The Phantom 'Rickshaw, and Other Ghost Stories
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
to-morrow.”
“Neither drunk nor sunstruck,” said Dravot. “We have slept over the
notion half a year, and require to see Books and Atlases, and we have
decided that there is only one place now in the world that two strong
men can Sar-a-_whack_. They call it Kafiristan. By my reckoning it’s the
top right-hand corner of Afghanistan, not more than three hundred miles
from 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 Liqu-or, 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 to-morrow evening down to the Serai we’ll say
good-bye to you.”
“You _are_ two fools,” I answered. “You’ll be turned back at the
Frontier or cut up the minute you set foot in Afghanistan. Do you want
any money or a recommendation down-country? I can help you to the chance
of work next week.”
“Next week we shall be hard at work ourselves, thank you,” said Dravot.
“It isn’t so easy being a King as it looks. When we’ve got our Kingdom
in going order we’ll let you know, and you can come up and help us
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 Contract between me and you persuing witnesseth in
the name of God--Amen and so forth.
(One) That me and you will settle this matter
together; i.e., to be Kings of Kafiristan.
(Two) That you and me will not, while this
matter is being settled, look at any
Liquor, nor any Woman, black, white,
or brown, so as to get mixed up with
one or the other harmful.
(Three) That we conduct ourselves with Dignity
and Discretion, and if one of us gets
into trouble the other will stay by him.
Signed by you and me this day.
Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan.
Daniel Dravot.
Both Gentlemen at Large.
“There was no need for the last article,” said Carnehan, blushing
modestly; “but it looks regular. Now you know the sort of men that
loafers are,--we _are_ loafers, Dan, until we get out of India,--and
_do_ you think that we would sign a Contrack like that unless we was
in earnest? We have kept away from the two things that make life worth
having.”
“You won’t enjoy your lives much longer if you are going to try this
idiotic adventure. Don’t set the office on fire,” I said, “and go away
before nine o’clock.”
I left them still poring over the maps and making notes on the back
of the “Contrack.” “Be sure to come down to the Serai to-morrow,” were
their parting words.
The Kumharsen Serai is the great 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. “Ohé, 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