No More Learning

As soon as he had attracted my attention, he held up his hand
and showed a rope. I motioned, staggering to and fro for 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 sand
hills overlooking the crater. Dunnoo, with his face ashy grey in the
moonlight, implored me not to stay but to 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 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
do. 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.

* * * * *




THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

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

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

The beginning of everything was in a railway-train upon the road to Mhow
from Ajmir. There had been a Deficit in the Budget, which necessitated
travelling, not Second-class, which is only half as dear as First-Class,
but by Intermediate, which is very awful indeed. There are no cushions
in the Intermediate class, and the population are either Intermediate,
which is Eurasian, or native, which for a long night journey is nasty,
or Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated. Intermediates do not buy
from refreshment-rooms. They carry their food in bundles and pots, and
buy sweets from the native sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the roadside
water. This is why in 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 the big black-browed 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 under side where the lath and plaster is not smoothed off,--and we
talked postal arrangements because my friend wanted to send a telegram
back from the next station to Ajmir, 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 travelling 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 telegrams within ten days if that will serve you," I
said.

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

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

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

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

"Again and again, but the Residents find you out, and then you get
escorted to the Border before you've time to get your knife into them.
But about my friend here. I must give him a word o' mouth to tell him
what's come to me, or else he won't know where to go. I would take it
more than kind of you if you was to come out of Central India in time to
catch him at Marwar Junction, and say to him, 'He has gone South for the
week. ' He'll know what that means. He's a big man with a red beard, and
a great swell he is.

"You'll find him sleeping like a gentleman with all his luggage round him
in a Second-class apartment. But don't you be afraid.

"Slip down the window and say, 'He has gone South for the week,' and
he'll tumble. It's only cutting your time of stay in those parts by
two days. I ask you as a stranger--going to the West," he said, with
emphasis.

"Where have you come from? " said I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The train had begun to move out. The red man rubbed his eyes.

"He has gone South for the week," he repeated. "Now that's just like his
impidence. Did he say that I was to give you anything? 'Cause I won't. "

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

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

Later on I reflected that two gentlemen like my friends could not do any
good if they foregathered and personated correspondents of newspapers,
and might, if they blackmailed 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 outside the daily manufacture of a newspaper. A
newspaper office seems to attract every conceivable sort of person, to
the prejudice of discipline. Zenana-mission ladies arrive, and beg that
the Editor will instantly abandon all his duties to describe a Christian
prize-giving in a back slum of a perfectly inaccessible village;
Colonels who have been overpassed for command 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 punka-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 clamour to have the glories of their last
dance more fully described; 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
proof-reader. And, all the time, the telephone-bell is ringing madly,
and Kings are being killed on the Continent, and Empires are saying,
"You're another," and Mister Gladstone is calling down brimstone upon
the British Dominions, and the little black copyboys are whining,
"kaa-pi chay-ha-yeh" ("Copy wanted"), like tired bees, and most of the
paper is as blank as Modred's shield.

But that is the amusing part of the year. There are six other months
when 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 to 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 with a garment, and you
sit down and write: "A slight increase of sickness is reported from
the Khuda Janta Khan District. The outbreak is purely sporadic in
its nature, and, thanks to the energetic efforts of the District
authorities, is now almost at an end. It is, however, with deep regret
we record the death," etc.

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

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

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

One Saturday night it was my pleasant duty to put the paper to bed
alone. A King or courtier or a courtesan or a Community was going to
die or get a new Constitution, or do something that was important on
the other side of the world, and the paper was to be held open till the
latest possible minute in order to catch the telegram.

It was a pitchy-black night, as stifling as a June night can be, and
the loo, the red-hot wind from the westward, was booming among the
tinder-dry trees and pretending that the rain was on its heels.

Now and again a spot of almost boiling water would fall on the dust with
the flop of a frog, but all our weary world knew that was only pretence.
It was a shade cooler in the press-room than the office, so I sat there,
while the type ticked and clicked, and the night-jars hooted at the
windows, and the all but naked compositors wiped the sweat from their
foreheads and called for water. The thing that was keeping us back,
whatever it was, would not come off, though the loo dropped and the last
type was set, and the whole round earth stood still in the choking heat,
with its finger on its lip, to wait the event. I drowsed, and wondered
whether the telegraph was a blessing, and whether this dying man, or
struggling people, might be aware of the inconvenience the delay was
causing. There was no special reason beyond the heat and worry to make
tension, but, as the clock-hands crept up to three o'clock and the
machines spun their fly-wheels two and three times to see that all was
in order, before I said the word that would set them off, I could have
shrieked aloud.

Then the roar and rattle of the wheels shivered the quiet into little
bits. I rose to go away, but two men in white clothes stood in front
of me. The first one said, "It's him! " The second said, "So it is! " And
they both laughed almost as loudly as the machinery roared, and mopped
their foreheads. We seed 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 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 favour, because we found
out you did us a bad turn about Degumber State. "

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 you to Brother Peachey Carnehan, that's
him, and Brother Daniel Dravot, that is me, and the less said about
our professions the better, for we have been most things in our
time--soldier, sailor, compositor, photographer, proof-reader,
street-preacher, and correspondents of the 'Backwoodsman' when we
thought the paper wanted one. Carnehan is sober, and so am I. Look at us
first, and see that's sure. It will save you cutting into my talk. We'll
take one of your cigars apiece, and you shall see us light up. "

I watched the test. The men were absolutely sober, so I gave them each a
tepid whisky-and-soda.

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

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

"Therefore we are going away to be Kings. "

"Kings in our own right," muttered Dravot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I handed him Wood on the "Sources of the Oxus. " Carnehan was deep in the
"Encyclopaedia. "

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

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

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

I smoked while the men poured over Raverty, Wood, the maps, and the
"Encyclopaedia. "

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Signed by you and me this day.

Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan.

Daniel Dravot.

Both Gentlemen at Large.


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

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

I left them still poring over the maps and making notes on the back of
the "Contrack. " "Be sure to come down to the Serai tomorrow," 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 pussy-cats,
saddle-bags, fat-tailed sheep, and musk in the Kumharsen Serai, and get
many strange things for nothing. In the afternoon I went down to see
whether my friends intended to keep their word or were lying there
drunk.

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

"The priest is mad," said a horse-dealer to me. "He is going up to Kabul
to sell toys to the Amir. He will either be raised to honour 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 diverted into
the hands of other robbers just across the Border, and whose misfortunes
were the laughing-stock of the bazaar. "Ohe', priest, whence come you
and whither do you go? "

"From Roum have I come," shouted the priest, waving his whirligig; "from
Roum, blown by the breath of a hundred devils across the sea! O thieves,
robbers, liars, the blessing of Pir Khan on pigs, dogs, and perjurers!
Who will take the Protected of God to the North to sell charms that are
never still to the Amir? The camels shall not gall, the sons shall not
fall sick, and the wives shall remain faithful while they are away,
of the men who give me place in their caravan. Who will assist me to
slipper the King of the Roos with a golden slipper with a silver heel?
The protection of Pir Khan be upon his labours! " He spread out the
skirts of his gabardine 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 servant. He makes a handsome servant.
'T isn't for nothing that I've been knocking about the country for
fourteen years. Didn't I do that talk neat? We'll hitch on to a caravan
at 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, O Lor'! Put your hand under the camelbags and tell me what you
feel. "

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

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

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

"Fifteen hundred rupees of capital--every rupee we could beg, borrow, or
steal--are invested on these two camels," said Dravot.

"We won't get caught. We're going through the Khaiber with a regular
caravan. Who'd touch a poor mad priest? "

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

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

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

Carnehan leaned down and shook hands. Then the camels passed away along
the dusty road, and I was left alone to wonder. My eye could detect no
failure in the disguises. The scene in the Serai proved 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 correspondent, 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 good fortune. "

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I don't know you," I said, handing him the 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
Dravot--crowned Kings we was! In this office we settled it--you setting
there and giving us the books. I am Peachey,--Peachey Taliaferro
Carnehan,--and you've been setting here ever since--O Lord! "

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

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

"Take the 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 me, or maybe my words will go all to pieces. Keep
looking at me in my eyes and don't say anything. "

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

"No, don't look there. Look at me," said Carnehan. "That comes
afterward, but for the Lord's sake don't distrack me. We left with that
caravan, me and Dravot playing all sorts of antics to amuse the people
we were with. Dravot used to make us laugh in the evenings when all the
people was cooking their dinners--cooking their dinners, and. . .
what did they do then? They lit little fires with sparks that went into
Dravot's beard, and we all laughed--fit to die. Little red fires they
was, going into Dravot's big red beard--so funny. " His eyes left mine
and he smiled foolishly.

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

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

"Take some more whisky," I said, very slowly. "What did you and Daniel
Dravot do when the camels could go no farther 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.