Kim
“I know you are not at thee war now; but I tell _you_ that as soon as
you get to Umballa you will be sent to the war—the new war. It is a war
of eight thousand men, besides the guns.”
“That’s explicit. D’you add prophecy to your other gifts? Take him
along, sergeant. Take up a suit for him from the Drums, an’ take care
he doesn’t slip through your fingers. Who says the age of miracles is
gone by? I think I’ll go to bed. My poor mind’s weakening.”
At the far end of the camp, silent as a wild animal, an hour later sat
Kim, newly washed all over, in a horrible stiff suit that rasped his
arms and legs.
“A most amazin’ young bird,” said the sergeant. “He turns up in charge
of a yellow-headed buck-Brahmin priest, with his father’s Lodge
certificates round his neck, talkin’ God knows what all of a red bull.
The buck-Brahmin evaporates without explanations, an’ the bhoy sets
cross-legged on the Chaplain’s bed prophesyin’ bloody war to the men at
large. Injia’s a wild land for a God-fearin’ man. I’ll just tie his leg
to the tent-pole in case he’ll go through the roof. What did ye say
about the war?”
“Eight thousand men, besides guns,” said Kim. “Very soon you will see.”
“You’re a consolin’ little imp. Lie down between the Drums an’ go to
bye-bye. Those two boys will watch your slumbers.”
CHAPTER VI
Now I remember comrades—
Old playmates on new seas—
Whenas we traded orpiment
Among the savages.
Ten thousand leagues to southward,
And thirty years removed—
They knew not noble Valdez,
But me they knew and loved.
_Song of Diego Valdez._
Very early in the morning the white tents came down and disappeared as
the Mavericks took a side-road to Umballa. It did not skirt the
resting-place, and Kim, trudging beside a baggage-cart under fire of
comments from soldiers’ wives, was not so confident as overnight. He
discovered that he was closely watched—Father Victor on the one side,
and Mr Bennett on the other.
In the forenoon the column checked. A camel-orderly handed the Colonel
a letter. He read it, and spoke to a Major. Half a mile in the rear,
Kim heard a hoarse and joyful clamour rolling down on him through the
thick dust. Then someone beat him on the back, crying: “Tell us how ye
knew, ye little limb of Satan? Father dear, see if ye can make him
tell.”
A pony ranged alongside, and he was hauled on to the priest’s
saddlebow.
“Now, my son, your prophecy of last night has come true. Our orders are
to entrain at Umballa for the Front tomorrow.”
“What is thatt?” said Kim, for “_front_” and “_entrain_” were newish
words to him.
“We are going to ‘thee War,’ as you called it.”
“Of course you are going to thee War. I said last night.”
“Ye did; but, Powers o’ Darkness, how did ye know?”
Kim’s eyes sparkled. He shut his lips, nodded his head, and looked
unspeakable things. The Chaplain moved on through the dust, and
privates, sergeants, and subalterns called one another’s attention to
the boy. The Colonel, at the head of the column, stared at him
curiously. “It was probably some bazar rumour.” he said; “but even
then—” He referred to the paper in his hand. “Hang it all, the thing
was only decided within the last forty-eight hours.”
“Are there many more like you in India?” said Father Victor, “or are
you by way o’ being a _lusus naturæ?_”
“Now I have told you,” said the boy, “will you let me go back to my old
man? If he has not stayed with that woman from Kulu, I am afraid he
will die.”
“By what I saw of him he’s as well able to take care of himself as you.
No. Ye’ve brought us luck, an’ we’re goin’ to make a man of you. I’ll
take ye back to your baggage-cart and ye’ll come to me this evening.”
For the rest of the day Kim found himself an object of distinguished
consideration among a few hundred white men. The story of his
appearance in camp, the discovery of his parentage, and his prophecy,
had lost nothing in the telling. A big, shapeless white woman on a pile
of bedding asked him mysteriously whether he thought her husband would
come back from the war. Kim reflected gravely, and said that he would,
and the woman gave him food. In many respects, this big procession that
played music at intervals—this crowd that talked and laughed so
easily—resembled a festival in Lahore city. So far, there was no sign
of hard work, and he resolved to lend the spectacle his patronage. At
evening there came out to meet them bands of music, and played the
Mavericks into camp near Umballa railway station. That was an
interesting night. Men of other regiments came to visit the Mavericks.
The Mavericks went visiting on their own account. Their pickets hurried
forth to bring them back, met pickets of strange regiments on the same
duty; and, after a while, the bugles blew madly for more pickets with
officers to control the tumult. The Mavericks had a reputation for
liveliness to live up to. But they fell in on the platform next morning
in perfect shape and condition; and Kim, left behind with the sick,
women, and boys, found himself shouting farewells excitedly as the
trains drew away. Life as a Sahib was amusing so far; but he touched it
with a cautious hand. Then they marched him back in charge of a
drummer-boy to empty, lime-washed barracks, whose floors were covered
with rubbish and string and paper, and whose ceilings gave back his
lonely footfall. Native-fashion, he curled himself up on a stripped cot
and went to sleep. An angry man stumped down the veranda, woke him up,
and said he was a schoolmaster. This was enough for Kim, and he retired
into his shell. He could just puzzle out the various English Police
notices in Lahore city, because they affected his comfort; and among
the many guests of the woman who looked after him had been a queer
German who painted scenery for the Parsee travelling theatre. He told
Kim that he had been “on the barricades in “Forty-eight,” and
therefore—at least that was how it struck Kim—he would teach the boy to
write in return for food. Kim had been kicked as far as single letters,
but did not think well of them.
“I do not know anything. Go away!” said Kim, scenting evil. Hereupon
the man caught him by the ear, dragged him to a room in a far-off wing
where a dozen drummer-boys were sitting on forms, and told him to be
still if he could do nothing else. This he managed very successfully.
The man explained something or other with white lines on a black board
for at least half an hour, and Kim continued his interrupted nap. He
much disapproved of the present aspect of affairs, for this was the
very school and discipline he had spent two-thirds of his young life in
avoiding. Suddenly a beautiful idea occurred to him, and he wondered
that he had not thought of it before.
The man dismissed them, and first to spring through the veranda into
the open sunshine was Kim.
“’Ere, you! ’Alt! Stop!” said a high voice at his heels. “I’ve got to
look after you. My orders are not to let you out of my sight. Where are
you goin’?”
It was the drummer-boy who had been hanging round him all the
forenoon—a fat and freckled person of about fourteen, and Kim loathed
him from the soles of his boots to his cap-ribbons.
“To the bazar—to get sweets—for you,” said Kim, after thought.
“Well, the bazar’s out o’ bounds. If we go there we’ll get a
dressing-down. You come back.”
“How near can we go?” Kim did not know what bounds meant, but he wished
to be polite—for the present.
“’Ow near? ’Ow far, you mean! We can go as far as that tree down the
road.”
“Then I will go there.”
“All right. I ain’t goin’. It’s too ’ot. I can watch you from ’ere.
It’s no good your runninv away. If you did, they’d spot you by your
clothes. That’s regimental stuff you’re wearin’. There ain’t a picket
in Umballa wouldn’t ’ead you back quicker than you started out.”
This did not impress Kim as much as the knowledge that his raiment
would tire him out if he tried to run. He slouched to the tree at the
corner of a bare road leading towards the bazar, and eyed the natives
passing. Most of them were barrack-servants of the lowest caste. Kim
hailed a sweeper, who promptly retorted with a piece of unnecessary
insolence, in the natural belief that the European boy could not follow
it. The low, quick answer undeceived him. Kim put his fettered soul
into it, thankful for the late chance to abuse somebody in the tongue
he knew best. “And now, go to the nearest letter-writer in the bazar
and tell him to come here. I would write a letter.”
“But—but what manner of white man’s son art thou to need a bazar
letter-writer? Is there not a schoolmaster in the barracks?”
“Ay; and Hell is full of the same sort. Do my order, you—you Od! Thy
mother was married under a basket! Servant of Lal Beg” (Kim knew the
God of the sweepers), “run on my business or we will talk again.”
The sweeper shuffled off in haste. “There is a white boy by the
barracks waiting under a tree who is not a white boy,” he stammered to
the first bazar letter-writer he came across. “He needs thee.”
“Will he pay?” said the spruce scribe, gathering up his desk and pens
and sealing-wax all in order.
“I do not know. He is not like other boys. Go and see. It is well
worth.”
Kim danced with impatience when the slim young Kayeth hove in sight. As
soon as his voice could carry he cursed him volubly.
“First I will take my pay,” the letter-writer said. “Bad words have
made the price higher. But who art thou, dressed in that fashion, to
speak in this fashion?”
“Aha! That is in the letter which thou shalt write. Never was such a
tale. But I am in no haste. Another writer will serve me. Umballa city
is as full of them as is Lahore.”
“Four annas,” said the writer, sitting down and spreading his cloth in
the shade of a deserted barrack-wing.
Mechanically Kim squatted beside him—squatted as only the natives
can—in spite of the abominable clinging trousers.
The writer regarded him sideways.
“That is the price to ask of Sahibs,” said Kim. “Now fix me a true
one.”
“An anna and a half. How do I know, having written the letter, that
thou wilt not run away?”
I must not go beyond this tree, and there is also the stamp to be
considered.”
“I get no commission on the price of the stamp. Once more, what manner
of white boy art thou?”
“That shall be said in the letter, which is to Mahbub Ali, the
horse-dealer in the Kashmir Serai, at Lahore. He is my friend.”
“Wonder on wonder!” murmured the letter-writer, dipping a reed in the
inkstand. “To be written in Hindi?”
“Assuredly. To Mahbub Ali then. Begin! _I have come down with the old
man as far as Umballa in the train. At Umballa I carried the news of
the bay mare’s pedigree._” After what he had seen in the garden, he was
not going to write of white stallions.
“Slower a little. What has a bay mare to do ... Is it Mahbub Ali, the
great dealer?”
“Who else? I have been in his service. Take more ink. Again. _As the
order was, so I did it. We then went on foot towards Benares, but on
the third day we found a certain regiment._ Is that down?”
“Ay, _pulton_,” murmured the writer, all ears.
“_I went into their camp and was caught, and by means of the charm
about my neck, which thou knowest, it was established that I was the
son of some man in the regiment: according to the prophecy of the Red
Bull, which thou knowest was common talk of our bazar._” Kim waited for
this shaft to sink into the letter-writer’s heart, cleared his throat,
and continued: “_A priest clothed me and gave me a new name ... One
priest, however, was a fool. The clothes are very heavy, but I am a
Sahib and my heart is heavy too. They send me to a school and beat me.
I do not like the air and water here. Come then and help me, Mahbub