Kabanata Kabanata 13 · Chapter XIII

. Chapter XIII

Who hath desired the Sea—the immense and contemptuous surges?

The shudder, the stumble, the swerve ere the star-stabbing bowsprit

merges—

The orderly clouds of the Trades and the ridged roaring sapphire

thereunder—

Unheralded cliff-lurking flaws and the head-sails’ low-volleying

thunder?

His Sea in no wonder the same—his Sea and the same in each wonder—

His Sea that his being fulfils?

So and no otherwise—so and no otherwise hill-men desire their hills!

The Sea and the Hills.

“Who goes to the hills goes to his mother.”

They had crossed the Siwaliks and the half-tropical Doon, left

Mussoorie behind them, and headed north along the narrow hill-roads.

Day after day they struck deeper into the huddled mountains, and day

after day Kim watched the lama return to a man’s strength. Among the

terraces of the Doon he had leaned on the boy’s shoulder, ready to

profit by wayside halts. Under the great ramp to Mussoorie he drew

himself together as an old hunter faces a well-remembered bank, and

where he should have sunk exhausted swung his long draperies about him,

drew a deep double-lungful of the diamond air, and walked as only a

hillman can. Kim, plains-bred and plains-fed, sweated and panted

astonished. “This is _my_ country,” said the lama. “Beside Such-zen,

this is flatter than a rice-field”; and with steady, driving strokes

from the loins he strode upwards. But it was on the steep downhill

marches, three thousand feet in three hours, that he went utterly away

from Kim, whose back ached with holding back, and whose big toe was

nigh cut off by his grass sandal-string. Through the speckled shadow of

the great deodar-forests; through oak feathered and plumed with ferns;

birch, ilex, rhododendron, and pine, out on to the bare hillsides’

slippery sunburnt grass, and back into the woodlands’ coolth again,

till oak gave way to bamboo and palm of the valley, the lama swung

untiring.

Glancing back in the twilight at the huge ridges behind him and the

faint, thin line of the road whereby they had come, he would lay out,

with a hillman’s generous breadth of vision, fresh marches for the

morrow; or, halting in the neck of some uplifted pass that gave on

Spiti and Kulu, would stretch out his hands yearningly towards the high

snows of the horizon. In the dawns they flared windy-red above stark

blue, as Kedarnath and Badrinath—kings of that wilderness—took the

first sunlight. All day long they lay like molten silver under the sun,

and at evening put on their jewels again. At first they breathed

temperately upon the travellers, winds good to meet when one crawled

over some gigantic hog’s-back; but in a few days, at a height of nine

or ten thousand feet, those breezes bit; and Kim kindly allowed a

village of hillmen to acquire merit by giving him a rough blanket-coat.

The lama was mildly surprised that anyone should object to the

knife-edged breezes which had cut the years off his shoulders.

“These are but the lower hills, _chela_. There is no cold till we come

to the true Hills.”

“Air and water are good, and the people are devout enough, but the food

is very bad,” Kim growled; “and we walk as though we were mad—or

English. It freezes at night, too.”

“A little, maybe; but only enough to make old bones rejoice in the sun.

We must not always delight in soft beds and rich food.”

“We might at least keep to the road.”

Kim had all a plainsman’s affection for the well-trodden track, not six

feet wide, that snaked among the mountains; but the lama, being

Tibetan, could not refrain from short cuts over spurs and the rims of

gravel-strewn slopes. As he explained to his limping disciple, a man

bred among mountains can prophesy the course of a mountain-road, and

though low-lying clouds might be a hindrance to a short-cutting

stranger, they made no earthly difference to a thoughtful man. Thus,

after long hours of what would be reckoned very fair mountaineering in

civilized countries, they would pant over a saddle-back, sidle past a

few landslips, and drop through forest at an angle of forty-five onto

the road again. Along their track lay the villages of the hillfolk—mud

and earth huts, timbers now and then rudely carved with an axe—clinging

like swallows’ nests against the steeps, huddled on tiny flats half-way

down a three-thousand-foot glissade; jammed into a corner between

cliffs that funnelled and focused every wandering blast; or, for the

sake of summer pasture, cowering down on a neck that in winter would be

ten feet deep in snow. And the people—the sallow, greasy, duffle-clad

people, with short bare legs and faces almost Esquimaux—would flock out

and adore. The Plains—kindly and gentle—had treated the lama as a holy

man among holy men. But the Hills worshipped him as one in the

confidence of all their devils. Theirs was an almost obliterated

Buddhism, overlaid with a nature-worship fantastic as their own

landscapes, elaborate as the terracing of their tiny fields; but they

recognized the big hat, the clicking rosary, and the rare Chinese texts

for great authority; and they respected the man beneath the hat.

“We saw thee come down over the black Breasts of Eua,” said a Betah who

gave them cheese, sour milk, and stone-hard bread one evening. “We do

not use that often—except when calving cows stray in summer. There is a

sudden wind among those stones that casts men down on the stillest day.

But what should such folk care for the Devil of Eua!”

Then did Kim, aching in every fibre, dizzy with looking down, footsore

with cramping desperate toes into inadequate crannies, take joy in the

day’s march—such joy as a boy of St Xavier’s who had won the

quarter-mile on the flat might take in the praises of his friends. The

hills sweated the _ghi_ and sugar suet off his bones; the dry air,

taken sobbingly at the head of cruel passes, firmed and built out his

upper ribs; and the tilted levels put new hard muscles into calf and

thigh.

They meditated often on the Wheel of Life—the more so since, as the

lama said, they were freed from its visible temptations. Except the

grey eagle and an occasional far-seen bear grubbing and rooting on the

hillside; a vision of a furious painted leopard met at dawn in a still

valley devouring a goat; and now and again a bright-coloured bird, they

were alone with the winds and the grass singing under the wind. The

women of the smoky huts over whose roofs the two walked as they

descended the mountains, were unlovely and unclean, wives of many

husbands, and afflicted with goitre. The men were woodcutters when they

were not farmers—meek, and of an incredible simplicity. But that

suitable discourse might not fail, Fate sent them, overtaking and

overtaken upon the road, the courteous Dacca physician, who paid for

his food in ointments good for goitre and counsels that restore peace

between men and women. He seemed to know these hills as well as he knew

the hill dialects, and gave the lama the lie of the land towards Ladakh

and Tibet. He said they could return to the Plains at any moment.

Meantime, for such as loved mountains, yonder road might amuse. This

was not all revealed in a breath, but at evening encounters on the

stone threshing-floors, when, patients disposed of, the doctor would

smoke and the lama snuff, while Kim watched the wee cows grazing on the

housetops, or threw his soul after his eyes across the deep blue gulfs

between range and range. And there were talks apart in the dark woods,

when the doctor would seek herbs, and Kim, as budding physician, must

accompany him.

“You see, Mister O’Hara, I do not know what the deuce-an’ all I shall

do when I find our sporting friends; but if you will kindly keep within

sight of my umbrella, which is fine fixed point for cadastral survey, I

shall feel much better.”

Kim looked out across the jungle of peaks. “This is not my country,

_hakim_. Easier, I think, to find one louse in a bear-skin.”

“Oah, thatt is my strong points. There is no hurry for Hurree. They

were at Leh not so long ago. They said they had come down from the

Karakorum with their heads and horns and all. I am onlee afraid they

will have sent back all their letters and compromising things from Leh

into Russian territoree. Of course they will walk away as far to the

East as possible—just to show that they were never among the Western

States. You do not know the Hills?” He scratched with a twig on the

earth. “Look! They should have come in by Srinagar or Abbottabad.

_Thatt_ is their short road—down the river by Bunji and Astor. But they

have made mischief in the West. So”—he drew a furrow from left to

right—“they march and they march away East to Leh (ah! it is cold

there), and down the Indus to Hanlé (I know that road), and then down,

you see, to Bushahr and Chini valley. That is ascertained by process of

elimination, and also by asking questions from people that I cure so

well. Our friends have been a long time playing about and producing

impressions. So they are well known from far off. You will see me catch

them somewhere in Chini valley. Please keep your eye on the 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 him. He became thickly treasonous, and spoke in terms of

sweeping indecency of a Government which had forced upon him a white

man’s education and neglected to supply him with a white man’s salary.

He babbled tales of oppression and wrong till the tears ran down his

cheeks for the miseries of his land. Then he staggered off, singing

love-songs of Lower Bengal, and collapsed upon a wet tree-trunk. Never

was so unfortunate a product of English rule in India more unhappily

thrust upon aliens.

“They are all just of that pattern,” said one sportsman to the other in

French. “When we get into India proper thou wilt see. I should like to

visit his Rajah. One might speak the good word there. It is possible

that he has heard of us and wishes to signify his good-will.”

“We have not time. We must get into Simla as soon as may be,” his

companion replied. “For my own part, I wish our reports had been sent

back from Hilás, or even Leh.”

“The English post is better and safer. Remember we are given all

facilities—and Name of God!—they give them to us too! Is it

unbelievable stupidity?”

“It is pride—pride that deserves and will receive punishment.”

“Yes! To fight a fellow-Continental in our game is something. There is

a risk attached, but these people—bah! It is too easy.”

“Pride—all pride, my friend.”

“Now what the deuce is good of Chandernagore being so close to Calcutta

and all,” said Hurree, snoring open-mouthed on the sodden moss, “if I

cannot understand their French? They talk so par_tic_ularly fast! It

would have been much better to cut their beastly throats.”

When he presented himself again he was racked with a headache—penitent,

and volubly afraid that in his drunkenness he might have been

indiscreet. He loved the British Government—it was the source of all

prosperity and honour, and his master at Rampur held the very same

opinion. Upon this the men began to deride him and to quote past words,

till step by step, with deprecating smirks, oily grins, and leers of

infinite cunning, the poor Babu was beaten out of his defences and

forced to speak—truth. When Lurgan was told the tale later, he mourned

aloud that he could not have been in the place of the stubborn,

inattentive coolies, who with grass mats over their heads and the

raindrops puddling in their footprints, waited on the weather. All the

Sahibs of their acquaintance—rough-clad men joyously returning year

after year to their chosen gullies—had servants and cooks and

orderlies, very often hillmen. These Sahibs travelled without any

retinue. Therefore they were poor Sahibs, and ignorant; for no Sahib in

his senses would follow a Bengali’s advice. But the Bengali, appearing

from somewhere, had given them money, and could make shift with their

dialect. Used to comprehensive ill-treatment from their own colour,

they suspected a trap somewhere, and stood by to run if occasion

offered.

Then through the new-washed air, steaming with delicious earth-smells,

the Babu led the way down the slopes—walking ahead of the coolies in

pride; walking behind the foreigners in humility. His thoughts were

many and various. The least of them would have interested his

companions beyond words. But he was an agreeable guide, ever keen to

point out the beauties of his royal master’s domain. He peopled the

hills with anything thev had a mind to slay—thar, ibex, or markhor, and

bear by Elisha’s allowance. He discoursed of botany and ethnology with

unimpeachable inaccuracy, and his store of local legends—he had been a

trusted agent of the State for fifteen years, remember—was

inexhaustible.

“Decidedly this fellow is an original,” said the taller of the two

foreigners. “He is like the nightmare of a Viennese courier.”

“He represents _in petto_ India in transition—the monstrous hybridism

of East and West,” the Russian replied. “It is _we_ who can deal with

Orientals.”

“He has lost his own country and has not acquired any other. But he has

a most complete hatred of his conquerors. Listen. He confided to me

last night,” said the other.

Under the striped umbrella Hurree Babu was straining ear and brain to

follow the quick-poured French, and keeping both eyes on a _kilta_ full

of maps and documents—an extra-large one with a double red oil-skin

cover. He did not wish to steal anything. He only desired to know what

to steal, and, incidentally, how to get away when he had stolen it. He

thanked all the Gods of Hindustan, and Herbert Spencer, that there

remained some valuables to steal.

On the second day the road rose steeply to a grass spur above the

forest; and it was here, about sunset, that they came across an aged

lama—but they called him a bonze—sitting cross-legged above a

mysterious chart held down by stones, which he was explaining to a

young man, evidently a neophyte, of singular, though unwashen, beauty.

The striped umbrella had been sighted half a march away, and Kim had

suggested a halt till it came up to them.

“Ha!” said Hurree Babu, resourceful as Puss-in-Boots. “That is eminent

local holy man. Probably subject of my royal master.”

“What is he doing? It is very curious.”

“He is expounding holy picture—_all_ hand-worked.”

The two men stood bareheaded in the wash of the afternoon sunlight low

across the gold-coloured grass. The sullen coolies, glad of the check,

halted and slid down their loads.

“Look!” said the Frenchman. “It is like a picture for the birth of a

religion—the first teacher and the first disciple. Is he a Buddhist?”

“Of some debased kind,” the other answered. “There are no true

Buddhists among the Hills. But look at the folds of the drapery. Look

at his eyes—how insolent! Why does this make one feel that we are so

young a people?” The speaker struck passionately at a tall weed. “We

have nowhere left our mark yet. Nowhere! _That_, do you understand, is

what disquiets me.” He scowled at the placid face, and the monumental

calm of the pose.

“Have patience. We shall make your mark together—we and you young

people. Meantime, draw his picture.”

The Babu advanced loftily; his back out of all keeping with his

deferential speech, or his wink towards Kim.

“Holy One, these be Sahibs. My medicines cured one of a flux, and I go

into Simla to oversee his recovery. They wish to see thy picture—”

“To heal the sick is always good. This is the Wheel of Life,” said the

lama, “the same I showed thee in the hut at Ziglaur when the rain

fell.”

“And to hear thee expound it.”

The lama’s eyes lighted at the prospect of new listeners. “To expound

the Most Excellent Way is good. Have they any knowledge of Hindi, such

as had the Keeper of Images?”

“A little, maybe.”

Hereat, simply as a child engrossed with a new game, the lama threw

back his head and began the full-throated invocation of the Doctor of

Divinity ere he opens the full doctrine. The strangers leaned on their

alpenstocks and listened. Kim, squatting humbly, watched the red

sunlight on their faces, and the blend and parting of their long

shadows. They wore un-English leggings and curious girt-in belts that

reminded him hazily of the pictures in a book in St Xavier’s library

‘_The Adventures of a Young Naturalist in Mexico_’ was its name. Yes,

they looked very like the wonderful M. Sumichrast of that tale, and

very unlike the “highly unscrupulous folk” of Hurree Babu’s imagining.

The coolies, earth-coloured and mute, crouched reverently some twenty

or thirty yards away, and the Babu, the slack of his thin gear snapping

like a marking-flag in the chill breeze, stood by with an air of happy

proprietorship.

“These are the men,” Hurree whispered, as the ritual went on and the

two whites followed the grass-blade sweeping from Hell to Heaven and

back again. “All their books are in the large _kilta_ with the reddish

top—books and reports and maps—and I have seen a King’s letter that

either Hilás or Bunár has written. They guard it most carefully. They

have sent nothing back from Hilás or Leh. That is sure.”

“Who is with them?”

“Only the _beegar_-coolies. They have no servants. They are so close

they cook their own food.”

“But what am I to do?”

“Wait and see. Only if any chance comes to me thou wilt know where to

seek for the papers.”

“This were better in Mahbub Ali’s hands than a Bengali’s,” said Kim

scornfully.

“There are more ways of getting to a sweetheart than butting down a

wall.”

“See here the Hell appointed for avarice and greed. Flanked upon the

one side by Desire and on the other by Weariness.” The lama warmed to

his work, and one of the strangers sketched him in the quick-fading

light.

“That is enough,” the man said at last brusquely. “I cannot understand

him, but I want that picture. He is a better artist than I. Ask him if

he will sell it.”

“He says ‘No, sar,’” the Babu replied. The lama, of course, would no

more have parted with his chart to a casual wayfarer than an archbishop

would pawn the holy vessels of his cathedral. All Tibet is full of

cheap reproductions of the Wheel; but the lama was an artist, as well

as a wealthy Abbot in his own place.

“Perhaps in three days, or four, or ten, if I perceive that the Sahib

is a Seeker and of good understanding, I may myself draw him another.

But _this_ was used for the initiation of a novice. Tell him so,

_hakim_.”

“He wishes it now—for money.”

The lama shook his head slowly and began to fold up the Wheel. The

Russian, on his side, saw no more than an unclean old man haggling over

a dirty piece of paper. He drew out a handful of rupees, and snatched

half-jestingly at the chart, which tore in the lama’s grip. A low

murmur of horror went up from the coolies—some of whom were Spiti men

and, by their lights, good Buddhists. The lama rose at the insult; his

hand went to the heavy iron pencase that is the priest’s weapon, and

the Babu danced in agony.

“Now you see—you see why I wanted witnesses. They are highly

unscrupulous people. Oh, sar! sar! You must _not_ hit holyman!”

“_Chela!_ He has defiled the Written Word!”

It was too late. Before Kim could ward him off, the Russian struck the

old man full on the face. Next instant he was rolling over and over

downhill with Kim at his throat. The blow had waked every unknown Irish

devil in the boy’s blood, and the sudden fall of his enemy did the

rest. The lama dropped to his knees, half-stunned; the coolies under

their loads fled up the hill as fast as plainsmen run aross the level.

They had seen sacrilege unspeakable, and it behoved them to get away

before the Gods and devils of the hills took vengeance. The Frenchman

ran towards the lama, fumbling at his revolver with some notion of

making him a hostage for his companion. A shower of cutting

stones—hillmen are very straight shots—drove him away, and a coolie

from Ao-chung snatched the lama into the stampede. All came about as

swiftly as the sudden mountain-darkness.

“They have taken the baggage and all the guns,” yelled the Frenchman,

firing blindly into the twilight.

“All right, sar! All right! Don’t shoot. I go to rescue,” and Hurree,

pounding down the slope, cast himself bodily upon the delighted and

astonished Kim, who was banging his breathless foe’s head against a

boulder.

“Go back to the coolies,” whispered the Babu in his ear. “They have the

baggage. The papers are in the _kilta_ with the red top, but look

through all. Take their papers, and specially the _murasla_ (King’s

letter). Go! The other man comes!”

Kim tore uphill. A revolver-bullet rang on a rock by his side, and he

cowered partridge-wise.

“If you shoot,” shouted Hurree, “they will descend and annihilate us. I

have rescued the gentleman, sar. This is par_tic_ularly dangerous.”

“By Jove!” Kim was thinking hard in English. “This is dam’-tight place,

but _I_ think it is self-defence.” He felt in his bosom for Mahbub’s

gift, and uncertainly—save for a few practice shots in the Bikanir

desert, he had never used the little gun—pulled the trigger.

“What did I say, sar!” The Babu seemed to be in tears. “Come down here

and assist to resuscitate. We are all up a tree, I tell you.”

The shots ceased. There was a sound of stumbling feet, and Kim hurried

upward through the gloom, swearing like a cat—or a country-bred.

“Did they wound thee, _chela?_” called the lama above him.

“No. And thou?” He dived into a clump of stunted firs.

“Unhurt. Come away. We go with these folk to Shamlegh-under-the-Snow.”

“But not before we have done justice,” a voice cried. “I have got the

Sahibs’ guns—all four. Let us go down.”

“He struck the Holy One—we saw it! Our cattle will be barren—our wives

will cease to bear! The snows will slide upon us as we go home... Atop

of all other oppression too!”

The little fir-clump filled with clamouring coolies—panic-stricken, and

in their terror capable of anything. The man from Ao-chung clicked the

breech-bolt of his gun impatiently, and made as to go downhill.

“Wait a little, Holy One; they cannot go far. Wait till I return,” said

he.

“It is this person who has suffered wrong,” said the lama, his hand

over his brow.

“For that very reason,” was the reply.

“If this person overlooks it, your hands are clean. Moreover, ye

acquire merit by obedience.”

“Wait, and we will all go to Shamlegh together,” the man insisted.

For a moment, for just so long as it needs to stuff a cartridge into a

breech-loader, the lama hesitated. Then he rose to his feet, and laid a

finger on the man’s shoulder.

“Hast thou heard? _I_ say there shall be no killing—I who was Abbot of

Such-zen. Is it any lust of thine to be re-born as a rat, or a snake

under the eaves—a worm in the belly of the most mean beast? Is it thy

wish to—”

The man from Ao-chung fell to his knees, for the voice boomed like a

Tibetan devil-gong.

“Ai! ai!” cried the Spiti men. “Do not curse us—do not curse him. It

was but his zeal, Holy One! ... Put down the rifle, fool!”

“Anger on anger! Evil on evil! There will be no killing. Let the

priest-beaters go in bondage to their own acts. Just and sure is the

Wheel, swerving not a hair! They will be born many times—in torment.”

His head drooped, and he leaned heavily on Kim’s shoulder.

“I have come near to great evil, _chela_,” he whispered in that dead

hush under the pines. “I was tempted to loose the bullet; and truly, in

Tibet there would have been a heavy and a slow death for them ... He

struck me across the face ... upon the flesh ...” He slid to the

ground, breathing heavily, and Kim could hear the over-driven heart

bump and check.

“Have they hurt him to the death?” said the Ao-chung man, while the

others stood mute.

Kim knelt over the body in deadly fear. “Nay,” he cried passionately,

“this is only a weakness.” Then he remembered that he was a white man,

with a white man’s camp-fittings at his service. “Open the _kiltas!_

The Sahibs may have a medicine.”

“Oho! Then I know it,” said the Ao-chung man with a laugh. “Not for

five years was I Yankling Sahib’s _shikarri_ without knowing that

medicine. I too have tasted it. Behold!”

He drew from his breast a bottle of cheap whisky—such as is sold to

explorers at Leh—and cleverly forced a little between the lama’s teeth.

“So I did when Yankling Sahib twisted his foot beyond Astor. Aha! I

have already looked into their baskets—but we will make fair division

at Shamlegh. Give him a little more. It is good medicine. Feel! His

heart goes better now. Lay his head down and rub a little on the chest.

If he had waited quietly while I accounted for the Sahibs this would

never have come. But perhaps the Sahibs may chase us here. Then it

would not be wrong to shoot them with their own guns, heh?”

“One is paid, I think, already,” said Kim between his teeth. “I kicked

him in the groin as we went downhill. Would I had killed him!”

“It is well to be brave when one does not live in Rampur,” said one

whose hut lay within a few miles of the Rajah’s rickety palace. “If we

get a bad name among the Sahibs, none will employ us as _shikarris_ any

more.”

“Oh, but these are not Angrezi Sahibs—not merry-minded men like Fostum

Sahib or Yankling Sahib. They are foreigners—they cannot speak Angrezi

as do Sahibs.”

Here the lama coughed and sat up, groping for the rosary.

“There shall be no killing,” he murmured. “Just is the Wheel! Evil on

evil—”

“Nay, Holy One. We are all here.” The Ao-chung man timidly patted his

feet. “Except by thy order, no one shall be slain. Rest awhile. We will

make a little camp here, and later, as the moon rises, we go to

Shamlegh-under-the-Snow.”

“After a blow,” said a Spiti man sententiously, “it is best to sleep.”

“There is, as it were, a dizziness at the back of my neck, and a

pinching in it. Let me lay my head on thy lap, _chela_. I am an old

man, but not free from passion ... We must think of the Cause of

Things.”

“Give him a blanket. We dare not light a fire lest the Sahibs see.”

“Better get away to Shamlegh. None will follow us to Shamlegh.”

This was the nervous Rampur man.

“I have been Fostum Sahib’s _shikarri_, and I am Yankling Sahib’s

_shikarri_. I should have been with Yankling Sahib now but for this

cursed _beegar_ (the _corvée_). Let two men watch below with the guns

lest the Sahibs do more foolishness. _I_ shall not leave this Holy

One.”

They sat down a little apart from the lama, and, after listening

awhile, passed round a water-pipe whose receiver was an old Day and

Martin blacking-bottle. The glow of the red charcoal as it went from

hand to hand lit up the narrow, blinking eyes, the high Chinese

cheek-bones, and the bull-throats that melted away into the dark duffle

folds round the shoulders. They looked like kobolds from some magic

mine—gnomes of the hills in conclave. And while they talked, the voices

of the snow-waters round them diminished one by one as the night-frost

choked and clogged the runnels.

“How he stood up against us!” said a Spiti man admiring. “I remember an

old ibex, out Ladakh-way, that Dupont Sahib missed on a shoulder-shot,

seven seasons back, standing up just like him. Dupont Sahib was a good

_shikarri_.”

“Not as good as Yankling Sahib.” The Ao-chung man took a pull at the

whisky-bottle and passed it over. “Now hear me—unless any other man

thinks he knows more.”

The challenge was not taken up.

“We go to Shamlegh when the moon rises. There we will fairly divide the

baggage between us. I am content with this new little rifle and all its

cartridges.”

“Are the bears only bad on thy holding? said a mate, sucking at the

pipe.

“No; but musk-pods are worth six rupees apiece now, and thy women can

have the canvas of the tents and some of the cooking-gear. We will do

all that at Shamlegh before dawn. Then we all go our ways, remembering

that we have never seen or taken service with these Sahibs, who may,

indeed, say that we have stolen their baggage.”

“That is well for thee, but what will our Rajah say?”

“Who is to tell him? Those Sahibs, who cannot speak our talk, or the

Babu, who for his own ends gave us money? Will _he_ lead an army

against us? What evidence will remain? That we do not need we shall

throw on Shamlegh-midden, where no man has yet set foot.”

“Who is at Shamlegh this summer?” The place was only a grazing centre

of three or four huts.”

“The Woman of Shamlegh. _She_ has no love for Sahibs, as we know. The

others can be pleased with little presents; and here is enough for us

all.” He patted the fat sides of the nearest basket.

“But—but—”

“I have said they are not true Sahibs. All their skins and heads were

bought in the bazar at Leh. _I_ know the marks. I showed them to ye

last march.”

“True. They were all bought skins and heads. Some had even the moth in

them.”

That was a shrewd argument, and the Ao-chung man knew his fellows.

“If the worst comes to the worst, I shall tell Yankling Sahib, who is a

man of a merry mind, and he will laugh. We are not doing any wrong to

any Sahibs whom we know. _They_ are priest-beaters. They frightened us.

We fled! Who knows where we dropped the baggage? Do ye think Yankling

Sahib will permit down-country police to wander all over the hills,

disturbing his game? It is a far cry from Simla to Chini, and farther

from Shamlegh to Shamlegh-midden.”

“So be it, but I carry the big _kilta_. The basket with the red top

that the Sahibs pack themselves every morning.”

“Thus it is proved,” said the Shamlegh man adroitly, “that they are

Sahibs of no account. Who ever heard of Fostum Sahib, or Yankling

Sahib, or even the little Peel Sahib that sits up of nights to shoot

serow—I say, who, ever heard of these Sahibs coming into the hills

without a down-country cook, and a bearer, and—and all manner of

well-paid, high-handed and oppressive folk in their tail? How can they

make trouble? What of the _kilta?_”

“Nothing, but that it is full of the Written Word—books and papers in

which they wrote, and strange instruments, as of worship.”

“Shamlegh-midden will take them all.”

“True! But how if we insult the Sahibs’ Gods thereby! I do not like to

handle the Written Word in that fashion. And their brass idols are

beyond my comprehension. It is no plunder for simple hill-folk.”

“The old man still sleeps. Hst! We will ask his _chela_.” The Ao-chung

man refreshed himself, and swelled with pride of leadership.

“We have here,” he whispered, “a _kilta_ whose nature we do not know.”

“But I do,” said Kim cautiously. The lama drew breath in natural, easy

sleep, and Kim had been thinking of Hurree’s last words. As a player of

the Great Game, he was disposed just then to reverence the Babu. “It is

a _kilta_ with a red top full of very wonderful things, not to be

handled by fools.”

“I said it; I said it,” cried the bearer of that burden. “Thinkest thou

it will betray us?”

“Not if it be given to me. I can draw out its magic. Otherwise it will

do great harm.”

“A priest always takes his share.” Whisky was demoralizing the Ao-chung

man.

“It is no matter to me.” Kim answered, with the craft of his

mother-country. “Share it among you, and see what comes!”

“Not I. I was only jesting. Give the order. There is more than enough

for us all. We go our way from Shamlegh in the dawn.”

They arranged and re-arranged their artless little plans for another

hour, while Kim shivered with cold and pride. The humour of the

situation tickled the Irish and the Oriental in his soul. Here were the

emissaries of the dread Power of the North, very possibly as great in

their own land as Mahbub or Colonel Creighton, suddenly smitten

helpless. One of them, he privately knew, would be lame for a time.

They had made promises to Kings. Tonight they lay out somewhere below

him, chartless, foodless, tentless, gunless—except for Hurree Babu,

guideless. And this collapse of their Great Game (Kim wondered to whom

they would report it), this panicky bolt into the night, had come about

through no craft of Hurree’s or contrivance of Kim’s, but simply,

beautifully, and inevitably as the capture of Mahbub’s _faquir_-friends

by the zealous young policeman at Umballa.

“They are there—with nothing; and, by Jove, it is cold! I am here with

all their things. Oh, they will be angry! I am sorry for Hurree Babu.”

Kim might have saved his pity, for though at that moment the Bengali

suffered acutely in the flesh, his soul was puffed and lofty. A mile

down the hill, on the edge of the pine-forest, two half-frozen men—one

powerfully sick at intervals—were varying mutual recriminations with

the most poignant abuse of the Babu, who seemed distraught with terror.

They demanded a plan of action. He explained that they were very lucky

to be alive; that their coolies, if not then stalking them, had passed

beyond recall; that the Rajah, his master, was ninety miles away, and,

so far from lending them money and a retinue for the Simla journey,

would surely cast them into prison if he heard that they had hit a

priest. He enlarged on this sin and its consequences till they bade him

change the subject. Their one hope, said he, was unostentatious flight

from village to village till they reached civilization; and, for the

hundredth time dissolved in tears, he demanded of the high stars why

the Sahibs “had beaten holy man”.

Ten steps would have taken Hurree into the creaking gloom utterly

beyond their reach—to the shelter and food of the nearest village,

where glib-tongued doctors were scarce. But he preferred to endure

cold, belly-pinch, bad words, and occasional blows in the company of

his honoured employers. Crouched against a tree-trunk, he sniffed

dolefully.

“And have you thought,” said the uninjured man hotly, “what sort of

spectacle we shall present wandering through these hills among these

aborigines?”

Hurree Babu had thought of little else for some hours, but the remark

was not to his address.

“We cannot wander! I can hardly walk,” groaned Kim’s victim.

“Perhaps the holy man will be merciful in loving-kindness, sar,

otherwise—”

“I promise myself a peculiar pleasure in emptying my revolver into that

young bonze when next we meet,” was the unchristian answer.

“Revolvers! Vengeance! Bonzes!” Hurree crouched lower. The war was

breaking out afresh. “Have you no consideration for our loss? The

baggage! The baggage!” He could hear the speaker literally dancing on

the grass. “Everything we bore! Everything we have secured! Our gains!

Eight months’ work! Do you know what that means? ‘Decidedly it is we

who can deal with Orientals!’ Oh, you have done well.”

They fell to it in several tongues, and Hurree smiled. Kim was with the

_kiltas_, and in the _kiltas_ lay eight months of good diplomacy. There

was no means of communicating with the boy, but he could be trusted.

For the rest, Hurree could so stage-manage the journey through the

hills that Hilás, Bunár, and four hundred miles of hill-roads should

tell the tale for a generation. Men who cannot control their own

coolies are little respected in the Hills, and the hillman has a very

keen sense of humour.

“If I had done it myself,” thought Hurree, “it would not have been

better; and, by Jove, now I think of it, of course I arranged it

myself. How quick I have been! Just when I ran downhill I thought it!

Thee outrage was accidental, but onlee me could have worked it—ah—for

all it was dam’-well worth. Consider the moral effect upon these

ignorant peoples! No treaties—no papers—no written documents at all—and

_me_ to interpret for them. How I shall laugh with the Colonel! I wish

I had their papers also: but you cannot occupy two places in space

simultaneously. Thatt is axiomatic.”