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Chapter 13
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 Kedar- nath 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 Hanle (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. o 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 Hilas, 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
particularly 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
wea- ther. 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 little 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 dav 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 Hilas or Bunar has written. They guard it most
carefully. They have sent nothing back from Hilas 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 particularly
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 corvee]. 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 fakir-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 Hilas, Bunar, 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.'
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