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 clamouring 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 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 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 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 there 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 man-loads 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 shipshape, 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, it’s 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,” said 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, all red like 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 out like 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 a
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 in the
running-shed too!”
‘“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 sun being on
his crown and beard and all.
‘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?” says he,
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 the 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 knows
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 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 say 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 make the King 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. Peachey, 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 lot
of priests went down to the little temple to bring up the girl, and the
horns blew 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 howl 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
breechloaders, 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. He was swearing horrible and crying out
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 God’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-way 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 hand 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.