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Tales From Kipling.




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THE MAN WHO
WOULD- BE- KING -Etc,,l  


R U D YAR


B Y
D KIPLING


PUBLISHED IN NEW YOKK BY
DODGE PUBLISHING COMPANY
AT 220 EAST TWENTY-THIRD STREET




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Contents.
PAGE
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING...............          7
THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW.......................     65
MY OWN TRUE GHOST STORY................... 102
THE STRANGE RIDE OF MORROWDIE JUKES...... 116
IN   ERROR........................................  153
A   BANK  FRAUD.................................  160
TODS' AMENDMENT............................... 171
THE DAUGHTER OF THE REGIMENT.-.............. 180


v








The Man Who Would Be King.
< Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be
found worthy."
1  HE 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 circumstance 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 Amijr.
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




8


Tales From Kipling.


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
whisky. 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




The Man Who Would Be King.


9


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 were 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
jthat 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
unning through Ajmir about the night of the
23d."
I "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 Jodh



io       Tales From Kipling.
pore 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 those 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
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 sleep'
ing 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 ih
those parts by two days.  I ask you as 6
stranger-going to the West," he said with
emphasis.
"Where have you come from?" said I.




The Man Who Would Be King. I1
"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




1 2     Tales From Kipling.


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 hushmoney 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




The Man Who Would Be King.


I3


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




14       Tales From Kipling.
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




The Man Who Would Be King. 15
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 axletrees 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,




i6       Tales From Kipling.
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 other six 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
Kings continue to divert themselves as selfishly as before, and the Foreman thinks that a
daily paper really ought to come out once in




The Man Who Would Be King. i7
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




x8       Tales From Kipling.
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 clicked 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 flywheels
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 I" And they both
laughed almost as loudly as the machinery
roared, and mopped their foreheads. "We see




The Man Who Would Be King. 19
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, proofreader,
street preacher, and correspondents of the Back



20      Tales From Kipling


woodsman 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 mustache.
"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.". - i 




The Man Who Would Be King. 21


"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 Sara-whack. They call it Kafiristan. By my reckoning it's the top right-hand corner of Afghanistan, not more than three hundred miles from
Peshawar. They have two-and-thirty heathen
idols there, and we'll be the thirty-third. It's
a mountainous 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




22      Tales From Kipling.


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 Encyclopcedia Brittanica, and the men consulted
them.
"See herel" said Dravot, his thumb on the
map. "Up to Jagdallak, Peachey and me
know the road. We was there with Roberts'
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.




The Man Who Would Be King. 23
I handed him Wood on the Sources of the
Oxus. Carnehan was deep in the Encyclopoedia.
"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'mmI"
"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 Encyclopcedia.
"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-by 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 downcountry? I can help you to the chance of work
next week."




24


Tales From Kipling.


"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 Carneban.
Daniel Dravot.
Both Gentlemen at Large.




The Man Who Would Be King. 25


"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 foursquare 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 pussycats, 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




26


Tales From Kipling.


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 I 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




The Man Who Would Be King. 27
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 Peshawar 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 Peshawar 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 8ervant. He makes a handsome
servant. 'Tisri'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




28      Tales From Kipling.


a caravan at Peshawar 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, 0 Lorl 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 thingsl" 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-by," said Dravot, giving me his
hand cautiously. "It's the last time we'll
shake hands with an Englishman these many




The Man Who Would Be King. 29


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 the 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 Peshawar,
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 Peshawar 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 goodfortune."
The two, then, were beyond the Border. I
would have prayed for them, but that night a
real King died in Europe, and demanded an
obituary notice.
The wheel of the world swings through the
same phases again and again. Summer passed




30       Tales From Kipling.
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 ragwrapped, 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 baok 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 gray hair, to the light.




The Man Who Would Be King. 31


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
whisky. "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 Dravotcrowned Kings we was I 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"
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
clowns 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 whisky," 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




32     Tales From Kipling.


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 afterwards, 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 evening 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. Litle 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 camelsmine and Dravot's. When we left the caravan




The Man Who Would Be King. 33
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 sheepskin 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 mountainous 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 goatsthere 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 whisky," 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




34      Tales From Kipling.


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
mountainous 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 mountainous 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




The Man Who Would Be King. 35


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 mewith 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.




36       Tales From Kipling.
They take 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 jimjams 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 whisky 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 wor



The Man Who Would Be King. 37


shipped. 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
)ravo, says, 'Now what is the trouble between
you two villages?' and the people points to a
woman, as fair as yoi 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 Carneban 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 lingobread 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




38       Tales From Kipling.
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 Carneban 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
mountainous. 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 thunder



The Man Who Would Be King. 39
ing 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 tbe 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 bands 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 maneuver 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, whereever he be by land or by sea."




4o


Tales From Kipling.


At the risk of throwing the creature out of
train I interrupted, "How could you write a
letter up yonder?"
"The letters 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 bad been away two or three
months, and I kept my people quiet.




The Man Who Would Be King. 4I


One morning I beard 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 tool 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 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




42


Tales From Kipling.


that I left at Bashkai-Billy Fish we called
him afterwards, 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 bands 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




The Man Who Would Be King. 43


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.




44      Tales From Kipling.


"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 meddlingwith 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
one 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,' rays 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




The Man Who Would Be King.


45


country, and King of Kafiristan equally with
Peachey I At that he puts on his crown and I
puts on mine-I was doing Senior Wardenand we opens the Lodge in most ample form.
It was an 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


f




46     Tales From Kipling.


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 wrk-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
Bashkaf, and Pikky Kargan from Shu, and an
old Chief we called Kefuzelum-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,




The Man Who Would Be King.


47


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
tribes people, we got more than a hundred handmade 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 in 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 I These men aren't niggers;




48


Tales From Kipling.


they're English I 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 fair two million of 'em
in these hills. The villages are full o' little
children. The 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 I 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 Segowlimany'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 hands 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. Thatand all the Sniders that'll be thrown out when
the native troops in India take up the Martini.




The Man Who Would Be King. 49
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 bigI
It's big, I tell you I But there's so much to be
done in every place-Bashaki, 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' 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




50        Tales From Kipling.
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 huge 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'
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, Peachy,
a nice, strappin', plump girl that'll keep you
warm in the winter. They're prettier than Eng



The Man Who Would Be King. 5 


lish 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' woment' 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 I'
"'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.'




52       Tales From Kipling.
" 'For the last time o' asking, Dan, do not,' I
says. 'It'll only briDg us harm. The Bible
says that Kings ain't towaste their strength
on women, 'specially when they've got a new
raw Kingdom to work over.'
" 'For the last time of answering I will,'
says 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 bought 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




The Man Who Would Be King. 53
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 the
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 MasterMason at the first go-off; but I said nothing.
All that night there was a blowing of horns in
a little dark temple halfway 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.




54      Tales From Kipling.


"'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
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




The Man Who Would Be King. 55
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 coat 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 any one. 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 fit to wake the dead. Billy Fish




56       Tales From Kipling.
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 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




The Man Who Would Be King. 57
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 wasvery 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




58       Tales From Kipling.
Emperor am I,' says Daniel, 'and next year I
shall be a Knight of theQueen.'
" '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, missionaries'-pass
hunting hound!' He sat upcn a rock and called
me every foul name he could lay tongue to. I
was too heartsick 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 back 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 coun



The Man Who Would Be King. 59
try-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.'




60        Tales From Kipling.
"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




The Man Who Would Be King. 6i
Taliaferro, I tell you, Sir, in confidence as betwixt two friends, he lost his head, Sir. No,
he didn't either. The King lost his head, so he
did, all along o' one of those cunning ropebridges. 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
not 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 hands will show. They used




62        Tales From Kipling.
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




The Man Who Would Be King. 63
embroidered with silver thread; and shook
therefrom onto 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 whisky 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




64      Tales From Kipling.


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 afarWho 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.




The Phantom 'Rickshaw.


65


The Phantom 'Rickshaw.
May no ill dreams disturb my rest,
Nor Powers of Darkness me molest.
-Evening Hymn.
O    NE of the few advantages that India has
over England is a great Knowability.
After five years' service a man is directly or inderectly acquainted with the two or
three hundred Civilians in his Province, all the
Messes of ten or twelve Regiments and Batteries,
and some fifteen hundred other people of the nonofficial caste. In ten years his knowledge should
be doubled, and at the end of twenty he knows, or
knows something about, every Englishman in
the Empire, and may travel anywhere and
everywhere without paying hotel bills.
Globe-trotters who expect entertainment as a
right, have even within my memory, blunted
this open-heartedness, but none the less to-day,
if you belong to the Inner Circle, and are neither a Bear nor a Black Sheep, all houses are
open to you, and our small world is very, very
kind and helpful.
Rickett of Kamartha stayed with Polder of
Kumaon some fifteen years ago. He meant to




66       Tales From   Kipling.
stay two nights, but was knocked down by
rheumatic fever, and for six weeks disorganized
Polder's establishment, stopped Polder's work,
and nearly died in Polder's bedroom. Polder
behaves as though he had been placed under
eternal obligation by Rickett, and yearly sends
the little Ricketts a box of presents and toys.
It is the same everywhere. The men who do
not take the trouble to conceal from you their
opinion that you are an incompetent ass,and the
women who blacken your character and misunderstand your wife's amusements, will work
themselves to the bone in your behalf if you
fall sick or into serious trouble. Heatherlegh,
the Doctor, kept, in addition to his regular practice, a hospital on his private account-an arrangement of loose boxes for Incurables, his
friend called it-but it was really a sort of fitting-up shed for craft that had been damaged
by stress of weather. The weather in India is
often sultry, and since the tale of bricks is
always a fixed quantity, and the only liberty
allowed is permission to work overtime and get
no thanks, men occasionally break down and
become as mixed as the metaphors in this sentence.
Heatherlegh is the dearest doctor that ever
was, and his invariable prescription to all his
patients is: "Lie low, go slow, and keep cool."
He says that more men are killed by overwork
than the importance of this world justifies. He




The Phantom 'Rickshaw.


67


maintains that overwork slew Pansay,who died
under his hands about three years ago. He has,
of course, the right to speak authoritatively,
and he laughs at my theory that there was
a crack in Pansay's head and a little bit of the
Dark World came through and pressed him to
death. "Pansay went off the handle," says
Heatherlegh, "after the stimulus of long leave
at Home. He may or he may not have behaved
like a blackguard to Mrs. Keith-Wessington.
My notion is that the work of the Katabundi
Settlement ran him off his legs, and that he
took to brooding and making much of an ordinary P. & 0. flirtation. He certainly was
engaged to Miss Mannering, and she certainly
broke off the engagement. Then he took a
feverish chill and all that nonsense about ghosts
developed. Overwork started his illness, kept it
alight, and killed him, poor devil. Write him
off to the System-one man to take the work of
two and a half men."
I do not believe this. I used to sit up with
Pansay sometimes when Heatherlegh was
called out to patients, and I happened to be
within claim. The man would make me most
unhappy by describing in a low, even voice the
procession that was always passing at the bottom of his bed. He had a sick man's command
of language. When he recovered I suggested
that he should write out the whole affair from
beginning to end, knowing that ink might




68      Tales From Kipling.


assist him to ease his mind. When little boys
have learned a new bad word they are never
happy till they have chalked it up on a door.
And this also is Literature.
He was in a high fever while he was writing,
and the blood-and-thunder Magazine diction he
adopted did not calm him. Two months afterward he was reported fit for duty, but, in spite
of the fact that he was urgently needed to help
an undermanned Commission stagger through
a deficit, he preferred to die; vowing at the last
that he was hag-ridden. I got his manuscript
before he died, and this is his version of the
affair, dated 1885:
My doctor tells me that I need rest and
change of air. It is not improbable that I shall
get both ere long-rest that neither the redcoated messenger nor the midday gun can
break, and change of air far beyond that which
any homeward bound steamer can give me. In
the meantime I am resolved to stay where I
am; and, in flat defiance of my doctor's orders,
to take all the world into my confidence. You
shall learn for yourselves the precise nature of
my malady; and shall,too,judge for yourselves
whether any man born of woman on this weary
earth was ever so tormented as I.
Speaking now as a condemned criminal might
speakere the drop-bolts are drawn, my story,
wild andhideously improbable as it may appear,




The Phantom 'Rickshaw.


69


demands at least attention. That it will ever
receive credence I utterly disbelieve. Two
months ago I should have scouted as mad or
drunk the man who had dared tell me the like.
Two months ago I was the happiest man in
India. To-day, from Peshawar to the sea, there
is no one more wretched. My doctor and I are
the only two who know this. His explanation
is that my brain, digestion, and eyesight are
all slightly affected; giving rise to my frequent
and persistent "delusions." Delusions, indeed!
I call him a fool; but he attends me still with
the same unwearied smile, the same bland professional manner, the same neatly trimmed red
whiskers, till I begin to suspect that I am an
ungrateful, evil-tempered invalid. But you
shall judge for yourselves.
Three years ago it was my fortune-my great
misfortune-to sail from Gravesend to Bombay,
on return from long leave, with one Agnes
Keith-Wessington, wife of an officer on the
Bombay side. It does not in the least concern
you to know what manner of woman she was.
Be content with the knowledge that, ere the
voyage had ended, both she and I were desperately and unreasoningly in love with one
another. Heaven knows that I can make the
admission now without one particle of vanity.
In matters of this sort there is always one who
gives and another who accepts. Fromn the first
day of our ill-omened attachment I was con



70        Tales From Kipling.
scious that Agnes's passion was a stronger, a
more dominant, and-if I may use the expression-a purer sentiment than mine. Whether
she recognized the fact then I do not know.
Afterward it was bitterly plain to both of us.
Arrived at Bombay in the spring of the year,
we went our respective ways, to meet no more
for the next three or four months, when my
leave and her love took us both to Simla.
There we spent the season together; and there
my fire of straw burned itself out to a pitiful end
with the closing year. I attempt no excuse. I
make no apology. Mrs. Wessington had given
up much for my sake, and was prepared to
give up all. From my own lips, in August,
1882, she learned that I was sick of her presence,
tired of her company, and weary of the sound
of her voice. Ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have wearied of me as I wearied of
them; seventy-five of that number would have
promptly avenged themselves by active and
obtrusive flirtation with other men. Mrs. Wessington was the hundredth. On her neither
my openly expressed aversion nor the cutting
brutalities with which I garnished our interviews had the least effect. "Jack darling!"
was her one eternal cuckoo cry- "I'm sure it's
all a mistake- a hideous mistake; and we'll
be good friends again some day. Please forgive me, Jack, dear."
I was the offender, and I knew it. That...




The Phantom 'Rickshaw.


7I


knowledge transformed my pity into passive
endurance, and eventually into blind hate-the
same instinct, I suppose, which prompts a man
to savagely stamp on the spider he has but half
killed. And with this hate in my bosom the
season of 1882 came to an end.
Next year we met again at Simla-she with
her monotonous face and timid attempts at reconciliation, and I with loathing of her in every
fibre of my frame. Several times I could not
avoid meeting her alone; and on each occasion
her words were identically the same. Still the
unreasoning wail that it was all a "mistake,"
and still the hope of eventually "making
friends." I might have seen had I cared to
look, that tnat hope only was keeping her alive.
She grew more wan and thin month by month.
You will agree with me, at least, that such
conduct would have driven any one to despair.
It was uncalled for, childish, unwomanly. I
maintain that she was much to blame. And
again, sometimes, in the black, fever-stricken
night watches, I have begun to think that I
might have been a little kinder to her. But
that really is a "delusion." I could not have
continued pretending to love her when I didn't;
could I? It would have been unfair to us both.
Last year we met again-on the same terms
as before. The same weary appeals, and the
same curt answers from my lips. At least I
would make her see how wholly wrong and




72        Tales From Kipling.
hopeless were her attempts at resuming the old
relationship. As the season wore on we fell
apart-that is to say, she found it difficult to
meet me, for I had other and more absorbing
interests to attend to. When I think it over
quietly in my sick-room, the season of 1884
seems a confused nightmare wherein light and
shade were fantastically intermingled-my
courtship of little Kitty Mannering; my hopes,
doubts, and fears; our long rides together; my
trembling avowal of attachment; her reply;
and now and again a vision of a white face
flitting by in the 'rickshaw with the black and
white liveries I once watched for so earnestly;
the wave of Mrs. Wessington's gloved hand;
and, when she met me alone, which was but
seldom, the irksome monotony of her appeal.
I loved Kitty Mannering; honestly, heartily
loved her, and with my love for her grew my
hatred for Agnes. In August Kitty and I were
engaged. The next day I met those accursed
"magpie" jhampanies at the back of Jakko,
and, moved by some passing sentiment of pity,
stopped to tell Mrs. Wessington everything.
She knew it already.
"So I hear you're engaged, Jack, dear."
Then, without a moment's pause: "I'm sure
it's all a mistake-a hideous mistake. We shall
be as good friends some day, Jack, as we ever
were."
My answer might have made even a man




The Phantom 'Rickshaw.


73


wince. It cut the dying woman before me like
the blow of a whip. "Please forgive me, Jack;
I didn't mean to make you angry; but it's
true, it's true.'
And Mrs. Wessington broke down completely. I turned away and left her to finish
her journey in peace, feeling, but only for a
moment or two, that I had been an unutterably
mean hound. I looked back, and saw that she
had turned her 'rickshaw with the idea, I suppose, of overtaking me.
The scene and its surroundings were photographed on my memory. The rain-swept sky
(we were at the end of the wet weather), the
sodden, dingy pines, the muddy road, and the
black powder-riven cliffs formed a gloomy
background against which the black and white
liveries of the jhampanies, the yellow-paneed
'rickshaw and Mrs. Wessington's down-bowed
golden head stood out clearly. She was holding
her handkerchief in her left hand and was leaning back exhausted against the 'rickshaw cushions. I turned my horse up a bypath near
the Sanjowlie Reseilvoir and literally ran away.
Once I fancied I heard a faint call of "Jack T'
This may have been imagination. I never
stopped to verify it. Ten minutes later I came
across Kitty on horseback' and, in the delight
of a long ride with her, forgot all about the
interview.
A week later Mrs. Wessington died, and the




74        Tales From Kipling.
inexpressible burden of her existence was re
moved from my life. I went Plainsward perfectly happy. Before three months were over I
had forgotten all about her,except that at times
the discovery of some of her old letters reminded
me unpleasantly of our bygone relationship.
By January I had disinterred what was left of
our correspondence from among my scattered
belongings and had burned it At the beginning
of April of this year, 1885, I was at Simlasemideserted Simla-once more, and was deep
in lover's talks and walks with Kitty. It was
decided that we should be married at the end of
June. You will understand, therefore, that,
loving Kitty as I did,I am not saying too much
when I pronounce myself to have been, at that
time, the happiest man in India.
Fourteen delightful days passed almost before I noticed their flight. Then, aroused to
the sense of what was proper among mortals
circumstanced as we were, I pointed out to
Kitty that an engagement ring was the outward and visible sign of her dignity as an engaged girl; and that she must forthwith come
to Hamilton's to be measured for one. Up to
that moment, I give you my word, we had completely forgotten so trivial a matter. To Ham -
ilton's we accordingly went on the 15th of
April, 1885. Remember that-whatever my
doctors may say to the contrary-I was then in
perfect health, enjoying a well-balanced mind




The Phantom 'Rickshaw.         75
and an absolutely tranquil spirit. Kitty and
I entered Hamilton's shop together, and there,
regardless of the order of affairs, I measured
Kitty for the ring in the presence of the amused
assistant. The ring was a sapphire with two
diamonds. We then rode out down the slope
that leads to the Combermere Bridge and Peliti's shop.
While my Waler was cautiously feeling his
way over the loose shale and Kitty was laughing and chattering at my side-while all Simla,
that is to say, as much of it as had then come
from the Plains, was grouped round the Reading room and Peliti's veranda-I was aware
that some one, apparently at a vast distance,
was calling me by my Christian name. It
struck me that I had heard the voice before,
but when and where I could not at once determine. In the short space it took to cover the
road between the path from Hamilton's shop
and the first plank of the Combermere Bridge
I had thought over half a dozen people who
might have committed such a solecism, and
had eventually decided that it must have been
some singing in my ears. Immediately opposite Peliti's shop my eye was arrested by the
sight of four jhampanies in "magpie " livery,
pulling a yellow-paneled, cheap, bazar 'rickshaw. In a moment my mind flew back to the
previous season and Mrs. Wessington with a
sense of irritation and disgust. Was it not




76


Tales From Kipling.


enough that the woman was dead and done
with, without her black and white servitors
reappearing to spoil the day's happiness?
Whoever employed them now I thought I
would call upon, and ask as a personal favor to
change her jhampanies' livery. I would hire
the men myself, and, if necessary, buy their
coats from off their backs. It is impossible to
say here what a flood of undesirable memories
their presence evoked.
"Kitty," I cried, "there are poor Mrs. Wessington's jhampanies turned up again! I wonder who has them now?"
Kitty had known Mrs. Wessington slightly
last season, and had always been interested in
the sickly woman.
"What? Where?" she asked. "I can't see
them anywhere."
Even as she spoke her horse, swerving from
a laden mule, threw himself directly in front of
the advancing 'rickshaw. I had scarcely time
to utter a word of warning when, to my unutterable horror, horse and rider passed through
men and carriage as if they had been thin air.
"What's the matter?" cried Kitty; "what
made you call out so foolishly, Jack? If I am
engaged, I don't want all creation to know
about it. There was lots of space between the
mule and the veranda; and if you think I can't
ride-There!"
Whereupon willful Kitty set off, her dainty




The Phantom 'Rickshaw.


77


little head in the air, at a hand-gallop in the
direction of the Band-stand; fully expecting, as
she herself afterward told me, that I should follow her. What was the matter? Nothing indeed.
Either that I was mad or drunk, or that Simla
was haunted with devils. I reined in my impatient cob and turned round. The 'rickshaw had
turned, too, and now stood immediately facing
me, near the left railing of the Combermere
Bridge.
"Jack! Jack, darling!" (There was no
mistake about the words this time; they rang
through my brain as if they had been shouted
in my ear.) "It's some hideous mistake, I'm
sure. Please forgive me, Jack, and let's be
friends again."
The 'rickshaw hood had fallen back, and
inside, as I hope and pray daily for the death
I dread by night, sat Mrs. Keith-Wessington,
handkerchief in hand, and golden head bowed
on her breast.
How long I stared motionless I do not know.
Finally I was aroused by my syce taking the
Waler's bridle and asking whether I was ill.
From the horrible to the commonplace is but
a step. I tumbled off my horse and dashed,
half-fainting, into Peliti's for a glass of cherrybrandy. There two or three couples were gathered round the coffee-tables discussing the gossip of the day. Their trivialities were more
comforting to me just then than the consola



78        Tales From Kipling.
tions of religion could have been. I plunged
into the midst of the conversation at once,
chatted, laughed, and jested with a face (when
I caught a glimpse of it in a mirror) as white
and drawn as that of a corpse. Three or four
men noticed my condition; and, evidently setting it down to the results of overmany pegs,
charitably endeavored to draw me apart from
the rest of the loungers. But I refused to be
led away. I wanted the company of my kind
-as a child rushes into the midst of the dinnerparty after a fright in the dark. I must have
talked for about ten minutes or so, though it
seemed an eternity to me, when I heard Kitty's
clear voice outside inquiring for me. In another minute she had entered the shop,prepared
to roundly upbraid me for failing so signally
in my duties. Something in my face stopped
her.
"Why, Jack," she cried,"what have you
been doing? What has happened? Are you
ill?" Thus driven into a direct lie, I said that
the sun had been a little too much for me. It
was close upon five o'clock of a cloudy April
afternoon,and the sun had been hidden all day.
I saw my mistake as soon as the words were
out of my mouth; attempted to recover it;
blundered hopelessly and followed Kitty in a
regal rage out of doors, amid the smiles of my
acquaintances. I made some excuse (I have
forgotten what) on the score of my feeling




The Phantom 'Rickshaw.


79


faint; and cantered away to my hotel, leaving
Kitty to finish the ride by herself.
In my room I sat down and tried calmly to
reason out the matter. Here was I, Theobald
Jack Pansay, a well-educated Bengal Civilian in
the year of grace 1885, presumably sane, certainly healthy, driven in terror from my sweetheart's side by the apparition of a woman who
had been dead and buried eight months ago.
These were facts that I could not blink. Nothing was further from my thought than any
memory of Mrs. Wessington when Kitty and
I left Hamilton's shop. Nothing was more
utterly commonplace than the stretch of wall
opposite Peliti's. It was broad daylight. The
road was full of people; and yet here, look you,
in defiance of every law of probability,in direct
outrage of Nature's ordinance, there had appeared to me a face from the grave.
Kitty's Arab had gone through the 'rickshaw; so that my first hope that some woman
marvelously like Mrs. Wessington had hired
the carriage and the coolies with their old livery
was lost. Again and again I went round this
treadmill of thought; and again and again gave
up baffled and in despair. The voice was as
inexplicable as the apparition. I had originally
some wild notion of confiding it all to Kitty;
of begging her to marry me at once; and in her
arms defying the ghostly occupant of the 'rickshaw, "After all," I argued, "the presence of




8o


Tales From Kipling.


the 'rickshaw is in itself enough to prove the
existence of a spectral illusion. One may see
ghosts of men and women, but surely never of
coolies and carriages. The whole thing is absurd. Fancy the ghost of a hill man!"  Next
morning I sent a penitent note to Kitty, imploring her to overlook my strange conduct of
the previous afternoon. My Divinity was still
very wroth, and a personal apology was necessary. I explained, with a fluency born of
night-long pondering over a falsehood, that I
had been attacked with a sudden palpitation of
the heart-the result of indigestion. This eminently practical solution had its effect; and
Kitty and I rode out that afternoon with the
shadow of my first lie dividing us.
Nothing would please her save a canter round
Jakko. With my nerves still unstrung from
the previous night I feebly protested against
the notion, suggesting Observatory Hill, Jutogh, the Boileaugunge road-anything rather
than the Jakko round. Kitty was angry and a
little hurt: so I yielded from fear of provoking
further misunderstanding, and we set out together toward Chota Simla. We walked a
greater part of the way, and, according to our
custom, cantered from a mile or so below the
Convent to the stretch of level road by the Sanjowlie Reservoir. The wretched horses appeared
to fly, and my heart beat quicker and quicker
as we neared the crest of the ascent. My mind




The Phantom 'Rickshaw.


had been full of Mrs. Wessington all the afternoon; and every inch of the Jakko road bore
witness to our old-time walks and talks. The
bowlders were full of it; the pines sang it
aloud overhead; the rain-fed torrents giggled
and chuckled unseen over the shameful story;
and the wind in my ears chanted the iniquity
aloud.
As a fitting climax,in the middle of the level
men call the Ladies' Mile, the Horror was
awaiting me. No other 'rickshaw was in sight
-only the four black and white jhampanies,
the yellow-paneled carriage, and the golden
head of the woman within-all apparently just
as I had left them eight months and one fortnight ago! For an instant I fancied that Kitty
must see what I saw-we were so marvelously
sympathetic in all things. Her next words
undeceived me-" Not a soul in sight! Come
along, Jack, and I'll race you to the Reservoir
buildings!"' Her wiry little Arab was off like
a bird, my Waler following close behind, and
in this order we dashed under the cliffs. Half
a minute brought us within fifty yards of the
'rickshaw. I pulled my Waler and fell back a
little. The 'rickshaw was directly in the middle of the road; and once more the Arab passed
through it, my horse following. "Jack! Jack
dear! Please forgive me," rang with a wail
in my ears, and, after an interval:-" It's all a
mistake, a hideous mistake!"




82      Tales From Kipling.


I spurred my horse like a man possessed.
When I turned my head at the Reservoir works
the black and white liveries were still waiting
-patiently waiting-under the gray hillside,
and the wind brought me a mocking echo of
the words I had just heard. Kitty bantered
me a good deal on my silence throughout the
remainder of the ride. I had been talking up
till then wildly and at random. To save my
life I could not speak afterward naturally, and
from Sanjowlie to the Church wisely held my
tongue.
I was to dine with the Mannerings that night,
and had barely time to canter home to dress.
On the road to Elysium Hill I overheard two
men talking together in the dusk. "It's a curious thing," said one,"how completely all trace
of it disappeared. You know my wife was
insanely fond of the woman (never could see
anything in her myself) and wanted me to
pick up her old 'rickshaw and coolies if they
were to be got for love or money. Morbid sort
of fancy I call it; but I've got to do what the
Memsahib tells me. Would you believe that
the man she hired it from tells me that all four
of the men-they were brothers-died of cholera
on the way to Hardwar, poor devils; and the
'rickshaw has been broken up by the man himself. 'Told me he never used a dead Mernsahib's 'rickshaw. 'Spoilt his luck. Queer notion, wasn't it? Fancy poor little Mrs. Wes



The Phantom 'Rickshaw.


83


sington spoiling any one's luck except her
own!" I laughed aloud at this point; and my
laugh jarred on me as I uttered it. So there
were ghosts of 'rickshaws,after all,and ghostly
employments in the other world! How much
did Mrs. Wessington give her men? What
were their hours? Where did they go?
And for visible answer to my last question I
saw the infernal Thing blocking my path in
the twilight. The dead travel fast, and by
short cuts unknown to ordinary coolies. I
laughed aloud a second time, and checked my
laughter suddenly,for I was afraid I was going
mad. Mad to a certain extent I must have
been, for I recollect that I reined in my horse
at the head of the 'rickshaw, and politely
wished Mrs. Wessington "Good-evening." Her
answer was one I knew only too well. I listened to the end, and replied that I had heard
it all before, but should be delighted if she had
anything further to say. Some malignant devil
stronger than I must have entered into me that
evening,for I have a dim recollection of talking
the commonplaces of the day for five minutes
to the Thing in front of me.
"Mad as a hatter, poor devil-or drunk.
Max, try and get him to come home."
Surely that was not Mrs. Wessington's voice!
The two men had overheard me speaking to
the empty air and had returned to look after
me. They were very kind and considerate,and




84        Tales From Kipling.
from their words evidently gathered that I was
extremely drunk. I thanked them confusedly
and cantered away to my hotel, there changed,
and arrived at the Mannerings' ten minutes
late. I pleaded the darkness of the night as an
excuse; was rebuked by Kitty for my unloverlike tardiness; and sat down.
The conversation had already become general; and under cover of it, I was addressing
some tender small talk to my sweetheart when
I was aware that at the farther end of the table,a short, red-whiskered man was describing,with
much broidery, his encounter with a mad unknown that evening.
A few sentences convinced me that he was
repeating the incident of half an hour ago. In
the middle of the story he looked round for
applause, as professional story-tellers do,caught
my eye, and straightway collapsed. There was
a moment's awkward silence, and the red-whiskered man muttered something to the effect
that he had "forgotten the rest," thereby sacrificing a reputation as a good story-teller which
he had built up for six seasons past. I blessed
him from the bottom of my heart, and-went
on with my fish.
In the fulness of time that dinner came to an
end, and with genuine regret I tore myself
away from Kitty-as certain as I was of my
own existence that It would be waiting for me
outside the door. The red-whiskered man,who




The Phantom 'Rickshaw.


85


had been introduced to me as Dr. Heatherlegh
of Silma, volunteered to bear me company as
far out as our roads lay together. I accepted
his offer with gratitude.
My instinct had not deceived me. It lay in
readiness in the Mall, and, in what seemed devlish mockery of our ways, with a lighted headlamp. The red-whiskered man went to the
point at once, in a manner that showed he had
been thinking over it all dinner time.
"I say, Pansay, what the deuce was the matter with you this evening on the Elysiuip
road?"   The suddenness of the question
wrenched an answer from me before I was
aware.
"That!" said I, pointing to It.
" That may be either D. T. or Eyes for aught
I know. Now you don't liquor. I saw as much
at dinner, so it can't be D. T. There's nothing
whatever where you're pointing, though you're
sweating and trembling with fright like a
scared pony. Therefore I conclude that it's
Eyes. And I ought to understand all about
them. Come along home with me. I'm on the
Blessington lower road."
To my intense delight the 'rickshaw instead
of waiting for us kept about twenty yards ahead
-and this, too, whether we walked, trotted or
cantered. In the course of that long night ride
I had told my companion almost as much as 1
have told you here.




86


Tales From Kipling.


"Well, you've spoiled one of the best tales
I've ever laid tongue to," said he, "but I'll
forgive you for the sake of what you've gone
through. Now come home and do what I tell
you; and when I've cured you, young man, let
this be a lesson to you to steer clear of women
and indigestible food till the day of your
death."
The 'rickshaw kept steady in front; and my
red-whiskered friend seemed to derive great
pleasure from my account of its exact whereabouts. "Eyes, Pansay-all Eyes, Brain and
Stomach. And the greatest of these three
is Stomach.   You've too much    conceited
Brain, too little Stomach, and thoroughly unhealthy Eyes. Get your Stomach straight and
the rest follows. And all that's French for a
liver pill. I'll take sole medical charge of you
from this hour! for you're too interesting a
phenomenon to be passed over."
By this time we were deep in the shadow of
the Blessington lower road, and the 'rickshaw
came to a dead stop under a pine-clad, overhanging shalecliff. Instinctively I halted too,
giving my reason. Heatherlegh rapped out an
oath.
"Now, if you think I'm going to spend a
cold night on the hillside for the sake of a
Stomach-cum-Brain-cum-Eye illusion...
Lord, ha' mercy! What's that?"
There was a muffled report, a blinding




The Phantom 'Rickshaw.


87


smother of dust just in front of us, a crack,
the noise of rent boughs, and about ten yards
of the cliff-side-pines, undergrowth and allslid down into the road below, completely
blocking it up. The uprooted trees swayed and
tottered for a moment like drunken giants in
the gloom, and then fell prone among their fellows with a thunderous crash. Our two horses
stood motionless and sweating with fear. As
soon as the rattle of falling earth and stone had
subsided, my companion muttered: "Man, if
we'd gone forward we should have been ten
feet deep in our graves by now. 'There are
more things in heaven and earth.'... Come
home, Pansay, and thank God. I want a peg
badly."
We retraced our way over the Church Ridge,
and I arrived at Dr. Heatherlegh's house shortly after midnight.
His attempts toward my cure commenced
almost immediately, and for a week I never
left his sight. Many a time in the course of
that week did I bless the good-fortune which
had thrown me in contact with Simla's best
and kindest doctor. Day by day my spirits grew
lighter and more equable. Day by day, too, I
became more and more inclined to fall in with
Heatherlegh's "spectral illusion" theory, implicating eyes, brain and stomach. I wrote to
Kitty, telling her that a slight sprain caused
by a fall from my horse kept me indoors for a




88      Tales From Kipling.


few days; and that I should be recovered before
she had time to regret my absence.
Heatherlegh's treatment was simple to a degree. It consisted of liver pills, cold-water
baths, and strong exercise, taken in the dusk
or at early dawn-for, as he sagely observed:
-"A man with a sprained ankle doesn't walk
a dozen miles a day, and your young woman
might be wondering if she saw you."
At the end of the week, after much examination of pupil and pulse, and strict injunctions as to diet and pedestrianism, Heatherlegh
dismissed me as brusquely as he had taken
charge of me. Here is his parting benediction:
-"Man, I certify to your mental cure, and
that's as much as to say I've cured most of
your bodily ailments. Now, get your traps out
of this as soon as you can; and be off to make
love to Miss Kitty."
I was endeavoring to express my thanks for
his kindness. He cut me short.
"Don't think I did this because I like you.
I gather that you've behaved like a blackguard
all through. But, all the same, you're a phenomenon, and as queer a phenomenon as you
are a blackguard. No!"-checking me a second
time-"not a rupee, please. Go out and see if
you can find the eyes-brain-and-stomach business again. I'll give you a lakh for each time
you see it."
Half an hour later I was in the Mannerings'




The Phantom 'Rickshaw.


89


drawing-room with Kitty-drunk with the intoxication of present happiness and the foreknowledge that I should never more be troubled with its hideous presence. Strong in the
sense of my new-found security, I proposed a
ride at once; and, by preference, a canter round
Jakko.
Never had I felt so well, so overladen with
vitality and mere animal spirits, as I did on
the after-noon of the 30th of April. Kitty was
delighted at the change in my appearance, and
complimented me on it in her delightfully
frank and outspoken manner. We left the
Mannerings' house together, laughing and talking, and cantered along the Chota Simla road
as of old.
I was in haste to reach the Sanjowlie Reservoir,and there make my assurance doubly sure.
The horses did their best, but seemed all too
slow to my impatient mind. Kitty was astonished at my boisterousness. "Why, Jack!"
she cried at last,"you are behaving like a child.
What are you doing?"
We were just below the Convent, and from
sheer wantonness I was making my Waler
plunge and curvet across the road as I tickled it
with the loop of my riding-whip.
"Doing?" I answered; "nothing, dear.
That's just it. If you'd been doing nothing
for a week except lie up, you'd be as riotous
as I.




go90      Tales From Kipling.
Id Singing and murmuring in your feastful mirth,
Joying to feel yourself alive;
Lord over Nature, Lord of the visible Earth,
Lord of the senses five."'
My quotation was hardly out of my lips
before we had rounded the corner above the
Convent; and a few yards farther on could see
across to Sanjowlie. In the center of the level
road stood the black and white liveries, the yellow-paneled 'rickshaw, and Mrs. Keith-Wessington. I pulled up, looked, rubbed my eyes,
and, I believe, must have said something. The
next thing I knew was that I was lying face
downward on the road, with Kitty kneeling
above me in tears.
"Has it gone, child!" I gasped. Kitty only
wept more bitterly.
"Has what gone, Jack dear? what does it all
mean? There must be a mistake somewhere,
Jack. A hideous mistake." Her last words
brought me to my feet-mad-raving for the
time being.
"Yes, there is a mistake somewhere," I repeated, "a hideous mistake. Come and look at
It."
I have an indistinct idea that I dragged Kitty
by the wrist along the road up to where It
stood, and implored her for pity's sake to speak
to It; to tell It that we were betrothed; that
neither Death nor Hell could break the tie
between us; and Kitty only knows how much




The Phantom 'Rickshaw.


9I


more to the same effect. Now and again I
appealed passionately to the Terror in the 'rickshaw to bear witness to all I had said, and to
release me from a torture that was killing me.
As I talked I suppose I must have told Kitty
of my old relations with Mrs. Wessington, for
I saw her listen intently with white face and
blazing eyes.
"Thank you, Mr. Pansay," she said, "that's
quite enough. Syce Ghora lao."
The syces, impassive as Orientals always are,
had come up with the recaptured horses; and as
Kitty sprang into her saddle I caught hold of
the bridle entreating her to hear me out and
forgive. My answer was the cut of her ridingwhip across my face from mouth to eye, and a
word or two of farewell that even now I cannot write down. So I judged, and judged
rightly, that Kitty knew all; and I staggered
back to the side of the 'rickshaw. My face was
cut and bleeding, and the blow of the ridingwhip had raised a livid blue wheal on it. I
had no self-respect. Just then Heatherlegh,
who must have been following Kitty and me
at a distance, cantered up.
"Doctor," I said, pointing to my face,
"here's Miss Mannering's signature to my
order of dismissal.... I'll thank you foi
that lakh as soon as convenient."
Heatherlegh's face, even in my abject misery,
moved me to laughter.




92       Tales From Kipling.
"I'll stake my professional reputation"-bhe
began. "Don't be a fool," I whispered. "I've
lost my life's happiness and you'd better take
me home."
As I spoke the 'rickshaw was gone. Then
I lost all knowledge of what was passing. The
crest of Jakko seemed to heave and roll like
the crest of a cloud and fall in upon me.
Seven days later (on the 7th of May, that is
to say) I was aware that I was lying in Heatherlegh's room as weak as a little child. Heatherlegh was watching me intently from behind
the papers on his writing-table. His first words
were not encouraging; but I was too far spent
to be much moved by them.
"Here's Miss Kitty has sent back your letters. You corresponded a good deal,you young
people. Here's a packet that looks like a ring,
and a cheerful sort of a note from Mannering
Papa, which I've taken the liberty of reading
and burning. The old gentleman's not pleased
with you."
"And Kitty?" I asked, dully.
"Rather more drawn than her father from
what she says. By the same token you must
have been letting out any number of queer
reminiscences just before I met you. 'Says that
a man who would have behaved to a woman as
you did to Mrs. Wessington ought to kill himself out of sheer pity for his kind. She's a hotheaded little virago, your mash. 'Will have it,




The Phantom 'Rickshaw.


93


too, that you were suffering from D. T. when
that row on the Jakko road turned up. 'Says
she'll die before she ever speaks to you again."
I groaned and turned over on the other side.
"Now you've got your choice, my friend.
This engagement has to be broken off; and the
Mannerings don't want to be too hard on you.
Was it broken through D. T. or epileptic fits?
Sorry I can't offer you a better exchange unless
you'd prefer hereditary insanity. Say the word
and I'll tell 'em it's fits. All Simla knows
about that scene on the Ladies' Mile. Come!
I'll give you five minutes to think over it."
During those five minutes I believe that I
explored thoroughly the lowest circles of the
Inferno which it is permitted man to tread on
earth. And at the same time I myself was
watching myself faltering through the dark
labyrinths of doubt, misery, and utter despair.
I wondered, as Heatherlegh in his chair might
have wondered, which dreadful alternative I
should adopt. Presently I heard myself answering in a voice that I hardly recognized"They're confoundedly particular about
morality in these parts. Give 'em fits, Heatherlegh, and my love. Now let me sleep a bit
longer."
Then my two selves joined, and it was only
I (half crazed, devil-driven I) that tossed in my
bed, tracing step by step the history of the past
month.




94


Tales From Kipling.


"But I am in Simla," I kept repeating to
myself. "I, Jack Pansay, am in Simla, and
there are no ghosts here. It's unreasonable of
that woman to pretend there are. Why couldn't
Agnes have left me alone? I never did her any
harm. It might just as well have been me as
Agnes. Only I'd never have come back on
purpose to kill her. Why can't I be left alone
-left alone and happy?"
It was high noon when I first awoke: and
the sun was low in the sky before I slept-slept
as the tortured criminal sleeps on his rack, too
worn to feel further pain.
Next day I could not leave my bed. Heatherlegh told me in the morning that he had received an answer from  Mr. Mannering, and
that, thanks to his (Heatherlegh's) friendly offices, the story of my affliction had traveled
through the length and breadth of Simla,where
I was on all sides much pitied.
"And that's rather more than you deserve,"
he concluded pleasantly, "though the Lord
knows you've been going through a pretty
severe mill. Never mind; we'll cure you yet,
you perverse phenomenon."
I declined firmly to be cured. "You've been
much too good to me already, old man," said
I; "but I don't think I need trouble you further."
In my heart I knew that nothing Heatherlegh could do would lighten the burden that
bad been laid upon me,




The Phantom 'Rickshaw.


95


With that knowledge came also a sense of
hopeless, impotent rebellion against the unreasonableness of it all. There were scores of men
no better than I whose punishments had at
least been reserved for another world; and I
felt that it was bitterly, cruelly unfair that I
alone should have been singled out for so hideous a fate. This mood would in time give
place to another where it seemed that the 'rickshaw and I were the only realities in a world
of shadows; that Kitty was a ghost; that Mannering, Heatherlegh and all the other men and
women I knew were all ghosts; and the great
gray hills themselves but vain shadows devised
to torture me. From mood to mood I tossed
backward and forward for seven weary days;
my body growing daily stronger and stronger,
until the bedroom looking-glass told me that I
had returned to every-day life,and was as other
men once more. Curiously enough my face
showed no signs of the struggle I had gone
through. It was pale indeed, but as expressionless and commonplace as ever. I had expected
some permanent alteration-visible evidence of
the disease that was eating me away. I found
nothing.
On the 15th of May I left Heatherlegh's
house at eleven o'clock in the morning; and the
instinct of the bachelor drove me to the Club.
There I found that every man knew my story
as told by Heatherlegh, and was, in clumsy




96       Tales From Kipling.
fashion, abnormally kind and attentive. Nevertheless I recognized that for the rest of my
natural life I should be among but not of my
fellows; and I envied very bitterly indeed the
laughing coolies on the Mall below. I lunched
at the Club, and, at four o'clock wandered aimlessly down the Mall in the vain hope of meeting Kitty. Close to the Band-stand the black
and white liveries joined me; and I heard Mrs.
Wessington's old appeal at my side. I had
been expecting this ever since I came out; and
was only surprised at her delay. The phantom 'rickshaw and I went side by side along the
Chota Simla road in silence. Close to the bazar
Kitty and a man on horseback overtook and
passed us. For any sign she gave I might have
been a dog in the road. She did not even pay
me the compliment of quickening her pace;
though the rainy afternoon had served for an
excuse.
So Kitty and her companion, and I and my
ghostly Light-o'-Love, crept round Jakko in
couples. The road was streaming with water;
the pines dripped like roof-pipes on the rocks
below, and the air was full of fine, driving
rain. Two or three times I found myself saying to myself almost aloud:-"I'm Jack Pansay on leave at Simla-at Sinmla! Every-day,
ordinary Simla.  I mustn't forget that-I
mustn't forget that." Then I would try to
recollect some of the gossip I had heard at the




The Phantom 'Rickshaw.


97


Club: the prices of So-and-So's horses-anything, in fact, that related to the work-a-day
Anglo-Indian world I knew so well. I even
repeated the multiplication table rapidly to myself, to make quite sure that I was not taking
leave of my senses. It gave me much comfort;
and must have prevented my hearing Mrs.
Wessington for a time.
Once more I wearily climbed the Convent
slope and entered the level road. Here Kitty
and the man started off at a canter, and I was
left alone with Mrs. Wessington. "Agnes,"
said I, "will you put back your hood and tell
me what it all means?" The hood dropped
noiselessly, and I was face to face with my
dead and buried mistress. She was wearing
the dress in which I had last seen her alive;
carried the same tiny handkerchief in her right
hand; and the same card case in her left. (A
woman eight months dead with a card-case!)
I had to pin myself down to the multiplication
table, and to set both hands on the stone parapet of the road,'to assure myself that that at
least was real.
"Agnes," I repeated, "for pity's sake tell
me what it all means." Mrs. Wessington leaned
forward, with that odd, quick turn of the
head I used to know so well and spoke.
If my story had not already so madly overleaped the bounds of all human belief I should
apologize to you now. As I know that no one




98     Tales From Kipling.


-no, not even Kitty, for whom it is written as
some sort of justification of my conduct-will
believe me, I will go on. Mrs. Wessington
spoke and I walked with her from the Sanjowlie road to the turning below the Commander-in-Chief's house as I might walk by the side of
any living woman's 'rickshaw, deep in conver
sation. The second and most tormenting of my
moods of sickness had suddenly laid hold upon
me, and like the Prince in Tennyson's poem,
"I seemed to move amid a world of ghosts."
There had been a garden-party at the Commander-in-Chief's,and we two joined the crowd
of homeward-bound folk. As I saw them then
it seemed that they were the shadows-impalpable fantastic shadows-that divided for Mrs.
Wessington's 'rickshaw to pass through. What
we said during the course of that weird interview I cannot-indeed I dare not-tell. Heatherlegh's comment would have been a short
laugh and a remark that I had been "mashing
a brain-eye-and-stomach chimera." It was a
ghastly and yet in some indefinable way a marvelously dear experience. Could it be possible,
I wondered, that I was in this life to woo a
second time the woman I had killed by my own
neglect and cruelty?
I met Kitty on the homeward road-a shadow
among shadows.
If I were to describe all the incidents of the
next fortnight in their order, my story would




The Phantom 'Rickshaw.


99


never come to an end; and your patience would
be exhausted. Morning after morning and
evening after evening the ghostly 'rickshaw
and I used to wander through Simla together.
Wherever I went there the four black and
white liveries followed me and bore me company to and from my hotel. At the Theatre I
found them amid the crowd of yelling jhampanies; outside the Club veranda, after a long
evening of whist; at the Birthday Ball, waiting patiently for my reappearance; and in
broad daylight when I went calling. Save
that it cast no shadow, the 'rickshaw was in
every respect as real to look upon as one of
wood and iron. More than once indeed I have
had to check myself from warning some hardriding friend against cantering over it. More
than once I have walked down the Mall deep in
conversation with Mrs. Wessington to the unspeakable amazement of the passers-by.
Before I had been out and about a week I
learned that the "fit" theory had been discarded
in favor of insanity. However, I made no
change in my mode of life. I called, rode and
dined out as freely as ever. I had a passion
for the society of my kind which I had never
felt before; I hungered to be among the realities of life; and at the same time I felt vaguely
unhappy when I had been separated too long
from my ghostly companion. It would be almost impossible to describe my varying moods
from the 15th of May up to to-day.




I00


Tales From Kipling.


The presence of the 'rickshaw filled me by
turns with horror, blind fear, a dim sort of
pleasure, and utter despair. I dared not leave
Simla; and I knew that my stay there was killing me. I knew, moreover, that it was -my
destiny to die slowly and a little every day.
My only anxiety was to get the pennance over
as quietly as might be. Alternately I hungered
for a sight of Kitty and watched her outrageous flirtations with my successor-to speak
more accurately, my successors-with amused
interest. She was as much out of my life as I
was out of hers. By day I wandered with Mrs.
Wessington almost content. By night I implored Heaven to let me return to the world as
I used to know it. Above all these varying
moods lay the sensation of dull, numbing wonder that the Seen and the Unseen should mingle so strangely on this earth to hound one poor
soul to its grave.
August 27.-Heatherlegh has been indefatigable in his attendance on me; and only yesterday told me that I ought to send in an application for sick leave. An application to escape
the company of a phantom! A request that the
Government would graciously permit me to get
rid of five ghosts and an airy 'rickshaw by going to England! Heatherlegh's proposition
moved me to almost hysterical laughter. I
told him that I should await the end quietly at




The Phantom 'Rickshaw.


101


Simla; and I am sure that the end is not far
off. Believe me that I dread its advent more
than any word can say; and I torture myself
nightly with a thousand speculations as to the
manner of my death.
Shall I die in my bed decently as an English gentleman should die; or, in one last walk
on the Mall, will my soul be wrenched from me
to take its place for ever and ever by the side
of that ghastly phantasm? Shall I return to
my old lost allegiance in the next world, or
shall I meet Agnes loathing her and bound to
her side through all eternity? Shall we two
hover over the scene of our lives till the end of
Time? As the day of my death draws nearer,
the intense horror that all living flesh feels
toward escaped spirits from beyond the grave
grows more and more powerful. It is an awful
thing to go down quick among the dead with
scarcely one-half of your life completed. It is
a thousand times more awful to wait as I do in
your midst, for I know not what unimaginable
terror. Pity me, at least on the score of my
"delusion," for I know you will never believe
what I have written here. Yet as surely as
ever a man was done to death by the Powers of
Darkness I am that man.
In justice, too, pity her. For as surely as
ever woman was killed by man, I killed Mrs.
Wessington. And the last portion of my punishment is even now upon me.




102


Tales From Kipling.


My Own True Ghost Story.
As I came through the Desert thus it wasAs I came through the Desert.
-The City of Dreadful Night.
S   OMEWHERE in the Other World, where
there are books and pictures and plays and
shop-windows to look at, and thousands
of men who spend their lives in building up all
four, lives a gentleman who writes real stories
about the real insides of people; and his name is
Mr. Walter Besant. But he will insist upon
treating his ghosts-he has published half a
workshopful of them-with levity. He makes
his ghost-seers talk familiarly and in some cases,
flirt outrageously, with the phantoms. You
may treat anything, from a Viceroy to a Vernacular Paper, with levity; but you must behave reverently toward a ghost, and particularly an Indian one.
There are, in this land, ghosts who take the
form of fat, cold, pobby corpses, and hide in
trees near the roadside till a traveler passes.
Then they drop upon his neck and remain.
There are also terrible ghosts of women who
have died in childbed. These wander along




My Own True Ghost Story. io3
the pathways at dusk,or hide in the crops near
a village, and call seductively. But to answer
their call is death in this world and the next.
Their feet are turned backwards that all sober
men may recognize them. There are ghosts of
little children who have been thrown into wells.
These haunt wellcurbs and the fringes of jun
gles, and wail under the stars, or catch women
by the wrist and beg to be taken up and carried. These and the corpse-ghosts, however,
are only vernacular articles, and do not attack
Sahibs. No native ghost has yet been authentically reported to have frightened an Englishman; but many English ghosts have scared the
life out of both white and black.
Nearly every other Station owns a ghost.
There are said to be two at Simla, not counting
the woman who blows the bellows at Syree
dak-bungalow on the Old Road; Mussoorie has
a house haunted of a very lively Thing; a
White Lady is supposed to do night-watchman
round a house in Lahore; Dalhousie says that
one of her houses "repeats" on autumn evenings all the incidents of a horrible horse-andprecipice accident; Murree has a merry ghost,
and, now that she has been swept by cholera,
will have room for a sorrowful one; there are
Officers' Quarters in Mian Mir whose doors
open without reason, and whose furniture is
guaranteed to creak, not with the heat of June,
but with the weight of Invisibles who come to




o104


Tales From Kipling.


lounge in the chairs; Peshawur possesses
houses that none will willingly rent; and there
is something-not fever-wrong with a big
bungalow in Allahabad. The older Provinces
simply bristle with haunted houses, and march
phantom armies along their main thoroughfares.
Some of the dak-bungalows on the Grand
Trunk Road have handy little cemeteries in
their compound-witnesses to the "changes and
chances of this mortal life" in the days when
men drove from Calcutta to the Northwest.
These bungalows are objectionable places to
put up in. They are generally very old, always
dirty, while the khansamah is as ancient as
the bungalow. He either chatters senilely, or
falls into the long trances of age. In both
moods be is useless. If you get angry with
him he refers to some Sahib dead and buried
these thirty years, and says that when he was
in that Sahib's service not a khansamah in the
Province could touch him. Then he jabbers
and mows and trembles and fidgets among the
dishes and you repent of your irritation.
In these dak-bungalows, ghosts are most likely to be found, and when found, they should
be made a note of. Not long ago it was my
business to live in dak-bungalows. I never inhabited the same house for three nights running, and grew to be learned in the breed. I
lived in Government-built ones with red brick




My Own True Ghost Story. 105


walls and rail ceilings, an inventory of the furniture posted in every room, and an excited
snake at the threshold to give welcome. I lived
in "converted" ones-old houses officiating as
dak-bungalows -where nothing was in its
proper place and there wasn't even a fowl for
dinner. I lived in second-hand palaces where
the wind blew through open-work marble tracery just as uncomfortably as through a broken
pane. I lived in dak-bungalows where the last
entry in the visitors' book was fifteen months
old, and where they slashed off the curry-kid's
head with a sword. It was my good-luck to
meet all sorts of men, from sober traveling
missionaries and deserters flying from British
Regiments, to drunken loafers who threw whisky bottles at all who passed; and my still
greater good-fortune just to escape a maternity
case. Seeing that a fair proportion of the tragedy of our lives out here acted itself in dakbungalows, I wondered that I had met no
ghosts. A ghost that would voluntarily hang
about a dak-bungalow would be mad of course;
but so many men have died mad in dak-bungalows that there must be a fair percentage of
lunatic ghosts.
In due time I found my ghost, or ghosts
rather, for there were two of them. Up till
that hour I had sympathized with Mr. Besant's method of handling them, as shown in
"The Strange Case of Mr. Lucraft and other
Stories." I am now in the Opposition.




io6      Tales From Kipling.
We will call the bungalow Katmal dakbungalow. But that was the smallest part of
the horror. A man with a sensitive hide has
no right to sleep in dak-bungalows. He should
marry. Katmal dak-bunaglow was old and
rotten and unrepaired. The floor was of worn
bricks, the walls were filthy, and the windows
were nearly black with grime. It stood on a
bypath largely used by native Sub-Deputy Assistants of all kinds, from Finance to Forests;
but real Sahibs were rare. The khansamah,
who was nearly bent double with old age, said
so.
When I arrived, there was a fitful,undecided
rain on the face of the land, accompanied by a
restless wind, and every gust made a noise like
the rattling of dry bones in the stiff toddy
palms outside. The khansamah completely
lost his head on my arrival. He had served a
Sahib once. Did I know that Sahib? He gave
me the name of a well-known man who has
been buried for more than a quarter of a century, and showed me an ancient daguerreotype
of that man in his prehistoric youth. I had seen
a steel engraving of him at the head of a
double volume of Memoirs a month before, and
I felt ancient beyond telling.
The day shut in and the khansamah went to
get me food. He did not go through the pretense of calling it "khana"-man's victuals. He said "ratub," and that means,




My Own True Ghost Story. 107


among other things, "grub"-dog's rations.
There was no insult in his choice of the term.
He had forgotten the other word, I suppose.
While he was cutting up the dead bodies of
animals, I settled myself down, after exploring
the dak-bungalow. There were three rooms,
beside my own, which was a corner kennel,
each giving into the other through dingy white
doors fastened with long iron bars.  The
bungalow was a very solid one, but the partition walls of the rooms were almost jerry-built
in their flimsiness. Every step or bang of a
trunk echoed from my room down the other
three, and every footfall came back tremulously
from the far walls. For this reason I shut the
door. There were no lamps-only candles in
long glass shades. An oil wick was set in the
bathroom.
For bleak, unadulterated misery that dakbungalow was the worst of the many that I had
ever set foot in. There was no fireplace, and
the windows would not open; so a brazier of
charcoal would have been useless. The rain
and the wind splashed and gurgled and moaned
round the house, and the toddy palms rattled
and roared. Half a dozen jackals went through
the compound singing, and a hyena stood afar
off and mocked them. A hyena would convince a Sadducee of the Resurrection of the Dead
-the worst sort of Dead. Then came the
ratub-a curious meal, half-native and half



io8


Tales From Kipling.


English in composition, with the old khansamah babbling behind my chair about dead and
gone English people, and the wind-blown candles playing shadow-bo-peep with the bed and
the mosquito curtains. It was just the sort of
dinner and evening to make a man think of
every single one of his past sins, and of all the
others that he intended to commit if he lived.
Sleep, for several hundred reasons, was not
easy. The lamp in the bathroom threw the
most absurd shadows into the room, and the
wind was beginning to talk nonsense.
Just when the reasons were drowsy with
blood-sucking I heard the regular-"Let-ustake-and-heave him-over" grunt of doolie-bearers in the compound. First one doolie came
in, then a second, and then a third. I heard
the doolies dumped on the ground,and the shutter in front of my door shook. "That's some
one trying to come in," I said. But no one
spoke, and I persuaded myself that it was the
gusty wind. The shutter of the room next to
mine was attacked, flung back, and the inner
door opened. "That's some Sub-Deputy Assistant," I said, "and he has brought his
friends with him. Now they'll talk and spit
and smoke for an hour."
But there were no voices and no footsteps.
No one was putting his luggage into the next
room. The door shut, and I thanked Providence that I was to be left in peace. But I was




My Own True Ghost Story. 109
curious to know where the doolies had gone. I
got out of bed and looked into the darkness.
There was never a sign of a doolie. Just as I
was getting into bed again I heard in the next
roomn the sound that no man in his senses can
possibly mistake-the whir of a billiard ball
down the length of the slates when the striker
is stringing for break. No other sound is like
it. A minute afterward there was another
whir, and I got into bed. I was not frightened-indeed I was not. I was very curious
to know what had become of the doolies. I
jumped into bed for that reason.
Next minute I heard the double click of a
cannon, and my hair sat up. It is a mistake to
say that hair stands up. The skin of the head
tightens and you can feel a faint, prickly bristling all over the scalp. That is the hair sitting
up.
There was a whir and a click, and both
sounds could only have been made by one thing
-a billiard ball. I argued the matter out at
great length with myself; and the more I argued the less probable it seemed that one bed,
one table, and two chairs-all the furniture of
the room next to mine-could so exactly duplicate the sounds of a game of billiards. After
another cannon,a three-cushion one to judge by
the whir, I argued no more. I had found my
ghost and would have given worlds to have esgaped from that dak-bungalow. I listened, and




IIO


Tales From Kipling.


with each listen the game grew clearer. There
was whir on whir and click on click. Sometimes there was a double click and a whir and
another click. Beyond any sort of doubt, people were playing billiards in the next room.
And the next room was not big enough to hold
a billiard table!
Between the pauses of the wind I heard the
game go forward-stroke after stroke. I tried
to believe that I could not hear voices; but that
attempt was a failure.
Do you know what fear is? Not ordinary
fear of insult, injury or death, but abject, quivering dread of something that you cannot seefear that dries the inside of the mouth and half
the throat-fear that makes you sweat on the
palms of the hands, and gulp in order to keep
the uvula at work? This is a fine Fear-a great
cowardice, and must be felt to be appreciated.
The very improbability of billiards in a dakbungalow proved the reality of the thing. No
man-drunk or sober-could imagine a game at
billiards, or invent the spitting crack of a
"screw-cannon."
A severe course of dak-bungalows has this
disadvantage-it breeds infinite credulity. If
a man said to a confirmed dak-bungalow haunter: "There is a corpse in the next room and
there's a mad girl in the next but one, and the
woman and man on that camel have just eloped
from a place sixty miles away," the hearer




My Own True Ghost Story. i i i
would not disbelieve, because he would know
that nothing is too wild, grotesque or horrible
to happen in a dak-bungalow.
This credulity, unfortunately, extends to
ghosts. A rational person fresh from his own
house would have turned on his side and slept.
I did not. So surely as I was given up as a bad
carcass by the scores of things in the bed
because the bulk of my blood was in my heart, so
surely did I hear every stroke of a long game at
billiards played in the echoing room behind the
iron-barred door. My dominant fear was that
the players might want a marker. It was an
absurd fear because creatures who could play in
the dark would be above such superfluities. I
only know that that was my terror, and it was
real.
After a long, long while, the game stopped,
and the door banged. I slept because I was
dead tired. Otherwise I should have preferred
to have kept awake. Not for everything in
Asia would I have dropped the door bar and
peered into the dark of the next room.
When the morning came I considered that I
had done well and wisely, and inquired for the
means of departure.
"By the way, khanamah," I said, "what
were those three doolies doing in my compound
in the night?"
"There were no doolies," said the khansamah.




I I2


Tales From Kipling.


I went into the next room and the daylight
streamed through the open door. I was immensely brave. I would, at that hour, have
played Black Pool with the owner of the big
Black Pool down below.
"Has this place always been a dak-bungalow?" I asked.
"No," said the khansamah. "Ten or twenty
years ago, I have forgotten how long, it was a
billiard-room."
"A how much?"
"A billiard-room for the Sahibs who built
the Railway. I was khansamah then in the
big house where all the Railway-Sahibs lived,
and I used to come across with brandy-shrab.
These three rooms were all one, and they held
a big table on which the Sahibs played every
evening. But the Sahibs are all dead now, and
the Railway runs, you say, nearly to Kabul."
"Do you remember anything about the
Sahibs?"
"It is long ago, but I remember that one
Sahib, a fat man and always angry, was playing here one night, and he said to me: 'Mangal Khan, brandy-pani do,' and I filled the
glass, and he bent over the table to strike, and
his head fell lower and lower till it hit the
table, and his spectacles came off, and when we
-the Sahibs and I myself-ran to lift him he
was dead. I helped to carry him out. Aha,
he was a strong Sahib! But he is dead and I,




My Own True Ghost Story.        13
old Mangal Khan, am still living by your
favor."
That was more than enough! I had my
ghost-a first-hand, authenticated article. I
would write to the Society for Psychical Research-I would paralyze the Empire with the
news! But I would, first of all, put eighty
miles of assessed crop-land between myself and
that dak-bungalo before nightfall. The Society
might send their regular agent to investigate
later on.
I went into my own room and prepared to
pack after noting down the facts of the case.
As I smoked I heard the game begin againwith a miss in balk this time, for the whir was
a short one.
The door was open and I could see into the
room. Click-Click! That was a cannon. I
entered the room without fear, for there was
sunlight within and a fresh breeze without.
Theunseen game was going on at a tremendous
rate. And well it might, when a restless little
rat was running to and fro inside the dingy
ceiling-cloth, and a piece of loose window-sash
was making fifty breaks off the window-bolt
as it shook in the breeze!
Impossible to mistake the sound of billiard
balls! Impossible to mistake the whir of a ball
over the slate! But I was to be excused. Even
when I shut my enlightened eyes the sound
was marvelously like that of a fast game.




II4


Tales From Kipling.


Entered angrily the faithful partner of my
sorrows, Kadir Baksh.
"This bungalow is very bad and low-caste!
No wonder the Presence was disturbed and is
speckled. Three sets of doolie-bearers came to
the bungalow late last night when I was sleeping outside, and said that it was their custom
to rest in the rooms set apart for the English
people! What honor has the khansamah?
They tried to enter, but I told them to go. No
wonder, if these Oorias have been here, that
the Presence is sorely spotted. It is a shame,
and the work of a dirty man!"
Kadir Baksh did not say that he had taken
from each gang two annas for rent in advance,
and then, beyond my earshot, had beaten them
with the big green umbrella whose use I could
never before divine. But Kadir Baksh has no
notions of morality.
There was an interview with the khansamah,
but as he promptly lost his head, wrath gave
place to pity, and pity led to a long conversation,
in the course of which he put the fat EngineerSahib's tragic death in three separate stationstwo of them fifty miles away. The third shift
was to Calcutta, and there the Sahib died while
driving a dogcart.
If I had encouraged him the khansamah
would have wandered all through Bengal with
his corpse.
I did not go away as soon as I intended, I




My Own True Ghost Story. 115
stayed for the night,while the wind and the rat
and the sash and the window-bolt played a
ding-dong "hundred and fifty up." Then the
wind ran out and the billiards stopped, and I
felt that I had ruined my new genuine, hallmarked ghost story.
Had I only stopped at the proper time, I
could have made anything out of it.
That was the bitterest thought of all!




Tales From Kipling.


The Strange Ride of Morrowdie
Jukes.
Alive or dead-there is no other way.-Native Proverb.
THERE is, as the conjurors say, no deception about this tale. Jukes by accident
stumbled upon a village that is well
known to exist, though he is the only English
man who has been there. A somewhat similar
institution used to flourish on the outskirts of
Calcutta, and there is a story that if you go into
the heart of Bikanir, which is in the heart of the
great Indian Desert, you shall come across not
a village, but a town where the Dead who do
not die but may not live have established their
headquarters. And, since it is perfectly true
that in the same Desert is a wonderful city where
all the rich money-lenders retreat after they
have made their fortunes (fortunes so vast that
the owners cannot trust even the strong Land
of the Government to protect them, but take
refuge in the waterless sands), and drive sumptuous C-spring barouches, and buy beautiful
girls and decorate their palaces with gold and
ivory and Minton tiles and mother-o'-pearl, I
do not see why Juke's tale should not be true.




The Strange Ride.


I I 7


He is a Civil Engineer, with a head for plans
and distances and things of that kind, and he
certainly would not take the trouble to invent
imaginary traps. He could earn more by doing
his legitimate work. He never varies the tale
in the telling, and grows very hot and indignant when he thinks of the disrespectful treatment he received. He wrote this quite straightforwardly at first, but he has since touched it
up in places and introduced Moral Reflections,
thus:
In the beginning it all arose from a slight
attack of fever. My work necessitated my
being in camp for some months between Pakpattan and Mubarakpur-a desolate sandy
stretch of country as every one who has had the
misfortune to go there may know. My coolies
were neither more nor less exasperating than
other gangs, and my work demanded sufficient
attention to keep me from moping, had I been
inclined to so unmanly a weakness.
On the 23d December, 1884, I felt a little
feverish. There was a full moon at the time,
and, in consequence, every dog near my tent
was baying at it. The brutes assembled in
twos and threes and drove me frantic. A few
days previously I had shot one loud-mouthed
singer and suspended his carcass in terrorem
about fifty yards from my tent-door. But his
friends fell upon, fought for, and ultimately




I i8


Tales From Kipling.


devoured the body; and, as it seemed to me,
sang their hymns of thanksgiving afterward
with renewed energy.
The light-headedness which accompanies fever acts differently on different men. My irritation gave way, after a short time, to a fixed
determination to slaughter one huge black and
white beast who had been foremost in song and
first in flight throughout the evening. Thanks
to a shaking hand and a giddy head I had
already missed him twice with both barrels of
my shotgun, when it struck me that my best
plan would be to ride him down in the open
and finish him off with a hog-spear. This, of
course, was merely the semi-delirious notion of
a fever-stricken patient; but I remember that
it struck me at the time as being eminently
practical and feasible.
I therefore ordered my grooms to saddle Pornic and bring him round quietly to the rear of
my tent. When the pony was ready I stood at
his head, prepared to mount and dash out as
soon as the dog should again lift up his voice.
Pornic, by the way, had not been out of his
pickets for a couple of days; the night air was
crisp and chilly; and I was armed with a specially long and sharp pair of persuaders, with
which I had been rousing a sluggish cob that
afternoon. You will easily believe, then, that
when he was let go he went quickly. In one
moment, for the brute bolted as straight as a




The Strange Ride.


lI9


die, the tent was left far behind, and we were
flying over the smooth sandy soil at racing
speed. In another,we had passed the wretched
dog, and I had almost forgotten why it was
that I had taken horse and hog-spear.
The delirium of fever and the excitement of
rapid motion through the air must have taken
away the remnant of my senses. I have a
faint recollection of standing upright in my
stirrups, and of brandishing my hog-spear at
the great white Moon that looked down so
calmly on my mad gallop; and of shouting
challenges to the camel-thorn bushes as they
whizzed past. Once or twice I believe I swayed
forward on Pornic's neck,and literally hung on
by my spurs-as the marks next morning
showed.
The wretched beast went forward like a
thing possessed,over what seemed to be a limitless expanse of moonlit sand. Next, I remember, the ground rose suddenly in front of us,
and as we topped the ascent I saw the waters
of the Sutlej shining like a silver bar below.
Then Pornic blundered heavily on his nose,and
we rolled together down some unseen slope.
I must have lost consciousness, for when I
recovered I was lying on my stomach in a heap
of soft white sand,and the dawn was beginning
to break dimly over the edge of the slope down
which I had fallen. As the light grew stronger
I saw that I was at the bottom of a horse



120


Tales From Kipling.


shoe-shaped crater of sand, opening on one side
directly on to the shoals of the Sutlej. My
fever had altogether left me, and, with the
exception of a slight dizziness in the head I felt
no bad effects from the fall over night. Pornic, who was standing a few yards away, was
naturally a good deal exhausted, but had not
hurt himself in the least. His saddle, a favorite
polo one, was much knocked about, and had
been twisted under his belly. It took me some
time to put him to rights, and in the meantime
I had ample opportunities of observing the spot
into which I had so foolishly dropped.
At the risk of being considered tedious, I
must describe it at length; inasmuch as an
accurate mental picture of its peculiarities will
be of material assistance in enabling the reader
to understand what follows.
Imagine then, as I have said before, a horseshoe-shaped crater of sand with steeply graded
sand walls about thirty-five feet high. (The
slope, I fancy, must have been about 65~). This
crater inclosed a level piece of ground about
fifty yards long by thirty at its broadest part,
with a rude well in the center. Round the bottom of the crater, about three feet from the
level of the ground proper, ran a series of
eighty-three semicircular, ovoid, square and
multilateral holes, all about three feet at the
mouth. Each hole on inspection showed that
it was carefully shored internally with drift



The Strange Ride.          121
wood and bamboos, and over the mouth a
wooden drip board projected, like the peak of a
jockey's cap, for two feet. No sign of life was
visible in these tunnels, but a most sickening
stench pervaded the entire amphitheatre- a
stench fouler than any which my wanderings in
Indian villages have introduced me to. Having remounted Pornic, who was as anxious as
I to get back to camp, I rode round the base of
the horseshoe to find some place whence an exit
would be practicable. The inhabitants, whoever
they might be, had not thought fit to put in an
appearance, so I was left to my own devices.
My first attempt to "rush" Pornic up the steep
sandbanks showed me that I had fallen into a
trap exactly on the same model as that which
the ant-lion sets for its prey. At each step the
shifting sand poured down from above in tons,
and rattled on the drip boards of the holes like
small shot. A couple of ineffectual charges
sent us both rolling down to the bottom, halfchoked with the torrents of sand; and I was
constrained to turn my attention to the riverbank.
Here everything seemed easy enough. The
sand hills ran down to the river edge, it is true,
but there were plenty of shoals and shallows
across which I could gallop Pornic, and find
my way back to terra firma by turning sharply
to the right or the left. As I led Pornic over
the sands I was startled by the faint pop of a




122       Tales From Kipling.
rifle across the river; and at the same moment
a bullet dropped with a sharp " whit" close to
Pornic's head.
There was no mistaking the nature of the
missile-a regulation Martini-Henry "picket."
About five hundred yards away a country-boat
was anchored in midstream; and a jet of smoke
drifting away from its bows in the still morning air showed me whence the delicate attention
had come. Was ever a respectable gentleman
in such an impasse? The treacherous sand
slope allowed no escape from a spot which I
had visited most involuntarily, and a promenade on the river frontage was the signal for a
bombardment from some insane native in a
boat. I'm afraid that I lost my temper very
much indeed.
Another bullet reminded me that I had better save my breath to cool my porridge; and I
retreated hastily up the sands and back to the
horseshoe, where I saw that the noise of the
rifle had drawn sixty-five human beings from
the badger-holes which I had up till that point
supposed to be untenanted. I found myself in
the midst of a crowd of spectators-about forty
men, twenty women, and one child who could
not have been more than five years old. They
were all scantily clothed in that salmon- colored
cloth which one associates with Hindu mendicants, and, at first sight, gave me the impression of a band of loathsome fakirs. The filth




The Strange Ride.


I 3


and repulsiveness of the assembly were beyond
all description, and I shuddered to think what
their life in the badger-holes must be.  Even
in these days, when local self government has
destroyed the greater part of a native's respect
for a Sahib, I have been accustomed to a certain amount of civility from my inferiors, and
on approaching the crowd naturally expected
that there would be some recognition of my
presence. As a matter of fact there was; but
it was by no means what I had looked for.
The ragged crew actually laughed at mesuch laughter I hope I may never hear again.
They cackled, yelled, whistled, and howled as
I walked into their midst; some of them literally throwing themselves down on the ground
in convulsions of unholy mirth. In a moment
I had let go Pornic's head, and, irritated beyond expression at the morning's adventure,
commenced cuffing those nearest to me with all
the force I could. The wretches dropped under
my blows like ninepins, and the laughter gave
place to wails for mercy; while those yet untouched clasped me round the knees, imploring
me in all sorts of uncouth tongues to spare
them.
In the tumult, and just when I was feeling
very much ashamed of myself for having thus
easily given way to my temper, a thin, high
voice murmured in English from behind my
shoulder; "Sahib! Sahib I Do you not know




I124


Tales From Kipling.


me? Sahib, it is Gunga Dass, the telegraphmaster. "
I spun round quickly and faced the speaker.
Gunga Dass (I have, of course, no hesitation
in mentioning the man's real name) I had
known four years before as a Deccanee Brahmin lent by the Punjab Government to one of
the Khalsia States. He was in charge of a
branch telegraph-office there, and when I had
last met him was a jovial, full-stomached,
portly Government servant with a marvellous
capacity for making bad puns in English-a peculiarity which made me remember him long
after I had forgotten his services to me in his
official capacity. It is seldom that a Hindu
makes English puns.
Now, however, the man was changed beyond
all recognition.  Caste-mark, stomach, slatecolored continuations,and unctuous speech were
all gone. I looked at a withered skeleton, turbanless and almost naked, with long matted
hair and deep-set codfish eyes. But for a crescent-shaped scar on the left cheek-the result
of an accident for which I was responsible-I
should never have known him. But it was indubitably Gunga Dass, and-for this I was'
thankful-an English-speaking native who
might at least tell me the meaning of all that
I had gone through that day.
The crowd retreated to some distance as I
turned toward the miserable figure, and ordered




The Strange Ride.


125


him to show me some method of escaping from
the crater. He held a freshly plucked crow in
his hand, and in reply to my question climbed
slowly on a platform of sand which ran in front
of the holes, and commenced lighting a fire
there in silence. Dried bents, sand-poppies and
driftwood burned quickly; and I derived much
consolation from the fact that he lit them with
an ordinary sulphur match. When they were
in a bright glow, and the crow was neatly spitted
in front thereof, Gunga Dass began without a
word of preamble:
"There are only two kinds of men, Sar. The
alive and the dead. When you are dead you
are dead, but when you are alive you live."
(Here the crow demanded his attention for an
instant as it twirled before the fire in danger of
being burned to a cinder.) "If you die at home
and do not die, when you come to the ghat to be
burned you come here."
The nature of the reeking village was made
plain now, and all that I had known or read of
the grotesque and the horrible paled before the
fact just communicated by the ex-Brahmin. Sixteen years ago, when I first landed in Bombay,
I had been told by a wandering Armenian of
the existence, somewhere in India, of a place to
which such Hindus as had the misfortune to
recover from trance or catalepsy were conveyed
and kept, and I recollect laughing heartily at
what I was then pleased to consider a traveler's




1 26


Tales From Kipling.


tale. Sitting at the bottom of the sand-trap,
the memory of Watson's Hotel, with its swinging punkahs, white-robed attendants, and the
sallow-faced Armenian, rose up in my mind as
vividly as a photograph,and I burst into a loud
fit of laugter. The contrast was too absurd!
Gunga Dass, as he bent over the unclean
bird, watched me curiously. Hindus seldom
laugh,and his surroundings were not such as to
move Gunga Dass to any undue excess of hilarity. He removed the crow solemnly from the
wooden spit, and as solemnly devoured it.
Then he continued his story, which I give in his
own words:
"In epidemics of the cholera you are carried
to be burned almost before you are dead. When
you come to the riverside the cold air, perhaps,
makes you alive, and then, if you are only a
little alive, mud is put on your nose and mouth
and you die conclusively. If you are rather
more alive, more mud is put; but if you are too
lively they let you go and take you away. I
was too lively, and made protestation with anger against the indignities that they endeavored
to press upon me. In those days I was Brahmin and proud man. Now I am dead man and
eat"-here he eyed the well-gnawed breast bone
with the first sign of emotion that I had seen in
him since we met-"crows, and other things.
They took me from my sheets when they saw that
I was too lively and gave me medicines for one




The Strange Ride.


127


week, and I survived successfully. Then they
sent me by rail from my place to Okara Station, with a man to take care of me; and at
Okara Station we met two other men, and
they conducted we three on camels, in the
night, from Okara Station to this place, and
they propelled me from the top to the bottom,
and the other two succeeded, and I have been
here ever since two and a half years. Once I
was Brahmin and proud man, and now I eat
crows. "
"There is no way of getting out?"
"None of what kind at all. When I first
came I made experiments frequently, and all the
others also, but we have always succumbed to
the sand which is precipitated upon our heads."
"But surely, I broke in at this point, "the
river-front is open, and it is worth while dodging the bullets; while at night- "
I had already matured a rough plan of escape
which a natural instinct of selfishness forbade
me sharing with Gunga Dass. He, however,
divined my unspoken thought almost as soon
as it was formed; and, to my intense astonishment, gave vent to a long low chuckle of derision-the laughter, be it understood, of a superior or at least of an equal.
"You will not"-he had dropped the Sir
completely after his opening sentence-"make
any escape that way. But you can try. I have
tried. Once only."




128


Tales From Kipling.


The sensation of nameless terror and abject
fear which I had in vain attempted to strive
against overmastered me completely. My long
fast-it was now close upon ten o'clock, and I
had eaten nothing since tiffin on the previous
day-combined with the violent and unnatural
agitation of the ride-had exhausted me, and I
verily believe that, for a few minutes, I acted
as one mad. I hurled myself against the pitiless sand-slope. I ran round the base of the crater blaspheming and praying by turns.  I
crawled out among the sedges of the riverfront, only to be driven back each time in an
agony of nervous dread by the rifle-bullets
which cut up the sand round me-for I dared
not face the death of a mad dog among that
hideous crowd-and finally fell, spent and raving, at the curb of the well. No one had taken
the slightest notice of an exhibition which
makes me blush hotly even when I think of it
now.
Two or three men trod on my panting body
as they drew water, but they were evidently
used to this sort of thing, and had no time to
waste upon me. The situation was humiliating. Gunga Dass, indeed,when he had banked
the embers of his fire with sand, was at some
pains to throw half a cupful of fetid water over
my head, an attention for which I could have
fallen on my knees and thanked him, but he
was laughing all the while in the same mirth



The Strange Ride.


129


less, wheezy key that greeted me on my first
attempt to force the shoals. And so, in a semicomatose condition, I lay till noon. Then, being only a man after all, I felt. hungry, and
intimated as much to Gunga Dass, whom I had
begun to regard as my natural protector. Following the impulse of the outer world when
dealing with natives, I put my hand into my
pocket and drew out four annas. The absurdity
of the gift struck me at once, and I was about
to replace the money.
Gunga Dass, however, was of a different
opinion. "Give me the money," said he; "all
you have, or I will get help, and we will kill
you!" All this as if it were the most natural
-thing in the world!
A Briton's first impulse, I believe, is to guard
the contents of his pockets; but a moment's
reflection convinced me of the futility of differing with the one man who had it in his power
to make me comfortable; and with whose help
it was possible that I might eventually escape
from the crater. I gave him all the money in
my possession, Rs. 9-8-5-nine rupees, eight
annas and five pie-for I always keep small
change as bakshish when I am in camp.
Gunga Dass clutched the coins, and hid them
at once in his ragged loin-cloth, his expression
changing to something diabolical as he looked
round to assure himself that no one had observed us.




130       Tales From Kipling.
"Now I will give you something to eat,"
said he.
What pleasure the possession of my money
could have afforded him I am unable to say;
but inasmuch as it did give himn evident delight
I was not sorry that I had parted with it so
readily, for I had no doubt that he would have
had me killed if I had refused. One does not protest against the vagaries of a den of wild
beasts; and my companions were lower than
any beasts. While I devoured what Gunga
Dass had provided, a coarse chapatti and a
cupful of the foul well-water,the people showed
not the faintest sign of curiosity-that curiosity
which is so rampant, as a rule, in an Indian
village.
I could even fancy that they despised me. At
all events they treated me with the most chilling indifference, and Gunga Dass was nearly
as bad. I plied him with questions about the
terrible village,and received extremely unsatisfactory answers. So far as I could gather it
had been in existence from time immemorialwhence I concluded that it was at least a century old-and during that time no one had ever
been known to escape from it. I had to control
myself here with both hands, lest the blind terror should lay hold of me a second time and
drive me raving round the crater. Gunga
Dass took a malicious pleasure in emphasizing
this point, and in watching me wince. Nothing




The Strange Ride.


I3I


that I could do would induce him to tell me
who the mysterious "They" were.
"It is so ordered," he would reply, "and I
do not yet know any one who has disobeyed
the orders."
"Only wait till my servants find that I am
missing," I retorted, "and I promise you that
this place shall be cleared off the face of the
earth, and I'll give you a lesson in civility,too,
my friend."
"Your servants would be torn in pieces before they came near this place; and, besides,
you are dead, my dear friend. It is not your
fault, of course, but none the less you are dead
and buried."
At irregular intervals supplies of food, I was
told, were dropped down from the land side
into the amphitheater, and the inhabitants
fought for them like wild beasts.
When a man felt his death coming on he retreated to his lair and died there. The body
was sometimes dragged out of the hole and
thrown on to the sand, or allowed to rot where
it lay.
The phrase "thrown onto the sand" caught
my attention, and I asked Gunga Dass whether
this sort of thing was not likely to breed a pestilence.
"That," said he, with another of his wheezy
chuckles, "you may see for yourself subsequently. You will have much time to make
observations."




132


Tales From Kipling.


Whereat, to his great delight, I winced once
more and hastily continued the conversation:
"And how do you live here from day to day?
What do you do?" The question elicited exactly the same answer as before-coupled with
the information that "this place is like your
European heaven; there is neither marrying
nor giving in marriage.
Gtinga Dass had been educated at a Mission
School, and, as he himself admitted, had he
only changed his religion "like a wise man,"
might have avoided the living grave which
was now his portion. But as long as I was
with him I fancy he was happy.
Here was a Sahib, a representative of the
dominant race, helpless as a child and completely at the mercy of his native neighbors.
In a deliberate lazy way he set himself to torture me as a schoolboy would devote a rapturous half hour to watching the agonies of an
impaled beetle, or as a ferret in a blind burrow
might glue himself comfortably to the neck of
a rabbit. The burden of his conversation was
that there was no escape "of no kind whatever," and that I should stay here till I died
and was "thrown onto the sand."  If it were
possible to forejudge the conversation of the
Damned on the advent of a new soul in their
abode, I should say that they would speak as
Gunga Dass did to me throughout that long
afternoon. I was powerless to protest or an



The Strange Ride.


I33


swer; all my energies being devoted to a struggle against the inexplicable terror that threatened to overwhelm me again and again. I can
compare the feeling to nothing except the struggles of a man against the overpowering nausea
of the Channel passage-only my agony was of
the spirit and infinitely more terrible.
As the day wore on, the inhabitants began
to appear in full strength to catch the rays of
the afternoon sun, which were now sloping in
at the mouth of the crater. They assembled in
little knots, and talked among themselves without even throwing a glance in my direction.
About four o'clock, as far as I could judge,
Gunga Dass rose and dived into his lair for a
moment, emerging with a live crow in his
hands. The wretched bird was in a most
draggled and deplorable condition, but seemed
to be in no way afraid of its master. Advancing cautiously to the river-front, Gunga Dass
stepped from tussock to tussock until he had
reached a smooth patch of sand directly in the
line of the boat's fire. The occupants of the
boat took no notice. Here he stopped, and,
with a couple of dexterous turns of the wrist,
pegged the bird on its back with outstretched
wings. As was only natural the crow began
to shriek at once and beat the air with its
claws. In a few seconds the clamor had attracted the attention of a bevy of wild crows
on a shoal a few hundred yards away, where




I34


Tales From Kipling.


they were discussing something that looked like
a corpse. Half a dozen crows flew over at once
to see what was going on,and also,as it proved,
to attack the pinioned bird. Gunga Dass, who
had lain down on a tussock, motioned to me to
be quiet, though I fancy this was a needless
precaution. In a moment, and before I could
see how it happened, a wild crow, who had
grappled with the shrieking and helpless bird,
was entangled in the latter's claws, swiftly
disengaged by Gunga Dass, and pegged down
beside its companion in adversity. Curiosity,
it seemed, overpowered the rest of the flock,
and almost before Gunga Dass and I had time
to withdraw to the tussock, two more captives
were struggling in the upturned claws of the
decoys. So the chase-if I can give it so dignified a name-continued until Gunga Dass
had captured seven crows. Five of them he
throttled at once, reserving two for further operations another day. I was a good deal impressed by this, to me, novel method of securing food, and complimented Gunga Dass on his
skill.
"It is nothing to do," said he. "To-morrow
you must do it for me. You are stronger than
I am."
This calm assumption of superiority upset
me not a little, and I answered peremptorily:
"Indeed, you old ruffian! What do you think
I have given you money for?"




The Strange Ride.


135


"Very well," was the unmoved reply. "Perhaps not to-morrow, nor the day after, nor subsequently; but in the end, and for many years,
you will catch crows and eat crows, and you
will thank your European God that you have
crows to catch and eat. "
I could have cheerfully strangled him for
this; but judged it best under the circumstances to smother my resentment. An hour
later I was eating one of the crows; and, as
Gunga Dass had said, thanking my God that I
had a crow to eat. Never as long as I live
shall I forget that evening meal. The whole
population were squatting on the hard sand
platform opposite their dens, huddled over tiny
fires of refuse and dried rushes. Death, having
once laid his hand upon these men and forborne
to strike,seemed to stand aloof from them now;,
for most of our company were old men, bent
and worn and twisted with years, and women
aged to all appearance as the Fates themselves.
They sat together in knots and talked-God
only knows what they found to discuss-in low
equable tones, curiously in contrast to the strident babble with which natives are accustomed
to make day hideous. Now and then an access
of that sudden fury which had possessed me in
the morning would lay hold on a man or
woman; and with yells and imprecations the
sufferer would attack the steep slope until, baffled and bleeling, he fell back on the platform,




136


Tales From Kipling.


incapable of moving a limb. The others would
never even raise their eyes when this happened,
as men too well aware of the futility of their
fellows' attempts and wearied with their useless repetition. I saw four such outbursts in
the course of that evening.
Gunga Dass took an eminently business-like
view of my situation, and while we were dining-I can afford to laugh at the recollection
now, but it was painful enough at the timepropounded the terms on which he would consent to "do" for me. My nine rupees eight
annas, he argued, at the rate of three annas a
day, would provide me with food for fifty-one
days, or about seven weeks; that is to say, he
would be willing to cater for me for that length
of time. At the end of it I was to look after
myself. For a further consideration-videlicit
my boots-he would be willing to allow me to
occupy the den next to his own, and would supply me with as much, dried grass for bedding as
he could spare.
"Very well, Gunga Dass," I replied; "to
the first terms I cheerfully agree, but, as there
is nothing on earth to prevent my killing you
as you sit here and taking everything that you
have" (I thought of the two invaluable crows
at the time), "I flatly refuse to give you my
boots and shall take whichever den I please."
The stroke was a bold one, and I was glad
when I saw that it had succeeded. Gunga




The Strange Ride.


I37


Dass changed his tone immediately, and disavowed all intention of asking for my boots.
At the time it did not strike me as at all strange
that I, a Civil Engineer, a man of thirteen
years' standing in the Service, and, I trust, an
average Englishman, should thus calmly threaten murder and violence against the man who
had, for a consideration, it is true, taken me
under his wing. I had left the world,it seemed,
for centuries. I was as certain then as I am
now of my own existence, that in the accursed
settlement there was no law save that of the
stronger; that the living dead men had thrown
behind them every canon of the world which
had cast them out; and that I had to depend
for my own life on my strength and vigilance
alone. The crew of the ill-fated Mignonette are
the only men who would understand my frame
of mind. "At present," I argued to myself,
"I am strong and a match for six of these
wretches. It is imperatively necessary that I
should, for my own sake, keep both health and
strength until the hour of my release comes-if
it ever does."
Fortified with these resolutions I ate and
drank as much as I could, and made Gunga
Dass understand that I intended to be his master, and that the least sign of insubordination
on his part would be visited with the only punishment I had it in my power to inflict-sudden
and violent death. Shortly after this I went




138


Tales From Kipling.


to bed. That is to say, Gunga Dass gave me
a double armful of dried bents which I thrust
down the mouth of the lair to the right of his,
and followed myself, feet foremost; the hole
running about nine feet into the sand with a
slight downward inclination, and being neatly
shored with timbers. From my den, which
faced the river-front, I was able to watch the
waters of the Sutlej flowing past under the
light of a young moon and compose myself to
sleep as best I might.
The horrors of that night I shall never forget. My den was nearly as narrow as a coffin,
and the sides had been worn smooth and
greasy by the contact of innumerable naked
bodies, added to which it smelled abominably.
Sleep was altogether out of question to one in
my excited frame of mind. As the night wore
on it seemed that the entire amphitheater was
filled with legions of unclean devils that, troops
ing up from the shoals below, mocked the unfortunates in their lairs.
Personally I am not of an imaginative
temperament-very few Engineers are-but
on that occasion I was as completely pros,
trated with nervous terror as any woman.
After half an hour or so, however, I was able
once more to calmly review my chances of
escape. Any exit by the steep sand walls
was, of course, impracticable.  I had been
thoroughly convinced of this some time




The Strange Ride.


139


before. It was possible, just possible, that I
might, in the uncertain moonlight safely run
the gauntlet of the rifle shots. The place was
so full of terror for me that I was prepared to
undergo any risk in leaving it. Imagine my
delight, then, when after creeping stealthily to
the river front, I found that the infernal boat
was not there. My freedom lay before me in
the next few steps!
By walking out to the first shallow pool that
lay at the foot of the projecting left horn of the
horseshoe I could wade across, turn the flank
of the crater, and make my way inland. Without a moment's hesitation I marched briskly
past the tussocks where Gunga Dass had
snared the crows,and out in the direction of the
smooth white sand beyond. My first step from
the tufts of dried grass showed me how utterly
futile was any hope of escape; for, as I put my
foot down, I felt an indescribable drawing,
sucking motion of the sand below. Another
moment and my leg was swallowed up nearly
to the knee. In the moonlight the whole surface of the sand seemed to be shaken with devilish delight at my disappointment. I struggled
clear, sweating with terror and exertion, back
to the tussocks behind me, and fell on my face.
My only means of escape from the semicircle was protected with a quicksand!
How long I lay I have not the faintest idea;
but I was roused at last by the malevolent




140      Tales From Kipling.
chuckle of Gunga Dass at my ear. "I would
advise you, Protector of the Poor" (the ruffian
was speaking English), "to return to your house.
It is unhealthy to lie down here. Moreover,
when the boat returns, you will most certainly
be rifled at."  He stood over me in the dim
light of the dawn, chuckling and laughing to
himself.  Suppressing my first impulse to
catch the man by the neck and throw him on to
the quicksand, I rose sullenly and followed
him to the platform below the burrows.
Suddenly, and futilely as I thought while I
spoke, I asked: "Gunga Dass, what is the
good of the boat if I can't get out anyhow?"
I recollect that even in my deepest trouble I
had been speculating vaguely on the waste of
ammunition in guarding an already well protected foreshore.
Gunga Dass laughed again and made answer: "They have the boat only in daytime. It is for the reason that there is a way.
I hope we shall have the pleasure of your company for much longer time. It is a pleasant
spot when you have been here some years and
eaten roast crow long enough."
I staggered, numbed and helpless, toward the
fetid burrow allotted to me, and fell asleep.
An hour or so later I was awakened by a
piercing scream-the shrill,high-pitched scream
of a horse in pain. Those who have once heard
that will never forget the sound. I found some




The Strange Ride.


I4I


little difficulty in scrambling out of the burrow. When I was in the open, I saw Pornic,
my poor old Pornic, lying dead on the sandy
soil. How they had killed him I cannot guess.
Gunga Dass explained that horse was better
than crow, and "greatest good of greatest
number is political maxim. We are now Republic, Mister Jukes, and you are entitled to a
fair share of the beast. If you like we will
pass a vote of thanks. Shall I propose?"
Yes, we were a Republic indeed! A Republic of wild beasts penned at the bottom of a pit,
to eat and fight and sleep till we died. I
attempted no protest of any kind, but sat down
and stared at the hideous sight in front of me.
In less time almost than it takes me to write
this, Pornic's body was divided, in some unclean way or other; the men and women had
dragged the fragments on to the platform, and
were preparing their morning meal. Gunga
Dass cooked mine. The almost irresistible impulse to fly at the sand walls until I was wearied
laid hold of me afresh, and I had to struggle
against it with all my might. Gunga Dass was
offensively jocular till I told him that if he addressed another remark of any kind whatever
to me I should strangle him where he sat.
This silenced him till silence became insupport
able, and I bade him say something.
"You will live here till you die like the other
Feringhi," he said coolly, watching me over
the fragment of gristle that he was gnawing.




142


Tales From Kipling.


"What other Sahib, you swine? Speak at
once, and don't stop to tell me a lie."
"He is over there," answered Gunga Dass,
pointing to a burrow-mouth about four doors to
the left of my own. "You can see for yourself.
He died in the burrow as you will die, and I
will die, and as all these men and women and
the one child will also die."
"For pity's sake tell me all you know about
him. Who was he? When did he come, and
when did he die?"
This appeal was a weak step on my part.
Gunga Dass only leered and replied: "I will
not-unless you give me something first."
Then I recollected where I was, and struck
the man between the eyes, partially stunning
him. He stepped down from the platform at
once, and cringing and fawning and weeping
and attempting to embrace my feet, led me
round to the burrow which he had indicated.
"I know nothing whatever about the gentleman. Your God be my witness that I do not.
He was as anxious to escape as you were and
he was shot from the boat, though we all did
all things to prevent him from attempting. He
was shot here." Gunga Dass laid his hand on
his lean stomach and bowed to the earth.
"Well, and what then? Go on!"
"And then-and then, Your Honor, we carried him into his house and gave him water, and
put wet cloths on the wound, and he laid down
in his house and gave up the ghost."




The Strange Ride.


143


"In how long? In how long?"
"About half an hour after he received his
wound. I call Vishn to witness," yelled the
wretched man,"that I did everything for him.
Everything which was possible, that I did!"
He threw himself down on the ground and
clasped my ankles. But I had my doubts about
Gunga Dass's benevolence,and kicked him off as
he lay protesting.
"I believe you robbed him of everything he
had. But I can find out in a minute or two.
How long was the Sahib here?"
"Nearly a year and a half. I think he must
have gone mad. But hear me swear, Protector
of the Poor! Won't Your Honor hear me
swear that I never touched an article that
belonged to him? What is Your Worship
going to do?"
I had taken Gunga Dass by the waist and
had hauled him on to the platform opposite the
deserted burrow. As I did so I thought of my
wretched fellow-prisoner's unspeakable misery
among all these horrors for eighteen months,
and the final agony of dying like a rat in a hole
with a bullet-wound in the stomach. Gunga
Dass fancied I was going to kill him and
howled pitifully. The rest of the population,
in the plethora that follows a full flesh meal,
watched us without stirring.
"Go inside, Gunga Dass," said I, "and fetch
it out."




144


Tales From Kipling.


I was feeling sick and faint with horror now.
Gunga Dass nearly rolled off the platform and
howled aloud.
"But I am Brahmin, Sahib-a high-caste
Brahmin. By your soul, by your father's soul,
do not make me do this thing!"
"Brahmin or no Brahmin, by my soul and
my father's soul, in you go!" I said, and seizing him by the shoulders, I crammed his head
into the mouth of the burrow, kicked the rest
of him in, and sitting down, covered my face
with my hands.
At the end of a few minutes I heard a rustle
and a creak; then Gunga Dass in a sobbing,
choking whisper speaking to himself; then a
soft thud-and I uncovered my eyes.
The dry sand had turned the corpse intrusted
to its keeping into a yellow-brown mummy.
I told Gunga Dass to stand off while I examined it. The body-clad in an olive-green
hunting-suit much stained and worn, with
leather pads on the shoulders-was that of a
man between thirty and forty, above middle
height, with light, sandy hair, long mustache,
and a rough unkempt beard. The left canine
of the upper jaw was missing, and a portion of
the lobe of the right ear was gone. On the
second finger of the left hand was a ring-a
shield-shaped bloodstone set in gold, with a
monogram that might have been either "B.K."
or"B.L." On the third finger of the right




The Strange Ride.


I45


hand was a silver ring of the shape of a coiled
cobra, much worn and tarnished. Gunga Dass
deposited a handful of the trifles he had picked
out of the burrow at my feet, and covering the
face of the body with my handkerchief,I turned
to examine these. I give the full list in the
hope that it may lead to the identification of
the unfortunate man:
1. Bowl of a briarwood pipe, serrated at the
edge; much worn and blackened; bound with
string at the screw.
2. Two patent-lever keys; wards of both
broken.
3. Tortoise-shell-handled penknife, silver or
nickel, name-plate, marked with monogram
"B.K. "
4. Envelope, postmark undecipherable, bearing a Victorian stamp, addressed to "Miss
Mon-" (rest illegible)-" ham"-" nt."
5. Imitation crocodile-skin notebook with
pencil. First forty-five pages blank; four and
a half illegible; fifteen others filled with private memoranda relating chiefly to three persons-a Mrs. L. Singleton, abbreviated several
times to "Lot Single," "Mrs. S. May," and
"Garmison," referred to in places as "Jerry"
or "Jack."
6. Handle of small-sized hunting knife.
Blade snapped short. Buck's horn, diamond
cut, with swivel and ring on the butt; fragment of cotton cord attached.




146


Tales From Kipling.


It must not be supposed that I inventoried
all these things on the spot as fully as I have
here written them down. The notebook first
attracted my attention, and I put it in my
pocket with a view to studying it later on. The
rest of the articles I conveyed to my burrow
for safety's sake, and there, being a methodical
man, I inventoried them. I then returned to the
corpse and ordered Gunga Dass to help me
carry it out to the river front. While we were
engaged in this, the exploded shell of an old
brown cartridge dropped out of one of the pockets and rolled at my feet. Gunga Dass had not
seen it; and I fell to thinking that a man does
not carry exploded cartridge-cases, especially
"browns," which will not bear loading twice,
about with him when shooting. In other words,
that cartridge- case had been fired inside the crater. Consequently there must be a gun somewhere. I was on the verge of asking Gunga
Dass, but checked myself, knowing that he
would lie. We laid the body down on the edge of
the quicksand by the tussocks. It was my intention to push it out and let it be swallowed upthe only possible mode of burial that I could
think of. I ordered Gunga Dass to go away.
Then I gingerly put the corpse out on the
quicksand. In doing so,it was lying face downward, I tore the frail and rotten khaki shootingcoat open, disclosing a hideous cavity in the
back. I have already told you that the dry sand




The Strange Ride.


I47


had, as it were, mummified the body. A moment's glance showed that the gaping hole had
been caused by a gunshot wound; the gun must
have been fired with the muzzle almost touching the back. The shooting-coat, being intact,
had been drawn over the body after death,
which must have been instantaneous. The
secret of the poor wretch's death was plain to
me in a flash. Some one of the crater, presumably Gunga Dass, must have shot him with his
own gun-the gun that fitted the brown cartridges. He had never attempted to escape in
the face of the rifle-fire from the boat.
I pushed the corpse out hastily, and saw it
sink from sight literally in a few seconds. I
shuddered as I watched. In a dazed, half-conscious way I turned to peruse the notebook. A
stained and discolored slip of paper had been
inserted between the binding and the back, and
dropped out as I opened the pages. This is
what it contained: "Four out from crowclump: three left; nine out; two right; three
back; two left; fourteen out; two left, seven
out; one left; nine back; two right; six back;
four right; seven back." The paper had been
burned and charred at the edges. What it meant
I could not understand. I sat down on the
dried bents turning it over and over between
my fingers, until I was aware of Gunga Dass
standing immediately behind me with glowing
eyes and outstretched hands.




148


Tales From Kipling.


"Have you got it?" he panted. "Will you
not let me look at it also? I swear that I will
return it."
"Got what? Return what?" I asked.
"That which you have in your hands. It
will help us both." He stretched out his long,
bird-like talons, trembling with eagerness.
"I could never find it," he continued. "He
had secreted it about his person. Therefore I
shot him, but nevertheless I was unable to obtain it."
Gunga Dass had quite forgotten his little fiction about the rifle bullet. I received the information perfectly calmly. Morality is blunted
by consorting with the Dead who are alive.
" What on earth are you raving about? What
is it you want me to give you?"
"The piece of paper in the notebook. It will
help us both. Oh, you fool! You fool! Can
you not see what it will do for us? We shall
escape!"
His voice rose almost to a scream, and he
danced with excitement before me. I own I
was moved at the chance of getting away.
"Don't skip! Explain yourself. Do you
mean to say that this slip of paper will help us?
What does it mean?"
"Read it aloud! Read it aloud! I beg and
I pray you to read it aloud."
I did so. Gunga Dass listened delightedly,
and drew an irregular line in the sand with his
fingers,




The Strange Ride.


I49


"See now! It was the length of his gunbarrels without the stock. I have those barrels.  Four gun-barrels out from the place
where I caught crows. Straight out; doyou
follow me? Then three left-Ah! how well
I remember when that man worked it out night
after night. Then nine out, and so on. Out
is always straight before you across the quicksand. He told mo so before I killed him."
"But if you knew all this why didn't you
get out before?"
"I did not know it. He told me that he was
working it out a year and a half ago, and how
he was working it out night after night when
the boat had gone away, and he could get out
near the quicksand safely. Then he said that
we would get away together. But I was afraid
that he would leave me behind one night when
he had worked it all out, and so I shot him.
Besides, it is not advisable that the men who
once get in here should escape. Only I, and I
am a Brahmin."
The prospect of escape had brought Gunga
Dass's caste back to him. He stood up,walked
about and gesticulated violently. Eventually
I managed to make him talk soberly, and he
told me how this Englishman had spnt six
months night after night in exploring, inch by
inch, the passage across the quicksand; bhow he
had declared it to be simplicity itself up to
within about twenty yards of the river bank after




150       Tales From Kipling.
turning the flank of the left horn of the horseshoe. This much he had evidently not completed when Gunga Dass shot him with his
own gun.
In my frenzy of delight at the possibilities of
escape I recollect shaking hands effusively with
Gunga Dass, after we had decided that we were
to make an attempt to get away that very
night. It was weary work waiting throughout
the afternoon.
About ten o'clock, as far as I could judge,
when the Moon had just risen above the lip of
the crater, Gunga Dass made a move for his
burrow to bring out the gun-barrels whereby to
measure our path. All the other wretched inhabitants had retired to their lairs long ago.
The guardian boat drifted downstream some
hours before, and we were utterly alone by the
crow-clump. Gunga Dass, while carrying the
gun barrels, let slip the piece of paper which
was to be our guide. I stooped down hastily
to recover it, and, as I did so, I was aware that
the diabolical Brahmin was aiming a violent
blow at the back of my head with the gunbarrels. It was too late to turn round. I must
have received the blow somewhere on the nape
of my neck. A hundred thousand fiery stars
danced before my eyes,and I fell forward senseless at the edge of the quicksand.
When I recovered consciousness the Moon
was going down, and I was sensible of intoler



The Strange Ride.


l5I


able pain in the back of my head. Gunga Dass
had disappeared and my mouth was full of
blood. I lay down again and prayed that I
might die without more ado. Then the unreasoning fury which I have before mentioned laid
hold upon me, and I staggered inland toward
the walls of the crater. It seemed that some
one was calling to me in a whisper-"Sahib!
Sahib! Sahib!" exactly as my bearer used to
call me in the mornings. I fancied that I was
delirious until a handful of sand fell at my feet.
Then I looked up and saw a head peering down
into the amphitheater-the head of Dunnoo, my
dog-boy, who attended to my collies. As soon
as he had attracted my attention, he held up
his hand and showed a rope. I motioned, staggering to and fro the while, that he should
throw it down. It was a couple of leather
punkah ropes knotted together, with a loop at
one end. I slipped the loop over my head and
under my arms; heard Dunnoo urge something
forward; was conscious that I was being
dragged, face downward, up the steep sand
slope,and the next instant found myself choked
and half-fainting on the sandhills overlooking
the crater. Dunnoo, with his face ashy gray
in the moonlight, implored me not to stay but
get back to my tent at once.
It seems that he had tracked Pornic's footprints fourteen miles across the sands to the
crater; had returned and told my servants, who




152       Tales From Kipling.
flatly refused to meddle with any one, white or
black, once fallen into the hideous Village of
the Dead; whereupon Dunnoo had taken one of
my ponies and a couple of punkah ropes, returned to the crater, and hauled me out as I
have described.
To cut a long story short, Dunnoo is now my
personal servant on a gold mohur a month-a
sum which I still think far too little for the
services he has rendered. Nothing on earth will
induce me to go near that devilish spot again,
or to reveal its whereabouts more clearly than
I have done. Of Gunga Dass I have never
found a trace,nor do I wish to. My sole motive
in giving this to be published is the hope that
some one may possibly identify, from the details and the inventory which I have given
above, the corpse of the man in the olive-green
hunting-suit.




In Error.


'53


In Error.
They burnt a corpse upon the sandThe light shone out afar;
It guided home the plunging boats
That beat from Zanzibar.
Spirit of Fire, where e'er Thy altars rise,
Thou art Light of Guidance to our eyesi
-Salsette Boat Song.
T    HERE is hope for a man who gets publicly and riotously drunk more often
than he ought to do; but there is no
hope for the man who drinks secretly and
alone in his own house-the man who is never
seen to drink.
This is a rule; so there must be an exception
to prove it. Moriarty's case was that exception. He was a civil engineer, and the government, very kindly, put him quite by himself in
an out-district, with nobody but natives to talk
to and a great deal of work to do. He did his
work well in the four years he was utterly
alone; but he picked up the vice of secret and
solitary drinking, and came up out of the wilderness more old and worn and haggard than the
dead-alive life had any right to make him.




154


Tales From Kipling.


You know the saying that a man who has been
alone in the jungle for more than a year is
never quite sane all his life after. People credited Moriarty's queerness of manner and moody
ways to the solitude, and said that it showed
how government spoiled the futures of its best
men. Moriarty had built himself the plinth of
a very good reputation in the bridge-dam-girder
line. But he knew, every night of the week,
that he was taking steps to undermine that
reputation with L. L. L. and "Christopher"
and little nips of liquors, and filth of that kind.
He had a sound constitution and a great brain,
or else he would have broken down and died
like a sick camel in the district, as better men
have done before him.
Government ordered him to Simla after he
had come out of the desert; and he went up,
meaning to try for a post then vacant. That
season Mrs. Reiver-perhaps you will remember her-was in the height of her power, and
many men lay under her yoke. Everything
bad that could be said has already been said
about Mrs. Reiver in another tale Moriarty
was heavily built and handsome, very quiet
and nervously anxious to please his neighbors
when he wasn't sunk in a brown study. He
started a good deal at sudden noises or if spoken
to without warning; and, when you watched
him drinking his glass of water at dinner, you
could see the hand sJake a little. But all this




In Error.


I55


was put down to nervousness, and the quiet,
steady "sip-sip-sip, fill, and sip-sip-sip again"
that went on in his own room when he was by
himself, was never known. Which was miraculous, seeing how everything in a man's private
life is public property out here.
Moriarty was drawn, not into Mrs. Reiver's
set, because they were not his sort, but into the
power of Mrs. Reiver, and he fell down in
front of her and made a goddess of her. This
was due to his coming fresh out of the jungle
to a big town. He could not scale things properly or see who was what.
Because Mrs. Reiver was cold and hard, he
said she was stately and dignified. Because
she had no brains, and could not talk cleverly,
he said she was reserved and shy. Mrs. Reiver shy! Because she was unworthy of honor
or reverence from any one, he reverenced her
from a distance and dowered her with all the
virtues in the Bible and most of those in
Shakespeare.
This big, dark, abstracted man who was so
nervous when a pony cantered behind him,used
to moon in the train of Mrs. Reiver, blushing
with pleasure when she threw a word or two
his way. His admiration was strictly platonic;
even other women saw and admitted this. He
did not move out in Simla, so he heard nothing
against his idol; which was satisfactory. Mrs.
Reiver took no special notice of him, beyond




156


Tales From Kipling.


seeing that he was added to her list of admirers, and going for a walk with him now and
then, just to show that he was her property,
claimable as such. Moriarty must have done
most of the talking, for Mrs. Reiver couldn't
talk much to a man of his stamp; and the little she said could not have been profitable.
What Moriarty believed in, as he had good
reason to, was Mrs. Reiver's influence over
him, and, in that belief, set himself seriously
to try to do away with the vice that only he
himself knew of.
His experiences while he was fighting with
it must have been peculiar, but he never described them. Sometimes he would hold off
from everything except water for a week.
Then, on a rainy night, when no one had asked
him out to dinner, and there was a big fire in
his room, and everything comfortable, he would
sit down and make a big night of it by adding
little nip to little nip, planning big schemes of
reformation meanwhile, until he threw himself
on his bed hopelessly drunk. He suffered next
morning.
One night the big crash came. He was
troubled in his own mind over his attempts to
make himself "worthy of the friendship" of
Mrs. Reiver. The past ten days had been very
bad ones, and the end of it all was that he
received the arrears of two and three-quarter
years of sipping in one attack of delirium tre



In Error.


I57


mens of the subdued kind; beginning with suicidal depression, going on to fits and starts and
hysteria, and ending with downright raving.
As he sat in a chair in front of the fire, or
walked up and down the room picking a handkerchief to pieces, you heard what poor Moriarty really thought of Mrs. Reiver, for he raved
about her and his own fall for the most part;
though he raveled some P. W. D. accounts into
the same skein of thought. He talked and
talked and talked in a low dry whisper to himself, and there was no stopping him. He
seemed to know that there was something
wrong, and twice tried to pull himself to.
gether and confer rationally with the doctor;
but his mind ran out of control at once, and he
fell back to a whisper and the story of his
troubles. It is terrible to hear a big man babbling like a child of all that a man usually
locks up and puts away in the deep of his heart.
Moriarty read out his very soul for the benefit
of any one who was in the room between 10:30
that night and 2:45 next morning.
From what he said one gathered how immense an influence Mrs. Reiver held over him,
and how thoroughly he felt for his own lapse.
His whisperings cannot, of course, be put down
here; but they were very instructive as showing the errors of his estimates.
When the trouble wa   ovr, and  is few
When the trouble was over, and his few




I58


Tales From Kipling.


acquaintances were pitying him for the bad
attack of jungle-fever that had so pulled him
down, Moriarty swore a big oath to himself
and went abroad again with Mrs. Reiver till
the end of the season, adoring her in a quiet
and deferential way as an angel from heaven.
Later on he took to riding-not hacking, but
honest riding-which was good proof that he
was improving, and you could slam doors behind him without his jumping to his feet with
a gasp. That, again, was hopeful.
How he kept his oath, and what it cost him
in the beginning nobody knows. He certainly
managed to compass the hardest thing that a
man who has drunk heavily can do. He took
his peg and wine at dinner; but he never drank
alone, and never let what he drank have the
least hold on him.
Once he told a bosom friend the story of his
great trouble, and how the "influence of a pure,
honest woman, and an angel as well," had saved
him. When the man-startled at anything
good being laid to Mrs. Reiver's door-laughed,
it cost him Moriarty's friendship. Moriarty,
who is married now to a woman ten thousand
times better than Mrs. Reiver-a woman who
believes that there is no man on earth as good
and clever as her husband-will go down to
his grave vowing and protesting that Mrs. Reiver saved him from ruin in both worlds.
That she knew anything of Moriarty's weak



In Error.            IJ9
ness nobody believed for a moment. That she
would have cut him dead,thrown him over and
acquainted all her friends with her discovery,
if she had known of it, nobody who knew her
doubted for an instant.
Moriarty thought her something she never
was, and in that belief saved himself. Which
was just as good as though she had been everything that he had imagined.
But the question is, what claim will Mrs.
Reiver have to the credit of Moriarty's salvation when her day of reckoning comes?




i6o


Tales From Kipling.


A Bank Fraud.
He drank strong waters and his speech was coarse;
He purchased raiment and forebore to pay;
He stuck a trusting junior with a horse,
And won Gymkhanas in a doubtful way.
Then, 'twixt a vice and folly, turned aside
To do good deeds and straight to cloak them, lied.
-The Mess Room.
IF Reggie Burke were in India now,
he would resent this tale being told;
but as he is in Hongkong and won't
see it, the telling is safe. He was the man
who worked the big fraud on the Sind and
Sialkote Bank. He was manager of an upcountry branch, and a sound practical man
with a large experience of native loan and insurance work. He would combine the frivolities of ordinary life with his work, and yet
do well. Reggie Burke rode anything that
would let him get up, danced as neatly as he
rode, and was wanted for every sort of amusement in the station.
As he said himself, and as many men found
out rather to their surprise, there were two
Burkes, both very much at your service.




A Bank Fraud.          i6i
"Reggie Burke," between four and ten, ready
for anything from a hot weather gymkhana to
a riding picnic; and, between ten and four,
"Mr. Reginald Burke, manager of the Sind
and Sialkote Branch Bank." You might play
polo with him one afternoon and hear him
express his opinions when a man crossed; and
you might call on him next morning to raise a
two-thousand-rupee loan on a five-hundredpound insurance policy, eighty pounds paid in
premiums. He would recognize you, but you
would have some trouble in recognizing him.
The directors of the bank-it had its headquarters in Calcutta and its general manager's
word carried weight with the governmentpicked their men well. They had tested Reggie
up to a fairly severe breaking-strain. They
trusted him just as much as directors ever trust
managers. You must see for yourself whether
their trust was misplaced.
Reggie's branch was in a big station, and
worked with the usual staff-one manager, one
accountant, both English, a cashier, and a horde
of native clerks; besides the police patrol at
nights outside. The bulk of its work, for it
was in a thriving district, was hoondi and accommodation of all kinds. A fool has no grip
of this sort of business; and a clever man who
does not go about among his clients, and know
more than a little of their affairs, is worse than
a fool. Reggie was young-looking, clean



i62


Tales From Kipling.


shaved, with a twinkle in his eye, and a head
that nothing short of a gallon of the gunners'
Madeira could make any impression on.
One day, at a big dinner, he announced casually that the directors had shifted on to him a
natural curiosity, from England, in the accountant line. He was perfectly correct. Mr. Silas
Riley, accountant, was a most curious animal
-a long, gawky, raw-boned Yorkshireman,
full of the savage self-conceit that blossoms
only in the best county in England. Arrogance was a mild word for the mental attitude
of Mr. S. Riley. He had worked himself up,
after seven years, to a cashier's position in a
Huddersfield bank; and all his experience lay
among the factories of the North. Perhaps he
would have done better on the Bombay side,
where they are happy with one-half per cent.
profits, and money is cheap. He was useless
for Upper India and a wheat province, where a
man wants a large head and a touch of imagination if he is to turn out a satisfactory balance sheet.
He was wonderfully narrow-minded in business, and being new to the country, had no notion that Indian banking is totally distinct
from home work. Like most clever self-made
men, he had much simplicity in his nature;
and, somehow or other, had construed the ordinarily polite terms of his letter of engagement
into a belief that the directors had chosen him




A Bank Fraud.            163
on account of his special and brilliant talents,
and that they set great store by him. This
notion grew and crystallized; thus adding to
his natural North-country conceit. Further,
he was delicate, suffered from some trouble in
his chest, and was short in his temper.
You will admit that Reggie had reason to
call his new accountant a natural curiosity.
The two men failed to hit it off at all. Riley
considered Reggie a wild, feather-headed idiot,
given to Heaven only knew what dissipation in
low places called "messes," and totally unfit
for the serious and solemn vocation of banking
He could never get over Reggie's look of youth
and "you-be-damned" air; and he couldn't understand Reggie's friends-clean-built, careless
men in the army-who rode over to big Sunday breakfasts at the bank, and told sultry stories till Riley got up and left the room. Riley
was always showing Reggie how the business
ought to be conducted, and Reggie had more
than once to remind him that seven years' limited experience between Huddersfield and Beverly did not qualify a man to steer a big upcountry business. Then Riley sulked and
referred to himself as a pillar of the bank and
a cherished friend of the directors, and Reggie
tore his hair. If a man's English subordinates
fail him in this country, he comes to a hard
time indeed, for native help has strict limitations. In the winter Riley went sick for weeks




164


Tales From Kipling.


at a time with his lung complaint, and this
threw more work on Reggie. But he preferred
it to the everlasting friction when Riley was
well.
One of the traveling inspectors of the bank
discovered these collapses and reported them to
the directors. Now Riley had been foisted on
the bank by an M. P., who wanted the support
of Riley's father, who, again, was anxious to
get his son out to a warmer climate because of
those lungs. The M. P. had interest in the
bank; but one of the directors wanted to advance a nominee of his own; and, after Riley's
father had died, he made the rest of the board
see that an accountant who was sick for half
the year had better give place to a healthy
man. If Riley had known the real story of his
appointment, he might have behaved better;
but knowing nothing, his stretches of sickness
alternated with restless, persistent, meddling
irritation of Reggie, and all the hundred ways
in which conceit in a subordinate situation can
find play. Reggie used to call him striking
and hair-curling names behind his back as a
relief to his own feelings; but he never abused
him to his face,because he said: "Riley is such
a frail beast that half of his loathsomeconceit is
due to pains in the chest. "
Late one April, Riley wvent very sick indeed.
The doctor punched him and thumped him, and
told him he would be better before long. Then




A Bank Fraud.            165
the doctor went to Reggie and said: "Do you
know how sick your accountant is?"
"No!" said Reggie. "The worse the better,
confound him! He's a clacking nuisance when
he's well. I'll let you take away the bank
safe if you can drug him silent for this hot
weather. "
But the doctor did not laugh. "Man, I'm not
joking," hesaid. "I'll give himanother three
months in his bed, and a week or so more to
die in. On my honor and reputation that's all
the grace he has in this world. Consumption
has hold of him to the marrow."
Reggie's face changed at once into the face
of "Mr. Reginald Burke," and he answered:
"What can I do?"
"Nothing," said the doctor. "For all practical purposes the man is dead already. Keep
him quiet and cheerful, and tell him he's going
to recover. That's all. I'll look after him to
the end, of course."
The doctor went away, and Reggie sat down
to open the evening mail. His first letter was
one from the directors, intimating for his information that Mr. Riley was to resign, under
a month's notice, by the term of his agreement,
telling Reggie that their letter to Riley would
follow, and advising Reggie of the coming of a
new accountant, a man whom Reggie knew
and liked.
Reggie lighted a cheroot, and before he had




i66      Tales From Kipling.
finished smoking, he had sketched the outline
of a fraud. He put away-"burked"-the director's letter, and went in to talk to Riley,
who was as ungracious as usual, and fretting
himself over the way the bank would run during his illness. He never thought of the extra
work on Reggie's shoulders, but solely of the
damage to his own prospects of advancement.
Then Reggie assured him that everything
would be well, and that he, Reggie, would confer with Riley daily on the management of the
bank. Riley was a little soothed,but he hinted
in as many words that he did not think much
of Reggie's business capacity. Reggie was
humble. And he had letters in his desk from
the directors that a Gilbarte or a Harde might
have been proud of!
The days passed in the big darkened house,
and the directors' letter of dismissal to Riley
came and was put away by Reggie who, every
evening, brought the books to Riley's room,
and showed him what had been going forward,
while Riley snarled. Reggie did his best to
make statements pleasing to Riley, but the accountant was sure that the bank was going to
rack and ruin without him. In June, as the
lying in bed told on his spirit,he asked whether
his absence had been noted by the directors,
and Reggie said that they had written most
sympathetic letters, hoping that he would be
able to resume his valuable services before




A Bank Fraud.         6


i67


long. He showed Riley the letters; and Riley
said that the directors ought to have written to
him direct. A few days later Reggie opened
Riley's mail in the half-light of the room, and
gave him the sheet, not the envelope-of a letter to Riley from the directors. Riley said he
would thank Reggie not to interfere with his
private papers, especially as Reggie knew he
was too weak to open his own letters.
Reggie apologized.
Then Riley's mood changed, and he lectured
Reggie on his evil ways: his horses and his bad
friends. "Of course, lying here on my back,
Mr. BurkeI can't keep you straight; but when
I'm wellI do hope you'll pay some heed to my
words." Reggie, who had dropped polo, and
dinners, and tennis, and all to attend to Riley,
said that he was penitent and settled Riley's
head on the pillow and heard him fret and contradict in hard, dry, hacking whispers without
a sign of impatience. This at the end of a
heavy day's office work, doing double duty, in
the latter half of June.
When the new accountant came, Reggie told
him the facts of the case, and announced to
Riley that he had a guest staying with him.
Riley said that he might have had more consideration than to entertain his "doubtful
friends" at such a time. Reggie made Carron,
the new accountant, sleep at the club in consequence. Carron's arrival took some of the




I68


Tales From Kipling.


heavy work off his shoulders, and he had time
to attend to Riley's exactions-to explain,
soothe, invent, and settle and resettle the poor
wretch in bed and to forge complimentary letters from Calcutta. At the end of the first
month, Riley wished to send some money home
to his mother. Reggie sent the draft. At the
end of the second month Riley's salary came
in just the same. Reggie paid it out of his own
pocket; and with it wrote Riley a beautiful letter from the directors.
Riley was very ill indeed, but the flame of
his life burned unsteadily. Now and then he
would be cheerful and confident about the future, sketching plans for going home and seeing his mother. Reggie listened patiently when
the office work was over, and encouraged him.
At other times Riley insisted on Reggie reading the Bible and grim "Methody" tracts to
him. Out of these tracts he pointed morals directed at his manager. But he always found
time to worry Reggie about the working of the
bank, and to show him where the weak points
lay.
This indoor, sick-room life and constant
strain wore Reggie down a good deal, and
shook his nerves, and lowered his billiardplay by forty points. But the business of the
bank, and the business of the sick-room had
to go on, though the glass was one hundred
and sixteen degrees in the shade.




A Bank Fraud.


i69


At the end of the third month, Riley was
sinking fast, and had begun to realize that he
was very sick. But the conceit that made him
worry Reggie kept him from   belia ing the
worst. "He wants some sort of mental stimrnlant if he is to drag on," said the doctor.
"Keep him interested in life if you care about
his living." So Riley, contrary to all the laws
of business and finance,  received a twentyfive per cent. rise of salary from the directors.
The "mental stimulant" succeeded beautifully. Riley was happy and cheerful, and as
is often the case in consumption, healthiest in
mind when the body was weakest. He lingered
for a full month, snarling and fretting about
the bank, talking of the future, hearing the
Bible read, lecturing Reggie on sin, and wondering when he would be able to move abroad.
But at the end of September,one mercilessly
hot evening, he rose up in his bed with a little
gasp, and said quickly to Reggie: "Mr. Burke,
I am going to die. I know it in myself. My
chest is all hollow inside, and there's nothing
to breathe with. To the best of my knowledge
I have done nowt"-he was returning to the
talk of his boyhood-"to lie heavy on my conscience. God be thanked, I have been preserved from the grosser forms of sin; and I
counsel you, Mr. Burke-" Here his voice
died down, and Reggie stooped over him.
"Send my salary for September to my mother




170       Tales From Kipling.... done great things with the bank if I had
been spared... mistaken policy.. no
fault of mine -"
Then he turned his face to the wall and died.
' Ieggie drew the sheet over its face, and went
out into the veranda with his last "mental
stimulant,"a letter of condolence and sympathy from the directors, unused in his pocket.
"If I'd only been ten minutes earlier,"
thought Reggie, "I might have heartened him
up to pull through another day."




Tods' Amendment.


1I7


Tods' Amendment.
The World hath set its heavy yoke
Upon the old white-bearded folk
Who strive to please the King.
God's mercy is upon the young,
God's wisdom in the baby tongue
That fears not anything.
-The Parable of Chajju Bhagat.
N     OW  Tods' mamma was a singularly
charming woman, and every one in
Simla knew Tods. Most men had
saved him from death on occasions. He was
beyond his ayah's control altogether, and periled his life daily to find out what would
happen if you pulled a mountain battery
mule's tail. He was an utterly fearless young
pagan, about six years old, and the only baby
who ever broke the holy calm of the supreme
legislative council.
It happened this way: Tods' pet kid got
loose, and fled up the hill, off the Boileaugunge
Road, Tods after it, until it burst into the viceregal lodge lawn, then attached to Peterhoff.
The council were sitting at the time, and the
windows were open because it was warm. The




I 72


Tales From Kipling.


Red Lancer in the porch told Tods to go away;
but Tods knew the Red Lancer and most of the
members of the council personally. Moreover,
he had firm hold of the kid's collar, and was
being dragged all across the flower-beds. " Gi ve
my salaam to the long Councillor Sahib," and
ask him to help me to take Moti back!" gasped
Tods. The council heard the noise through the
open windows; and, after an interval, was seen
the shocking spectacle of a legal member and a
lieutenant-governor helping, under the direct
patronage of a commander-in-chief and a viceroy, one small and very dirty boy in a sailor's
suit and a tangle of brown hair, to coerce a
lively and rebellious kid. They headed it off
down the path to the Mall, and Tods went home
in triumph and told his mamma that all the
Councillor Sahibs had been helping him to
catch Moti. Whereat his mamma smacked
Tods for interfering with the administration of
the empire; but Tods met the legal member
the next day, and told him in confidence that if
the legal member ever wanted to catch a goat,
he, Tods, would give him all the help in his
power. "Thank you, Tods," said the legal
member.
Tods was the idol of some eighty jhampanis, and half as many saises. He saluted them
all as "0 brother."  It never entered his head
that any living human being could disobey his
orders, and he was the buffer between the ser



Tods' Amendment.


I73


vants and his mamma's wrath. The working
of that household turned on Tods, who was
adored bt)y every one from the dhoby to the dog
boy. Even Futteh Khan, the villainous loafer
khit from Mussoorie, shirked risking Tods' displeasure for fear his co-mates should look down
on him.
So Tods had honor in the land from Boileaugunge to Chota Simla, and ruled justly according to his lights. Of course, he spoke Urdu,
but he had also mastered many queer sidespeeches like the chotee bolee of the women,
and held grave converse with shopkeepers
and Hill coolies alike. He wds precocious for
his age, and his mixing with natives had taught
him some of the more bitter truths of life; the
meanness and the sordidness of it. He used,
over his bread and milk, to deliver solemn and
serious aphorisms, translated from the vernacular into the English, that made his mamma
jump and vow that Tods must go home next
hot weather.
Just when Tods was in the bloom of his
power, the supreme legislature were hacking
out a bill for the Sub-Montane Tracts, a revision of the then act, smaller than the Punjab
Land Bill, but affecting a few hundred thousand people none the less. The legal member
had built, and bolstered, and embroidered, and
amended that bill till it looked beautiful on paper. Then the council began to settle what




I74


Tales From Kipling.


they called the "minor details." As if any
Englishman legislating for natives knows
enough to know which are the minor and which
are the major points, from the native point of
view, of any measure! That bill was a triumph of "safeguarding the interests of the
tenant." One clause provided that land should
not be leased on longer terms than five years at
a stretch; because, if the landlord had a tenant
bound down for, say, twenty years, he would
squeeze the very life out of him. The notion
was to keep up a stream of independent cultivators in the Sub-Montane Tracts; and ethnologically and politically the notion was correct.
The only drawback was that it was altogether
wrong. A native's life in India implies the
life of his son. Wherefore you cannot legislate for one generation at a time. You must
consider the next from the native point of view.
Curiously enough, the native now and then, and
in Northern India more particularly, hates being overprotected against himself. There was
a Naga village once, where they lived on dead
and buried commissariat mules.... But that
is another story.
For many reasons, to be explained later, the
people concerned objected to the bill. The native member in council knew as much about
Punjabis as he knew about Charing Cross. He
had said in Calcutta that "the bill was entirely
in accord with the desires of that large and




Tods' Amendment.


175


important class, the cultivators;" and so on,
and so on. The legal member's knowledge of natives was limited to Englishspeaking Durbaris, and his own red chaprassis,
the Sub-Montane Tracts, concerned no one in
particular, the deputy commissioners were a
good deal too driven to make representations,
and the measure was one which dealt with
small landholders only. Nevertheless, the legal
member prayed that it might be correct, for he
was a nervously conscientious man. He did
not know that no man can tell what natives
think unless he mixes with them with the varnish off. And not always then. But he did
the best he knew. And the measure came up
to the supreme council for the final touches,
while Tods patroled the Burra Simla Bazaar
in his morning rides, and played with the monkey belonging to Ditta Mull, the bunnia, and
listened, as a child listens, to all the stray talk
about this new freak of the Lat Sahib's.
One day there was a dinner party at the
house of Tods' mamma, and the legal member
came. Tods was in bed, but he kept awake
till he heard the bursts of laughter from the
men over the coffee. Then he paddled out in
his little red flannel dressing-gown and his
nightsuit and took refuge by the side of his
father,knowing that he would not be sent back.
"See the miseries of having a family!" said
Tods' father, giving Tod three prunes, some




176


Tales From Kipling.


water in a glass that had been used for claret,
and telling him to sit still. Tods sucked the
prunes slowly, knowing that he would have to
go when they were finished, and sipped the
pink water like a man of the world as he
listened to the conversation. Presently the
legal member, talking "shop" to the head of
a department, mentioned his bill by its full
name: "The Sub-Montane Tracts Ryotwary
Revised Enactment." Tods caught the one
native word, and lifting up his small voice said:
"Oh, I know all about that! Has it been
murramutted yet, Councillor Sahib?"
"How much?" said the legal member.
"JMurramutted-mended-put theek, you
know-made nice to please Ditta Mull!"
The legal member left his place and moved
up next to Tods.
"What do you know about Ryotwari, little
man?" he said.
"I'm not a little man, I'm Tods, and I know
all about it. Ditta Mull, and Choga Lall, and
Amir Nath, and-oh, lakhs of my friends tell
me about it in the bazaars when I talk to them."
"Oh, they do-do they? What do they say,
Tods?"
Tods tucked his feet under his red flannel
dressing-gown and said: "I must fink."
The legal member waited patiently. Then
Tods, with infinite compassion:
"You don't speak my talk do you, Councillor
Sahib?"




Tods' Amendment.


I77


"No; I am sorry to say I do not," said the
legal member.
"Very well," said Tods, "I mustfink  in
English."
"He spent a minute putting his ideas in order, and began very slowly, translating in his
mind from the vernacular to English, as many
Anglo-Indian children do. You must remember that the legal member helped him on by
questions when he halted, for Tods was not
equal to the sustained flight of oratory that follows:
"Ditta Mull says: 'This thing is the talk of
a child, and was made up by fools.' But I
don't think you are a fool, Councillor Sahib,"
said Tods hastily. "You caught my goat.
This is what Ditta Mull says: 'I am not a fool,
and why should the sirkar say I am a child?
I can see if the land is good and if the landlord is
good. If I am fool, the sin is upon my own
head. For five years I take my ground for
which I have saved money, and a wife I take,
too, and a little son is born.' Ditta Mull has
one daughter now, but he says he will have
a son soon. And he says: 'At the end of five
years, by this new bundobust, I must go. If I
do not go, I must get fresh seals and takkusstamps on the papers, perhaps in the middle of
the harvest, and to go to the law courts once is
wisdom, but to go twice is Jehannum. ' That
is quite true," explained Tods gravely. "All
my friends say eo. And Ditta Mull says: 'Al



178       Tales From Kipling.
ways fresh takkus and paying money to vakils
and chapsarsis and law courts every five years,
or else the landlord makes me go. Why do I
want to go? Am I a fool? If I am a fool and
do not know, after forty years, good land when
I see it, let me die! But if the new bundobust
says for fifteen years, that is good and wise.
My little son is a man, and I am burned, and
he takes the ground or another ground, paying
only once for the takkus-stamps on the papers,
and his little son is born, and at the end of fiften years is a man too. But what profit is
there in five years and fresh papers? Nothing
but dikh, trouble, dikh. We are not young
men who take these lands, but old ones-not
jats, but tradesmen with a little money-and
for fifteen years we shall have peace. Nor are
we children that the sirkar should treat us so.' "
Here Tods stopped short, for the whole table
were listening. The legal member said to
Tods: "Is that all?"
"All I can remember," said Tods. "But
you should see Ditta Mull's big monkey. It's
just like a Councillor Sahib."
" Tods! Go to bed, " said his father.
Tods gathered up his dressing-gown tail and
departed.
The legal member brought his hand down on
the table with a crash. "By Jove!" said the
legal member, "I believe the boy is right. The
short tenure is the weak point."
He left early, thinking over what Tods had




Tods' Amendment.


179


said. Now, it was obviously impossible for the
legal member to play with a bunnia's monkey,
by way of getting understanding; but he did
better. He made inquiries, always bearing in
mind the fact that the real native-not the
hybrid, university-trained mule, is as timid as
a colt, and, little by little he coaxed some of
the men whom the measure concerned most
intimately to give in their views,which squared
very closely with Tods' evidence.
So the bill was amended in that clause; and
the legal member was filled with an uneasy
suspicion that native members represent very
little except the orders they carry on their
bosoms. But he put the thought from him as
illiberal. He was a most liberal man.
After a time the news spread through the
bazaars that Tods had got the bill recast in the
tenure-clause, and if Tods' mamma had not
interfered, Tods would have made himself sick
on the baskets of fruit and pistachio nuts and
Cabuli grapes and almonds that crowded the
veranda.  Till he went home, Tods ranked
some few degrees before the viceroy in popular
estimation. But for the little life of him Tods
could not understand why.
In the legal member's private paper-box still
lies the rough draft of the Sub-Montane Tracts
Ryotwary Revised Enactment; and, opposite
the twenty-second clause, penciled in blue chalk,
and signed by the legal member, are the words
"Tods' Amendment."




I80       Tales From   Kipling.
The Daughter of the Regiment.
Jain 'Ardin' was a Sarjint's wife,
A Sarjint's wife wus she.
She married of 'im in Orldershort
An' comed across the sea.
(Chorus) 'Ave you never'eard tell o' Jain 'Ardin'?
Jain 'Ardin'?
Jain 'Ardin'?
'Ave you never 'eard tell o' Jain 'Ardin'?
The pride o' the Companee?
-Old Barrack Room Ballad.
A     GENTLEMAN who doesn't know the
Circassian circle ought not to stand
up  for it-puttin' everybody out."
That was what Miss McKenna said, and the
sergeant who was my vis-a-vis looked the
same thing. I was afraid of Miss McKenna.
She was six feet high, all yellow freckles
and red hair. and was simply clad in white
satin shoes, a pink muslin dress, and applegreen stuff sash, and black silk gloves,
with yellow roses in her hair. Wherefore
I fled from Miss McKenna and sought my
friend, Private Mulvaney, who was at the cant
-refreshment table.
"So you've been dancin' with little Jhansi




The Daughter of the Regiment. i 8
McKenna, sorr-she that's goin' to marry Corp'ril Slane? Whin you next conversh wid your
lorruds an' your ladies, tell thim you've danced
wid little Jhansi. 'Tis a thing to be proud av. "
But I wasn't proud. I was humble. I saw
a story in Private Mulvaney's eye; and, besides, if he stayed too long at the bar he would,
I knew, qualify for more pack-drill. Now to
meet an esteemed friend doing pack-drill outside the guard-room is embarrassing, especially
if you happen to be walking with his commanding-officer.
"Come on to the parade-ground, Mulvaney, it's
cooler there, and tell me about Miss McKenna.
What is she, and who is she, and why is she
called 'Jhansi?'"
"D'ye mane to say you've never heard av
ould Pummeloe's daughter? An' you thinkin'
you know things! I'm wid ye in a minut'
whin me poipe's lighted."
We came out under the stars. Mulvaney sat
down on one of the artillery bridges and began
in the usual way, his pipe between his teeth,
his big hands clasped and dropped between his
knees, and his cap well back on his head.
"Whin Mrs. Mulvaney, that is, was Miss
Shad that was, you were a dale younger than
you are now, an' the army was diff'rint in sev'ril e-senshuls. Bhoys have no call for to marry
nowadays, an' that's why the army has so few
rale good, honest, swearin' strapagin', tinder



182      Tales From Kipling.
hearted, heavy-futted wives as ut used to have
whin I was a corp'ril. I was rejuced afterward
-but no matther-I was a cor'pril wanst. In
thim times a man lived and died wid his rigiment; an' by natur' he married whin he was
a man. Whin I was corp'ril-Mother av Hivin, how the rigimint has died an' been borrun
since that day-my color-sar'jint was ould
McKenna, an' a married man, tu. An' his
woife-his first woife, for he married three
times did McKenna-was Bridget McKenna,
from Portarlingon, like mesilf. I've misremembered fwhat her first name was; but in B
company we called her 'Ould Pummeloe' by
reason av her figure, which was entirely circum-fe-renshil. Like the big dhrum! Nowthat
woman —God rock her sowl to rest in glorywas for everlastin' havin' childher; an' McKenna, whin the fifth or sixth came squallin'
on to the musther-roll, swore he wud number
them off in the future. But ould Pummeloe
she prayed av him to christen thim afther the
names of the stations they was borrun in. So
there was Colaba McKenna an' Muttra McKenna, an' a whole presidincy av other McKennas,
an' little Jhansi, dancin' over yonder. Whin
the children wasn't bornin', they was dying;
for av our childer die like sheep in these days
they died like flies thin. I lost me own little
Shad-but no matther. 'Tis long ago, and Mrs.
Mulvaney niver had another.




The Daughter of the Regiment. I83
"I'm digresshin. Wan divil's hot summer
there come an order from some mad ijit, whose
name I misremember, for the rigimint to go
up-country. May be they wanted to know how
the new rail carried throops. They knew! On
me sowl, they knew before they was done!
Ould Pummeloe had just buried Muttra
McKenna; an' the season bein' onwholesim,
only little Jhansi McKenna, who was four
years ould thin, was left on hand.
"Five children gone in fourteen months.
'Twas harrd, wasn't ut?
"So we wint up to our new station in that
blazin' heat-may the curse av Saint Lawrence
conshume the man who gave the ordher! Will
I iver forgit that move? They gave us two
wake trains to the rigimint; an' we was eight
hundher' and sivinty strong. There was A, B,
C and D companies in the secon' thrain, wid
twelve women, no orficer's ladies, an' thirteen
childher. We was to go six hundher' miles,
an' railways was new in thim days. Whin we
had been a night in the belly av the thrainthe men ragin' in their shirts an' dhrinkin'
anything they cud find, an' eatin' bad fruit
stuff whinthey cud, for we cudn't stop 'em-I
was a corp'ril thin-the cholera bruk out wid
the dawnin' av the day.
"Pray to the saints, you may niver see cholera
in a throop-thrain. 'Tis like the judgmint av
God hittin' down from the nakid sky! We run




184


Tales From Kipling.


into a rest-camp-as ut might have been Ludianny, but not by any means so comfortable.
The orficer commandin' sent a telegrapt up
the line, three hundher' mile up, askin' for
help. Faith, we wanted ut, for ivry sowl av
the followers ran for the dear life as soon as the
thrain stopped; an' by the time that telegrapt
was writ, there wasn't a naygur in the station
exceptin' the telegrapt clerk-an' he only bekaze he was held down to his chair by the scruff
av his sneakin' black neck. Thin the day be
gan wid the noise in the carr'ges, an' the rattle
av the men on the platform fallin' over, arms
an' all, as they stud for to answer the comp'ny
muster-roll before goin' over to the camp.
'Tisn't for me to say what like the cholera was
like. Maybe the doctor cud ha' tould, av he
hadn't dropped on to the platform from the door
av a carriage where he was takin' out the dead.
He died wid the rest. Some bhoys had died
in the night. We tuk out siven, and twenty
more was sickenin' as we tuk thim. The women
was huddled up any ways, screamin' wid fear.
"Sez the commandin' orficer, whose name I
misremember: 'Take the women over to that
tope av trees yonder. Git thim out av the
camp. 'Tis no place for thim.'
"Ould Pumnmeloe was sittin' on her beddin'rowl, thryin' to kape little Jhansi quiet. 'Go
off to that tope!' sez the orficer. 'Go out av
the men's wayl'




The Daughter of the Regiment. 185


"'Be damned av I do ' sez ould Pummeloe,
'an' little Jhansi, squattin by her mother's side,
squeaks out,'Be damned av I do,' tu. Then
ould Pummeloe turns to the women an' she sez:
'Are ye goin' to let the bhoys die while you're
picnickin', ye sluts?' sez she. ''Tis wather they
want. Come on an' help.'
"Wid that she turns up her sleeves an' steps
out for a well behind the rest-camp-little
Jhansi trottin' behind wid a lotah an' string,
an' the other women followin' like lambs, wid
horse-buckets and cookin' degchies. Whin all
the things was full, ould Pummeloe marches
back into camp-'twas like a battlefield wid all
the glory missin'-at the hid av the rigiment
av women.
" 'McKenna, me man!' she sez, wid a voice
on her like grand-roun's challenge, 'tell the
bhoys to be quiet. Ould Pummeloe's a-comin'
to look afther thim-wid free dhrinks.'
"Thin we cheered, and the cheerin' in the
lines was louder than the noise av the poor divils wid the sickness on thim. But not much.
"You see, we was a new an' raw rigimint in
those days, an' we cud make neither head nor
tail av the sickness; an' so we was useless.
The men was goin' roun' an' about like dumb
sheep, waitin' for the nex' man to fall over, an'
sayin' undher their spache: 'Fwhat is ut? In
the name av God, fwhat is ut?' 'Twas horrible. But through ut all, up an' down, an'




i86


Tales From Kipling.


down an' up, wint ould Pummeloe an' little
Jhansi-all we cud see av the baby, undher a
dead man's helmet wid the chin-strap swingin'
about her little stummick-up an' down wid
the water and fwhat brandy there was.
"Now an' thin ould Pummeloe, the tears
runnin down her fat, red face, sez: 'Me bhoys,
me poor, dead darlin' bhoys!' But for the most
she was thryin' to put heart into the men an'
kape thim stiddy; and little Jhansi was tellin'
thim all they wud be 'betther in the mornin'.'
'Twas a thrick she'd picked up from hearing
old Pummeloe whin Muttra was burnin' out
wid fever. In the mornin'! 'Twas the iverlastin' mornin' at St. Peter's Gate was the
mornin' for seven-and-twenty good men; an'
twenty more was sick to the death in that bitter, burnin' sun. But the women worked like
angils, as I've said, an' the men like divils, till
two doctors come down from above, an' we was
rescued.
"But just before that ould Pummeloe, on her
knees over a bhoy in my squad-right-cot man
to me he was in the barrick-tellin' him the
wurrud av the Church that niver failed a man
yet, sez: 'Huld me up, bhoys! I'm feelin'
bloody sick!' 'Twas the sun, not the cholera, did ut. She misremembered she was only
wearin' her ould black bonnet, an' she died
wid 'McKenna, me man,' houldin' her up, an'
the bhoys howled whin they buried her.




The Daughter of the Regiment. 187
"That night a big wind blew, an' blew, an'
blew, an' blew the tents flat. But it blew the
cholera away an' niver another case there was
all the while we was waitin'-ten days in quarintin'. Av you will belave me, the thrack of
the sickness in the camp was for all the wurruld
the thrack of a man walkin' four times in a
figur'-av-eight through the tents. They say
'tis the Wandherin' Jew takes the cholera wid
him. I believe ut.
"An' that," said Mulvaney, illogically, "is
the cause why little Jhansi McKenna is fwhat
she is. She was brought up by the quartermaster-sergeant's wife whin McKenna died,
but she b'longs to B comp'ny; an' this tale I'm
tellin' you-wid a proper appreciashin av
Jhansi McKenna-I've belted into every recruity av the comp'y as he was drafted. Faith,
'twas me belted Corp'ril Slane into askin' the
girl!"
"Not really?"
"Man, I did! She's no beauty to look at,
but she's old Pummeloe's daughter, an' 'tis my
juty to provide for her. Just before Slane got
his wan-eight a day, I sez to him: 'Slane,' sez
I, 'to-morrow 'twill be insubordinashin av me
to chastise you; but, by the sowl av old Pummeloe, who is now in glory, av you don't give
me your worrud to ask Jhansi McKenna at
wanst, I'll peel the flesh off yer bones wid a
brass huk to-night. 'Tis a dishgrace to B com



I88       Tales From Kipling.
p'ny she's been single so long!' sez I. Was I
goin' to let a three-year-ould preshume to discoorse wid me, my will bein' set? No! Slane
wint an' asked her. He's a good bhoy is Slane.
Wan av these days he'll get into the com'ssariat
and dbrive a boggy wid his-savin's. So I provided for ould Pummeloe's daughter; an' now
you go along and dance agin wid her."
And I did.
I felt a respect for Miss Jhansi McKenna,
and I went to her wedding later on.
Perhaps I will tell you about that one of
these days.
THE END.




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