Kim

of the Sahibs and then he would see. The Hand of Friendship must in

some way have averted the Whip of Calamity, for six weeks later Kim

seems to have passed an examination in elementary surveying 'with great

credit', his age being fifteen years and eight months. From this date

the record is silent. His name does not appear in the year's batch of

those who entered for the subordinate Survey of India, but against it

stand the words 'removed on appointment.'

Several times in those three years, cast up at the Temple of the

Tirthankars in Benares the lama, a little thinner and a shade yellower,

if that were possible, but gentle and untainted as ever. Sometimes it

was from the South that he came--from south of Tuticorin, whence the

wonderful fire-boats go to Ceylon where are priests who know Pali;

sometimes it was from the wet green West and the thousand

cotton-factory chimneys that ring Bombay; and once from the North,

where he had doubled back eight hundred miles to talk for a day with

the Keeper of the Images in the Wonder House. He would stride to his

cell in the cool, cut marble--the priests of the Temple were good to

the old man,--wash off the dust of travel, make prayer, and depart for

Lucknow, well accustomed now to the way of the rail, in a third-class

carriage. Returning, it was noticeable, as his friend the Seeker

pointed out to the head-priest, that he ceased for a while to mourn the

loss of his River, or to draw wondrous pictures of the Wheel of Life,

but preferred to talk of the beauty and wisdom of a certain mysterious

chela whom no man of the Temple had ever seen. Yes, he had followed

the traces of the Blessed Feet throughout all India. (The Curator has

still in his possession a most marvellous account of his wanderings and

meditations.) There remained nothing more in life but to find the River

of the Arrow. Yet it was shown to him in dreams that it was a matter

not to be undertaken with any hope of success unless that seeker had

with him the one chela appointed to bring the event to a happy issue,

and versed in great wisdom--such wisdom as white-haired Keepers of

Images possess. For example (here came out the snuff-gourd, and the

kindly Jain priests made haste to be silent):

'Long and long ago, when Devadatta was King of Benares--let all listen

to the Tataka!--an elephant was captured for a time by the king's

hunters and ere he broke free, beringed with a grievous legiron. This

he strove to remove with hate and frenzy in his heart, and hurrying up

and down the forests, besought his brother-elephants to wrench it

asunder. One by one, with their strong trunks, they tried and failed.

At the last they gave it as their opinion that the ring was not to be

broken by any bestial power. And in a thicket, new-born, wet with

moisture of birth, lay a day-old calf of the herd whose mother had

died. The fettered elephant, forgetting his own agony, said: "If I do

not help this suckling it will perish under our feet." So he stood

above the young thing, making his legs buttresses against the uneasily

moving herd; and he begged milk of a virtuous cow, and the calf throve,

and the ringed elephant was the calf's guide and defence. Now the days

of an elephant--let all listen to the Tataka!--are thirty-five years to

his full strength, and through thirty-five Rains the ringed elephant

befriended the younger, and all the while the fetter ate into the flesh.

'Then one day the young elephant saw the half-buried iron, and turning

to the elder said: "What is this?" "It is even my sorrow," said he

who had befriended him. Then that other put out his trunk and in the

twinkling of an eyelash abolished the ring, saying: "The appointed

time has come." So the virtuous elephant who had waited temperately

and done kind acts was relieved, at the appointed time, by the very

calf whom he had turned aside to cherish--let all listen to the Tataka!

for the Elephant was Ananda, and the Calf that broke the ring was none

other than The Lord Himself...'

Then he would shake his head benignly, and over the ever-clicking

rosary point out how free that elephant-calf was from the sin of pride.

He was as humble as a chela who, seeing his master sitting in the dust

outside the Gates of Learning, over-leapt the gates (though they were

locked) and took his master to his heart in the presence of the

proud-stomached city. Rich would be the reward of such a master and

such a chela when the time came for them to seek freedom together!

So did the lama speak, coming and going across India as softly as a

bat. A sharp-tongued old woman in a house among the fruit-trees behind

Saharunpore honoured him as the woman honoured the prophet, but his

chamber was by no means upon the wall. In an apartment of the

forecourt overlooked by cooing doves he would sit, while she laid aside

her useless veil and chattered of spirits and fiends of Kulu, of

grandchildren unborn, and of the free-tongued brat who had talked to

her in the resting-place. Once, too, he strayed alone from the Grand

Trunk Road below Umballa to the very village whose priest had tried to

drug him; but the kind Heaven that guards lamas sent him at twilight

through the crops, absorbed and unsuspicious, to the Rissaldar's door.

Here was like to have been a grave misunderstanding, for the old

soldier asked him why the Friend of the Stars had gone that way only

six days before.

'That may not be,' said the lama. 'He has gone back to his own people.'

'He sat in that corner telling a hundred merry tales five nights ago,'

his host insisted. 'True, he vanished somewhat suddenly in the dawn

after foolish talk with my granddaughter. He grows apace, but he is

the same Friend of the Stars as brought me true word of the war. Have

ye parted?'

'Yes--and no,' the lama replied. 'We--we have not altogether parted,

but the time is not ripe that we should take the Road together. He

acquires wisdom in another place. We must wait.'

'All one--but if it were not the boy how did he come to speak so

continually of thee?'

'And what said he?' asked the lama eagerly.

'Sweet words--an hundred thousand--that thou art his father and mother

and such all. Pity that he does not take the Qpeen's service. He is

fearless.'

This news amazed the lama, who did not then know how religiously Kim

kept to the contract made with Mahbub Ali, and perforce ratified by

Colonel Creighton...

'There is no holding the young pony from the game,' said the

horse-dealer when the Colonel pointed out that vagabonding over India

in holiday time was absurd. 'If permission be refused to go and come

as he chooses, he will make light of the refusal. Then who is to catch

him? Colonel Sahib, only once in a thousand years is a horse born so

well fitted for the game as this our colt. And we need men.'

Chapter 10

Your tiercel's too long at hack, Sire. He's no eyass

But a passage-hawk that footed ere we caught him,

Dangerously free o' the air. Faith! were he mine

(As mine's the glove he binds to for his tirings)

I'd fly him with a make-hawk. He's in yarak

Plumed to the very point--so manned, so weathered...

Give him the firmament God made him for,

And what shall take the air of him?

Gow's Watch

Lurgan Sahib did not use as direct speech, but his advice tallied with

Mahbub's; and the upshot was good for Kim. He knew better now than to

leave Lucknow city in native garb, and if Mahbub were anywhere within