Kim

'The child will be fortunate all his life. He has seen a great

healing. When I was a child I made clay men and horses.'

'I have made them too. Sir Banas, he comes in the night and makes them

all alive at the back of our kitchen-midden,' piped the child.

'And so thou art not frightened at anything. Eh, Prince?'

'I was frightened because my father was frightened. I felt his arms

shake.'

'Oh, chicken-man!' said Kim, and even the abashed Jat laughed. 'I

have done a healing on this poor trader. He must forsake his gains and

his account-books, and sit by the wayside three nights to overcome the

malignity of his enemies. The Stars are against him.'

'The fewer money-lenders the better, say I; but, Saddhu or no Saddhu,

he should pay for my stuff on his shoulders.'

'So? But that is thy child on thy shoulder--given over to the

burning-ghat not two days ago. There remains one thing more. I did

this charm in thy presence because need was great. I changed his shape

and his soul. None the less, if, by any chance, O man from Jullundur,

thou rememberest what thou hast seen, either among the elders sitting

under the village tree, or in thine own house, or in company of thy

priest when he blesses thy cattle, a murrain will come among the

buffaloes, and a fire in thy thatch, and rats in the corn-bins, and the

curse of our Gods upon thy fields that they may be barren before thy

feet and after thy ploughshare.' This was part of an old curse picked

up from a fakir by the Taksali Gate in the days of Kim's innocence. It

lost nothing by repetition.

'Cease, Holy One! In mercy, cease!' cried the Jat. 'Do not curse the

household. I saw nothing! I heard nothing! I am thy cow!' and he

made to grab at Kim's bare foot beating rhythmically on the carriage

floor. 'But since thou hast been permitted to aid me in the matter of

a pinch of flour and a little opium and such trifles as I have honoured

by using in my art, so will the Gods return a blessing,' and he gave it

at length, to the man's immense relief. It was one that he had learned

from Lurgan Sahib.

The lama stared through his spectacles as he had not stared at the

business of disguisement. 'Friend of the Stars,' he said at last,

'thou hast acquired great wisdom. Beware that it do not give birth to

pride. No man having the Law before his eyes speaks hastily of any

matter which he has seen or encountered.'

'No--no--no, indeed,' cried the farmer, fearful lest the master should

be minded to improve on the pupil. E23, with relaxed mouth, gave

himself up to the opium that is meat, tobacco, and medicine to the

spent Asiatic.

So, in a silence of awe and great miscomprehension, they slid into

Delhi about lamp-lighting time.

Chapter 12

Who hath desired the Sea--the sight of salt-water unbounded?

The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber

wind-hounded?

The sleek-barrelled swell before storm--grey, foamless, enormous,

and growing?

Stark calm on the lap of the Line--or the crazy-eyed hurricane

blowing?

His Sea in no showing the same--his Sea and the same 'neath all

showing--

His Sea that his being fulfils?

So and no otherwise--so and no otherwise hill-men desire their Hills!

The Sea and the Hills.

'I have found my heart again,' said E23, under cover of the platform's

tumult. 'Hunger and fear make men dazed, or I might have thought of

this escape before. I was right. They come to hunt for me. Thou hast

saved my head.'

A group of yellow-trousered Punjab policemen, headed by a hot and

perspiring young Englishman, parted the crowd about the carriages.

Behind them, inconspicuous as a cat, ambled a small fat person who

looked like a lawyer's tout.

'See the young Sahib reading from a paper. My description is in his

hand,' said E23. 'Thev go carriage by carriage, like fisher-folk

netting a pool.'

When the procession reached their compartment, E23 was counting his

beads with a steady jerk of the wrist; while Kim jeered at him for

being so drugged as to have lost the ringed fire-tongs which are the

Saddhu's distinguishing mark. The lama, deep in meditation, stared

straight before him; and the farmer, glancing furtively, gathered up

his belongings.

'Nothing here but a parcel of holy-bolies,' said the Englishman aloud,

and passed on amid a ripple of uneasiness; for native police mean

extortion to the native all India over.

'The trouble now,' whispered E23, 'lies in sending a wire as to the

place where I hid that letter I was sent to find. I cannot go to the

tar-office in this guise.'

'Is it not enough I have saved thy neck?'

'Not if the work be left unfinished. Did never the healer of sick

pearls tell thee so? Comes another Sahib! Ah!'

This was a tallish, sallowish District Superintendent of Police--belt,

helmet, polished spurs and all--strutting and twirling his dark

moustache.

'What fools are these Police Sahibs!' said Kim genially.

E23 glanced up under his eyelids. 'It is well said,' he muttered in a

changed voice. 'I go to drink water. Keep my place.'

He blundered out almost into the Englishman's arms, and was bad-worded

in clumsy Urdu.

'Tum mut? You drunk? You mustn't bang about as though Delhi station

belonged to you, my friend.'

E23, not moving a muscle of his countenance, answered with a stream of

the filthiest abuse, at which Kim naturally rejoiced. It reminded him

of the drummer-boys and the barrack-sweepers at Umballa in the terrible

time of his first schooling.

'My good fool,' the Englishman drawled. 'Nickle-jao! Go back to your

carriage.'

Step by step, withdrawing deferentially and dropping his voice, the

yellow Saddhu clomb back to the carriage, cursing the D.S.P. to

remotest posterity, by--here Kim almost jumped--by the curse of the

Queen's Stone, by the writing under the Queen's Stone, and by an

assortment of Gods with wholly, new names.

'I don't know what you're saying,'--the Englishman flushed

angrily--'but it's some piece of blasted impertinence. Come out of

that!'

E23, affecting to misunderstand, gravely produced his ticket, which the

Englishman wrenched angrily from his hand.

'Oh, zoolum! What oppression!' growled the Jat from his corner. 'All

for the sake of a jest too.' He had been grinning at the freedom of

the Saddhu's tongue. 'Thy charms do not work well today, Holy One!'

The Saddhu followed the policeman, fawning and supplicating. The ruck

of passengers, busy, with their babies and their bundles, had not

noticed the affair. Kim slipped out behind him; for it flashed through

his head that he had heard this angry, stupid Sahib discoursing loud

personalities to an old lady near Umballa three years ago.

'It is well', the Saddhu whispered, jammed in the calling, shouting,

bewildered press--a Persian greyhound between his feet and a cageful of

yelling hawks under charge of a Rajput falconer in the small of his

back. 'He has gone now to send word of the letter which I hid. They

told me he was in Peshawur. I might have known that he is like the

crocodile--always at the other ford. He has saved me from present

calamity, but I owe my life to thee.'

'Is he also one of Us?' Kim ducked under a Mewar camel-driver's greasy

armpit and cannoned off a covey of jabbering Sikh matrons.

'Not less than the greatest. We are both fortunate! I will make

report to him of what thou hast done. I am safe under his protection.'