umbrella.'
It nodded like a wind-blown harebell down the valleys and round the
mountain sides, and in due time the lama and Kim, who steered by
compass, would overhaul it, vending ointments and powders at eventide.
'We came by such and such a way!' The lama would throw a careless
finger backward at the ridges, and the umbrella would expend itself in
compliments.
They crossed a snowy pass in cold moonlight, when the lama, mildly
chaffing Kim, went through up to his knees, like a Bactrian camel--the
snow-bred, shag-haired sort that came into the Kashmir Serai. They
dipped across beds of light snow and snow-powdered shale, where they
took refuge from a gale in a camp of Tibetans hurrying down tiny sheep,
each laden with a bag of borax. They came out upon grassy shoulders
still snow-speckled, and through forest, to grass anew. For all their
marchings, Kedarnath and Badrinath were not impressed; and it was only
after days of travel that Kim, uplifted upon some insignificant
ten-thousand-foot hummock, could see that a shoulder-knot or horn of
the two great lords had--ever so slightly--changed outline.
At last they entered a world within a world--a valley of leagues where
the high hills were fashioned of a mere rubble and refuse from off the
knees of the mountains. Here one day's march carried them no farther,
it seemed, than a dreamer's clogged pace bears him in a nightmare.
They skirted a shoulder painfully for hours, and, behold, it was but an
outlying boss in an outlying buttress of the main pile! A rounded
meadow revealed itself, when they had reached it, for a vast tableland
running far into the valley. Three days later, it was a dim fold in
the earth to southward.
'Surely the Gods live here!' said Kim, beaten down by the silence and
the appalling sweep and dispersal of the cloud-shadows after rain.
'This is no place for men!'
'Long and long ago,' said the lama, as to himself, 'it was asked of the
Lord whether the world were everlasting. On this the Excellent One
returned no answer ... When I was in Ceylon, a wise Seeker confirmed
that from the gospel which is written in Pali. Certainly, since we
know the way to Freedom, the question were unprofitable, but--look, and
know illusion, chela! These--are the true Hills! They are like my
hills by Suchzen. Never were such hills!'
Above them, still enormously above them, earth towered away towards the
snow-line, where from east to west across hundreds of miles, ruled as
with a ruler, the last of the bold birches stopped. Above that, in
scarps and blocks upheaved, the rocks strove to fight their heads above
the white smother. Above these again, changeless since the world's
beginning, but changing to every mood of sun and cloud, lay out the
eternal snow. They could see blots and blurs on its face where storm
and wandering wullie-wa got up to dance. Below them, as they stood,
the forest slid away in a sheet of blue-green for mile upon mile; below
the forest was a village in its sprinkle of terraced fields and steep
grazing-grounds. Below the village they knew, though a thunderstorm
worried and growled there for the moment, a pitch of twelve or fifteen
hundred feet gave to the moist valley where the streams gather that are
the mothers of young Sutluj.
As usual, the lama had led Kim by cow-track and by-road, far from the
main route along which Hurree Babu, that 'fearful man', had bucketed
three days before through a storm to which nine Englishmen out of ten
would have given full right of way. Hurree was no game-shot--the snick
of a trigger made him change colour--but, as he himself would have
said, he was 'fairly effeecient stalker', and he had raked the huge
valley with a pair of cheap binoculars to some purpose. Moreover, the
white of worn canvas tents against green carries far. Hurree Babu had
seen all he wanted to see when he sat on the threshing-floor of
Ziglaur, twenty miles away as the eagle flies, and forty by road--that
is to say, two small dots which one day were just below the snow-line,
and the next had moved downward perhaps six inches on the hillside.
Once cleaned out and set to the work, his fat bare legs could cover a
surprising amount of ground, and this was the reason why, while Kim and
the lama lay in a leaky hut at Ziglaur till the storm should be
over-past, an oily, wet, but always smiling Bengali, talking the best
of English with the vilest of phrases, was ingratiating himself with
two sodden and rather rheumatic foreigners. He had arrived, revolving
many wild schemes, on the heels of a thunderstorm which had split a
pine over against their camp, and so convinced a dozen or two forcibly
impressed baggage-coolies the day was inauspicious for farther travel
that with one accord they had thrown down their loads and jibbed. They
were subjects of a Hill Rajah who farmed out their services, as is the
custom, for his private gain; and, to add to their personal distresses,
the strange Sahibs had already threatened them with rifles. The most
of them knew rifles and Sahibs of old: they were trackers and
shikarris of the Northern valleys, keen after bear and wild goat; but
they had never been thus treated in their lives. So the forest took
them to her bosom, and, for all oaths and clamour, refused to restore.
There was no need to feign madness or--the Babu had thought of another
means of securing a welcome. He wrung out his wet clothes, slipped on
his patent-leather shoes, opened the blue-and-white umbrella, and with
mincing gait and a heart beating against his tonsils appeared as 'agent
for His Royal Highness, the Rajah of Rampur, gentlemen. What can I do
for you, please?'
The gentlemen were delighted. One was visibly French, the other
Russian, but they spoke English not much inferior to the Babu's. They
begged his kind offices. Their native servants had gone sick at Leh.
They had hurried on because they were anxious to bring the spoils of
the chase to Simla ere the skins grew moth-eaten. They bore a general
letter of introduction (the Babu salaamed to it orientally) to all
Government officials. No, they had not met any other shooting-parties
en route. They did for themselves. They had plenty of supplies. They
only wished to push on as soon as might be. At this he waylaid a
cowering hillman among the trees, and after three minutes' talk and a
little silver (one cannot be economical upon State service, though
Hurree's heart bled at the waste) the eleven coolies and the three
hangers-on reappeared. At least the Babu would be a witness to their
oppression.
'My royal master, he will be much annoyed, but these people are onlee
common people and grossly ignorant. If your honours will kindly
overlook unfortunate affair, I shall be much pleased. In a little
while rain will stop and we can then proceed. You have been shooting,
eh? That is fine performance!'
He skipped nimbly from one kilta to the next, making pretence to adjust
each conical basket. The Englishman is not, as a rule, familiar with
the Asiatic, but he would not strike across the wrist a kindly Babu who
had accidentally upset a kilta with a red oilskin top. On the other
hand, he would not press drink upon a Babu were he never so friendly,
nor would he invite him to meat. The strangers did all these things,
and asked many questions--about women mostly--to which Hurree returned
gay and unstudied answers. They gave him a glass of whitish fluid like
to gin, and then more; and in a little time his gravity departed from