priests was watching us continuous, and I felt uneasy, for I knew
we’d have to fudge the Ritual, and I didn’t know what the men knew.
The old priest was a stranger come in from beyond the village of
Bashkai. The minute Dravot puts on the Master’s apron that the girls
had made for him, the priest fetches a whoop and a howl, and tries to
overturn the stone that Dravot was sitting on. ‘It’s all up now,’
I says. ‘That comes of meddling with the Craft without warrant!’
Dravot never winked an eye, not when ten priests took and tilted over
the Grand-Master’s chair—which was to say the stone of Imbra. The
priest begins rubbing the bottom end of it to clear away the black
dirt, and presently he shows all the other priests the Master’s Mark,
same as was on Dravot’s apron, cut into the stone. Not even the
priests of the temple of Imbra knew it was there. The old chap falls
flat on his face at Dravot’s feet and kisses ’em. ‘Luck again,’
says Dravot, across the Lodge to me, ‘they say it’s the missing
Mark that no one could understand the why of. We’re more than safe
now.’ Then he bangs the butt of his gun for a gavel and says:—‘By
virtue of the authority vested in me by my own right hand and the help
of Peachey, I declare myself Grand-Master of all Freemasonry in
Kafiristan in this the Mother Lodge o’ the country, and King of
Kafiristan equally with Peachey!’ At that he puts on his crown and I
puts on mine—I was doing Senior Warden—and we opens the Lodge in
most ample form. It was a amazing miracle! The priests moved in Lodge
through the first two degrees almost without telling, as if the memory
was coming back to them. After that, Peachey and Dravot raised such as
was worthy—high priests and Chiefs of far-off villages. Billy Fish
was the first, and I can tell you we scared the soul out of him. It was
not in any way according to Ritual, but it served our turn. We didn’t
raise more than ten of the biggest men because we didn’t want to make
the Degree common. And they was clamoring to be raised.
“‘In another six months,’ says Dravot, ‘we’ll hold another
Communication and see how you are working.’ Then he asks them about
their villages, and learns that they was fighting one against the other
and were fair sick and tired of it. And when they wasn’t doing that
they was fighting with the Mohammedans. ‘You can fight those when
they come into our country,’ says Dravot. ‘Tell off every tenth man
of your tribes for a Frontier guard, and send two hundred at a time to
this valley to be drilled. Nobody is going to be shot or speared any
more so long as he does well, and I know that you won’t cheat me
because you’re white people—sons of Alexander—and not like
common, black Mohammedans. You are my people and by God,’ says he,
running off into English at the end—‘I’ll make a damned fine
Nation of you, or I’ll die in the making!’
“I can’t tell all we did for the next six months because Dravot did
a lot I couldn’t see the hang of, and he learned their lingo in a way
I never could. My work was to help the people plough, and now and again
to go out with some of the Army and see what the other villages were
doing, and make ’em throw rope-bridges across the ravines which cut
up the country horrid. Dravot was very kind to me, but when he walked
up and down in the pine wood pulling that bloody red beard of his with
both fists I knew he was thinking plans I could not advise him about,
and I just waited for orders.
“But Dravot never showed me disrespect before the people. They were
afraid of me and the Army, but they loved Dan. He was the best of
friends with the priests and the Chiefs; but any one could come across
the hills with a complaint and Dravot would hear him out fair, and call
four priests together and say what was to be done. He used to call in
Billy Fish from Bashkai, and Pikky Kergan from Shu, and an old Chief we
called Kafuzelum—it was like enough to his real name—and hold
councils with ’em when there was any fighting to be done in small
villages. That was his Council of War, and the four priests of Bashkai,
Shu, Khawak, and Madora was his Privy Council. Between the lot of ’em
they sent me, with forty men and twenty rifles, and sixty men carrying
turquoises, into the Ghorband country to buy those hand-made Martini
rifles, that come out of the Amir’s workshops at Kabul, from one of
the Amir’s Herati regiments that would have sold the very teeth out
of their mouths for turquoises.
“I stayed in Ghorband a month, and gave the Governor the pick of my
baskets for hush-money, and bribed the colonel of the regiment some
more, and, between the two and the tribes-people, we got more than a
hundred hand-made Martinis, a hundred good Kohat Jezails that’ll
throw to six hundred yards, and forty manloads of very bad ammunition
for the rifles. I came back with what I had, and distributed ’em
among the men that the Chiefs sent in to me to drill. Dravot was too
busy to attend to those things, but the old Army that we first made
helped me, and we turned out five hundred men that could drill, and two
hundred that knew how to hold arms pretty straight. Even those
cork-screwed, hand-made guns was a miracle to them. Dravot talked big
about powder-shops and factories, walking up and down in the pine wood
when the winter was coming on.
“‘I won’t make a Nation,’ says he. ‘I’ll make an Empire!
These men aren’t niggers; they’re English! Look at their
eyes—look at their mouths. Look at the way they stand up. They sit on
chairs in their own houses. They’re the Lost Tribes, or something
like it, and they’ve grown to be English. I’ll take a census in the
spring if the priests don’t get frightened. There must be a fair two
million of ’em in these hills. The villages are full o’ little
children. Two million people—two hundred and fifty thousand fighting
men—and all English! They only want the rifles and a little
drilling. Two hundred and fifty thousand men, ready to cut in on
Russia’s right flank when she tries for India! Peachey, man,’ he
says, chewing his beard in great hunks, ‘we shall be
Emperors—Emperors of the Earth! Rajah Brooke will be a suckling to
us. I’ll treat with the Viceroy on equal terms. I’ll ask him to
send me twelve picked English—twelve that I know of—to help us
govern a bit. There’s Mackray, Sergeant-pensioner at
Segowli—many’s the good dinner he’s given me, and his wife a pair
of trousers. There’s Donkin, the Warder of Tounghoo Jail; there’s
hundreds that I could lay my hand on if I was in India. The Viceroy
shall do it for me. I’ll send a man through in the spring for those
men, and I’ll write for a dispensation from the Grand Lodge for what
I’ve done as Grand-Master. That—and all the Sniders that’ll be
thrown out when the native troops in India take up the Martini.
They’ll be worn smooth, but they’ll do for fighting in these hills.
Twelve English, a hundred thousand Sniders run through the Amir’s
country in driblets—I’d be content with twenty thousand in one
year—and we’d be an Empire. When everything was ship-shape, I’d
hand over the crown—this crown I’m wearing now—to Queen Victoria
on my knees, and she’d say:—“Rise up, Sir Daniel Dravot.” Oh,
its big! It’s big, I tell you! But there’s so much to be done in
every place—Bashkai, Khawak, Shu, and everywhere else.’
“‘What is it?’ I says. ‘There are no more men coming in to be
drilled this autumn. Look at those fat, black clouds. They’re
bringing the snow.’
“‘It isn’t that,’ says Daniel, putting his hand very hard on my
shoulder; ‘and I don’t wish to say anything that’s against you,
for no other living man would have followed me and made me what I am as
you have done. You’re a first-class Commander-in-Chief, and the
people know you; but—it’s a big country, and somehow you can’t
help me, Peachey, in the way I want to be helped.’
“‘Go to your blasted priests, then!’ I said, and I was sorry when
I made that remark, but it did hurt me sore to find Daniel talking so
superior when I’d drilled all the men, and done all he told me.
“‘Don’t let’s quarrel, Peachey,’ says Daniel without cursing.
‘You’re a King too, and the half of this Kingdom is yours; but
can’t you see, Peachey, we want cleverer men than us now—three or
four of ‘em that we can scatter about for our Deputies? It’s a
hugeous great State, and I can’t always tell the right thing to do,
and I haven’t time for all I want to do, and here’s the winter
coming on and all.’ He put half his beard into his mouth, and it was
as red as the gold of his crown.
“‘I’m sorry, Daniel,’ says I. ‘I’ve done all I could.
I’ve drilled the men and shown the people how to stack their oats
better, and I’ve brought in those tinware rifles from Ghorband—but
I know what you’re driving at. I take it Kings always feel oppressed
that way.’
“‘There’s another thing too,’ says Dravot, walking up and down.
‘The winter’s coming and these people won’t be giving much
trouble, and if they do we can’t move about. I want a wife.’
“‘For Gord’s sake leave the women alone!’ I says. ‘We’ve
both got all the work we can, though I am a fool. Remember the
Contrack, and keep clear o’ women.’
“‘The Contrack only lasted till such time as we was Kings; and
Kings we have been these months past,’ says Dravot, weighing his
crown in his hand. ‘You go get a wife too, Peachey—a nice,
strappin’, plump girl that’ll keep you warm in the winter.
They’re prettier than English girls, and we can take the pick of
’em. Boil ’em once or twice in hot water, and they’ll come as
fair as chicken and ham.’
“‘Don’t tempt me!’ I says. ‘I will not have any dealings with
a woman not till we are a dam’ side more settled than we are now.
I’ve been doing the work o’ two men, and you’ve been doing the
work o’ three. Let’s lie off a bit, and see if we can get some
better tobacco from Afghan country and run in some good liquor; but no
women.’
“‘Who’s talking o’ women?’ says Dravot. ‘I said wife—a
Queen to breed a King’s son for the King. A Queen out of the
strongest tribe, that’ll make them your blood-brothers, and that’ll
lie by your side and tell you all the people thinks about you and their
own affairs. That’s what I want.’
“‘Do you remember that Bengali woman I kept at Mogul Serai when I
was plate-layer?’ says I. ‘A fat lot o’ good she was to me. She
taught me the lingo and one or two other things; but what happened? She
ran away with the Station Master’s servant and half my month’s pay.
Then she turned up at Dadur Junction in tow of a half-caste, and had
the impidence to say I was her husband—all among the drivers of the
running-shed!’
“‘We’ve done with that,’ says Dravot. ‘These women are whiter
than you or me, and a Queen I will have for the winter months.’
“‘For the last time o’ asking, Dan, do not,’ I says. ‘It’ll
only bring us harm. The Bible says that Kings ain’t to waste their
strength on women, ’specially when they’ve got a new raw Kingdom to
work over.’
“‘For the last time of answering, I will,’ said Dravot, and he
went away through the pine-trees looking like a big red devil. The low
sun hit his crown and beard on one side, and the two blazed like hot
coals.
“But getting a wife was not as easy as Dan thought. He put it before
the Council, and there was no answer till Billy Fish said that he’d
better ask the girls. Dravot damned them all round. ‘What’s wrong
with me?’ he shouts, standing by the idol Imbra. ‘Am I a dog or am
I not enough of a man for your wenches? Haven’t I put the shadow of
my hand over this country? Who stopped the last Afghan raid?’ It was
me really, but Dravot was too angry to remember. ‘Who bought your
guns? Who repaired the bridges? Who’s the Grand-Master of the sign
cut in the stone?’ and he thumped his hand on the block that he used
to sit on in Lodge, and at Council, which opened like Lodge always.
Billy Fish said nothing and no more did the others. ‘Keep your hair
on, Dan,’ said I; ‘and ask the girls. That’s how it’s done at
home, and these people are quite English.’
“‘The marriage of a King is a matter of State,’ says Dan, in a
white-hot rage, for he could feel, I hope, that he was going against
his better mind. He walked out of the Council-room, and the others sat
still, looking at the ground.
“‘Billy Fish,’ says I to the Chief of Bashkai, ‘what’s the
difficulty here? A straight answer to a true friend.’ ‘You know,’
says Billy Fish. ‘How should a man tell you who know everything? How
can daughters of men marry gods or devils? It’s not proper.’
“I remembered something like that in the Bible; but if, after seeing
us as long as they had, they still believed we were gods it wasn’t
for me to undeceive them.
“‘A god can do anything,’ says I. ‘If the King is fond of a
girl he’ll not let her die.’ ‘She’ll have to,’ said Billy
Fish. ‘There are all sorts of gods and devils in these mountains, and
now and again a girl marries one of them and isn’t seen any more.
Besides, you two know the Mark cut in the stone. Only the gods know
that. We thought you were men till you showed the sign of the Master.’
“‘I wished then that we had explained about the loss of the genuine
secrets of a Master-Mason at the first go-off; but I said nothing. All
that night there was a blowing of horns in a little dark temple
half-way down the hill, and I heard a girl crying fit to die. One of
the priests told us that she was being prepared to marry the King.
“‘I’ll have no nonsense of that kind,’ says Dan. ‘I don’t
want to interfere with your customs, but I’ll take my own wife.
‘The girl’s a little bit afraid,’ says the priest. ‘She thinks
she’s going to die, and they are a-heartening of her up down in the
temple.’
“‘Hearten her very tender, then,’ says Dravot, ‘or I’ll
hearten you with the butt of a gun so that you’ll never want to be
heartened again.’ He licked his lips, did Dan, and stayed up walking
about more than half the night, thinking of the wife that he was going
to get in the morning. I wasn’t any means comfortable, for I knew
that dealings with a woman in foreign parts, though you was a crowned
King twenty times over, could not but be risky. I got up very early in
the morning while Dravot was asleep, and I saw the priests talking
together in whispers, and the Chiefs talking together too, and they
looked at me out of the corners of their eyes.
“‘What is up, Fish?’ I says to the Bashkai man, who was wrapped
up in his furs and looking splendid to behold.
“‘I can’t rightly say,’ says he; ‘but if you can induce the
King to drop all this nonsense about marriage, you’ll be doing him
and me and yourself a great service.’
“‘That I do believe,’ says I. ‘But sure, you know, Billy, as
well as me, having fought against and for us, that the King and me are
nothing more than two of the finest men that God Almighty ever made.
Nothing more, I do assure you.’
“‘That may be,’ says Billy Fish, ‘and yet I should be sorry if
it was.’ He sinks his head upon his great fur cloak for a minute and
thinks. ‘King,’ says he, ‘be you man or god or devil, I’ll
stick by you to-day. I have twenty of my men with me, and they will
follow me. We’ll go to Bashkai until the storm blows over.’
“A little snow had fallen in the night, and everything was white
except the greasy fat clouds that blew down and down from the north.
Dravot came out with his crown on his head, swinging his arms and
stamping his feet, and looking more pleased than Punch.
“‘For the last time, drop it, Dan,’ says I in a whisper. ‘Billy
Fish here says that there will be a row.’
“‘A row among my people!’ says Dravot. ‘Not much. Peachy,
you’re a fool not to get a wife too. Where’s the girl?’ says he
with a voice as loud as the braying of a jackass. ‘Call up all the
Chiefs and priests, and let the Emperor see if his wife suits him.’
“There was no need to call any one. They were all there leaning on
their guns and spears round the clearing in the centre of the pine
wood. A deputation of priests went down to the little temple to bring
up the girl, and the horns blew up fit to wake the dead. Billy Fish
saunters round and gets as close to Daniel as he could, and behind him
stood his twenty men with matchlocks. Not a man of them under six feet.
I was next to Dravot, and behind me was twenty men of the regular Army.
Up comes the girl, and a strapping wench she was, covered with silver
and turquoises but white as death, and looking back every minute at the
priests.
“‘She’ll do,’ said Dan, looking her over. ‘What’s to be
afraid of, lass? Come and kiss me.’ He puts his arm round her. She
shuts her eyes, gives a bit of a squeak, and down goes her face in the
side of Dan’s flaming red beard.
“‘The slut’s bitten me!’ says he, clapping his hand to his
neck, and, sure enough, his hand was red with blood. Billy Fish and two
of his matchlock-men catches hold of Dan by the shoulders and drags him
into the Bashkai lot, while the priests howls in their
lingo,—‘Neither god nor devil but a man!’ I was all taken aback,
for a priest cut at me in front, and the Army behind began firing into
the Bashkai men.
“‘God A-mighty!’ says Dan. ‘What is the meaning o’ this?’
“‘Come back! Come away!’ says Billy Fish. ‘Ruin and Mutiny is
the matter. We’ll break for Bashkai if we can.’
“I tried to give some sort of orders to my men—the men o’ the
regular Army—but it was no use, so I fired into the brown of ’em
with an English Martini and drilled three beggars in a line. The valley
was full of shouting, howling creatures, and every soul was shrieking,
‘Not a god nor a devil but only a man!’ The Bashkai troops stuck to
Billy Fish all they were worth, but their matchlocks wasn’t half as
good as the Kabul breech-loaders, and four of them dropped. Dan was
bellowing like a bull, for he was very wrathy; and Billy Fish had a
hard job to prevent him running out at the crowd.
“‘We can’t stand,’ says Billy Fish. ‘Make a run for it down
the valley! The whole place is against us.’ The matchlock-men ran,
and we went down the valley in spite of Dravot’s protestations. He
was swearing horribly and crying out that he was a King. The priests
rolled great stones on us, and the regular Army fired hard, and there
wasn’t more than six men, not counting Dan, Billy Fish, and Me, that
came down to the bottom of the valley alive.
“‘Then they stopped firing and the horns in the temple blew again.
‘Come away—for Gord’s sake come away!’ says Billy Fish.
‘They’ll send runners out to all the villages before ever we get to
Bashkai. I can protect you there, but I can’t do anything now.’
“My own notion is that Dan began to go mad in his head from that
hour. He stared up and down like a stuck pig. Then he was all for
walking back alone and killing the priests with his bare hands; which
he could have done. ‘An Emperor am I,’ says Daniel, ‘and next
year I shall be a Knight of the Queen.
“‘All right, Dan,’ says I; ‘but come along now while there’s
time.’
“‘It’s your fault,’ says he, ‘for not looking after your Army
better. There was mutiny in the midst, and you didn’t know—you
damned engine-driving, plate-laying, missionary’s-pass-hunting
hound!’ He sat upon a rock and called me every foul name he could lay
tongue to. I was too heart-sick to care, though it was all his
foolishness that brought the smash.
“‘I’m sorry, Dan,’ says I, ‘but there’s no accounting for
natives. This business is our Fifty-Seven. Maybe we’ll make something
out of it yet, when we’ve got to Bashkai.’
“‘Let’s get to Bashkai, then,’ says Dan, ‘and, by God, when I
come back here again I’ll sweep the valley so there isn’t a bug in
a blanket left!’
“‘We walked all that day, and all that night Dan was stumping up
and down on the snow, chewing his beard and muttering to himself.
“‘There’s no hope o’ getting clear,’ said Billy Fish. ‘The
priests will have sent runners to the villages to say that you are only
men. Why didn’t you stick on as gods till things was more settled?
I’m a dead man,’ says Billy Fish, and he throws himself down on the
snow and begins to pray to his gods.
“Next morning we was in a cruel bad country—all up and down, no
level ground at all, and no food either. The six Bashkai men looked at
Billy Fish hungry-wise as if they wanted to ask something, but they
said never a word. At noon we came to the top of a flat mountain all
covered with snow, and when we climbed up into it, behold, there was an
army in position waiting in the middle!
“‘The runners have been very quick,’ says Billy Fish, with a
little bit of a laugh. ‘They are waiting for us.’
“Three or four men began to fire from the enemy’s side, and a
chance shot took Daniel in the calf of the leg. That brought him to his
senses. He looks across the snow at the Army, and sees the rifles that
we had brought into the country.
“‘We’re done for,’ says he. ‘They are Englishmen, these
people,—and it’s my blasted nonsense that has brought you to this.
Get back, Billy Fish, and take your men away; you’ve done what you
could, and now cut for it. Carnehan,’ says he, ‘shake hands with me
and go along with Billy. Maybe they won’t kill you. I’ll go and
meet ’em alone. It’s me that did it. Me, the King!’
“‘Go!’ says I. ‘Go to Hell, Dan. I’m with you here. Billy
Fish, you clear out, and we two will meet those folk.’
“‘I’m a Chief,’ says Billy Fish, quite quiet. ‘I stay with
you. My men can go.’
“The Bashkai fellows didn’t wait for a second word but ran off, and
Dan and Me and Billy Fish walked across to where the drums were
drumming and the horns were horning. It was cold-awful cold. I’ve got
that cold in the back of my head now. There’s a lump of it there.”
The punkah-coolies had gone to sleep. Two kerosene lamps were blazing
in the office, and the perspiration poured down my face and splashed on
the blotter as I leaned forward. Carnehan was shivering, and I feared
that his mind might go. I wiped my face, took a fresh grip of the
piteously mangled hands, and said:—“What happened after that?”
The momentary shift of my eyes had broken the clear current.
“What was you pleased to say?” whined Carnehan. “They took them
without any sound. Not a little whisper all along the snow, not though
the King knocked down the first man that set hand on him—not though
old Peachey fired his last cartridge into the brown of ’em. Not a
single solitary sound did those swines make. They just closed up,
tight, and I tell you their furs stunk. There was a man called Billy
Fish, a good friend of us all, and they cut his throat, Sir, then and
there, like a pig; and the King kicks up the bloody snow and
says:—‘We’ve had a dashed fine run for our money. What’s coming
next?’ But Peachey, Peachey Taliaferro, I tell you, Sir, in
confidence as betwixt two friends, he lost his head, Sir. No, he
didn’t neither. The King lost his head, so he did, all along o’ one
of those cunning rope-bridges. Kindly let me have the paper-cutter,
Sir. It tilted this way. They marched him a mile across that snow to a
rope-bridge over a ravine with a river at the bottom. You may have seen
such. They prodded him behind like an ox. ‘Damn your eyes!’ says
the King. ‘D’you suppose I can’t die like a gentleman?’ He
turns to Peachey—Peachey that was crying like a child. ‘I’ve
brought you to this, Peachey,’ says he. ‘Brought you out of your
happy life to be killed in Kafiristan, where you was late
Commander-in-Chief of the Emperor’s forces. Say you forgive me,
Peachey.’ ‘I do,’ says Peachey. ‘Fully and freely do I forgive
you, Dan.’ ‘Shake hands, Peachey,’ says he. ‘I’m going
now.’ Out he goes, looking neither right nor left, and when he was
plumb in the middle of those dizzy dancing ropes, ‘Cut, you
beggars,’ he shouts; and they cut, and old Dan fell, turning round
and round and round, twenty thousand miles, for he took half an hour to
fall till he struck the water, and I could see his body caught on a
rock with the gold crown close beside.
“But do you know what they did to Peachey between two pine-trees?
They crucified him, sir, as Peachey’s hands will show. They used
wooden pegs for his hands and his feet; and he didn’t die. He hung
there and screamed, and they took him down next day, and said it was a
miracle that he wasn’t dead. They took him down—poor old Peachey
that hadn’t done them any harm—that hadn’t done them any…”
He rocked to and fro and wept bitterly, wiping his eyes with the back
of his scarred hands and moaning like a child for some ten minutes.