædia.
“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 an all-fired lot of
heathens, but this book here says they think they’re related to us
English.”
I smoked while the men pored over Raverty, Wood, the maps and the
Encyclopædia.
“There is no use your waiting,” said Dravot, politely. “It’s
about four o’clock now. We’ll go before six o’clock if you want
to sleep, and we won’t steal any of the papers. Don’t you sit up.
We’re two harmless lunatics, and if you come, to-morrow evening, down
to the Serai we’ll say good-by to you.”
“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 to govern it.”
“Would two lunatics make a Contrack like that!” said Carnehan, with
subdued pride, showing me a greasy half-sheet of note-paper on which
was written the following. I copied it, then and there, as a
curiosity:—
This Contract 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 could 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 four-square sink of humanity where the
strings of camels and horses from the North load and unload. All the
nationalities of Central Asia may be found there, and most of the folk
of India proper. Balkh and Bokhara there meet Bengal and Bombay, and
try to draw eye-teeth. You can buy ponies, turquoises, Persian
pussy-cats, saddle-bags, fat-tailed sheep and musk in the Kumharsen
Serai, and get many strange things for nothing. In the afternoon I went
down there to see whether my friends intended to keep their word or
were lying about drunk.
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 honor 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
feloniously diverted into the hands of other robbers just across the
Border, and whose misfortunes were the laughing-stock of the bazar.
“Ohé, priest, whence come you and whither do you go?”
“From Roum have I come,” shouted the priest, waving his whirligig;
“from Roum, blown by the breath of a hundred devils across the sea! O
thieves, robbers, liars, the blessing of Pir Khan on pigs, dogs, and
perjurers! Who will take the Protected of God to the North to sell
charms that are never still to the Amir? The camels shall not gall, the
sons shall not fall sick, and the wives shall remain faithful while
they are away, of the men who give me place in their caravan. Who will
assist me to slipper the King of the Roos with a golden slipper with a
silver heel? The protection of Pir Kahn be upon his labors!” He
spread out the skirts of his gaberdine and pirouetted between the lines
of tethered horses.
“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. ’Tisn’t for nothing that I’ve been knocking
about the country for fourteen years. Didn’t I do that talk neat?
We’ll hitch on to a caravan at Peshawar till we get to Jagdallak, and
then we’ll see if we can get donkeys for our camels, and strike into
Kafiristan. Whirligigs for the Amir, O Lor! Put your hand under the
camel-bags and tell me what you feel.”
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-by,” said Dravot, giving me his hand cautiously. “It’s
the last time we’ll shake hands with an Englishman these many days.
Shake hands with him, Carnehan,” he cried, as the second camel passed
me.
Carnehan leaned down and shook hands. Then the camels passed away along
the dusty road, and I was left alone to wonder. My eye could detect no
failure in the disguises. The scene in the Serai attested that they
were complete to the native mind. There was just the chance, therefore,
that Carnehan and Dravot would be able to wander through Afghanistan
without detection. But, beyond, they would find death, certain and
awful death.
Ten days later a native friend of mine, giving me the news of the day
from Peshawar, wound up his letter with:—“There has been much
laughter here on account of a certain mad priest who is going in his
estimation to sell petty gauds and insignificant trinkets which he
ascribes as great charms to H. H. the Amir of Bokhara. He passed
through Peshawar and associated himself to the Second Summer caravan
that goes to Kabul. The merchants are pleased because through
superstition they imagine that such mad fellows bring good-fortune.”
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 whiskey. “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 whiskey,” I said, “and take your own time. Tell me all
you can recollect of everything from beginning to end. You got across
the border on your camels, Dravot dressed as a mad priest and you his
servant. Do you remember that?”
“I ain’t mad—yet, but I will be that way soon. Of course I
remember. Keep looking at me, or maybe my words will go all to pieces.
Keep looking at me in my eyes and don’t say anything.”
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 afterwards, but for the Lord’s sake don’t distrack
me. We left with that caravan, me and Dravot, playing all sorts of
antics to amuse the people we were with. Dravot used to make us laugh
in the evenings when all the people was cooking their dinners—cooking
their dinners, and … what did they do then? They lit little fires
with sparks that went into Dravot’s beard, and we all laughed—fit
to die. Little red fires they was, going into Dravot’s big red
beard—so funny.” His eyes left mine and he smiled foolishly.
“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 sheep-skin over his shoulder, and shaved his
head into patterns. He shaved mine, too, and made me wear outrageous
things to look like a heathen. That was in a most mountaineous country,
and our camels couldn’t go along any more because of the mountains.
They were tall and black, and coming home I saw them fight like wild
goats—there are lots of goats in Kafiristan. And these mountains,
they never keep still, no more than the goats. Always fighting they
are, and don’t let you sleep at night.”
“Take some more whiskey,” I said, very slowly. “What did you and
Daniel Dravot do when the camels could go no further because of the
rough roads that led into Kafiristan?”
“What did which do? There was a party called Peachey Taliaferro
Carnehan that was with Dravot. Shall I tell you about him? He died out
there in the cold. Slap from the bridge fell old Peachey, turning and
twisting in the air like a penny whirligig that you can sell to the
Amir—No; they was two for three ha’pence, those whirligigs, or I am
much mistaken and woful sore. And then these camels were no use, and
Peachey said to Dravot—‘For the Lord’s sake, let’s get out of
this before our heads are chopped off,’ and with that they killed the
camels all among the mountains, not having anything in particular to
eat, but first they took off the boxes with the guns and the
ammunition, till two men came along driving four mules. Dravot up and
dances in front of them, singing,—‘Sell me four mules.’ Says the
first man,—‘If you are rich enough to buy, you are rich enough to
rob;’ but before ever he could put his hand to his knife, Dravot
breaks his neck over his knee, and the other party runs away. So
Carnehan loaded the mules with the rifles that was taken off the
camels, and together we starts forward into those bitter cold
mountainous parts, and never a road broader than the back of your
hand.”
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 mountainous and the mules were most
contrary, and the inhabitants was dispersed and solitary. They went up
and up, and down and down, and that other party Carnehan, was imploring
of Dravot not to sing and whistle so loud, for fear of bringing down
the tremenjus avalanches. But Dravot says that if a King couldn’t
sing it wasn’t worth being King, and whacked the mules over the rump,
and never took no heed for ten cold days. We came to a big level valley
all among the mountains, and the mules were near dead, so we killed
them, not having anything in special for them or us to eat. We sat upon
the boxes, and played odd and even with the cartridges that was jolted
out.
“Then ten men with bows and arrows ran down that valley, chasing
twenty men with bows and arrows, and the row was tremenjus. They was
fair men—fairer than you or me—with yellow hair and remarkable well
built. Says Dravot, unpacking the guns—‘This is the beginning of
the business. We’ll fight for the ten men,’ and with that he fires
two rifles at the twenty men and drops one of them at two hundred yards
from the rock where we was sitting. The other men began to run, but
Carnehan and Dravot sits on the boxes picking them off at all ranges,
up and down the valley. Then we goes up to the ten men that had run
across the snow too, and they fires a footy little arrow at us. Dravot
he shoots above their heads and they all falls down flat. Then he walks
over them and kicks them, and then he lifts them up and shakes hands
all around to make them friendly like. He calls them and gives them the
boxes to carry, and waves his hand for all the world as though he was
King already. They takes the boxes and him across the valley and up the
hill into a pine wood on the top, where there was half a dozen big
stone idols. Dravot he goes to the biggest—a fellow they call
Imbra—and lays a rifle and a cartridge at his feet, rubbing his nose
respectful with his own nose, patting him on the head, and saluting in
front of it. He turns round to the men and nods his head, and
says,—‘That’s all right. I’m in the know too, and these old
jim-jams are my friends.’ Then he opens his mouth and points down it,
and when the first man brings him food, he says—‘No;’ and when
the second man brings him food, he says—‘No;’ but when one of the
old priests and the boss of the village brings him food, he
says—‘Yes;’ very haughty, and eats it slow. That was how we came
to our first village, without any trouble, just as though we had
tumbled from the skies. But we tumbled from one of those damned
rope-bridges, you see, and you couldn’t expect a man to laugh much
after that.”
“Take some more whiskey and go on,” I said. “That was the first
village you came into. How did you get to be King?”
“I wasn’t King,” said Carnehan. “Dravot he was the King, and a
handsome man he looked with the gold crown on his head and all. Him and
the other party stayed in that village, and every morning Dravot sat by
the side of old Imbra, and the people came and worshipped. That was
Dravot’s order. Then a lot of men came into the valley, and Carnehan
and Dravot picks them off with the rifles before they knew where they
was, and runs down into the valley and up again the other side, and
finds another village, same as the first one, and the people all falls
down flat on their faces, and Dravot says,—‘Now what is the trouble
between you two villages?’ and the people points to a woman, as fair
as you or me, that was carried off, and Dravot takes her back to the
first village and counts up the dead—eight there was. For each dead
man Dravot pours a little milk on the ground and waves his arms like a
whirligig and, ‘That’s all right,’ says he. Then he and Carnehan
takes the big boss of each village by the arm and walks them down into
the valley, and shows them how to scratch a line with a spear right
down the valley, and gives each a sod of turf from both sides o’ the
line. Then all the people comes down and shouts like the devil and all,
and Dravot says,—‘Go and dig the land, and be fruitful and
multiply,’ which they did, though they didn’t understand. Then we
asks the names of things in their lingo—bread and water and fire and
idols and such, and Dravot leads the priest of each village up to the
idol, and says he must sit there and judge the people, and if anything
goes wrong he is to be shot.
“Next week they was all turning up the land in the valley as quiet as
bees and much prettier, and the priests heard all the complaints and
told Dravot in dumb show what it was about. ‘That’s just the
beginning,’ says Dravot. ‘They think we’re gods.’ He and
Carnehan picks out twenty good men and shows them how to click off a
rifle, and form fours, and advance in line, and they was very pleased
to do so, and clever to see the hang of it. Then he takes out his pipe
and his baccy-pouch and leaves one at one village, and one at the
other, and off we two goes to see what was to be done in the next
valley. That was all rock, and there was a little village there, and
Carnehan says,—‘Send ’em to the old valley to plant,’ and takes
’em there and gives ’em some land that wasn’t took before. They
were a poor lot, and we blooded ’em with a kid before letting ’em
into the new Kingdom. That was to impress the people, and then they
settled down quiet, and Carnehan went back to Dravot who had got into
another valley, all snow and ice and most mountainous. There was no
people there and the Army got afraid, so Dravot shoots one of them, and
goes on till he finds some people in a village, and the Army explains
that unless the people wants to be killed they had better not shoot
their little matchlocks; for they had matchlocks. We makes friends with
the priest and I stays there alone with two of the Army, teaching the
men how to drill, and a thundering big Chief comes across the snow with
kettledrums and horns twanging, because he heard there was a new god
kicking about. Carnehan sights for the brown of the men half a mile
across the snow and wings one of them. Then he sends a message to the
Chief that, unless he wished to be killed, he must come and shake hands
with me and leave his arms behind. The Chief comes alone first, and
Carnehan shakes hands with him and whirls his arms about, same as
Dravot used, and very much surprised that Chief was, and strokes my
eyebrows. Then Carnehan goes alone to the Chief, and asks him in dumb
show if he had an enemy he hated. ‘I have,’ says the Chief. So
Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to
show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manœuvre about
as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big
plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a
village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the
enemy. So we took that village too, and I gives the Chief a rag from my
coat and says, ‘Occupy till I come’: which was scriptural. By way
of a reminder, when me and the Army was eighteen hundred yards away, I
drops a bullet near him standing on the snow, and all the people falls
flat on their faces. Then I sends a letter to Dravot, wherever he be by
land or by sea.”
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 cypher of his own. He could, after the lapse of days
or hours, repeat the sentence which he had reeled up. He had reduced
the alphabet to eleven primitive sounds; and tried to teach me his
method, but failed.
“I sent that letter to Dravot,” said Carnehan; “and told him to
come back because this Kingdom was growing too big for me to handle,
and then I struck for the first valley, to see how the priests were
working. They called the village we took along with the Chief, Bashkai,
and the first village we took, Er-Heb. The priest at Er-Heb was doing
all right, but they had a lot of pending cases about land to show me,
and some men from another village had been firing arrows at night. I
went out and looked for that village and fired four rounds at it from a
thousand yards. That used all the cartridges I cared to spend, and I
waited for Dravot, who had been away two or three months, and I kept my
people quiet.
“One morning I heard the devil’s own noise of drums and horns, and
Dan Dravot marches down the hill with his Army and a tail of hundreds
of men, and, which was the most amazing—a great gold crown on his
head. ‘My Gord, Carnehan,’ says Daniel, ‘this is a tremenjus
business, and we’ve got the whole country as far as it’s worth
having. I am the son of Alexander by Queen Semiramis, and you’re my
younger brother and a god too! It’s the biggest thing we’ve ever
seen. I’ve been marching and fighting for six weeks with the Army,
and every footy little village for fifty miles has come in rejoiceful;
and more than that, I’ve got the key of the whole show, as you’ll
see, and I’ve got a crown for you! I told ’em to make two of ’em
at a place called Shu, where the gold lies in the rock like suet in
mutton. Gold I’ve seen, and turquoise I’ve kicked out of the
cliffs, and there’s garnets in the sands of the river, and here’s a
chunk of amber that a man brought me. Call up all the priests and,
here, take your crown.’
“One of the men opens a black hair bag and I slips the crown on. It
was too small and too heavy, but I wore it for the glory. Hammered gold
it was—five pound weight, like a hoop of a barrel.
“‘Peachey,’ says Dravot, ‘we don’t want to fight no more. The
Craft’s the trick so help me!’ and he brings forward that same
Chief that I left at Bashkai—Billy Fish we called him afterwards,
because he was so like Billy Fish that drove the big tank-engine at
Mach on the Bolan in the old days. ‘Shake hands with him,’ says
Dravot, and I shook hands and nearly dropped, for Billy Fish gave me
the Grip. I said nothing, but tried him with the Fellow Craft Grip. He
answers, all right, and I tried the Master’s Grip, but that was a
slip. ‘A Fellow Craft he is!’ I says to Dan. ‘Does he know the
word?’ ‘He does,’ says Dan, ‘and all the priests know. It’s a
miracle! The Chiefs and the priest can work a Fellow Craft Lodge in a
way that’s very like ours, and they’ve cut the marks on the rocks,
but they don’t know the Third Degree, and they’ve come to find out.
It’s Gord’s Truth. I’ve known these long years that the Afghans
knew up to the Fellow Craft Degree, but this is a miracle. A god and a
Grand-Master of the Craft am I, and a Lodge in the Third Degree I will
open, and we’ll raise the head priests and the Chiefs of the
villages.’
“‘It’s against all the law,’ I says, ‘holding a Lodge without
warrant from any one; and we never held office in any Lodge.’
“‘It’s a master-stroke of policy,’ says Dravot. ‘It means
running the country as easy as a four-wheeled bogy on a down grade. We
can’t stop to inquire now, or they’ll turn against us. I’ve forty
Chiefs at my heel, and passed and raised according to their merit they
shall be. Billet these men on the villages and see that we run up a
Lodge of some kind. The temple of Imbra will do for the Lodge-room. The
women must make aprons as you show them. I’ll hold a levee of Chiefs
tonight and Lodge to-morrow.’
“I was fair rim off my legs, but I wasn’t such a fool as not to see
what a pull this Craft business gave us. I showed the priests’
families how to make aprons of the degrees, but for Dravot’s apron
the blue border and marks was made of turquoise lumps on white hide,
not cloth. We took a great square stone in the temple for the
Master’s chair, and little stones for the officers’ chairs, and
painted the black pavement with white squares, and did what we could to
make things regular.
“At the levee which was held that night on the hillside with big
bonfires, Dravot gives out that him and me were gods and sons of
Alexander, and Past Grand-Masters in the Craft, and was come to make
Kafiristan a country where every man should eat in peace and drink in
quiet, and specially obey us. Then the Chiefs come round to shake
hands, and they was so hairy and white and fair it was just shaking
hands with old friends. We gave them names according as they was like
men we had known in India—Billy Fish, Holly Dilworth, Pikky Kergan
that was Bazar-master when I was at Mhow, and so on, and so on.