THE SERVICE EDITION
OF
THE WORKS OF
RUDYARD KIPLING
WEE WILLIE WINKIE
AND OTHER STORIES
BY
RUDYARD KIPLING
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1914
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
Page
The Man who would be King 3
Wee Willie Winkie 67
Baa Baa, Black Sheep 85
His Majesty the King 132
The Drums of the Fore and Aft 151
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 hunt it for myself.
The beginning of everything was in a railway train upon the road to Mhow
from Ajmir. There had been a Deficit in the Budget, which necessitated
travelling, not Second-class, which is only half as dear as First-class,
but by Intermediate, which is very awful indeed. There are no cushions
in the Intermediate class, and the population are either Intermediate,
which is Eurasian, or native, which for a long night journey is nasty,
or Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated. Intermediates do not buy
from refreshment-rooms. They carry their food in bundles and pots, and
buy sweets from the native sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the roadside
water. 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 big black-browed gentleman in shirt-sleeves entered,
and, following the custom of Intermediates, passed the time of day. He
was a wanderer and a vagabond like myself, but with an educated taste
for whisky. He told tales of things he had seen and done, of
out-of-the-way corners of the Empire into which he had penetrated, and
of adventures in which he risked his life for a few days’ food.
‘If India was filled with men like you and me, not knowing more than the
crows where they’d get their next day’s rations, it isn’t seventy
millions of revenue the land would be paying—it’s seven hundred
millions,’ said he; and as I looked at his mouth and chin I was disposed
to agree with him.
We talked politics—the politics of Loaferdom, that sees things from the
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, 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 23rd for Bombay. That means he’ll be running
through Ajmir about the night of the 23rd.’
‘But I’m going into the Indian Desert,’ I explained.
‘Well _and_ good,’ said he. ‘You’ll be changing at Marwar Junction to
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 asked you
to do it—and now I know that I can depend on you doing it. A
Second-class carriage at Marwar Junction, and a red-haired man asleep in
it. You’ll be sure to remember. I get out at the next station, and I
must hold on there till he comes or sends me what I want.’
‘I’ll give the message if I catch him,’ I said, ‘and for the sake of
your Mother as well as mine I’ll give you a word of advice. Don’t try to
run the Central India States just now as the correspondent of the
_Backwoodsman_. There’s a real one knocking about here, and it might
lead to trouble.’
‘Thank you,’ said he simply, ‘and when will the swine be gone? I can’t
starve because he’s ruining my work. I wanted to get hold of the
Degumber Rajah down here about his father’s widow, and give him a jump.’
‘What did he do to his father’s widow, then?’
‘Filled her up with red pepper and slippered her to death as she hung
from a beam. I found that out myself, and I’m the only man that would
dare going into the State to get hush-money for it. They’ll try to
poison me, same as they did in Chortumna when I went on the loot there.
But you’ll give the man at Marwar Junction my message?’
He got out at a little roadside station, and I reflected. I had heard,
more than once, of men personating correspondents of newspapers and
bleeding small Native States with threats of exposure, but I had never
met any of the caste before. They lead a hard life, and generally die
with great suddenness. The Native States have a wholesome horror of
English newspapers which may throw light on their peculiar methods of
government, and do their best to choke correspondents with champagne, or
drive them out of their mind with four-in-hand barouches. They do not
understand that nobody cares a straw for the internal administration of
Native States so long as oppression and crime are kept within decent
limits, and the ruler is not drugged, drunk, or diseased from one end of
the year to the other. They are the dark places of the earth, full of
unimaginable cruelty, touching the Railway and the Telegraph on one
side, and, on the other, the days of Harun-al-Raschid. When I left the
train I did business with divers Kings, and in eight days passed through
many changes of life. Sometimes I wore dress-clothes and consorted with
Princes and Politicals, drinking from crystal and eating from silver.
Sometimes I lay out upon the ground and devoured what I could get, from
a plate made of leaves, and drank the running water, and slept under the
same rug as my servant. It was all in the day’s work.
Then I headed for the Great Indian Desert upon the proper date, as I had
promised, and the night Mail set me down at Marwar Junction, where a
funny, little, happy-go-lucky, native-managed railway runs to Jodhpore.
The Bombay Mail from Delhi makes a short halt at Marwar. She arrived as
I got in, and I had just time to hurry to her platform and go down the
carriages. There was only one Second-class on the train. I slipped the
window and looked down upon a flaming red beard, half covered by a
railway rug. That was my man, fast asleep, and I dug him gently in the
ribs. He woke with a grunt, and I saw his face in the light of the
lamps. It was a great and shining face.
‘Tickets again?’ said he.
‘No,’ said I. ‘I am to tell you that he is gone South for the week. He
has gone South for the week!’
The train had begun to move out. The red man rubbed his eyes. ‘He has
gone South for the week,’ he repeated. ‘Now that’s just like his
impidence. Did he say that I was to give you anything? ’Cause I won’t.’
‘He didn’t,’ I said, and dropped away, and watched the red lights die
out in the dark. It was horribly cold because the wind was blowing off
the sands. I climbed into my own train—not an Intermediate Carriage this
time—and went to sleep.
If the man with the beard had given me a rupee I should have kept it as
a memento of a rather curious affair. But the consciousness of having
done my duty was my only reward.
Later on I reflected that two gentlemen like my friends could not do any
good if they forgathered and personated correspondents of newspapers,
and might, if they black-mailed one of the little rat-trap states of
Central India or Southern Rajputana, get themselves into serious
difficulties. I therefore took some trouble to describe them as
accurately as I could remember to people who would be interested in
deporting them; and succeeded, so I was later informed, in having them
headed back from the Degumber borders.
Then I became respectable, and returned to an Office where there were no
Kings and no incidents outside the daily manufacture of a newspaper. A
newspaper office seems to attract every conceivable sort of person, to
the prejudice of discipline. Zenana-mission ladies arrive, and beg that
the Editor will instantly abandon all his duties to describe a Christian
prize-giving in a back-slum of a perfectly inaccessible village;
Colonels who have been overpassed for command sit down and sketch the
outline of a series of ten, twelve, or twenty-four leading articles on
Seniority _versus_ Selection; Missionaries wish to know why they have
not been permitted to escape from their regular vehicles of abuse and
swear at a brother-missionary under special patronage of the editorial
We; stranded theatrical companies troop up to explain that they cannot
pay for their advertisements, but on their return from New Zealand or
Tahiti will do so with interest; inventors of patent 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 clamour to have the glories of
their last dance more fully described; strange ladies rustle in and say,
‘I want a hundred lady’s cards printed _at once_, please,’ which is
manifestly part of an Editor’s duty; and every dissolute ruffian that
ever tramped the 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 chay-ha-yeh_’ (copy wanted) like tired bees, and most
of the paper is as blank as Modred’s shield.
But that is the amusing part of the year. There are six other months
when none ever comes 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 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 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 get off to sleep ere the
heat roused him.
One Saturday night it was my pleasant duty to put the paper to bed
alone. A King or courtier or a courtesan or a Community was going to die
or get a new Constitution, or do something that was important on the
other side of the world, and the paper was to be held open till the
latest possible minute in order to catch the telegram.
It was a pitchy black night, as stifling as a June night can be, and the
_loo_, the red-hot wind from the westward, was booming among the
tinder-dry trees and pretending that the rain was on its heels. Now and
again a spot of almost boiling water would fall on the dust with the
flop of a frog, but all our weary world knew that was only pretence. It
was a shade cooler in the press-room than the office, so I sat there,
while the type ticked and clicked, and the night-jars hooted at the
windows, and the all but naked compositors wiped the sweat from their
foreheads, and called for water. The thing that was keeping us back,
whatever it was, would not come off, though the _loo_ dropped and the
last type was set, and the whole round earth stood still in the choking
heat, with its finger on its lip, to wait the event. I drowsed, and
wondered whether the telegraph was a blessing, and whether this dying
man, or struggling people, might be aware of the inconvenience the delay
was causing. There was no special reason beyond the heat and worry to
make tension, but, as the clock-hands crept up to three o’clock, and the
machines spun their fly-wheels two or 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 seed there was a light burning across the road, and
we were sleeping in that ditch there for coolness, and I said to my
friend here, The office is open. Let’s come along and speak to him as
turned us back from 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 favour, because we found
out you did us a bad turn about Degumber State.’
I led from the press-room to the stifling office with the maps on the
walls, and the red-haired man rubbed his hands. ‘That’s something like,’
said he. ‘This was the proper shop to come to. Now, Sir, let me
introduce 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 up.’
I watched the test. The men were absolutely sober, so I gave them each a
tepid whisky and soda.
‘Well _and_ good,’ said Carnehan of the eyebrows, wiping the froth from
his moustache. ‘Let me talk now, Dan. We have been all over India,
mostly on foot. We have been boiler-fitters, engine-drivers, petty
contractors, and all that, and we have decided that India isn’t big
enough for such as us.’
They certainly were too big for the office. Dravot’s beard seemed to
fill half the room and Carnehan’s shoulders the other half, as they sat
on the big table. Carnehan continued: ‘The country isn’t half worked out
because they that governs it won’t let you touch it. They spend all
their blessed time in governing it, and you can’t lift a spade, nor chip
a rock, nor look for oil, nor anything like that, without all the
Government saying, “Leave it alone, and let us govern.” Therefore, such
_as_ it is, we will let it alone, and go away to some other place where
a man isn’t crowded and can come to his own. We are not little men, and
there is nothing that we are afraid of except Drink, and we have signed
a Contrack on that. _Therefore_, we are going away to be Kings.’
‘Kings in our own right,’ muttered Dravot.
‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘You’ve been tramping in the sun, and it’s a
very warm night, and hadn’t you better sleep over the notion? Come
to-morrow.’
‘Neither drunk nor sunstruck,’ said Dravot. ‘We have slept over the
notion half a year, and require to see Books and Atlases, and we have
decided that there is only one place now in the world that two strong
men can Sar-a-_whack_. They call it Kafiristan. By my reckoning it’s the
top right-hand comer of Afghanistan, not more than three hundred miles
from Peshawar. They have two-and-thirty heathen idols there, and we’ll
be the thirty-third and fourth. It’s a mountaineous country, and the
women of those parts are very beautiful.’
‘But that is provided against in the Contrack,’ said Carnehan. ‘Neither
Woman nor Liqu-or, Daniel.’
‘And that’s all we know, except that no one has gone there, and they
fight, and in any place where they fight a man who knows how to drill
men can always be a King. We shall go to those parts and say to any King
we find—“D’you want to vanquish your foes?” and we will show him how to
drill men; for that we know better than anything else. Then we will
subvert that King and seize his Throne and establish a Dy-nasty.’
‘You’ll be cut to pieces before you’re fifty miles across the Border,’ I
said. ‘You have to travel through Afghanistan to get to that country.
It’s one mass of mountains and peaks and glaciers, and no Englishman has
been through it. The people are utter brutes, and even if you reached
them you couldn’t do anything.’
‘That’s more like,’ said Carnehan. ‘If you could think us a little more
mad we would be more pleased. We have come to you to know about this
country, to read a book about it, and to be shown maps. We want you to
tell us that we are fools and to show us your books.’ He turned to the
bookcases.
‘Are you at all in earnest?’ I said.
‘A little,’ said Dravot sweetly. ‘As big a map as you have got, even if
it’s all blank where Kafiristan is, and any books you’ve got. We can
read, though we aren’t very educated.’
I uncased the big thirty-two-miles-to-the-inch map of India, and two
smaller Frontier maps, hauled down volume INF-KAN of the _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’ 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 a stinkin’ 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-bye to you.’
‘You _are_ two fools,’ I answered. ‘You’ll be turned back at the
Frontier or cut up the minute you set foot in Afghanistan. Do you want
any money or a recommendation down-country? I can help you to the chance
of work next week.’
‘Next week we shall be hard at work ourselves, thank you,’ said Dravot.
‘It isn’t so easy being a King as it looks. When we’ve got our Kingdom
in going order we’ll let you know, and you can come up and help us to
govern it.’
‘Would two lunatics make a contrack like that?’ said Carnehan, with
subdued pride, showing me a greasy half-sheet of notepaper on which was
written the following. I copied it, then and there, as a curiosity—
_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 would sign a Contrack like that unless we was in
earnest? We have kept away from the two things that make life worth
having.’
‘You won’t enjoy your lives much longer if you are going to try this
idiotic adventure. Don’t set the office on fire,’ I said, ‘and go away
before nine o’clock.’
I left them still poring over the maps and making notes on the back of
the ‘Contrack.’ ‘Be sure to come down to the Serai to-morrow,’ were
their parting words.
The Kumharsen Serai is the great 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 to see
whether my friends intended to keep their word or were lying there
drunk.
A priest attired in fragments of ribbons and rags stalked up to me,
gravely twisting a child’s paper whirligig. Behind him was his servant
bending under the load of a crate of mud toys. The two were loading up
two camels, and the inhabitants of the Serai watched them with shrieks
of laughter.
‘The priest is mad,’ said a horse-dealer to me. ‘He is going up to Kabul
to sell toys to the Amir. He will either be raised to honour or have his
head cut off. He came in here this morning and has been behaving madly
ever since.’
‘The witless are under the protection of God,’ stammered a flat-cheeked
Usbeg in broken Hindi. ‘They foretell future events.’
‘Would they could have foretold that my caravan would have been cut up
by the Shinwaris almost within shadow of the Pass!’ grunted the Eusufzai
agent of a Rajputana trading-house whose goods had been diverted into
the hands of other robbers just across the Border, and whose misfortunes
were the laughing-stock of the 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 Khan be upon his labours!’ 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 memento of your kindness,
_Brother_. You did me a service, yesterday, and that time in Marwar.
Half my Kingdom shall you have, as the saying is.’ I slipped a small
charm compass from my watch-chain and handed it up to the priest.
‘Good-bye,’ said Dravot, giving me hand cautiously. ‘It’s the last time
we’ll shake hands with an Englishman these many days. Shake hands with
him, Carnehan,’ he cried, as the second camel passed me.
Carnehan leaned down and shook hands. Then the camels passed away along
the dusty road, and I was left alone to wonder. My eye could detect no
failure in the disguises. The scene in the Serai proved that they were
complete to the native mind. There was just the chance, therefore, that
Carnehan and Dravot would be able to wander through Afghanistan without
detection. But, beyond, they would find death—certain and awful death.
Ten days later a native correspondent giving me the news of the day from
Peshawar, wound up his letter with: ‘There has been much laughter here
on account of a certain mad priest who is going in his estimation to
sell petty gauds and insignificant trinkets which he ascribes as great
charms to H.H. the Amir of Bokhara. He passed through Peshawar and
associated himself to the Second Summer caravan that goes to Kabul. The
merchants are pleased because through superstition they imagine that
such mad fellows bring good fortune.’
The two, then, were beyond the Border. I would have prayed for them,
but, that night, a real King died in Europe, and demanded an obituary
notice.
* * * * *
The wheel of the world swings through the same phases again and again.
Summer passed and winter thereafter, and came and passed again. The
daily paper continued and I with it, and upon the third summer there
fell a hot night, a night-issue, and a strained waiting for something to
be telegraphed from the other side of the world, exactly as had happened
before. A few great men had died in the past two years, the machines
worked with more clatter, and some of the trees in the office garden
were a few feet taller. But that was all the difference.
I passed over to the press-room, and went through just such a scene as I
have already described. The nervous tension was stronger than it had
been two years before, and I felt the heat more acutely. At three
o’clock I cried, ‘Print off,’ and turned to go, when there crept to my
chair what was left of a man. He was bent into a circle, his head was
sunk between his shoulders, and he moved his feet one over the other
like a bear. I could hardly see whether he walked or crawled—this
rag-wrapped, whining cripple who addressed me by name, crying that he
was come back. ‘Can you give me a drink?’ he whimpered. ‘For the Lord’s
sake give me a drink!’
I went back to the office, the man following with groans of pain, and I
turned up the lamp.
‘Don’t you know me?’ he gasped, dropping into a chair, and he turned his
drawn face, surmounted by a shock of gray hair, to the light.
I looked at him intently. Once before had I seen eyebrows that met over
the nose in an inch-broad black band, but for the life of me I could not
tell where.
‘I don’t know you,’ I said, handing him the whisky. ‘What can I do for
you?’
He took a gulp of the spirit raw, and shivered in spite of the
suffocating heat.
‘I’ve come back,’ he repeated; ‘and I was the King of Kafiristan—me and
Dravot—crowned Kings we was! In this office we settled it—you setting
there and giving us the books. I am Peachey—Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan,
and you’ve been setting here ever since—O Lord!’
I was more than a little astonished, and expressed my feelings
accordingly.
‘It’s true,’ said Carnehan, with a dry cackle, nursing his feet, which
were wrapped in rags. ‘True as gospel. Kings we were, with crowns upon
our heads—me and Dravot—poor Dan—oh, poor, poor Dan, that would never
take advice, not though I begged of him!’
‘Take the whisky,’ I said, ‘and take your own time. Tell me all you can
recollect of everything from beginning to end. You got across the Border
on your camels, Dravot dressed as a mad priest and you his servant. Do
you remember that?’
‘I ain’t mad—yet, but I shall be that way soon. Of course I remember.
Keep looking at me, or maybe my words will go all to pieces. Keep
looking at me in my eyes and don’t say anything.’
I leaned forward and looked into his face as steadily as I could. He
dropped one hand upon the table and I grasped it by the wrist. It was
twisted like a bird’s claw, and upon the back was a ragged red
diamond-shaped scar.
‘No, don’t look there. Look at _me_,’ said Carnehan. ‘That comes
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 sheepskin over his shoulder, and shaved his head into patterns.
He shaved mine, too, and made me wear outrageous things to look like a
heathen. That was in a most mountaineous country, and our camels
couldn’t go along any more because of the mountains. They were tall and
black, and coming home I saw them fight like wild goats—there are lots
of goats in Kafiristan. And these mountains, they never keep still, no
more than the goats. Always fighting they are, and don’t let you sleep
at night.’
‘Take some more whisky,’ I said very slowly. ‘What did you and Daniel
Dravot do when the camels could go no farther because of the rough roads
that led into Kafiristan?’
‘What did which do? There was a party called Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan
that was with Dravot. Shall I tell you about him? He died out there in
the cold. Slap from the bridge fell old Peachey, turning and twisting in
the air like a penny whirligig that you can sell to the Amir.—No; they
was two for three-ha’pence, those whirligigs, or I am much mistaken and
woful sore.... And then these camels were no use, and Peachey said to
Dravot—“For the Lord’s sake let’s get out of this before our heads are
chopped off,” and with that they killed the camels all among the
mountains, not having anything in particular to eat, but first they took
off the boxes with the guns and the ammunition, till two men came along
driving four mules. Dravot up and dances in front of them, singing—“Sell
me four mules.” Says the first man—“If you are rich enough to buy, you
are rich enough to rob”; but before ever he could put his hand to his
knife, Dravot breaks his neck over his knee, and the other party runs
away. So Carnehan loaded the mules with the rifles that was taken off
the camels, and together we starts forward into those bitter cold
mountaineous parts, and never a road broader than the back of your
hand.’
He paused for a moment, while I asked him if he could remember the
nature of the country through which he had journeyed.
‘I am telling you as straight as I can, but my head isn’t as good as it
might be. They drove nails through it to make me hear better how Dravot
died. The country was mountaineous and the mules were most contrary, and
the inhabitants was dispersed and solitary. They went up and up, and
down and down, and that other party, Carnehan, was imploring of Dravot
not to sing and whistle so loud, for fear of bringing down the tremenjus
avalanches. But Dravot says that if a King couldn’t sing it wasn’t worth
being King, and whacked the mules over the rump, and never took no heed
for ten cold days. We came to a big level valley all among the
mountains, and the mules were near dead, so we killed them, not having
anything in special for them or us to eat. We sat upon the boxes, and
played odd and even with the cartridges that was jolted out.
‘Then ten men with bows and arrows ran down that valley, chasing twenty
men with bows and arrows, and the row was tremenjus. They was fair
men—fairer than you or me—with yellow hair and remarkable well built.
Says Dravot, unpacking the guns—“This is the beginning of the business.
We’ll fight for the ten men,” and with that he fires two rifles at the
twenty men, and drops one of them at two hundred yards from the rock
where he was sitting. The other men began to run, but Carnehan and
Dravot sits on the boxes picking them off at all ranges, up and down the
valley. Then we goes up to the ten men that had run across the snow too,
and they fires a footy little arrow at us. Dravot he shoots above their
heads and they all falls down flat. Then he walks over them and kicks
them, and then he lifts them up and shakes hands all round to make them
friendly like. He calls them and gives them the boxes to carry, and
waves his hand for all the world as though he was King already. They
takes the boxes and him across the valley and up the hill into a pine
wood on the top, where there was half-a-dozen big stone idols. Dravot he
goes to the biggest—a fellow they call Imbra—and lays a rifle and a
cartridge at his feet, rubbing his nose 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 all 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 whisky and go on,’ I said. ‘That was the first village
you came into. How did you get to be King?’
‘I wasn’t King,’ said Carnehan. ‘Dravot he was the King, and a handsome
man he looked with the gold crown on his head and all. Him and the other
party stayed in that village, and every morning Dravot sat by the side
of old Imbra, and the people came and worshipped. That was Dravot’s
order. Then a lot of men came into the valley, and Carnehan 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 of the line. Then all the people
comes down and shouts like the devil and all, and Dravot says—“Go and
dig the land, and be fruitful and multiply,” which they did, though they
didn’t understand. Then we asks the names of things in their lingo—bread
and water and fire and idols and such, and Dravot leads the priest of
each village up to the idol, and says he must sit there and judge the
people, and if anything goes wrong he is to be shot.
‘Next week they was all turning up the land in the valley as quiet as
bees and much prettier, and the priests heard all the complaints and
told Dravot in dumb show what it was about. “That’s just the beginning,”
says Dravot “They think we’re Gods.” He and Carnehan picks out twenty
good men and shows them how to click off a rifle, and form fours, and
advance in line, and they was very pleased to do so, and clever to see
the hang of it. Then he takes out his pipe and his baccy-pouch and
leaves one at one village, and one at the other, and off we two goes to
see what was to be done in the next valley. That was all rock, and there
was a little village there, and Carnehan says—“Send ’em to the old
valley to plant,” and takes ’em there, and gives ’em some land that
wasn’t took before. They were a poor lot, and we blooded ’em with a kid
before letting ’em into the new Kingdom. That was to impress the people,
and then they settled down quiet, and Carnehan went back to Dravot who
had got into another valley, all snow and ice and most mountaineous.
There was no people there and the Army got afraid, so Dravot shoots one
of them, and goes on till he finds some people in a village, and the
Army explains that unless the people wants to be killed they had better
not shoot their little matchlocks; for they had matchlocks. We makes
friends with the priest, and I stays there alone with two of the Army,
teaching the men how to drill, and a thundering big Chief comes across
the snow with kettle-drums 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 Chief’s men rushes into a village and takes it;
we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy. So we took that
village too, and I gives the Chief a rag from my coat and says, “Occupy
till I come”; which was scriptural. By way of a reminder, when me and
the Army was eighteen hundred yards away, I drops a bullet near him
standing on the snow, and all the people falls flat on their faces. Then
I sends a letter to Dravot wherever he be by land or by sea.’
At the risk of throwing the creature out of train I interrupted—‘How
could you write a letter up yonder?’
‘The letter?—Oh!—The letter! Keep looking at me between the eyes,
please. It was a string-talk letter, that we’d learned the way of it
from a blind beggar in the Punjab.’
I remember that there had once come to the office a blind man with a
knotted twig and a piece of string which he wound round the twig
according to some cipher of his own. He could, after the lapse of days
or hours, repeat the sentence which he had reeled up. He had reduced the
alphabet to eleven primitive sounds, and tried to teach me his method,
but I could not understand.
‘I sent that letter to Dravot,’ said Carnehan; ‘and told him to come
back because this Kingdom was growing too big for me to handle, and then
I struck for the first valley, to see how the priests were working. They
called the village we took along with the Chief, Bashkai, and the first
village we took, Er-Heb. The priests at Er-Heb was doing all right, but
they had a lot of pending cases about land to show me, and some men from
another village had been firing arrows at night. I went out and looked
for that village, and fired four rounds at it from a thousand yards.
That used all the cartridges I cared to spend, and I waited for Dravot,
who had been away two or three months, and I kept my people quiet.
‘One morning I heard the devil’s own noise of drums and horns, and Dan
Dravot marches down the hill with his Army and a tail of hundreds of
men, and, which was the most amazing, a great gold crown on his head.
“My Gord, Carnehan,” says Daniel, “this is a tremenjus business, and
we’ve got the whole country as far as it’s worth having. I am the son of
Alexander by Queen Semiramis, and you’re my younger brother and a God
too! It’s the biggest thing we’ve ever seen. I’ve been marching and
fighting for six weeks with the Army, and every footy little village for
fifty miles has come in rejoiceful; and more than that, I’ve got the key
of the whole show, as you’ll see, and I’ve got a crown for you! I told
’em to make two of ’em at a place called Shu, where the gold 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 priests can work a
Fellow Craft Lodge in a way that’s very like ours, and they’ve cut the
marks on the rocks, but they don’t know the Third Degree, and they’ve
come to find out. It’s Gord’s Truth. I’ve known these long years that
the Afghans knew up to the Fellow Craft Degree, but this is a miracle. A
God and a Grand-Master of the Craft am I, and a Lodge in the Third
Degree I will open, and we’ll raise the head priests and the Chiefs of
the villages.”
‘“It’s against all the law,” I says, “holding a Lodge without warrant
from any one; and you know we never held office in any Lodge.”
‘“It’s a master-stroke o’ policy,” says Dravot. “It means running the
country as easy as a four-wheeled bogie on a down grade. We can’t stop
to inquire now, or they’ll turn against us. I’ve forty Chiefs at my
heel, and passed and raised according to their merit they shall be.
Billet these men on the villages, and see that we run up a Lodge of some
kind. The temple of Imbra will do for the Lodge-room. The women must
make aprons as you show them. I’ll hold a levee of Chiefs to-night and
Lodge to-morrow.”
‘I was fair run off my legs, but I wasn’t such a fool as not to see what
a pull this Craft business gave us. I showed the priests’ families how
to make aprons of the degrees, but for Dravot’s apron the blue border
and marks was made of turquoise lumps on white hide, not cloth. We took
a great square stone in the temple for the Master’s chair, and little
stones for the 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 were so hairy and white and fair it was just shaking hands with
old friends. We gave them names according as they was like men we had
known in India—Billy Fish, Holly Dilworth, Pikky Kergan, that was
Bazar-master when I was at Mhow, and so on, and so on.