The Man Who Would Be King

"Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found worthy."

The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy to
follow. I have been fellow to a beggar again and again under circumstances
which prevented either of us finding out whether the other was worthy. I
have still to be brother to a Prince, though I once came near to kinship
with what might have been a veritable King and was promised the reversion
of a Kingdom--army, law-courts, revenue and policy all complete. But,
to-day, I greatly fear that my King is dead, and if I want a crown I must
go and hunt it for myself.

The beginning of everything was in a railway train upon the road to Mhow
from Ajmir. There had been a Deficit in the Budget, which necessitated
traveling, not Second-class, which is only half as dear as First-class,
but by Intermediate, which is very awful indeed. There are no cushions in
the Intermediate class, and the population are either Intermediate, which
is Eurasian, or native, which for a long night journey is nasty, or
Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated. Intermediates do not
patronize refreshment-rooms. They carry their food in bundles and pots,
and buy sweets from the native sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the roadside
water. That is why in the hot weather Intermediates are taken out of the
carriages dead, and in all weathers are most properly looked down upon.

My particular Intermediate happened to be empty till I reached Nasirabad,
when a huge gentleman in shirt-sleeves entered, and, following the custom
of Intermediates, passed the time of day. He was a wanderer and a vagabond
like myself, but with an educated taste for whiskey. He told tales of
things he had seen and done, of out-of-the-way corners of the Empire into
which he had penetrated, and of adventures in which he risked his life for
a few days' food. "If India was filled with men like you and me, not
knowing more than the crows where they'd get their next day's rations, it
isn't seventy millions of revenue the land would be paying--it's seven
hundred millions," said he: and as I looked at his mouth and chin I was
disposed to agree with him. We talked politics--the politics of Loaferdom
that sees things from the underside where the lath and plaster is not
smoothed off--and we talked postal arrangements because my friend wanted
to send a telegram back from the next station to Ajmir, which is the
turning-off place from the Bombay to the Mhow line as you travel westward.
My friend had no money beyond eight annas which he wanted for dinner, and
I had no money at all, owing to the hitch in the Budget before mentioned.
Further, I was going into a wilderness where, though I should resume touch
with the Treasury, there were no telegraph offices. I was, therefore,
unable to help him in any way.

"We might threaten a Station-master, and make him send a wire on tick,"
said my friend, "but that'd mean inquiries for you and for me, and I've
got my hands full these days. Did you say you are traveling back along
this line within any days?"

"Within ten," I said.

"Can't you make it eight?" said he. "Mine is rather urgent business."

"I can send your telegram within ten days if that will serve you," I said.

"I couldn't trust the wire to fetch him now I think of it. It's this way.
He leaves Delhi on the 23d for Bombay. That means he'll be running through
Ajmir about the night of the 23d."

"But I'm going into the Indian Desert," I explained.

"Well _and_ good," said he. "You'll be changing at Marwar Junction to get
into Jodhpore territory--you must do that--and he'll be coming through
Marwar Junction in the early morning of the 24th by the Bombay Mail. Can
you be at Marwar Junction on that time? 'Twon't be inconveniencing you
because I know that there's precious few pickings to be got out of these
Central India States--even though you pretend to be correspondent of the
_Backwoodsman_."

"Have you ever tried that trick?" I asked.

"Again and again, but the Residents find you out, and then you get
escorted to the Border before you've time to get your knife into them. But
about my friend here. I _must_ give him a word o' mouth to tell him what's
come to me or else he won't know where to go. I would take it more than
kind of you if you was to come out of Central India in time to catch him
at Marwar junction, and say to him:--'He has gone South for the week.'
He'll know what that means. He's a big man with a red beard, and a great
swell he is. You'll find him sleeping like a gentleman with all his
luggage round him in a Second-class compartment. But don't you be afraid.
Slip down the window, and say:--'He has gone South for the week,' and
he'll tumble. It's only cutting your time of stay in those parts by two
days. I ask you as a stranger--going to the West," he said, with emphasis.

"Where have _you_ come from?" said I.

"From the East," said he, "and I am hoping that you will give him the
message on the Square--for the sake of my Mother as well as your own."

Englishmen are not usually softened by appeals to the memory of their
mothers, but for certain reasons, which will be fully apparent, I saw fit
to agree.

"It's more than a little matter," said he, "and that's why I ask you to do
it--and now I know that I can depend on you doing it. A Second-class
carriage at Marwar Junction, and a red-haired man asleep in it. You'll be
sure to remember. I get out at the next station, and I must hold on there
till he comes or sends me what I want."

"I'll give the message if I catch him," I said, "and for the sake of your
Mother as well as mine I'll give you a word of advice. Don't try to run
the Central India States just now as the correspondent of the
_Backwoodsman_. There's a real one knocking about here, and it might lead
to trouble."

"Thank you," said he, simply, "and when will the swine be gone? I can't
starve because he's ruining my work. I wanted to get hold of the Degumber
Rajah down here about his father's widow, and give him a jump."

"What did he do to his father's widow then?"

"Filled her up with red pepper and slippered her to death as she hung from
a beam. I found that out myself and I'm the only man that would dare going
into the State to get hush-money for it. They'll try to poison me, same as
they did in Chortumna when I went on the loot there. But you'll give the
man at Marwar Junction my message?"

He got out at a little roadside station, and I reflected. I had heard,
more than once, of men personating correspondents of newspapers and
bleeding small Native States with threats of exposure, but I had never met
any of the caste before. They lead a hard life, and generally die with
great suddenness. The Native States have a wholesome horror of English
newspapers, which may throw light on their peculiar methods of government,
and do their best to choke correspondents with champagne, or drive them
out of their mind with four-in-hand barouches. They do not understand that
nobody cares a straw for the internal administration of Native States so
long as oppression and crime are kept within decent limits, and the ruler
is not drugged, drunk, or diseased from one end of the year to the other.
Native States were created by Providence in order to supply picturesque
scenery, tigers, and tall-writing. They are the dark places of the earth,
full of unimaginable cruelty, touching the Railway and the Telegraph on
one side, and, on the other, the days of Harun-al-Raschid. When I left the
train I did business with divers Kings, and in eight days passed through
many changes of life. Sometimes I wore dress-clothes and consorted with
Princes and Politicals, drinking from crystal and eating from silver.
Sometimes I lay out upon the ground and devoured what I could get, from a
plate made of a flapjack, and drank the running water, and slept under the
same rug as my servant. It was all in the day's work.

Then I headed for the Great Indian Desert upon the proper date, as I had
promised, and the night Mail set me down at Marwar Junction, where a funny
little, happy-go-lucky, native-managed railway runs to Jodhpore. The
Bombay Mail from Delhi makes a short halt at Marwar. She arrived as I got
in, and I had just time to hurry to her platform and go down the
carriages. There was only one Second-class on the train. I slipped the
window and looked down upon a flaming red beard, half covered by a railway
rug. That was my man, fast asleep, and I dug him gently in the ribs. He
woke with a grunt and I saw his face in the light of the lamps. It was a
great and shining face.

"Tickets again?" said he.

"No," said I. "I am to tell you that he is gone South for the week. He is
gone South for the week!"

The train had begun to move out. The red man rubbed his eyes. "He has gone
South for the week," he repeated. "Now that's just like his impidence. Did
he say that I was to give you anything?--'Cause I won't."

"He didn't," I said, and dropped away, and watched the red lights die out
in the dark. It was horribly cold because the wind was blowing off the
sands. I climbed into my own train--not an Intermediate Carriage this
time--and went to sleep.

If the man with the beard had given me a rupee I should have kept it as a
memento of a rather curious affair. But the consciousness of having done
my duty was my only reward.

Later on I reflected that two gentlemen like my friends could not do any
good if they foregathered and personated correspondents of newspapers, and
might, if they "stuck up" one of the little rat-trap states of Central
India or Southern Rajputana, get themselves into serious difficulties. I
therefore took some trouble to describe them as accurately as I could
remember to people who would be interested in deporting them: and
succeeded, so I was later informed, in having them headed back from the
Degumber borders.

Then I became respectable, and returned to an Office where there were no
Kings and no incidents except the daily manufacture of a newspaper. A
newspaper office seems to attract every conceivable sort of person, to the
prejudice of discipline. Zenana-mission ladies arrive, and beg that the
Editor will instantly abandon all his duties to describe a Christian
prize-giving in a back-slum of a perfectly inaccessible village; Colonels
who have been overpassed for commands sit down and sketch the outline of a
series of ten, twelve, or twenty-four leading articles on Seniority
_versus_ Selection; missionaries wish to know why they have not been
permitted to escape from their regular vehicles of abuse and swear at a
brother-missionary under special patronage of the editorial We; stranded
theatrical companies troop up to explain that they cannot pay for their
advertisements, but on their return from New Zealand or Tahiti will do so
with interest; inventors of patent punkah-pulling machines, carriage
couplings and unbreakable swords and axle-trees call with specifications
in their pockets and hours at their disposal; tea-companies enter and
elaborate their prospectuses with the office pens; secretaries of
ball-committees clamor to have the glories of their last dance more fully
expounded; strange ladies rustle in and say:--"I want a hundred lady's
cards printed _at once_, please," which is manifestly part of an Editor's
duty; and every dissolute ruffian that ever tramped the Grand Trunk Road
makes it his business to ask for employment as a proofreader. And, all the
time, the telephone-bell is ringing madly, and Kings are being killed on
the Continent, and Empires are saying--"You're another," and Mister
Gladstone is calling down brimstone upon the British Dominions, and the
little black copy-boys are whining, "_kaa-pi-chay-ha-yeh_" (copy wanted)
like tired bees, and most of the paper is as blank as Modred's shield,

But that is the amusing part of the year. There are six other months
wherein none ever come to call, and the thermometer walks inch by inch up
to the top of the glass, and the office is darkened to just above
reading-light, and the press machines are red-hot of touch, and nobody
writes anything but accounts of amusements in the Hill-stations or
obituary notices. Then the telephone becomes a tinkling terror, because it
tells you of the sudden deaths of men and women that you knew intimately,
and the prickly-heat covers you as with a garment, and you sit down and
write:--"A slight increase of sickness is reported from the Khuda Janta
Khan District. The outbreak is purely sporadic in its nature, and, thanks
to the energetic efforts of the District authorities, is now almost at an
end. It is, however, with deep regret we record the death, etc."

Then the sickness really breaks out, and the less recording and reporting
the better for the peace of the subscribers. But the Empires and the Kings
continue to divert themselves as selfishly as before, and the Foreman
thinks that a daily paper really ought to come out once in twenty-four
hours, and all the people at the Hill-stations in the middle of their
amusements say:--"Good gracious! Why can't the paper be sparkling? I'm
sure there's plenty going on up here."

That is the dark half of the moon, and, as the advertisements say, "must
be experienced to be appreciated."

It was in that season, and a remarkably evil season, that the paper began
running the last issue of the week on Saturday night, which is to say
Sunday morning, after the custom of a London paper. This was a great
convenience, for immediately after the paper was put to bed, the dawn
would lower the thermometer from 96 to almost 84 for half an hour, and
in that chill--you have no idea how cold is 84 on the grass until you
begin to pray for it--a very tired man could set off to sleep ere the heat
roused him.

One Saturday night it was my pleasant duty to put the paper to bed alone.
A King or courtier or a courtesan or a community was going to die or get a
new Constitution, or do something that was important on the other side of
the world, and the paper was to be held open till the latest possible
minute in order to catch the telegram. It was a pitchy black night, as
stifling as a June night can be, and the _loo_, the red-hot wind from the
westward, was booming among the tinder-dry trees and pretending that the
rain was on its heels. Now and again a spot of almost boiling water would
fall on the dust with the flop of a frog, but all our weary world knew
that was only pretence. It was a shade cooler in the press-room than the
office, so I sat there, while the type ticked and clicked, and the
night-jars hooted at the windows, and the all but naked compositors wiped
the sweat from their foreheads and called for water. The thing that was
keeping us back, whatever it was, would not come off, though the _loo_
dropped and the last type was set, and the whole round earth stood still
in the choking heat, with its finger on its lip, to wait the event. I
drowsed, and wondered whether the telegraph was a blessing, and whether
this dying man, or struggling people was aware of the inconvenience the
delay was causing. There was no special reason beyond the heat and worry
to make tension, but, as the clock hands crept up to three o'clock and the
machines spun their fly-wheels two and three times to see that all was in
order, before I said the word that would set them off, I could have
shrieked aloud.

Then the roar and rattle of the wheels shivered the quiet into little
bits. I rose to go away, but two men in white clothes stood in front of
me. The first one said:--"It's him!" The second said:--"So it is!" And
they both laughed almost as loudly as the machinery roared, and mopped
their foreheads. "We see there was a light burning across the road and we
were sleeping in that ditch there for coolness, and I said to my friend
here, The office is open. Let's come along and speak to him as turned us
back from the Degumber State," said the smaller of the two. He was the man
I had met in the Mhow train, and his fellow was the red-bearded man of
Marwar Junction. There was no mistaking the eyebrows of the one or the
beard of the other.

I was not pleased, because I wished to go to sleep, not to squabble with
loafers. "What do you want?" I asked.

"Half an hour's talk with you cool and comfortable, in the office," said
the red-bearded man. "We'd _like_ some drink--the Contrack doesn't begin
yet, Peachey, so you needn't look--but what we really want is advice. We
don't want money. We ask you as a favor, because you did us a bad turn
about Degumber."

I led from the press-room to the stifling office with the maps on the
walls, and the red-haired man rubbed his hands. "That's something like,"
said he, "This was the proper shop to come to. Now, Sir, let me introduce
to you Brother Peachey Carnehan, that's him, and Brother Daniel Dravot,
that is _me_, and the less said about our professions the better, for we
have been most things in our time. Soldier, sailor, compositor,
photographer, proof-reader, street-preacher, and correspondents of the
_Backwoodsman_ when we thought the paper wanted one. Carnehan is sober,
and so am I. Look at us first and see that's sure. It will save you
cutting into my talk. We'll take one of your cigars apiece, and you shall
see us light."

I watched the test. The men were absolutely sober, so I gave them each a
tepid peg.

"Well _and_ good," said Carnehan of the eyebrows, wiping the froth from
his moustache. "Let me talk now, Dan, We have been all over India, mostly
on foot. We have been boiler-fitters, engine-drivers, petty contractors,
and all that, and we have decided that India isn't big enough for such as
us."

They certainly were too big for the office. Dravot's beard seemed to fill
half the room and Carnehan's shoulders the other half, as they sat on the
big table. Carnehan continued:--"The country isn't half worked out because
they that governs it won't let you touch it. They spend all their blessed
time in governing it, and you can't lift a spade, nor chip a rock, nor
look for oil, nor anything like that without all the Government
saying--'Leave it alone and let us govern.' Therefore, such as it is, we
will let it alone, and go away to some other place where a man isn't
crowded and can come to his own. We are not little men, and there is
nothing that we are afraid of except Drink, and we have signed a Contrack
on that. _Therefore_, we are going away to be Kings."

"Kings in our own right," muttered Dravot.

"Yes, of course," I said. "You've been tramping in the sun, and it's a
very warm night, and hadn't you better sleep over the notion? Come
to-morrow."

"Neither drunk nor sunstruck," said Dravot. "We have slept over the notion
half a year, and require to see Books and Atlases, and we have decided
that there is only one place now in the world that two strong men can
Sar-a-_whack_. They call it Kafiristan. By my reckoning it's the top
right-hand corner of Afghanistan, not more than three hundred miles from
Peshawur. They have two and thirty heathen idols there, and we'll be the
thirty-third. It's a mountaineous country, and the women of those parts
are very beautiful."

"But that is provided against in the Contrack," said Carnehan. "Neither
Women nor Liquor, Daniel."

"And that's all we know, except that no one has gone there, and they
fight, and in any place where they fight a man who knows how to drill men
can always be a King. We shall go to those parts and say to any King we
find--'D'you want to vanquish your foes?' and we will show him how to
drill men; for that we know better than anything else. Then we will
subvert that King and seize his Throne and establish a Dy-nasty."

"You'll be cut to pieces before you're fifty miles across the Border," I
said. "You have to travel through Afghanistan to get to that country. It's
one mass of mountains and peaks and glaciers, and no Englishman has been
through it. The people are utter brutes, and even if you reached them you
couldn't do anything."

"That's more like," said Carnehan. "If you could think us a little more
mad we would be more pleased. We have come to you to know about this
country, to read a book about it, and to be shown maps. We want you to
tell us that we are fools and to show us your books." He turned to the
bookcases.

"Are you at all in earnest?" I said.

"A little," said Dravot, sweetly. "As big a map as you have got, even if
it's all blank where Kafiristan is, and any books you've got. We can read,
though we aren't very educated."

I uncased the big thirty-two-miles-to-the-inch map of India, and two
smaller Frontier maps, hauled down volume INF-KAN of the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_, and the men consulted them.

"See here!" said Dravot, his thumb on the map. "Up to Jagdallak, Peachey
and me know the road. We was there with Roberts's Army. We'll have to turn
off to the right at Jagdallak through Laghmann territory. Then we get
among the hills--fourteen thousand feet--fifteen thousand--it will be cold
work there, but it don't look very far on the map."

I handed him Wood on the _Sources of the Oxus_. Carnehan was deep in the
_Encyclopaedia_.

"They're a mixed lot," said Dravot, reflectively; "and it won't help us to
know the names of their tribes. The more tribes the more they'll fight,
and the better for us. From Jagdallak to Ashang. H'mm!"

"But all the information about the country is as sketchy and inaccurate as
can be," I protested. "No one knows anything about it really. Here's the
file of the _United Services Institute_. Read what Bellew says."

"Blow Bellew!" said Carnehan. "Dan, they're an all-fired lot of heathens,
but this book here says they think they're related to us English."

I smoked while the men pored over _Raverty_, _Wood_, the maps and the
_Encyclopaedia_.

"There is no use your waiting," said Dravot, politely, "It's about four
o'clock now. We'll go before six o'clock if you want to sleep, and we
won't steal any of the papers. Don't you sit up. We're two harmless
lunatics, and if you come, to-morrow evening, down to the Serai we'll say
good-bye to you."

"You _are_ two fools," I answered, "You'll be turned back at the Frontier
or cut up the minute you set foot in Afghanistan. Do you want any money or
a recommendation down-country? I can help you to the chance of work next
week."

"Next week we shall be hard at work ourselves, thank you," said Dravot.
"It isn't so easy being a King as it looks. When we've got our Kingdom in
going order we'll let you know, and you can come up and help us to govern
it."

"Would two lunatics make a Contrack like that?" said Carnehan, with
subdued pride, showing me a greasy half-sheet of note-paper on which was
written the following. I copied it, then and there, as a curiosity:

_This Contract between me and you persuing witnesseth in the name of
God--Amen and so forth.

(One) That me and you will settle this matter together: _i.e._,
to be Kings of Kafiristan.

(Two) That you and me will not, while this matter is being settled,
look at any Liquor, nor any Woman, black, white or brown, so
as to get mixed up with one or the other harmful.

(Three) That we conduct ourselves with dignity and discretion, and
if one of us gets into trouble the other will stay by him.

Signed by you and me this day.

Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan.

Daniel Dravot.

Both Gentlemen at Large._

"There was no need for the last article," said Carnehan, blushing
modestly; "but it looks regular. Now you know the sort of men that loafers
are--we _are_ loafers, Dan, until we get out of India--and _do_ you think
that we would sign a Contrack like that unless we was in earnest? We have
kept away from the two things that make life worth having."

"You won't enjoy your lives much longer if you are going to try this
idiotic adventure. Don't set the office on fire," I said, "and go away
before nine o'clock."

I left them still poring over the maps and making notes on the back of the
"Contrack." "Be sure to come down to the Serai to-morrow," were their
parting words.

The Kumharsen Serai is the great four-square sink of humanity where the
strings of camels and horses from the North load and unload. All the
nationalities of Central Asia may be found there, and most of the folk of
India proper. Balkh and Bokhara there meet Bengal and Bombay, and try to
draw eye-teeth. You can buy ponies, turquoises, Persian pussy-cats,
saddle-bags, fat-tailed sheep and musk in the Kumharsen Serai, and get
many strange things for nothing. In the afternoon I went down there to see
whether my friends intended to keep their word or were lying about drunk.

A priest attired in fragments of ribbons and rags stalked up to me,
gravely twisting a child's paper whirligig. Behind him was his servant
bending under the load of a crate of mud toys, The two were loading up two
camels, and the inhabitants of the Serai watched them with shrieks of
laughter.

"The priest is mad," said a horse-dealer to me, "He is going up to Kabul
to sell toys to the Amir. He will either be raised to honor or have his
head cut off. He came in here this morning and has been behaving madly
ever since."

"The witless are under the protection of God," stammered a flat-cheeked
Usbeg in broken Hindi. "They foretell future events."

"Would they could have foretold that my caravan would have been cut up by
the Shinwaris almost within shadow of the Pass!" grunted the Eusufzai
agent of a Rajputana trading-house whose goods had been feloniously
diverted into the hands of other robbers just across the Border, and whose
misfortunes were the laughing-stock of the bazar. "Ohe, priest, whence
come you and whither do you go?"

"From Roum have I come," shouted the priest, waving his whirligig; "from
Roum, blown by the breath of a hundred devils across the sea! O thieves,
robbers, liars, the blessing of Pir Khan on pigs, dogs, and perjurers! Who
will take the Protected of God to the North to sell charms that are never
still to the Amir? The camels shall not gall, the sons shall not fall
sick, and the wives shall remain faithful while they are away, of the men
who give me place in their caravan. Who will assist me to slipper the King
of the Roos with a golden slipper with a silver heel? The protection of
Pir Khan be upon his labors!" He spread out the skirts of his gaberdine
and pirouetted between the lines of tethered horses.

"There starts a caravan from Peshawur to Kabul in twenty days, _Huzrut_,"
said the Eusufzai trader, "My camels go therewith. Do thou also go and
bring us good luck."

"I will go even now!" shouted the priest, "I will depart upon my winged
camels, and be at Peshawur in a day! Ho! Hazar Mir Khan," he yelled to his
servant, "drive out the camels, but let me first mount my own."

He leaped on the back of his beast as it knelt, and, turning round to me,
cried:--"Come thou also, Sahib, a little along the road, and I will sell
thee a charm--an amulet that shall make thee King of Kafiristan."

Then the light broke upon me, and I followed the two camels out of the
Serai till we reached open road and the priest halted.

"What d' you think o' that?" said he in English. "Carnehan can't talk
their patter, so I've made him my servant. He makes a handsome servant,
'Tisn't for nothing that I've been knocking about the country for fourteen
years. Didn't I do that talk neat? We'll hitch on to a caravan at Peshawur
till we get to Jagdallak, and then we'll see if we can get donkeys for our
camels, and strike into Kafiristan. Whirligigs for the Amir, O Lor! Put
your hand under the camel-bags and tell me what you feel."

I felt the butt of a Martini, and another and another.

"Twenty of 'em," said Dravot, placidly. "Twenty of 'em, and ammunition to
correspond, under the whirligigs and the mud dolls."

"Heaven help you if you are caught with those things!" I said. "A Martini
is worth her weight in silver among the Pathans."

"Fifteen hundred rupees of capital--every rupee we could beg, borrow, or
steal--are invested on these two camels," said Dravot. "We won't get
caught. We're going through the Khaiber with a regular caravan. Who'd
touch a poor mad priest?"

"Have you got everything you want?" I asked, overcome with astonishment.

"Not yet, but we shall soon. Give us a memento of your kindness,
_Brother_. You did me a service yesterday, and that time in Marwar. Half
my Kingdom shall you have, as the saying is." I slipped a small charm
compass from my watch-chain and handed it up to the priest.

"Good-bye," said Dravot, giving me hand cautiously. "It's the last time
we'll shake hands with an Englishman these many days. Shake hands with
him, Carnehan," he cried, as the second camel passed me.

Carnehan leaned down and shook hands. Then the camels passed away along
the dusty road, and I was left alone to wonder. My eye could detect no
failure in the disguises. The scene in Serai attested that they were
complete to the native mind. There was just the chance, therefore, that
Carnehan and Dravot would be able to wander through Afghanistan without
detection. But, beyond, they would find death, certain and awful death.

Ten days later a native friend of mine, giving me the news of the day from
Peshawur, wound up his letter with:--"There has been much laughter here on
account of a certain mad priest who is going in his estimation to sell
petty gauds and insignificant trinkets which he ascribes as great charms
to H.H. the Amir of Bokhara. He passed through Peshawur and associated
himself to the Second Summer caravan that goes to Kabul. The merchants are
pleased because through superstition they imagine that such mad fellows
bring good-fortune."

The two, then, were beyond the Border. I would have prayed for them, but,
that night, a real King died in Europe, and demanded on obituary notice.


*
*
*
*
*

The wheel of the world swings through the same phases again and again.
Summer passed and winter thereafter, and came and passed again. The daily
paper continued and I with it, and upon the third summer there fell a hot
night, a night-issue, and a strained waiting for something to be
telegraphed from the other side of the world, exactly as had happened
before. A few great men had died in the past two years, the machines
worked with more clatter, and some of the trees in the Office garden were
a few feet taller. But that was all the difference.

I passed over to the press-room, and went through just such a scene as I
have already described. The nervous tension was stronger than it had been
two years before, and I felt the heat more acutely. At three o'clock I
cried, "Print off," and turned to go, when there crept to my chair what
was left of a man. He was bent into a circle, his head was sunk between
his shoulders, and he moved his feet one over the other like a bear. I
could hardly see whether he walked or crawled--this rag-wrapped, whining
cripple who addressed me by name, crying that he was come back. "Can you
give me a drink?" he whimpered. "For the Lord's sake, give me a drink!"

I went back to the office, the man following with groans of pain, and I
turned up the lamp.

"Don't you know me?" he gasped, dropping into a chair, and he turned his
drawn face, surmounted by a shock of grey hair, to the light.

I looked at him intently. Once before had I seen eyebrows that met over
the nose in an inch-broad black band, but for the life of me I could not
tell where.

"I don't know you," I said, handing him the whiskey. "What can I do for
you?"

He took a gulp of the spirit raw, and shivered in spite of the suffocating
heat.

"I've come back," he repeated; "and I was the King of Kafiristan--me and
Dravot--crowned Kings we was! In this office we settled it--you setting
there and giving us the books. I am Peachey--Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan,
and you've been setting here ever since--O Lord!"

I was more than a little astonished, and expressed my feelings
accordingly,

"It's true," said Carnehan, with a dry cackle, nursing his feet, which
were wrapped in rags. "True as gospel. Kings we were, with crowns upon our
heads--me and Dravot--poor Dan--oh, poor, poor Dan, that would never take
advice, not though I begged of him!"

"Take the whiskey," I said, "and take your own time. Tell me all you can
recollect of everything from beginning to end. You got across the border
on your camels, Dravot dressed as a mad priest and you his servant. Do you
remember that?"

"I ain't mad--yet, but I shall be that way soon. Of course I remember.
Keep looking at me, or maybe my words will go all to pieces. Keep looking
at me in my eyes and don't say anything."

I leaned forward and looked into his face as steadily as I could. He
dropped one hand upon the table and I grasped it by the wrist. It was
twisted like a bird's claw, and upon the back was a ragged, red,
diamond-shaped scar.

"No, don't look there. Look at _me_," said Carnehan.

"That comes afterward, but for the Lord's sake don't distrack me. We left
with that caravan, me and Dravot playing all sorts of antics to amuse the
people we were with. Dravot used to make us laugh in the evenings when all
the people was cooking their dinners--cooking their dinners, and ... what
did they do then? They lit little fires with sparks that went into
Dravot's beard, and we all laughed--fit to die. Little red fires they was,
going into Dravot's big red beard--so funny." His eyes left mine and he
smiled foolishly.

"You went as far as Jagdallak with that caravan," I said, at a venture,
"after you had lit those fires. To Jagdallak, where you turned off to try
to get into Kafiristan."

"No, we didn't neither. What are you talking about? We turned off before
Jagdallak, because we heard the roads was good. But they wasn't good
enough for our two camels--mine and Dravot's. When we left the caravan,
Dravot took off all his clothes and mine too, and said we would be
heathen, because the Kafirs didn't allow Mohammedans to talk to them. So
we dressed betwixt and between, and such a sight as Daniel Dravot I never
saw yet nor expect to see again. He burned half his beard, and slung a
sheep-skin over his shoulder, and shaved his head into patterns. He shaved
mine, too, and made me wear outrageous things to look like a heathen. That
was in a most mountaineous country, and our camels couldn't go along any
more because of the mountains. They were tall and black, and coming home I
saw them fight like wild goats--there are lots of goats in Kafiristan. And
these mountains, they never keep still, no more than the goats. Always
fighting they are, and don't let you sleep at night."

"Take some more whiskey," I said, very slowly. "What did you and Daniel
Dravot do when the camels could go no further because of the rough roads
that led into Kafiristan?"

"What did which do? There was a party called Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan
that was with Dravot. Shall I tell you about him? He died out there in the
cold. Slap from the bridge fell old Peachey, turning and twisting in the
air like a penny whirligig that you can sell to the Amir.--No; they was
two for three ha'pence, those whirligigs, or I am much mistaken and woful
sore. And then these camels were no use, and Peachey said to Dravot--'For
the Lord's sake, let's get out of this before our heads are chopped off,'
and with that they killed the camels all among the mountains, not having
anything in particular to eat, but first they took off the boxes with the
guns and the ammunition, till two men came along driving four mules.
Dravot up and dances in front of them, singing,--'Sell me four Mules.'
Says the first man,--'If you are rich enough to buy, you are rich enough
to rob;' but before ever he could put his hand to his knife, Dravot breaks
his neck over his knee, and the other party runs away. So Carnehan loaded
the mules with the rifles that was taken off the camels, and together we
starts forward into those bitter cold mountaineous parts, and never a road
broader than the back of your hand."

He paused for a moment, while I asked him if he could remember the nature
of the country through which he had journeyed.

"I am telling you as straight as I can, but my head isn't as good as it
might be. They drove nails through it to make me hear better how Dravot
died. The country was mountaineous and the mules were most contrary, and
the inhabitants was dispersed and solitary. They went up and up, and down
and down, and that other party, Carnehan, was imploring of Dravot not to
sing and whistle so loud, for fear of bringing down the tremenjus
avalanches. But Dravot says that if a King couldn't sing it wasn't worth
being King, and whacked the mules over the rump, and never took no heed
for ten cold days. We came to a big level valley all among the mountains,
and the mules were near dead, so we killed them, not having anything in
special for them or us to eat. We sat upon the boxes, and played odd and
even with the cartridges that was jolted out,

"Then ten men with bows and arrows ran down that valley, chasing twenty
men with bows and arrows, and the row was tremenjus. They was fair
men--fairer than you or me--with yellow hair and remarkable well built.
Says Dravot, unpacking the guns--'This is the beginning of the business.
We'll fight for the ten men,' and with that he fires two rifles at the
twenty men, and drops one of them at two hundred yards from the rock where
we was sitting. The other men began to run, but Carnehan and Dravot sits
on the boxes picking them off at all ranges, up and down the valley. Then
we goes up to the ten men that had run across the snow too, and they fires
a footy little arrow at us. Dravot he shoots above their heads and they
all falls down flat. Then he walks over them and kicks them, and then he
lifts them up and shakes hands all round to make them friendly like. He
calls them and gives them the boxes to carry, and waves his hand for all
the world as though he was King already. They takes the boxes and him
across the valley and up the hill into a pine wood on the top, where there
was half a dozen big stone idols. Dravot he goes to the biggest--a fellow
they call Imbra--and lays a rifle and a cartridge at his feet, rubbing his
nose respectful with his own nose, patting him on the head, and saluting
in front of it. He turns round to the men and nods his head, and
says,--'That's all right. I'm in the know too, and all these old jim-jams
are my friends.' Then he opens his mouth and points down it, and when the
first man brings him food, he says--'No;' and when the second man brings
him food, he says--'No;' but when one of the old priests and the boss of
the village brings him food, he says--'Yes;' very haughty, and eats it
slow. That was how we came to our first village, without any trouble, just
as though we had tumbled from the skies. But we tumbled from one of those
damned rope-bridges, you see, and you couldn't expect a man to laugh much
after that."

"Take some more whiskey and go on," I said. "That was the first village
you came into. How did you get to be King?"

"I wasn't King," said Carnehan. "Dravot he was the King, and a handsome
man he looked with the gold crown on his head and all. Him and the other
party stayed in that village, and every morning Dravot sat by the side of
old Imbra, and the people came and worshipped. That was Dravot's order.
Then a lot of men came into the valley, and Carnehan and Dravot picks them
off with the rifles before they knew where they was, and runs down into
the valley and up again the other side, and finds another village, same as
the first one, and the people all falls down flat on their faces, and
Dravot says, 'Now what is the trouble between you two villages?' and the
people points to a woman, as fair as you or me, that was carried off, and
Dravot takes her back to the first village and counts up the dead--eight
there was. For each dead man Dravot pours a little milk on the ground and
waves his arms like a whirligig and 'That's all right,' says he. Then he
and Carnehan takes the big boss of each village by the arm and walks them
down into the valley, and shows them how to scratch a line with a spear
right down the valley, and gives each a sod of turf from both sides o' the
line. Then all the people comes down and shouts like the devil and all,
and Dravot says,--'Go and dig the land, and be fruitful and multiply,'
which they did, though they didn't understand. Then we asks the names of
things in their lingo--bread and water and fire and idols and such, and
Dravot leads the priest of each village up to the idol, and says he must
sit there and judge the people, and if anything goes wrong he is to be
shot.

"Next week they was all turning up the land in the valley as quiet as bees
and much prettier, and the priests heard all the complaints and told
Dravot in dumb show what it was about. 'That's just the beginning,' says
Dravot. 'They think we're Gods.' He and Carnehan picks out twenty good men
and shows them how to click off a rifle, and form fours, and advance in
line, and they was very pleased to do so, and clever to see the hang of
it. Then he takes out his pipe and his baccy-pouch and leaves one at one
village and one at the other, and off we two goes to see what was to be
done in the next valley. That was all rock, and there was a little village
there, and Carnehan says,--'Send 'em to the old valley to plant,' and
takes 'em there and gives 'em some land that wasn't took before. They were
a poor lot, and we blooded 'em with a kid before letting 'em into the new
Kingdom. That was to impress the people, and then they settled down quiet,
and Carnehan went back to Dravot who had got into another valley, all snow
and ice and most mountaineous. There was no people there and the Army got
afraid, so Dravot shoots one of them, and goes on till he finds some
people in a village, and the Army explains that unless the people wants to
be killed they had better not shoot their little matchlocks; for they had
matchlocks. We makes friends with the priest and I stays there alone with
two of the Army, teaching the men how to drill, and a thundering big Chief
comes across the snow with kettle-drums and horns twanging, because he
heard there was a new God kicking about. Carnehan sights for the brown of
the men half a mile across the snow and wings one of them. Then he sends a
message to the Chief that, unless he wished to be killed, he must come and
shake hands with me and leave his arms behind. The chief comes alone
first, and Carnehan shakes hands with him and whirls his arms about, same
as Dravot used, and very much surprised that Chief was, and strokes my
eyebrows. Then Carnehan goes alone to the Chief, and asks him in dumb show
if he had an enemy he hated. 'I have,' says the Chief. So Carnehan weeds
out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill
and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as
Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top
of a mountain, and the Chief's men rushes into a village and takes it; we
three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy. So we took that village
too, and I gives the Chief a rag from my coat and says, 'Occupy till I
come:' which was scriptural. By way of a reminder, when me and the Army
was eighteen hundred yards away, I drops a bullet near him standing on the
snow, and all the people falls flat on their faces. Then I sends a letter
to Dravot, wherever he be by land or by sea."

At the risk of throwing the creature out of train I interrupted,--"How
could you write a letter up yonder?"

"The letter?--Oh!--The letter! Keep looking at me between the eyes,
please. It was a string-talk letter, that we'd learned the way of it from
a blind beggar in the Punjab."

I remember that there had once come to the office a blind man with a
knotted twig and a piece of string which he wound round the twig according
to some cypher of his own. He could, after the lapse of days or hours,
repeat the sentence which he had reeled up. He had reduced the alphabet to
eleven primitive sounds; and tried to teach me his method, but failed.

"I sent that letter to Dravot," said Carnehan; "and told him to come back
because this Kingdom was growing too big for me to handle, and then I
struck for the first valley, to see how the priests were working. They
called the village we took along with the Chief, Bashkai, and the first
village we took, Er-Heb. The priests at Er-Heb was doing all right, but
they had a lot of pending cases about land to show me, and some men from
another village had been firing arrows at night. I went out and looked for
that village and fired four rounds at it from a thousand yards. That used
all the cartridges I cared to spend, and I waited for Dravot, who had been
away two or three months, and I kept my people quiet.

"One morning I heard the devil's own noise of drums and horns, and Dan
Dravot marches down the hill with his Army and a tail of hundreds of men,
and, which was the most amazing--a great gold crown on his head. 'My Gord,
Carnehan,' says Daniel, 'this is a tremenjus business, and we've got the
whole country as far as it's worth having. I am the son of Alexander by
Queen Semiramis, and you're my younger brother and a God too! It's the
biggest thing we've ever seen. I've been marching and fighting for six
weeks with the Army, and every footy little village for fifty miles has
come in rejoiceful; and more than that, I've got the key of the whole
show, as you'll see, and I've got a crown for you! I told 'em to make two
of 'em at a place called Shu, where the gold lies in the rock like suet in
mutton. Gold I've seen, and turquoise I've kicked out of the cliffs, and
there's garnets in the sands of the river, and here's a chunk of amber
that a man brought me. Call up all the priests and, here, take your
crown.'

"One of the men opens a black hair bag and I slips the crown on. It was
too small and too heavy, but I wore it for the glory. Hammered gold it
was--five pound weight, like a hoop of a barrel.

"'Peachey,' says Dravot, 'we don't want to fight no more. The Craft's the
trick so help me!' and he brings forward that same Chief that I left at
Bashkai--Billy Fish we called him afterward, because he was so like Billy
Fish that drove the big tank-engine at Mach on the Bolan in the old days.
'Shake hands with him,' says Dravot, and I shook hands and nearly dropped,
for Billy Fish gave me the Grip. I said nothing, but tried him with the
Fellow Craft Grip. He answers, all right, and I tried the Master's Grip,
but that was a slip. 'A Fellow Craft he is!' I says to Dan. 'Does he know
the word?' 'He does,' says Dan, 'and all the priests know. It's a miracle!
The Chiefs and the priests can work a Fellow Craft Lodge in a way that's
very like ours, and they've cut the marks on the rocks, but they don't
know the Third Degree, and they've come to find out. It's Gord's Truth.
I've known these long years that the Afghans knew up to the Fellow Craft
Degree, but this is a miracle. A God and a Grand-Master of the Craft am I,
and a Lodge in the Third Degree I will open, and we'll raise the head
priests and the Chiefs of the villages.'

"'It's against all the law,' I says, 'holding a Lodge without warrant from
any one; and we never held office in any Lodge.'

"'It's a master-stroke of policy,' says Dravot. 'It means running the
country as easy as a four-wheeled bogy on a down grade. We can't stop to
inquire now, or they'll turn against us. I've forty Chiefs at my heel, and
passed and raised according to their merit they shall be. Billet these men
on the villages and see that we run up a Lodge of some kind. The temple of
Imbra will do for the Lodge-room. The women must make aprons as you show
them. I'll hold a levee of Chiefs to-night and Lodge to-morrow.'

"I was fair run off my legs, but I wasn't such a fool as not to see what a
pull this Craft business gave us. I showed the priests' families how to
make aprons of the degrees, but for Dravot's apron, the blue border and
marks was made of turquoise lumps on white hide, not cloth. We took a
great square stone in the temple for the Master's chair, and little stones
for the officers' chairs, and painted the black pavement with white
squares, and did what we could to make things regular.

"At the levee which was held that night on the hillside with big bonfires,
Dravot gives out that him and me were Gods and sons of Alexander, and Past
Grand-Masters in the Craft, and was come to make Kafiristan a country
where every man should eat in peace and drink in quiet, and specially obey
us. Then the Chiefs come round to shake hands, and they was so hairy and
white and fair it was just shaking hands with old friends. We gave them
names according as they was like men we had known in India--Billy Fish,
Holly Dilworth, Pikky Kergan that was Bazar-master when I was at Mhow, and
so on and so on.

"_The_ most amazing miracle was at Lodge next night. One of the old
priests was watching us continuous, and I felt uneasy, for I knew we'd
have to fudge the Ritual, and I didn't know what the men knew. The old
priest was a stranger come in from beyond the village of Bashkai. The
minute Dravot puts on the Master's apron that the girls had made for him,
the priest fetches a whoop and a howl, and tries to overturn the stone
that Dravot was sitting on. 'It's all up now,' I says. 'That comes of
meddling with the Craft without warrant!' Dravot never winked an eye, not
when ten priests took and tilted over the Grand-Master's chair--which was
to say the stone of Imbra. The priest begins rubbing the bottom end of it
to clear away the black dirt, and presently he shows all the other priests
the Master's Mark, same as was on Dravot's apron, cut into the stone. Not
even the priests of the temple of Imbra knew it was there. The old chap
falls flat on his face at Dravot's feet and kisses 'em. 'Luck again,' says
Dravot, across the Lodge to me, 'they say it's the missing Mark that no
one could understand the why of. We're more than safe now.' Then he bangs
the butt of his gun for a gavel and says:--'By virtue of the authority
vested in me by my own right hand and the help of Peachey, I declare
myself Grand-Master of all Freemasonry in Kafiristan in this the Mother
Lodge o' the country, and King of Kafiristan equally with Peachey!' At
that he puts on his crown and I puts on mine--I was doing Senior
Warden--and we opens the Lodge in most ample form. It was a amazing
miracle! The priests moved in Lodge through the first two degrees almost
without telling, as if the memory was coming back to them. After that,
Peachey and Dravot raised such as was worthy--high priests and Chiefs of
far-off villages. Billy Fish was the first, and I can tell you we scared
the soul out of him. It was not in any way according to Ritual, but it
served our turn. We didn't raise more than ten of the biggest men because
we didn't want to make the Degree common. And they was clamoring to be
raised.

"'In another six months,' says Dravot, 'we'll hold another Communication
and see how you are working.' Then he asks them about their villages, and
learns that they was fighting one against the other and were fair sick and
tired of it. And when they wasn't doing that they was fighting with the
Mohammedans. 'You can fight those when they come into our country,' says
Dravot. 'Tell off every tenth man of your tribes for a Frontier guard, and
send two hundred at a time to this valley to be drilled. Nobody is going
to be shot or speared any more so long as he does well, and I know that
you won't cheat me because you're white people--sons of Alexander--and not
like common, black Mohammedans. You are _my_ people and by God,' says he,
running off into English at the end--'I'll make a damned fine Nation of
you, or I'll die in the making!'

"I can't tell all we did for the next six months because Dravot did a lot
I couldn't see the hang of, and he learned their lingo in a way I never
could. My work was to help the people plough, and now and again go out
with some of the Army and see what the other villages were doing, and make
'em throw rope-bridges across the ravines which cut up the country horrid.
Dravot was very kind to me, but when he walked up and down in the pine
wood pulling that bloody red beard of his with both fists I knew he was
thinking plans I could not advise him about, and I just waited for orders.

"But Dravot never showed me disrespect before the people. They were afraid
of me and the Army, but they loved Dan. He was the best of friends with
the priests and the Chiefs; but any one could come across the hills with a
complaint and Dravot would hear him out fair, and call four priests
together and say what was to be done. He used to call in Billy Fish from
Bashkai, and Pikky Kergan from Shu, and an old Chief we called
Kafuzelum--it was like enough to his real name--and hold councils with 'em
when there was any fighting to be done in small villages. That was his
Council of War, and the four priests of Bashkai, Shu, Khawak, and Madora
was his Privy Council. Between the lot of 'em they sent me, with forty men
and twenty rifles, and sixty men carrying turquoises, into the Ghorband
country to buy those hand-made Martini rifles, that come out of the Amir's
workshops at Kabul, from one of the Amir's Herati regiments that would
have sold the very teeth out of their mouths for turquoises.

"I stayed in Ghorband a month, and gave the Governor there the pick of my
baskets for hush-money, and bribed the Colonel of the regiment some more,
and, between the two and the tribespeople, we got more than a hundred
hand-made Martinis, a hundred good Kohat Jezails that'll throw to six
hundred yards, and forty man-loads of very bad ammunition for the rifles.
I came back with what I had, and distributed 'em among the men that the
Chiefs sent to me to drill. Dravot was too busy to attend to those things,
but the old Army that we first made helped me, and we turned out five
hundred men that could drill, and two hundred that knew how to hold arms
pretty straight. Even those cork-screwed, hand-made guns was a miracle to
them. Dravot talked big about powder-shops and factories, walking up and
down in the pine wood when the winter was coming on.

"'I won't make a Nation,' says he. 'I'll make an Empire! These men aren't
niggers; they're English! Look at their eyes--look at their mouths. Look
at the way they stand up. They sit on chairs in their own houses. They're
the Lost Tribes, or something like it, and they've grown to be English.
I'll take a census in the spring if the priests don't get frightened.
There must be a fair two million of 'em in these hills. The villages are
full o' little children. Two million people--two hundred and fifty
thousand fighting men--and all English! They only want the rifles and a
little drilling. Two hundred and fifty thousand men, ready to cut in on
Russia's right flank when she tries for India! Peachey, man,' he says,
chewing his beard in great hunks, 'we shall be Emperors--Emperors of the
Earth! Rajah Brooke will be a suckling to us. I'll treat with the Viceroy
on equal terms. I'll ask him to send me twelve picked English--twelve that
I know of--to help us govern a bit. There's Mackray, Sergeant-pensioner at
Segowli--many's the good dinner he's given me, and his wife a pair of
trousers. There's Donkin, the Warder of Tounghoo Jail; there's hundreds
that I could lay my hand on if I was in India. The Viceroy shall do it for
me. I'll send a man through in the spring for those men, and I'll write
for a dispensation from the Grand Lodge for what I've done as
Grand-Master. That--and all the Sniders that'll be thrown out when the
native troops in India take up the Martini. They'll be worn smooth, but
they'll do for fighting in these hills. Twelve English, a hundred thousand
Sniders run through the Amir's country in driblets--I'd be content with
twenty thousand in one year--and we'd be an Empire. When everything was
shipshape, I'd hand over the crown--this crown I'm wearing now--to Queen
Victoria on my knees, and she'd say: "Rise up, Sir Daniel Dravot." Oh,
it's big! It's big, I tell you! But there's so much to be done in every
place--Bashkai, Khawak, Shu, and everywhere else.'

"'What is it?' I says. 'There are no more men coming in to be drilled this
autumn. Look at those fat, black clouds. They're bringing the snow.'

"'It isn't that,' says Daniel, putting his hand very hard on my shoulder;
'and I don't wish to say anything that's against you, for no other living
man would have followed me and made me what I am as you have done. You're
a first-class Commander-in-Chief, and the people know you; but--it's a big
country, and somehow you can't help me, Peachey, in the way I want to be
helped.'

"'Go to your blasted priests, then!' I said, and I was sorry when I made
that remark, but it did hurt me sore to find Daniel talking so superior
when I'd drilled all the men, and done all he told me.

"'Don't let's quarrel, Peachey,' says Daniel, without cursing. 'You're a
King too, and the half of this Kingdom is yours; but can't you see,
Peachey, we want cleverer men than us now--three or four of 'em, that we
can scatter about for our Deputies. It's a hugeous great State, and I
can't always tell the right thing to do, and I haven't time for all I want
to do, and here's the winter coming on and all.' He put half his beard
into his mouth, and it was as red as the gold of his crown.

"'I'm sorry, Daniel,' says I, 'I've done all I could. I've drilled the men
and shown the people how to stack their oats better; and I've brought in
those tinware rifles from Ghorband--but I know what you're driving at. I
take it Kings always feel oppressed that way.'

"'There's another thing too,' says Dravot, walking up and down, 'The
winter's coming and these people won't be giving much trouble, and if they
do we can't move about. I want a wife.'

"'For Gord's sake leave the women alone!' I says. 'We've both got all the
work we can, though I _am_ a fool. Remember the Contrack, and keep clear
o' women.'

"'The Contrack only lasted till such time as we was Kings; and Kings we
have been these months past,' says Dravot, weighing his crown in his hand.
'You go get a wife too, Peachey--a nice, strappin', plump girl that'll
keep you warm in the winter. They're prettier than English girls, and we
can take the pick of 'em. Boil 'em once or twice in hot water, and they'll
come as fair as chicken and ham.'

"'Don't tempt me!' I says. 'I will not have any dealings with a woman not
till we are a dam' side more settled than we are now. I've been doing the
work o' two men, and you've been doing the work o' three. Let's lie off a
bit, and see if we can get some better tobacco from Afghan country and run
in some good liquor; but no women.'

"'Who's talking o' _women_?' says Dravot. 'I said _wife_--a Queen to breed
a King's son for the King. A Queen out of the strongest tribe, that'll
make them your blood-brothers, and that'll lie by your side and tell you
all the people thinks about you and their own affairs. That's what I
want.'

"'Do you remember that Bengali woman I kept at Mogul Serai when I was a
plate-layer?' says I. 'A fat lot o' good she was to me. She taught me the
lingo and one or two other things; but what happened? She ran away with
the Station Master's servant and half my month's pay. Then she turned up
at Dadur Junction in tow of a half-caste, and had the impidence to say I
was her husband--all among the drivers in the running-shed!'

"'We've done with that,' says Dravot. 'These women are whiter than you or
me, and a Queen I will have for the winter months.'

"'For the last time o' asking, Dan, do not,' I says. 'It'll only bring us
harm. The Bible says that Kings ain't to waste their strength on women,
'specially when they've got a new raw Kingdom to work over.'

"'For the last time of answering I will,' said Dravot, and he went away
through the pine-trees looking like a big red devil. The low sun hit his
crown and beard on one side and the two blazed like hot coals.

"But getting a wife was not as easy as Dan thought. He put it before the
Council, and there was no answer till Billy Fish said that he'd better ask
the girls. Dravot damned them all round. 'What's wrong with me?' he
shouts, standing by the idol Imbra. 'Am I a dog or am I not enough of a
man for your wenches? Haven't I put the shadow of my hand over this
country? Who stopped the last Afghan raid?' It was me really, but Dravot
was too angry to remember. 'Who brought your guns? Who repaired the
bridges? Who's the Grand-Master of the sign cut in the stone?' and he
thumped his hand on the block that he used to sit on in Lodge, and at
Council, which opened like Lodge always. Billy Fish said nothing and no
more did the others. 'Keep your hair on, Dan,' said I; 'and ask the girls.
That's how it's done at Home, and these people are quite English.'

"'The marriage of the King is a matter of State,' says Dan, in a white-hot
rage, for he could feel, I hope, that he was going against his better
mind. He walked out of the Council-room, and the others sat still, looking
at the ground.

"'Billy Fish,' says I to the Chief of Bashkai, 'what's the difficulty
here? A straight answer to a true friend.' 'You know,' says Billy Fish.
'How should a man tell you who know everything? How can daughters of men
marry Gods or Devils? It's not proper.'

"I remembered something like that in the Bible; but if, after seeing us as
long as they had, they still believed we were Gods, it wasn't for me to
undeceive them.

"'A God can do anything,' says I. 'If the King is fond of a girl he'll not
let her die.' 'She'll have to,' said Billy Fish. 'There are all sorts of
Gods and Devils in these mountains, and now and again a girl marries one
of them and isn't seen any more. Besides, you two know the Mark cut in the
stone. Only the Gods know that. We thought you were men till you showed
the sign of the Master.'

"I wished then that we had explained about the loss of the genuine secrets
of a Master-Mason at the first go-off; but I said nothing. All that night
there was a blowing of horns in a little dark temple half-way down the
hill, and I heard a girl crying fit to die. One of the priests told us
that she was being prepared to marry the King.

"'I'll have no nonsense of that kind,' says, Dan. 'I don't want to
interfere with your customs, but I'll take my own wife.' 'The girl's a
little bit afraid,' says the priest. 'She thinks she's going to die, and
they are a-heartening of her up down in the temple.'

"'Hearten her very tender, then,' says Dravot, 'or I'll hearten you with
the butt of a gun so that you'll never want to be heartened again.' He
licked his lips, did Dan, and stayed up walking about more than half the
night, thinking of the wife that he was going to get in the morning. I
wasn't any means comfortable, for I knew that dealings with a woman in
foreign parts, though you was a crowned King twenty times over, could not
but be risky. I got up very early in the morning while Dravot was asleep,
and I saw the priests talking together in whispers, and the Chiefs talking
together too, and they looked at me out of the corners of their eyes.

"'What is up, Fish?' I says to the Bashkai man, who was wrapped up in his
furs and looking splendid to behold.

"'I can't rightly say,' says he; 'but if you can induce the King to drop
all this nonsense about marriage, you'll be doing him and me and yourself
a great service.'

"'That I do believe,' says I. 'But sure, you know, Billy, as well as me,
having fought against and for us, that the King and me are nothing more
than two of the finest men that God Almighty ever made. Nothing more, I do
assure you.'

"'That may be,' says Billy Fish, 'and yet I should be sorry if it was.' He
sinks his head upon his great fur cloak for a minute and thinks. 'King,'
says he, 'be you man or God or Devil, I'll stick by you to-day. I have
twenty of my men with me, and they will follow me. We'll go to Bashkai
until the storm blows over.'

"A little snow had fallen in the night, and everything was white except
the greasy fat clouds that blew down and down from the north. Dravot came
out with his crown on his head, swinging his arms and stamping his feet,
and looking more pleased than Punch.

"'For the last time, drop it, Dan,' says I, in a whisper. 'Billy Fish here
says that there will be a row.'

"'A row among my people!' says Dravot. 'Not much. Peachey, you're a fool
not to get a wife too. Where's the girl?' says he, with a voice as loud as
the braying of a jackass. 'Call up all the Chiefs and priests, and let the
Emperor see if his wife suits him.'

"There was no need to call anyone. They were all there leaning on their
guns and spears round the clearing in the centre of the pine wood. A
deputation of priests went down to the little temple to bring up the girl,
and the horns blew up fit to wake the dead. Billy Fish saunters round and
gets as close to Daniel as he could, and behind him stood his twenty men
with matchlocks. Not a man of them under six feet. I was next to Dravot,
and behind me was twenty men of the regular Army. Up comes the girl, and a
strapping wench she was, covered with silver and turquoises but white as
death, and looking back every minute at the priests.

"'She'll do,' said Dan, looking her over. 'What's to be afraid of, lass?
Come and kiss me.' He puts his arm round her. She shuts her eyes, gives a
bit of a squeak, and down goes her face in the side of Dan's flaming red
beard.

"'The slut's bitten me!' says he, clapping his hand to his neck, and, sure
enough, his hand was red with blood. Billy Fish and two of his
matchlock-men catches hold of Dan by the shoulders and drags him into the
Bashkai lot, while the priests howls in their lingo,--'Neither God nor
Devil but a man!' I was all taken aback, for a priest cut at me in front,
and the Army behind began firing into the Bashkai men.

"'God A-mighty!' says Dan, 'What is the meaning o' this?'

"'Come back! Come away!' says Billy Fish. 'Ruin and Mutiny is the matter.
We'll break for Bashkai if we can.'

"I tried to give some sort of orders to my men--the men o' the regular
Army--but it was no use, so I fired into the brown of 'em with an English
Martini and drilled three beggars in a line. The valley was full of
shouting, howling creatures, and every soul was shrieking, 'Not a God nor
a Devil but only a man!' The Bashkai troops stuck to Billy Fish all they
were worth, but their matchlocks wasn't half as good as the Kabul
breech-loaders, and four of them dropped. Dan was bellowing like a bull,
for he was very wrathy; and Billy Fish had a hard job to prevent him
running out at the crowd.

"'We can't stand,' says Billy Fish. 'Make a run for it down the valley!
The whole place is against us.' The matchlock-men ran, and we went down
the valley in spite of Dravot's protestations. He was swearing horribly
and crying out that he was a King. The priests rolled great stones on us,
and the regular Army fired hard, and there wasn't more than six men, not
counting Dan, Billy Fish, and Me, that came down to the bottom of the
valley alive.

"Then they stopped firing and the horns in the temple blew again. 'Come
away--for Gord's sake come away!' says Billy Fish. 'They'll send runners
out to all the villages before ever we get to Bashkai. I can protect you
there, but I can't do anything now.'

"My own notion is that Dan began to go mad in his head from that hour. He
stared up and down like a stuck pig. Then he was all for walking back
alone and killing the priests with his bare hands; which he could have
done. 'An Emperor am I,' says Daniel, 'and next year I shall be a Knight
of the Queen.'

"'All right, Dan,' says I; 'but come along now while there's time.'

"'It's your fault,' says he, 'for not looking after your Army better.
There was mutiny in the midst, and you didn't know--you damned
engine-driving, plate-laying, missionary's-pass-hunting hound!' He sat
upon a rock and called me every foul name he could lay tongue to. I was
too heart-sick to care, though it was all his foolishness that brought the
smash.

"'I'm sorry, Dan,' says I, 'but there's no accounting for natives. This
business is our Fifty-Seven. Maybe we'll make something out of it yet,
when we've got to Bashkai.'

"'Let's get to Bashkai, then,' says Dan, 'and, by God, when I come back
here again I'll sweep the valley so there isn't a bug in a blanket left!'

"We walked all that day, and all that night Dan was stumping up and down
on the snow, chewing his beard and muttering to himself.

"'There's no hope o' getting clear,' said Billy Fish. 'The priests will
have sent runners to the villages to say that you are only men. Why didn't
you stick on as Gods till things was more settled? I'm a dead man,' says
Billy Fish, and he throws himself down on the snow and begins to pray to
his Gods.

"Next morning we was in a cruel bad country--all up and down, no level
ground at all, and no food either. The six Bashkai men looked at Billy
Fish hungry-wise as if they wanted to ask something, but they said never a
word. At noon we came to the top of a flat mountain all covered with snow,
and when we climbed up into it, behold, there was an Army in position
waiting in the middle!

"'The runners have been very quick,' says Billy Fish, with a little bit of
a laugh. 'They are waiting for us.'

"Three or four men began to fire from the enemy's side, and a chance shot
took Daniel in the calf of the leg. That brought him to his senses. He
looks across the snow at the Army, and sees the rifles that we had brought
into the country.

"'We're done for,' says he. 'They are Englishmen, these people,--and it's
my blasted nonsense that has brought you to this. Get back, Billy Fish,
and take your men away; you've done what you could, and now cut for it.
Carnehan,' says he, 'shake hands with me and go along with Billy. Maybe
they won't kill you. I'll go and meet 'em alone. It's me that did it. Me,
the King!'

"'Go!' says I. 'Go to Hell, Dan. I'm with you here. Billy Fish, you clear
out, and we two will meet those folk.'

"'I'm a Chief,' says Billy Fish, quite quiet. 'I stay with you. My men can
go.'

"The Bashkai fellows didn't wait for a second word but ran off, and Dan
and Me and Billy Fish walked across to where the drums were drumming and
the horns were horning, It was cold--awful cold. I've got that cold in the
back of my head now. There's a lump of it there."

The punkah-coolies had gone to sleep. Two kerosene lamps were blazing in
the office, and the perspiration poured down my face and splashed on the
blotter as I leaned forward. Carnehan was shivering, and I feared that his
mind might go. I wiped my face, took a fresh grip of the piteously mangled
hands, and said:--"What happened after that?"

The momentary shift of my eyes had broken the clear current.

"What was you pleased to say?" whined Carnehan. "They took them without
any sound. Not a little whisper all along the snow, not though the King
knocked down the first man that set hand on him--not though old Peachey
fired his last cartridge into the brown of 'em. Not a single solitary
sound did those swines make. They just closed up tight, and I tell you
their furs stunk. There was a man called Billy Fish, a good friend of us
all, and they cut his throat, Sir, then and there, like a pig; and the
King kicks up the bloody snow and says:--'We've had a dashed fine run for
our money. What's coming next?' But Peachey, Peachey Taliaferro, I tell
you, Sir, in confidence as betwixt two friends, he lost his head, Sir. No,
he didn't neither. The King lost his head, so he did, all along o' one of
those cunning rope-bridges. Kindly let me have the paper-cutter, Sir. It
tilted this way. They marched him a mile across that snow to a rope-bridge
over a ravine with a river at the bottom. You may have seen such. They
prodded him behind like an ox. 'Damn your eyes!' says the King. 'D'you
suppose I can't die like a gentleman?' He turns to Peachey--Peachey that
was crying like a child. 'I've brought you to this, Peachey,' says he.
'Brought you out of your happy life to be killed in Kafiristan, where you
was late Commander-in-Chief of the Emperor's forces. Say you forgive me,
Peachey.' 'I do,' says Peachey. 'Fully and freely do I forgive you, Dan.'
'Shake hands, Peachey,' says he. 'I'm going now.' Out he goes, looking
neither right nor left, and when he was plumb in the middle of those dizzy
dancing ropes, 'Cut, you beggars,' he shouts; and they cut, and old Dan
fell, turning round and round and round twenty thousand miles, for he took
half an hour to fall till he struck the water, and I could see his body
caught on a rock with the gold crown close beside.

"But do you know what they did to Peachey between two pine trees? They
crucified him, Sir, as Peachey's hand will show. They used wooden pegs for
his hands and his feet; and he didn't die. He hung there and screamed, and
they took him down next day, and said it was a miracle that he wasn't
dead. They took him down--poor old Peachey that hadn't done them any
harm--that hadn't done them any...."

He rocked to and fro and wept bitterly, wiping his eyes with the back of
his scarred hands and moaning like a child for some ten minutes.

"They was cruel enough to feed him up in the temple, because they said he
was more of a God than old Daniel that was a man. Then they turned him out
on the snow, and told him to go home, and Peachey came home in about a
year, begging along the roads quite safe: for Daniel Dravot he walked
before and said:--'Come along, Peachey. It's a big thing we're doing.' The
mountains they danced at night, and the mountains they tried to fall on
Peachey's head, but Dan he held up his hand, and Peachey came along bent
double. He never let go of Dan's hand, and he never let go of Dan's head.
They gave it to him as a present in the temple, to remind him not to come
again, and though the crown was pure gold, and Peachey was starving, never
would Peachey sell the same. You knew Dravot, Sir! You knew Right
Worshipful Brother Dravot! Look at him now!"

He fumbled in the mass of rags round his bent waist; brought out a black
horsehair bag embroidered with silver thread; and shook therefrom on to my
table--the dried, withered head of Daniel Dravot! The morning sun that had
long been paling the lamps struck the red beard and blind sunken eyes;
struck, too, a heavy circlet of gold studded with raw turquoises, that
Carnehan placed tenderly on the battered temples.

"You behold now," said Carnehan, "the Emperor in his habit as he
lived--the King of Kafiristan with his crown upon his head. Poor old
Daniel that was a monarch once!"

I shuddered, for, in spite of defacements manifold, I recognized the head
of the man of Marwar Junction. Carnehan rose to go. I attempted to stop
him. He was not fit to walk abroad. "Let me take away the whiskey, and
give me a little money," he gasped, "I was a King once. I'll go to the
Deputy Commissioner and ask to set in the Poorhouse till I get my health.
No, thank you, I can't wait till you get a carriage for me, I've urgent
private affairs--in the south--at Marwar."

He shambled out of the office and departed in the direction of the Deputy
Commissioner's house. That day at noon I had occasion to go down the
blinding hot Mall, and I saw a crooked man crawling along the white dust
of the roadside, his hat in his hand, quavering dolorously after the
fashion of street-singers at Home. There was not a soul in sight, and he
was out of all possible earshot of the houses. And he sang through his
nose, turning his head from right to left:

"The Son of Man goes forth to war,
A golden crown to gain;
His blood-red banner streams afar--
Who follows in his train?"

I waited to hear no more, but put the poor wretch into my carriage and
drove him off to the nearest missionary for eventual transfer to the
Asylum. He repeated the hymn twice while he was with me whom he did not in
the least recognize, and I left him singing it to the missionary.

Two days later I inquired after his welfare of the Superintendent of the
Asylum.

"He was admitted suffering from sunstroke. He died early yesterday
morning," said the Superintendent. "Is it true that he was half an hour
bareheaded in the sun at midday?"

"Yes," said I, "but do you happen to know if he had anything upon him by
any chance when he died?"

"Not to my knowledge," said the Superintendent.

And there the matter rests.

Literature Network » Rudyard Kipling » The Man Who Would Be King