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THE PHANTOM ’RlCKSHAW
AND OTHER GHOST STORIES
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By RUDYARD .KIPLING


R. F. FI'INNU Cy C()‘\ll’:\‘;\'Y,PUB-
LISHERS : 9 & II E. SIXTEENTH
ST : NEW YORK CITY : I899


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PREFACE
HIS is not exactly a book of downright
ghost-stories as the cover makes belief. It
is rather a collection of facts that never quite ex-
plained themselves. All that the collector is cer-
tain of is, that one man insisted upon dying
because he believed himself to be haunted; an-
other man either made up a wonderful lie and.
stuck to it, or visited a very strange place; while
the third man was indubitably cruciﬁed by some
person or persons unknown, and gave an extra-
ordinary account of himself.
The peculiarity of ghost-stories is that they are
never told ﬁrst-hand. l have managed, with in-
ﬁnite trouble, to secure one exception to thisv
rule. It is not a very good specimen, but you.
can credit it from beginning to end. The other
three stories you must take on trust; as i did.
RUDYARD KIPLING.


CONTENTS
THE PHANTOM ’RICKSHAW
MY OWN TRUE GHOST STORY
THE STRANGE RIDE 0F MORROWBIE JUREs
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
“THE FINEST STORY IN THE WORLD”
PAGE
51
67
. 109
. I73


THE PHANTOM ’RICKSHAW
May no ill dreams disturb my rest,
Nor Powers of Darkness me molest.
-E-uming Hymn.
NE of the few advantages that India has
over England is a great Knowability.
After ﬁve years’ service a man is directly or in-
directly acquainted with the two or three hun-
dred Civilians in his Province, all the Messes of
ten or twelve Regiments and Batteries, and some
ﬁfteen hundred other people of the non-ofﬁcial
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 every-
where 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
II


12 The Phantom ’Rickshato
Kumaon some ﬁfteen years ago. He meant to
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 opin-
ion that you are an incompetent ass, and the
women who blacken your character and mis-
understand 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 lncurables,
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."
@


The Phantom “Rickshaw 13
He says that more men are killed by overwork
than the importance of this world justiﬁes. He
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. “ Pan-
say went off the handle," says Heatherlegh,
“after the stimulus of long leave' at Home. He
may or he may not have behaved like a black-
guard 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. 8: O. ﬂirta-
tion. He certainly was engaged to Miss Man-
nering, and she certainly broke off the engage-
ment. 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."
1 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 proces-
sion that was always passing at the bottom of
his bed. He had a sick man‘s command of lan-


14 The Phantom ’Rz'cksha'w

guage. When he recovered lsuggested that he
should write out the whole affair from beginning
to end, knowing that ink might 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 after-
ward 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. 1 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 red-coated mes- ‘
senger nor the midday gun can break, and
change of air far beyond that which any home-
ward-bound steamer can give me. In the mean-
time 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


The Phantom ’Rz'ckshaw I5
born of woman on this weary earth was ever
so tormented as 1.
Speaking now as a condemned criminal might
speak ere the drop-bolts are drawn, my story,
wild and hideously improbable as it may appear,
demands at least attention. That it will ever
receive credence l 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 1 was the happiest man in
lndia. To-day, from Peshawur 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 pro-
fessional manner, the same neatly trimmed red
whiskers, till I begin to suspect that I am an un—
grateful, 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


16 The Phantom ’Rz'ckshaw
voyage had ended, both she and l were desper-
ately 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. From the ﬁrst day of our
ill-omened attachment, 1 was conscious that
Agnes’s passion was a stronger, a more dom-
inant, and—if I may use the expression—a
purer sentiment than mine. Whether she recog-
nized the fact then, l 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 l 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 l wearied of them;
seventy-ﬁve of that number would have promptly
avenged themselves by active and obtrusive ﬂir-
tation with other men. Mrs.’Wessington was the


The Phantom ’Rz'ckshaw I7
hundredth. On her neither my openly expressed
aversion nor the cutting brutalities with which I
garnished our interviews had the least eﬁect.
“Jack, darling!” was her one eternal cuckoo
cry: “ I’m sure it’s all a mistake—a hideous mis-
take; and we‘ll be good friends again some day.
Please forgive me, jack, dear.”
I was the offender, and l knew it. That
knowledge transformed my pity into passive en-
durance, and, eventually, into blind hate—the
same instinct, l 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 reconcili-
ation, and lwith loathing of her in every ﬁbre
of my frame. Several times 1 could not avoid
meeting her alone; and on each occasion her
words were identically the same. Still the un-
reasoning 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 that
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


IS The Phantom ’Rz'ckshaw
the black, fever-stricken night-watches, l 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 un-
fair 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 hopeless
were her attempts at resuming the old relation-
ship. As the season wore on, we fell apart—
that is to say, she found it difﬁcult to meet me,
for l had other and more absorbing interests to
attend to. When I think it over quietly in my
sick-room, the season of I884 seems a confused
nightmare wherein light and shade were fan-
tastically 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. ln August Kitty and l


The Phantom ‘Rz'okshaw 19
were engaged. The next day i met those ac-
cursed “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 :—“l’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 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 photo-
graphed 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 back-
ground against which the black and white liveries
of the jhampanies, the yellow-paneled 'rickshaw
and Mrs. Wessington’s down-bowed golden head
stood out clearly. She was holding her handker-


20 The Phantom ’Ricksha'w
chief in her left hand and was leaning back ex-
hausted against the ’rickshaw cushions. i turned
my horse up a bypath near the Sanjowlie Reser-
voir and literally ran away. Oncel fancied I
heard a faint call of “Jack!” This may have
been imagination. I never stopped to verify it.
Ten minutes later I came across Kitty on horse-
back; and, in the delight of a long ride with her,
forgot all about the interview.
A week later Mrs. Wessington died, and the
inexpressible burden of her existence was re-
moved from my life. I went Plainsward per-
fectly 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 be-
longings and had burned it. At the beginning of
April of this year, 1885, Iwas at Simla—semi-
deserted Simla—once more, and was deep in
lover’s talks and walks with Kitty. It was de-
cided that we should be married at the end of
June. You will understand. therefore, that, lov-
ing Kitty as l did,l am not saying too much
when l 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


The Phantom ’Rz'chshaw 2I
of what was proper among mortals circum-
stanced 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, lgive
you my word, we had completely forgotten so
trivial a matter. To Hamilton’s we accordingly
went on the 15th of April, I885. Remember
that—whatever my doctor may say to the con-
trary—l was then in perfect health, enjoying a
well-balanced mind and an absolutely tranquil
spirit. Kitty and l entered Hamilton’s shop to-
gether, and there, regardless of the order Of
aﬁairs, I measured Kitty for the ring in the pres-
ence 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 laugh-
ing 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,—l was aware that
some one, apparently at a vast distance, was call-
ing 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


22 The Phantom ’Rz'ckshaw
it took to cover the road between the path from
Hamilton’s shop and the ﬁrst plank of the Com-
bermere Bridge I had thought over half a dozen
people who might have committed such a sole-
cism, and had eventually decided that it must have
been singing in my ears. Immediately opposite
Peliti’s shop my eye was arrested by the sight of
four jhampanz'es in “magpie” livery, pulling a
yellow-paneled, cheap, bazar ’rickshaw. In a
moment my mind ﬂew back to the previous sea-
son and Mrs. Wessington with a sense of irrita-
tion and disgust. Was it not enough that the
woman was dead and done with, without her
black and white servitors reappearing to spoil the
day’s happiness P Whoever employed them now
i thought Iwould call upon, and ask as a per-
sonal favor to change her jhampanz'es’ livery. I
would hire the men myself, and, if necessary,
buy their coats from off their backs. It is impos-
sible to say here what a ﬂood of undesirable
memories their presence evoked.
“Kitty,” I cried, “there are poor Mrs. Wes-
sington’s jhampanz'es 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 P ” she asked. “I can’t see
them anywhere."


The Phantom ’Richsha'w 23
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 wilful Kitty set off, her dainty
little head in the air, at a hand-gallop in the di-
rection of the Band-stand; fully expecting, as
she herself afterward told me, that I should fol-
low her. What was the matter? Nothing in-
deed. Either that lwas mad or drunk, or that
Simla was haunted with devils. l 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 Comber-
mere Bridge.
“jack! Jack, darling!” (There was no mis-
take 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."


24 The Phantom ’Ricksha'w
The ’rickshaw-hood had fallen back, and in-
side, as I hope and pray daily for the death l
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 cherry-
brandy. There two or three couples were gath-
ered round the coffee-tables discussing the gos-
sip of the day. Their trivialities were more
comforting to me just then than the consolations
of religion could have been. I plunged into the
midst of the conversation at once; chatted,
laughed, and jested with a face (when lcaught
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 over-many pegs, charitably en-
deavored 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 dinner—party 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


The Phantom ’Rz'ckshaw 25
inquiring for me. In another minute she had
entered the shop, prepared to roundly upbraid
me for failing so signally in my duties. Some-
thing in my face stopped her.
“Why, jack,” she cried, “what have you
been doing? What has happened? Are you
ill P” 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; blun-
dered hopelessly and followed Kitty in a regal
rage, out of doors, amid the smiles of my
acquaintances. I made some excuse (l have for-
gotten what) on the score of my feeling 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 1, Theobald
jack Pansay, a well-educated Bengal Civilian in
the year of grace x885, presumably sane, cer-
tainly healthy, driven in terror from my sweet-
heart’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. Noth-
ing was further from my thought than any
memory of Mrs. Wessington when Kitty and 1
left Hamilton’s shop. Nothing was more utterly


26 The Phantom ’Rz'ckshaw
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 de-
ﬁance of every law of probability, in direct out-
rage 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 marvel-
ously like Mrs. Wessington had hired the car-
riage and the coolies with their old livery was
lost. Again and again lwent round this tread-
mill of thought; and again and again gave up
bafﬂed and in despair. The voice was as inex-
plicable as the apparition. I had originally some
wild notion of conﬁding it all to Kitty; of beg-
ging her to marry me at once; and in her arms
defying the ghostly Occupant of the ’rickshaw.
“After all,” I argued, “the presence of the
’rickshaw is in itself enough to prove the exist-
ence 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 hillman! ”
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 neces-
sary. I explained, with a ﬂuency born of night-
long pondering over a falsehood, that I had been


The Phantom ’Ricksha'w 27
attacked with a sudden palpitation of the heart—I
the result of indigestion. This eminently prac-
tical 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 no-
tion, suggesting Observatory Hill, jutogh, the
Boileaugunge road—anything rather than the
jakko round. Kitty was angry and a little hurt:
so l yielded from fear of provoking further mis-
understanding, 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 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


28 The Phantom ’Rz'ckshaw
me. No other ’rickshaw was in sight—only the
four black and white jhampam'es, 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 l fancied that Kitty must see 'what l
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 follow-
ing close behind, and in this order we dashed
under the cliffs. Half a minute brought us
within ﬁfty yards of the ’rickshaw. l 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!”
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 grey 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 remain-
der of the ride. 1 had been talking up till then
wildly and at random. To save my life i could


The Phantom 'Rz'eksha-w 29
not speak afterward naturally, and from San-
jowlie 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 l overheard two men
talking together in the dusk.-—“lt’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 fancyl 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 Hard-
war, poor devils; and the ’rickshaw has been
broken up by the man himself. ’Told me he
never used a dead Memsahz'b’s ’rickshaw. ’Spoiled
his luck. Queer notion, wasn’t it? Fancy poor
little Mrs. Wessington spoiling any one’s luck
except her own! ” I laughed aloud at this point;
and my laugh jarred on me as luttered 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


30 The Phantom ’Rz'eksha'w

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 l was afraid I was going mad. Mad to a
certain extent I must have been, for l recollect
that l reined in my horse at the head of the ’rick-
shaw, 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 de-
lighted if she had anything further to say. Some
malignant devil stronger than I must have en-
tered into me that evening, for l have a dim rec-
ollection 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 from
their words evidently gathered that l was ex-
tremely 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 unlover-like tardi~
ness; and sat down.
The conversation had already become general;


The Phantom ’Rz'ckshaw 3i
and under cover of it, I was addressing some
tender small talk to my sweetheart when l was
aware that at the further 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 re-
peating 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 mo-
ment'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 l tore myself away
from Kitty—as certain as lwas of my own ex-
istence that It would be waiting for me outside
the door. The red-whiskered man, who had
been introduced to me as Doctor Heatherlegh of
Siml-a, volunteered to bear me company as far 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 devil-


32 I The Phantom 'Riehshaw
ish mockery of our ways, with a lighted head-
lamp. 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 mat-
ter with you this evening on the Elysium road P’
The suddenness of the question wrenched an an-
swer 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 l have
told you here.
“Well, you’ve spoiled one of the best tales
I’ve ever laid tongue to,” said he, “but I’ll for-
give 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


The Phantom 'Rz'cksha'w 33
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 where-
abouts.
“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, over-
hanging shale cliﬁ. lnstinctively l 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-
eum-Brain-eum7Eye illusion . . . Lord, ha’
mercy! What’s that?"
There was a mufﬂed report, a blinding 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 all—slid down into


34 The Phantom ’Rz'eksha'w
the road below, completely blocking it up. The
uprooted trees swayed and tottered for a mo-
ment 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 com-
panion muttered 2—“ 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, im-
plicating 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 few
days; and that I should be recovered before she
had time to regret my absence.


The Phantom ’Rz'eksha'w 35
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 sager observed:—“A man
with a sprained ankle doesn’t walk a dozen miles
a day, and your young woman might be wonder-
ing if she saw you.”
At the end of the week, after much exami-
nation of pupil and pulse, and strict injunctions
as to diet and pedestrianism, Heatherlegh dis-
missed 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 phenome-
non, 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 Iakh for each time you
see it.”
Half an hour later I was in the Mannerings’
drawing-room with Kitty—drunk with the in-


36 The Phantom ’Rz'cksha'w
toxication of present happiness and the fore-
knowledge that I should never more be troubled
with lts hideous presence. Strong in the sense
of my new-found security, 1 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
afternoon of the 30th of April. Kitty was de-
lighted at the change in my appearance, and
complimented me on it in her delightfully frank
and outspoken manner. We left the Manner-
ings’ 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 F"
We were just below the Convent, and from
sheer wantonness l was making my Waler
plunge and curvet across the road as l 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 l.


The Phantom ’Rz'cksha'w 37
" ‘ Singing and murmurng 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 further on could see across to
Sanjowlie. In the centre 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, childl” 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 re-
peated, “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:


38 The Phantom ’Rz'ehshaw
and Kitty only knows how much more to the
same effect. Now and again I appealed passion-
ately to the Terror in the ’rickshaw to bear wit-
ness to all I had said, and to release me from a
torture that was killing me. As I talked I sup-
pose I must have told Kitty of my old relations
with Mrs.'Wessington, for I saw her listen in-
tently with white face and blazing eyes.
“Thank you, Mr. Pansay,” she said, “that’s
quite enough. Syee ghora la'o."
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 for-
give. My answer was the cut of her riding-
whip 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 l staggered back to the
side of the ’rickshaw. My face was cut and
bleeding, and the blow of the riding-whip 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, can-
tered up.
“Doctor,” I said, pointing to my face, “here’s
Miss Mannering’s signature to my order of dis-
missal and . . . I’ll thank you for that lakh
as soon as convenient.”


The Phantom ’Rz'ekshalv 39
Heatherlegh’s face, even in my abject misery,
moved me to laughter.
“l'll stake my professional reputation”—he
began. “Don’t be afool,” l whispered. “I've
lost my life’s happiness and you‘d better take me.
home.”
As I spoke the 'rickshaw was gone. Then l
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) l was aware that lwas lying in Heather-
legh’s room as weak as a little child. Heather-
legh 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 peo-
ple. 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 burn-
ing. The old gentleman’s not pleased with you."
“And Kitty?" l 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 remi—
niscences just before I met you. ’Says that a
man who would have behaved to a woman as


4o - The Phantom ’Rtekshaw
you did to Mrs. Wessington ought to kill him-
self out of sheer pity for his kind. She’s a hot-
headed little virago, your mash. ’Will have it
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 ex-
plored thoroughly the lowest circles of the In-
ferno 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. Pres-
ently I heard myself answering in a voice that I
hardly recognized,—
“They’re confoundedly particular about mo-
rality in these parts. Give 'em ﬁts, Heatherlegh,
and my love. Now let me sleep a bit longer."


The Phantom ’Rz'ehshaw 4|
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.
“But I am in Simla," I kept repeating to my-
self. “I, ]ack 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? Inever did her any
harm. It might just as well have been me as
Agnes. Only I'd never have come back on pur-
pose 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. Heather-
legh 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 Iwas 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."


42 The Phantom ’Rz'ehsha'w
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 had been
laid upon me.
With that knowledge came also a sense of
hopeless, impotent rebellion against the unrea-
sonableness 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 l 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,- grey 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 everyday 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 ex-
pressionless and commonplace as ever. I had '
expected some permanent alteration—visible evi-


The Phantom ’Rz'aksha'w 4 3
dence 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. Therel
found that every man knew my story as told by
Heatherlegh, and was, in clumsy fashion, abnor-
mally kind and attentive. Nevertheless I recog-
nized that for the rest of my natural life I should
be among but not of my fellows; and Ienvied
very bitterly indeed the laughing coolies 0n the
Mall below. I lunched at the Club, and at four
o’clock wandered aimlessly down the Mall in the
vague 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 over-
took 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;


44 The Phantom ’Rz'eksha'w
the pines dripped like roof-pipes on the rocks be-
low, and the air was full of ﬁne, driving rain.
Two or three times I found myself saying to my-
self almost aloud: “ I’m Jack Pansay on leave at
Simla—at Sz'mla! Everyday, 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 Club: the prices of So-and-So’s
horses—anything, in fact, that related to the
workaday 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. Wes-
sington for a time.
Once more I wearin climbed the Convent
slope and entered the level road. Here Kitty
and the man started oﬁ’ 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 cardcase in her left. (A
woman eight months dead with a cardcase!) I
had to pin myself down to the multiplication-
table, and to set both hands on the stone parapet


The Phantom ’Rz'ekshaw 45
of the road, to assure myself that that at least
was real.
“Agnes,” l 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 over-
leaped the bounds of all human belief lshould
apologize to you now. As Iknow that no one
-—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 conversation.
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 home-
ward-bound folk. As I saw them then it seemed
that they were the shadows—impalpable, fantas-
tic shadows—that divided for Mrs. Wessington's
’rickshaw to pass through. What we said dur-
ing the course of that weird interview I cannot
—indeed, I dare not—tell. Heatherlegh’s com-
ment would have been a short laugh and a re-


46 The Phantom ’Rz'ekshaw
mark that I had been “ mashing a brain-eye-and-
stomach chimera.” It was a ghastly and yet in
some indeﬁnable way a marveloust dear experi-
ence. 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
never come to an end; and your patience would
be exhausted. Morning after morning and even-
ing after evening the ghostly ’rickshaw and I
used to wander through Simla together. Wher-
evcr I went there the four black and white liver-
ies followed me and bore me company to and
from my hotel. At the Theatre I found them
amid the crowd of yelling jhampanz'es; outside
the Club veranda, after a long evening of whist;
at the Birthday Ball, waiting patiently for my re-
appearance; and in broad daylight when I went
calling. Save that it cast no shadow, the ’rick-
shaw 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
hard-riding 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.


The Phantom 'Rz'ekshaw 47
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.
The presence of the ’rickshaw ﬁlled me by
turns with horror, blind fear, a dim sort of pleas—
ure, 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 penance over as quietly as might
be. Alternater I hungered for a sight of Kitty
and watched her outrageous ﬂirtations with my
successor—to speak more accurately, my succes-
sors—with amused interest. She was as much
out of my life as I was out of hers. By dayl
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


48 . The Phantom ’Rz'ehsha'w
mingle so strangely on this earth to hound one
poor soul to its grave.
* * * * * *
August 27.—Heatherlegh has been indefatiga-
ble 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 com-
pany of a phantom! A request that the Govern-
ment 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 thatl
should await the end quietly at 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 l torture myself nightly with a thousand
speculations as to the manner of my death.
Shall I die in my bed decently and as an Eng-
lish gentleman should die; or, in one last walk
on the Mall, will my soul be wrenched from me
to take its place forever 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


The Phantom 'Rz'akshaw 49
beyond the grave grows more and more power-
ful. 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 tov 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. Wes-
sington. And the last portion of my punishment
is even now upon me.


MY OWN TRUE GHOST STORY


MY OWN TRUE GHOST STORY
As I came through the Desert thus it was—
As I came through the Desert.
-—T/ze City of Dreadful Nzyht.
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 rever-
ently 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
child-bed. These wander along the pathways at
53


54 My Own True Ghost Story
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
backward that all sober men may recognize
them. There are ghosts of little children who
have been thrown into wells. These haunt well-
curbs and the fringes of jungles, 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 ar-
ticles 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 in-
cidents of a horrible horse-and-precipice acci-
dent; 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


My Own True Ghost Story 55

with the heat of June but with the weight of In-
visibles who come to lounge in the chair; Pesha-
wur 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 he
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 dirk-bungalows, ghosts are most likely
to be found, and when found, they should be
made a note of. Not long ago it was my busi-
ness to live in dak-bungalows. I never inhabited


56 My Own True Ghost Story
the same house for three nights running, and
grew to be learned in the breed. I lived in
Government-built ones with red brick 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 “con-
verted ” ones—old houses ofﬁciating as dak-bun-
galows—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 un—
comfortably as through a broken pane. llived
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 whiskey 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 dak-bungalows, Iwondered
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,


My Own True Ghost Story 57

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. Lueraft and other Stories." I am now
in the Opposition.
We will call the bungalow Katmal dak-bunga-
low. But that was the smallest part of the
horror. A man with a sensitive hide has no
right to sleep in dark-bungalows. He should
marry. Katmal dirk-bungalow was old and
rotten and unrepaired. The ﬂoor was of worn
brick, the walls were ﬁlthy, and the windows
were nearly black with grime. lt stood on a by-
path largely used by native Sub-Deputy Assist—
ants 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 aSahib 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 Mem-


58 My Own True Ghost Story

oirs 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 pre-
tence of calling it “khana”—man’s victuals.
He said “ratab,” and that means, among other
things, “grub "—dog’s rations. There was no
insult in his choice of the term. He had for-
gotten 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 r00ms were almost jerry-built in their ﬂimsi-
ness. 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 bath-room.
For bleak, unadulterated misery that dark-
bungalow 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


My Own True Ghost Story 59

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 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 in-
tended to commit if he lived.
Sleep, for several hundred reasons, was not
easy. The lamp in the bath-room 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-us-take-
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 per-
suaded myself that it was the gusty wind. The
shutter of the room next to mine was attacked,


60 My Own True Ghost Story
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 l was to be left in peace. But I was 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 l was getting
into bed again, I heard, in the next room, the
sound that no man in his senses can possibly mis-
take—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. . lwas not frightened—indeed l 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 can-
non and my hair sat up. It is a mistake to say
that hair stands up. The skin of the head tight-
ens 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 bil-
liard ball. I argued the matter out at great
length with myself; and the more I argued the


My Own True Ghost Story 6!

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 escaped from
that dak-bungalow. I listened, and 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 see—fear
that dries the inside of the mouth and half of 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 dark-
bungalow proved the reality of the thing. No
man—drunk or sober—could imagine a game at


62 My Own True Ghost Story

- 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 would
not disbelieve because he would know that noth-
ing 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 bil-
liards played in the echoing room behind the
iron-barred door. My dominant fear was that
the players might want a maker. It was an ab-
surd 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


My Own True Ghost Story 63

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 thatl
had done well and wisely, and inquired for the
means of departure.
“ By the way, hhansamah,” I said, “what were
those three doolies doing in my compound in the
night P”
“ There were no doolies,” said the khansamah.
I went into the next room and the daylight
streamed through the open door. I was im-
mensely 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-bunga-
low P ” I asked.
“ No," said the khansamah. “ Ten or twenty
years ago, I have forgotten how long, it was a
billiard-room.”
“ A how much P "
“ 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-shrub. 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.”


64 My Own True Ghost Story
“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 mez—‘Mangal
Khan, brandy-pant 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, 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-bunga-
low 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 again—
with 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


My Own True Ghost Story 65

sunlight within and a fresh breeze without. The
unseen 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.
Entered angrily the faithful partner of my sor-
rows, 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 Oorz'as have been here, that the Presence is
sorely spotted. It is 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


66 My Own True Ghost Story

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 conversa-
tion, in the course of which he put the fat En-
gineer-Sahib’s tragic death in three separate sta-
tions—two of them ﬁfty miles away. The third
shift was to Calcutta, and there the Sahib died
while driving a dog-cart.
If I had encouraged him the hhansamah
would have wandered all through Bengal with
his corpse.
I did not go away as soon as I intended. I
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 one genuine, hall-marked 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!


THE STRANGE RIDE or MORROWBIE
jUKES


THE STRANGE RIDE OF MOR-
ROWBIE JUKES
Alive or dead—there is no other way-Native Prat/ere.
HERE is, as the conjurers say, no deception
about this tale. jukes by accident stum-
bled upon a village that is well known to exist,
though he is the only Englishman 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 did 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 for-
tunes (fortunes so vast that the owners cannot
trust even the strong hand 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 Jukes’s tale should not
69


70 The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes

be true. 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 at-
tack 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 misfor-
tune to go there may know. My coolies were
neither more nor less exasperating than other
gangs, and my work demanded sufficient atten—
> tion to keep me from moping, had I been in-
clined to so unmanly a weakness.
On the 23d December, 1884, I felt a little fever-
ish. There was a full moon at the time, and, in
consequence, every dog near my tent was baying
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,


The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes 7t

and ultimately 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 deter-
mination 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 shot-
gun, 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 pa-
tient; but I remember that it struck me at the
time as being eminently practical and feasible.
I therefore ordered my groom to saddle Pornic
and bring him round quietly to the rear of my
tent. When the pony was ready, Istood 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 Ihad
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


72 The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes

bolted as straight as a 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 for-
gotten 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 re-
‘covered 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


The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes 73

which I had fallen. As the light grew stronger I
saw that I was at the bottom of a horseshoe-
shaped crater of sand, opening on one side di-
rectly 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 ef-
fects 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 ma-
terial assistance in enabling the reader to under-
stand what follows.
Imagine then, as I have said before, a horse-
shoe-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 enclosed a level piece of ground about ﬁfty
yards long by thirty at its broadest part, with a
rude well in the centre. Round the bottom of
the crater, about three feet from the level of the
ground proper, ran a series of eighty-three semi-


74 The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes

circular, ovoid, square, and multilateral holes, all
about three feet at the mouth. Each hole on in-
spection showed that it was carefully shored in-
ternally with drift-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 am-
phitheatre—a stench fouler than any which my
'wanderings in Indian villages have introduced
:.me to.
Having remounted Pornic, who was as anxious
'as l 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
sand-banks 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 shift-
ing 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, half choked
with the torrents of sand; and I was constrained
to turn my attention to the river-bank.
Here everything seemed easy enough. The
sand hills ran down to the river edge, it is true,


The Strange Ride of Morrowbie juhes 75

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 riﬂe
across the river; and at the same momenta 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 bombard-
ment from some insane native in a boat. I'm
afraid that I lost my temper very much indeed.
Another bullet reminded me thatl had better
save my breath to cool my porridge; and I re-
treated 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 sup-
posed to be untenanted. I found myself in the
midst of a crowd of spectators—about forty men,


76 The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes

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 and repul-
siveness of the assembly were beyond all des—
cription, and I shuddered to think what their life
in the badger-holes must be.
Even in these days, when local self-govern-
ment 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 interiors, 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 me—such
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
nine-pins, and the laughter gave place to wails
for mercy; while those yet untouched clasped


The Strange Ride of Morrowln'e jukes 77

' 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 mur-
mured in English from behind my shoulder:—
“ Sahib! Sahib! Do you not know me? Sahib,
it is Gunga Dass, the telegraph-master.”
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 loaned
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 serv-
ant with a marvelous 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 sel-
dom that a Hindu makes English puns.
Now, however, the man was changed beyond
all recognition. Caste-mark, stomach, slate-col-
ored continuations, and unctuous speech were all
gone. I looked at a withered skeleton, turban-
less 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


78 The Strange Ride of Morrowbie juhes

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
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 drift-
wood burn quickly; and I derived much consola-
tion from the fact that he lit them with an ordi-
nary 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 Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes 79

the grotesque and the horrible paled before the
fact just communicated by the ex-Brahmin. Six-
teen years ago, when I ﬁrst Ianded 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 re-
cover from trance or catalepsy were conveyed
and kept, and I recollect laughing heartily at
what I was then pleased to consider a traveler’s
tale. Sitting at the bottom of the sand-trap, the
memory of Watson's Hotel, with its swinging
punkahs, white-robed attendants, and the sal-
Iow-faced Armenian, rose up in my mind as viv-
idly as a photograph, and I burst into a loud ﬁt
of laughter. 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 con-
tinued 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 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


80 The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes

they let you go and take you away. Iwas 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
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 con-
ducted 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 dodg-
ing the bullets; while at night "—
I had already matured a rough plan of escape


The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes 8I

which a natural instinct of selﬁshness forbade
me sharing with Gunga Dass. He, however, di-
vined 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 com-
pletely after his opening sentence—“make any
escape that way. But you can try. I have tried.
Once only."
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 river-front, 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 ex-


82 The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes

hibition 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 mirthless, wheezy key that
greeted me on my ﬁrst attempt to force the
shoals. And so, in a semi-comatose 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 re-


The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes 8 3

ﬂection 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.
“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 him evident delight l
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 pro-
vided, a coarse ehapatti 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


84 The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes

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 immemorial—whence 1 con-
. cluded 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 watch-
ing me wince. Nothing 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 f riend."
“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


The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes 85

told, were dropped down from the land side into
the amphitheatre, 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 on to the sand” caught
my attention, and I asked Gunga Dass whether
this sort of thing was not likely to breed a pesti-
Ience.
“That,” said he, with another of his wheezy
chuckles, “you may see for yourself subse-
quently. You will have much time to make
observations.”
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 ex-
actly 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.”
Gunga Dass has 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.


86 The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes

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 de-
liberate 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 on to 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-
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


The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes 87

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
they were discussing something that looked like
a corpse. Half a dozcn 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 Iain down on a tussock, motioned to me
to be quiet, though I fancy this was a need-
less 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


88 The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes

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 digni-
ﬁed a name—continued until Gunga Dass had
captured seven crows. Five of them he throttled
at once, reserving two for further operations an-
other day. I was a good deal impressed by this,
to me, novel method of securing food, and com-
plimented 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;—“ In-
deed, you old rufﬁan! What do you thinkl
have given you money for?”
“Very well,” was the unmoved reply. “ Per-
haps 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 Iwas
eating one of the crows; and, as Gunga Dass
had said, thanking my God that I had a crow to


The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes 89

eat. Never as long as I live shall Iforget 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 ap-
pearance as the Fates themselves. They sat to-
gether 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 bleeding, he fell
back on the platform 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 time—pro-


90 ‘ The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes

pounded 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 fur-
ther consideration—videlz'eet 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 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 l, a
Civil Engineer, a man of thirteen years’ standing
in the Service, and, I trust, an average English-
man, should thus calmly threaten murder and
violence against the man who had, for a con-
sideration it is true, taken me under his wing. I
had left the world, it seemed, for centuries. I


The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes 91

was as certain then as I am now of my own ex-
istence, that in the accursed settlement there was
no law save that of the strongest; 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 under-
stand my frame of mind. “At present,” I
argued to myself, “I am strong and a match for
six of these wretches. It is imperativer neces-
sary 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, 1 ate and drank
as much as I could, and made Gunga Dass under-
stand 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 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


92 The Strange Ride of Morrowbie juhes

the light of a young moon and compose myself
to sleep as best I might.
The horrors of that nightl 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 alto—
gether out of question to one in my excited frame
of mind. As the night wore on, it seemed that
the entire amphitheatre was ﬁlled with legions of
unclean devils that, trooping up from the shoals
below, mocked the unfortunates in their lairs.
Personallyl am not of an imaginative tempera-
ment,—very few Engineers are,—but on that
occasion I was as completely prostrated 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, impracti-
cable. I had been thoroughly convinced of this
some time 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 l was prepared
to undergo any risk in leaving it. Imagine my
delight, then, when after creeping stealthin to
the river—front I found that the infernal boat was
not there. My freedom lay before me in the
next few steps!


The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes 9 3

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 be-
hind me and fell on my face.
My only means of escape from the semicircle
was protected with a quicksandl
How long I Iayl have not the faintest idea;
but I was roused at last by the malevolent
chuckle of Gunga Dass at my ear. “I would
advise you, Protector of the Poor " (the ruﬁ‘ian
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.


94 The Strange Ride of Morro'wbie jnkes

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 futiler as Ithought while I
spoke, I asked :—“ Gunga Dass, what is the good
of the boat if I can’t get out anyhow 2” I recol-
lect that even in my deepest troublel 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. Ihope 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 lit-
tle 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


The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes 95

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 what-
ever 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.
“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


96 The Strange Ride of Morrowbie juhes

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 P”
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 at-
tempting to embrace my feet, led me round to
the burrow which he had indicated.
“I knownothing whatever about the gentle-
man. 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 in to 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.”
“ In how long? In how long?"


The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes 97

“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 de-
serted 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 the stomach. Gunga Dass
fancied I was going to kill him and howled piti-
fully. The rest of the population, in the plethora
that follows a full ﬂesh meal, watched us with-
out stirring.
“Go inside, Gunga Dass," said I, “and fetch
it out.”


98 The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes

l 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 Brah-
min. 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 entrusted
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


The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes 99

“B.K." or “B.L." On the third ﬁnger of the
right hand was a silver ring in the shape of a
coiled cobra, much worn and tarnished. Gunga
Dass deposited a handful of 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 un-
fortunate man:
I. 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, bear-
ing 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 “Gar-
mison,” referred to in places as “Jerry” or
“jack.”
6. Handle of small-sized hunting-knife.


too The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes

Blade snapped short. Buck’s- horn, diamond
cut, with swivel and ring on the butt; fragment
of cotton cord attached.
It must not be supposed that l inventoried all
these things on the spot as fully as Ihave here
written them down. The notebook ﬁrst at-
tracted 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 in-
ventoried them. I then returned to the corpse
and ordered Gunga Dass to help me to 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 has 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 up—the
only possible mode of burial that I could think of.
I ordered Gunga Dass to go away.


The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes 10!

Then I gingerly put the corpse out on the
quicksand. In doing so, it was lying face down-
ward, ! tore the frail and rotten khaki shooting-
coat open, disclosing a hideous cavity in the
back. I have already told you that the dry sand
had, as it were, mummiﬁed the body. A mo-
ment's glance showed that the gaping hole had
been caused by a gun-shot 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-con-
scious way I turned to peruse the notebook. A
stained and discolored slip of paper had been in-
serted between the binding and the back, and
dropped out as I opened the pages. This is
what it contained :——“F0ur out from crow-
elump: three left; nine out; two right; three
back; two left; fourteen out; two left; seven
out; one left; nine back," two right; six back;


I02 The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes

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 stand-
ing immediately behind me with glowing eyes
and outstretched hands.
“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 ob-
tain it.”
Gunga Dass had quite forgotten his little
ﬁction about the riﬂe-bullet. I received the in-
formation 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 P" .
“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


The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes 103

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! Ibeg 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.
“See now! It was the length of his gun-
barrels without the stock. I have those barrels.
Four gun-barrels out from the place where I
caught crows. Straight out; do you follow me?
Then three Ieft— Ah! how well I remember when
that man worked it out night after night. Then
nine out, and so on. Out is always straight be-
fore you across the quicksand. He told me 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 Ishot him. Be-


104 The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes

sides, 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 spent six months
night after night in exploring, inch by inch, the
passage across the quicksand; how he had de-
clared it to be simplicity itself up to within about
twenty yards of the river bank after 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 effusiver 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 after-
noon.
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 bur-
row to bring out the gun-barrels whereby to
measure our path. All the other wretched in-
habitants had retired to their lairs long ago. The
guardian boat drifted down-stream some hours
before, and we were utterly alone by the crow-


The Strange Ride of Morrowbz'e jukes I05

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 diaboli-
cal Brahmin was aiming a violent blow at the
back of my head with the gun-barrels. 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 l was sensible Of intoler-
able pain in the back of my head. Gunga Dass
had disappeared and my mouth was f ull 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 morn-
ings. I fancied that I was delirious until a hand-
ful of sand fell at my feet. Then I looked up
and saw a head peering down into the amphi-
theatre—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


106 The Strange Ride of Morrowbie juhes

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 over-
looking 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 foot-
prints 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 pukah-ropes, returned
to the crater, and hauled me out as I have de-
scribed.
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 serv-
ices he has rendered. Nothing on earth will in-
duce me to go near that devilish spot again, or to
reveal its whereabouts more clearly than Ihave
done. Of Gunga Dass I have never found a
trace, nor do Iwish to do. My sole motive in
giving this to be published is the hope that some


The Strange Ride of Morrowbie jukes 107

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


THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
“ Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found
worthy."
HE Law, as quoted, lays down a fair con-
duct 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. l
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 Iwant a crown I
must go and hunt it for myself.
The beginning of everything was in a railway
train upon the road to Mhow from Ajmir. There
had been a Deﬁcit in the Budget, which neces-
sitated traveling, not Second-class, which is only
half as dear as First-class, but by Intermediate,
which is very awful indeed. There are no cush-
ions in the Intermediate class, and the popula-
tion are either Intermediate, which is Eurasian, or
native, which for a long night journey is nasty,
or Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated.
III


112 The Man Who Would be King

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, follow-
ing the custom of Intermediates, passed the time
of day. He was a wanderer and a vagabond like
myself, but with an educated taste for whiskey.
He told tales of things he had seen and done, of
out-of-the-way corners of the Empire into which
he had penetrated, and of adventures in which
he risked his life for a few days’ food. “ If India
was ﬁlled with men like you-and me, not know-
ing 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 l was disposed to agree with
him. We talked politics—the politics of Loafer-
dom that sees things from the underside where
the lath and plaster is'not smoothed off—and we
talked postal arrangements because my friend
wanted to send a telegram back from the next
station to Ajmir, which is the turning-off place


The Man Who Would be King 113

from the Bombay to the Mhow line as you travel
westWard. My friend had no money beyond
eight annas which he wanted for dinner, and I
had no money at all, owing to the hitch in the
Budget before mentioned. Further, I was going
into a wilderness where, though I should resume
touch with the Treasury, there were no telegraph
offices. I was, therefore, unable to help him in
any way.
“We might threaten a Station-master, and
make him send a wire on tick,” said my friend,
“but that’d mean inquiries for you and for me,
and I've got my hands full these days. Did you
say you are traveling back along this line within
any days ?”
“ Within ten,” I said.
“ Can’t you make it eight?" said he. “Mine
is rather urgent business.”
“I can send your telegram within ten days if
that will serve you,” I said.
“I couldn’t trust the wire to fetch him now!
think of it. It’s this way. He leaves Delhi on
the 23d for Bombay. That means he’ll be run-
ning through Ajmir about the night of the 23d."
“But I’m going into the Indian Desert," I ex-
plained.
“Well and good," said he. “You’ll be chang-
ing at Marwar junction to get into jodhpore ter-
ritory—you must do that—and he’ll be coming


114 The Man Who Would be King

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 in-
conveniencing 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 Baekwoodsman."
“ 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 be-
fore you’ve time to get your knife into them.
But about my friend here. I must give him a
word 0’ mouth to tell him what's come to me or
else he won’t know where to go. I would take
it more than kind of you if you was to come out
of Central India in time to catch him at Marwar
junction, and say to him:—‘He has gone South
for the week.’ He’ll know what that means.
He’s a big man with a red beard, and a great
swell he is. You’ll ﬁnd him sleeping like a
gentleman with all his luggage round him in a
Second-class compartment. But don‘t you be
afraid. Slip down the window, and say:—‘ He
has gone South for the week,’ and he’ll tumble.
It's only cutting your time of stay in those parts
by two days. I ask you as a stranger—going to
the West,” he said, with emphasis.
“Where haveyou come from?" said I.
“From the East,” said he, “and lam hoping


The Man Who Would be King 115

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 ap-
peals 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 re-
member. 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 Icatch 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 Baekwoodsman. 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. lwanted 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?"


116 The Man Who Would be King

“ 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 lwent 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 re-
ﬂected. 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 no-
body 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, touch-


The Man Who Would be King II7

ing the Railway and the Telegraph on one side,
and, on the other, the days of Harun-aI-Raschid.
When I left the train Iv 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


I 18 The Man Who Would be King

gone South for the week. He is gone South for
the week! ”
The train had begun to move out. The red
man rubbed his eyes. “He has gone South for
the week,” he repeated. “Now that’s just like
his impidence. Did he say that I was to give
you anything ?—’Cause I won’t.”
“He didn’t,” I said, and dropped away, and
watched the red lights die out in the dark. It
was horribly cold because the wind was blowing
off the sands. I climbed into my own train—not
an Intermediate Carriage this time—and went to
sleep.
If the man with the beard had given me a
rupee I should have kept it as a memento of a
rather curious affair. But the consciousness of
having done my duty was my only reward.
Later on I reﬂected that two gentlemen like my
friends could not do any good if they foregath-
ered and personated correspondents of news-
papers, and might, if they “stuck up” one of
the little rat-trap states of Central India or South-
ern Rajputana, get themselves into serious difﬁ-
culties. I therefore took some trouble to de-
scribe 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.


The Man Who Would be King 119

Then I became respectable, and returned to an
Ofﬁce where there Were no Kings and no in-
cidents except the daily manufacture of a news-
paper. 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 com-
mands 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 pat-
ronage of the editorial We; stranded theatrical
companies troop up to explain that they cannot
pay for their advertisements, but on their return
from New Zealand or Tahiti will do so with
interest; inventors of patent punkah-pulling
machines, carriage couplings and unbreakable
swords and axle-trees call with speciﬁcations in
their pockets and hours at their disposal; tea—
companies enter and elaborate their prospectuses
with the ofﬁce pens; secretaries of ball-commit-
tees 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


I20 The Man Who Would be King

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 an-
other,” and Mister Gladstone is calling down
brimstone upon the British Dominions, and the
little black copy—boys are whining, “ kaa-pi ehay—
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


The Man Who Would be King 121
y.“ .

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 sel-
ﬁshly 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 2—“ 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


122 The Man Who Would be King

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 fore-
heads 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


The Man Who Would be King I2 3

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
saidz—“So it is!” And they both laughed
almost as loudly as the machinery roared, and
mopped their foreheads. “We see there was a
light burning across the road and we were sleep-
ing 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 com-
fortable, 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


124 The Man Who Would be King

what we really want is advice. We don't want
money. We ask you as a favor, because you did
us a bad turn about Degumber.”
I led from the press-room to the stiﬂing ofﬁce
with the maps on the walls, and the red-haired
man rubbed his hands. “That’s something
like,” said he. “This was the proper shop to
come to. Now, Sir, let me introduce to you
Brother Peachey Carnehan, that’s him, and
Brother Daniel Dravot, that is me, and the less
said about our professions the better, for we have
been most things in our time. Soldier, sailor,
compositor, photographer, proof-reader, street-
preacher, and correspondents of the Backwoods-
man 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 eye-
brows, 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.


The Man Who Would be King 125

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-whaek.
They call it Kaﬁristan. By my reckoning it's the
top right-hand corner of Afghanistan, not more
than three hundred miles from Peshawur. They


126 The Man Who Would be King

have two and thirty heathen idols there, and
we’ll be the thirty-third. It’s a mountaineous
country, and the women of those parts are very
beautiful.”
“ But that is provided against in the Contrack,"
said Carnehan. “Neither Women nor 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 coun—
try. 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


The Man Who Would be. King 127

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 Encyclo-
pa‘dia Brittaniea, and the men consulted them.
“See here!” said Dravot, his thumb on the
map. “ Up to Jagdallak, Peachey and me know
the road. We was there with Roberts’s Army.
We’ll have to turn off to the right at Jagdallak
through Laghmann territory. Then we get
among the hills—fourteen thousand feet—ﬁfteen
thousand—it will be cold work there, but it don’t
look very far on the map."
I handed him Wood on the Sources of the
Oxus. Carnehan was deep in the Encyclopaedia.
“ They’re a mixed lot," said Dravot, reﬂec-
tively; “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’mml ”
“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


128 The Man Who Would be King

the ﬁle of the United Servz'ees’ 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 Encyclopazdia.
“ 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 Iunatics, 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 min-
ute 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 our-
selves, 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:


The Man Who Would be King 129

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 Kaﬁr-
istan.
(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 Dra'vot.
Both Gentlemen at Large.
“ There was no need for the last article,” said
Carnehan, blushing modestly; “but it looks reg—
ular. Now you know the sort of men that loaf-
ers 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


130 The Man Who Would be King

you are going to try this idiotic adventure. Don’t
set the ofﬁce on ﬁre,” I said, “and go away be-
fore nine o’clock."
I left them still poring, over the maps and
making notes on the back of the “Contrack.”
“ Be sure to come down to the Serai to-morrow,”
were their parting words.
The Kumharsen Serai is the great four-square
sink of humanity where the strings of camels
and horses from the North load and unload. All
the nationalities of Central Asia may be found
there, and most of the folk of India proper.
Balkh and Bokhara there meet Bengal and Bom-
bay, and try to draw eye-teeth. You can buy
ponies, turquoises, Persian pussy-cats, saddle-
bags, fat-tailed sheep and musk in the Kum-
harsen Serai, and get many strange things for
nothing. In the afternoon I went down there to
see whether my friends intended to keep their
word or were lying about drunk.
A priest attired in fragments of ribbons and
rags stalked up~to me, gravely twisting a child’s
paper whirligig. Behind him was his servant
bending under the load of a crate of mud toys.
The two were loading up two camels, and the
inhabitants of the Serai watched them with
shrieks of laughter.
“The priest is mad,” said a horse-dealer to me.
“ He is going up to Kabul to sell toys to the Amir.


The Man Who Would be King 131

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-checked Usbeg in broken Hindi.
“ They foretell future events.”
“ Would they could have foretold that my car-
avan 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. “ 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!
0 thieves, robbers, liars, the blessing of Pir
Khan on pigs, dogs, and perjurersl 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
laborsl” He spread out the skirts of his gaber-


132 The Man Who Would be King

dine and pirouetted betwcen the lines of tethered
horses.
“There starts a caravan from Peshawur to
Kabul in twenty days, Hugrut,” 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 Pashawur 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 0’ that?” said he in
English. “Carnehan can’t talk their patter, so
, I’ve made him my servant. He makes a hand-
some servant. ’Tisn’t for nothing that I’ve been
knocking about the country for fourteen years.
Didn’t I do that talk neat? We’ll hitch on to
a caravan at Peshawur till we get to jagdallak,
and then we’ll see if we can get donkeys for
our camels, and strike into Kaﬁristan. Whirl-
igigs for the Amir, 0 Lori Put your hand


The Man Who Would be King I 33

under the camel-bags and tell me what you
feel.”
I felt the butt of a Martini, and another and
another.
“ Twenty of ’em,” said Dravot, placidly.
“Twenty of ’em, and ammunition to correspond,
under the whirligigs and the mud dolls.”
“Heaven help you if you are caught with
those things! " I said. “ A Martini is worth her
weight in silver among the Pathans.”
“Fifteen hundred rupees of capital—every ru-
pee 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 me-
mento of your kindness, Brother. You did me
a service yesterday, and that time in Marwar.
Half my Kingdom shall you have, as the saying
is.” I slipped a small charm compass from my
watch-chain and handed it up to the priest.
“Good-bye,” said Dravot, giving me hand
cautiously. “ It’s the last time we’ll shake hands
with an Englishman these many days. Shake
hands with him, Carnehan," he cried, as the sec-
ond camel passed me.


134 The Man Who Would be King

Carnehan leaned down and shook hands. Then
the camels passed away along the dusty road,
and Iwas left alone to wonder. My eye could
detect no failure in the disguises. The scene in
Serai attested that they were complete to the
native mind. There was just the chance, there-
fore, that Carnehan and Dravot would be able to
wander through Afghanistan without detection.
But, beyond, they would ﬁnd death, certain and
awful death.
Ten days later a native friend of mine, giving
me the news of the day from Peshawur, wound
up his letter with :—“ There has been much laugh-
ter here on account of a certain mad priest who
is going in his estimation to sell petty gauds and
insigniﬁcant trinkets which he ascribes as great
charms to H. H. the Amir of Bokhara. He passed
through Peshawur and associated himself to the
Second Summer caravan that goes to Kabul. The
merchants are pleased because through supersti-
tion they imagine that such mad fellows bring
good-fortune."
The two, then, were beyond the Border. I
would have prayed for them, but, that night, a
real King died in Europe, and demanded on obit—
uary notice.
* 1‘ * il‘ * I?
The wheel of the world swings through the


The Man Who Would be King 135

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 some-
thing 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 asI have already de—
scribed. 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 shoul-
ders, 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


136 The Man Who Would be King

into a chair, and he turned his drawn face,
surmounted by a shock of grey hair, to the
light.
I looked at him intently. Once before hadl
seen eyebrows that met over the nose in an inch-
broad black band, but for the life of me I could
not tell where.
“I don’t know you,” I said, handing him the
whiskey. “What can I do for you ?”
He took a gulp of the spirit raw, and shivered
in spite of the suffocating heat.
“I’ve come back,” he repeated; “and I was
the King of Kaﬁristan—me and Dravot—crowned
Kings we was! In this ofﬁce we settled it—you
setting there and giving us the books. I am
Peachey—Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan, and
you’ve been setting here ever since—O Lord!”
I was more than a little astonished, and ex-
pressed my feelings accordingly.
“lt’s true,” said Carnehan, with a dry cackle,
nursing his feet, which were wrapped in rags.
“ True as gospel. Kings we were, with crowns
upon our heads—me and Dravot—poor Dan—oh,
poor, poor Dan, that would never take advice,
not though I begged of him! ”
“Take the whiskey,” I said, “and take your
own time. Tell me all you can recollect of
everything from beginning to end. You got
across the border on your camels, Dravot dressed


The Man Who Would be King 137

as a mad priest and you his servant. Do you re-
member 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 cara-
van, 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 jagdallah, where you turned off
to try to get into Kaﬁristan.” '


138 The Man Who Would be King

“No, we didn’t neither. What are you talk-
ing about? We turned off before jagdallak, be-
cause we heard the roads was good. But they
wasn’t good enough for our two camels—mine
and Dravot's. , When we left the caravan, Dravot
, took off all his clothes and mine too, and said we
would be heathen, because the Kaﬁrs didn't
.allow Mohammedans to talk to them. So we
dressed betwixt and between, and such a sight
as Daniel Dravot I never saw yet nor expect to
see again. He burned half his beard, and slung
a sheep-skin over his shoulder, and shaved his
head into patterns. He shaved mine, too, and
made me wear outrageous things to look like a
heathen. That was in a most mountaineous
country, and our camels couldn't go along any
more because of the mountains. They were tall
and black, and coming home I saw them ﬁght
like wild goats—there are lots of goats in Kaﬁr-
istan. And these mountains, they never keep
still, no more than the goats. Always ﬁghting
they are, and don’t let you sleep at night."
“Take some more whiskey," I said, very
slowly. “What did you and Daniel Dravot do
when the camels could go no further because of
the rough roads that led into Kaﬁristan P”
“What did which do? There was a party
called Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan that was with
Dravot. Shall I tell you about him? He died


The Man Who Would be King 139

out there in the cold. Slap from the bridge fell
old Peachey, turning and twisting in the air like
a penny Whirligig that you can sell to the Amir.
—No; they was two for three ha’pence, those
whirligigs, or I am much mistaken and woful
sore. And then these camels were no use, and
Peachey said to Dravot—‘ For the Lord’s sake,
let's get out of this before our heads are chopped
off,’ and with that they killed the camels all
among the mountains, not having anything in
particular to eat, but ﬁrst they took off the boxes
with the guns and the ammunition, till two men
came along driving four mules. Dravot up and
dances in front of them, singing,—‘ Sell me four
mules.’ Says the ﬁrst man,—‘ If you are rich
enough to buy, you are rich enough to rob; ’ but
before ever he could put his hand to his knife,
Dravot breaks his neck over his knee, and the
other party runs away. So Carnehan loaded the
mules with the riﬂes that was taken off the
camels, and together we starts forward into
those bitter cold mountaineous parts, and never a
road broader than the back of your hand.”
He paused for a moment, while I asked him if
he could remember the nature of the country
through which he had journeyed.
“ I am telling you as straight as I can, but my
head isn’t as good as it might be. They drove
nails through it to make me hear better how


140 The Man IV ho Would be King

Dravot died. The country was mountaineous
and the mules were most contrary, and the inhab-
itants was dispersed and solitary. They went up
and up, and down and down, and that other
party, Carnehan, was imploring of Dravot notto
sing and whistle so loud, for fear of bringing
down the tremenjus avalanches. But Dravot says
that if a King couldn’t sing it wasn’t worth being
King, and whacked the mules over the rump, and
never took no heed for ten cold days. We came
to a big level valley all among the mountains, and
the mules were near dead, so we killed them, not
having anything in special for them or us to eat.
We sat upon the boxes, and played odd and even
with the cartridges that was jolted out.
“Then ten men with bows and arrows ran
down that valley, chasing twenty men with bows
and arrows, and the row was tremenjus. They
was fair men—fairer than you or me—with
yellow hair and remarkable well built. Says
Dravot, unpacking the guns—‘ This is the begin-
ning 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 sit-
ting. 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


The Man Who Would be King 141

snow too, and they ﬁres a footy little arrow at
us. Dravot he shoots above their heads and
they all falls down ﬁat. Then he walks over
them and kicks them, and then he lifts them up
and shakes hands all round to make them friendly
like. He calls them and gives them the boxes to
carry, and waves his hand for all the world as
though he was King already. They takes the
boxes and him across the valley and up the hill
into a pine wood on the top, where there was
half a dozen big stone idols. Dravot he goes to
the biggest—a fellow they call lmbra—and lays
a riﬂe and a cartridge at his feet, rubbing his nose
respectful with his own nose, patting him on the
head, and saluting in front of it. He turns round
to the men and nods his head, and says,—‘ That’s
all right. I'm in the know too, and all these old
jim-jams are my friends.’ Then he opens his
mouth and points down it, and when the ﬁrst
man brings him food, he says—‘No;’ and when
the second man brings him food, he says—‘ No;’
but when one of the old priests and the boss of
the village brings him food, he says—‘Yes; ’
very haughty, and eats it slow. That was how
we came to our ﬁrst village, without any trouble,
just as though we had tumbled from the skies.
But we tumbled from one of those damned rope-
bridges, you see, and you couldn’t expect a man
to laugh much after that."


142 The Man Who Would be King

“Take some more whiskey and go on,”l said.
“That was the ﬁrst village you came into. How
did you get to be King ?”
“I wasn’t King,” said Carnehan. “Dravot he
was the King, and a handsome man he looked
with the gold crown on his head and all. Him
and the other party stayed in that village, and
every morning Dravot sat by the side of old
Imbra, and the people came and worshipped.
That was Dravot’s order. Then a lot of men
came into the valley, and Carnehan and Dravot
picks them ofir with the riﬂes before they knew
where they was, and runs down into the valley
and up again the other side, and ﬁnds another
village, same as the first one, and the people all
falls down ﬂat on their faces, and Dravot says,—
‘Now what is the trouble between you two vil-
lages?’ and the people points to a woman, as
fair as you or me, that was carried off, and
Dravot takes her back to the ﬁrst village and
counts up the dead—eight there was. For each
dead man Dravot pours a little milk on the
ground and waves his arms like a whirligig
and ‘That’s all right,’ says he. Then he and
Carnehan takes the big boss of each village by
the arm and walks them down into the valley,
and shows them how to scratch a line with a
spear right down the valley, and gives each a sod
of turf from both sides 0’ the line. Then all the


The Man Who Would be King 14;

people comes down and shouts like the devil and
all, and Dravot says,——‘ Go and dig the land, and
be fruitful and multiply,’ which they did, though
they didn’t understand. Then we asks the
names of things in their lingo—bread and water
and ﬁre and idols and such, and Dravot leads the
priest of each village up to the idol, and says he
must sit there and judge the people, and if any-
thing goes wrong he is to be shot.
“Next week they was all turning up the land
in the valley as quiet as bees and much prettier,
and the priests heard all the complaints and told
Dravot in dumb show what it was about.
‘ That's just the beginning,’ says Dravot. ‘ They
think we're Gods.’ He and Carnehan picks out
twenty good men and shows them how to click
off a riﬂe, and form fours, and advance in line,
and they was very pleased to do so, and clever
to see the hang of it. Then he takes out his pipe
and his baccy-pouch and leaves one at one village
and one at the other, and off we two goes to see
what was to be done in the next valley. That
was all rock, and there was a little village there,
and Carnehan says,—‘ Send ’em to the old valley
to plant,’ and takes ’em there and gives ’em some
land that wasn’t took before. They were a poor
lot, and we blooded ’em with a kid before let-
ting ’em into the new Kingdom. That was to
impress the people, and then they settled down


144 The Man Who Would be King

quiet, and Carnehan Went back to Dravot who
had got into another valley, all snow and ice and
most mountaineous. There was no people there
and the Army got afraid, so Dravot shoots one of
them, and goes on till he ﬁnds some people in a
village, and the Army explains that unless the
people wants to be killed they had better not
shoot their little matchlocks; for they had match-
locks. We makes friends with the priest and!
stays there alone with two of the Army, teaching
the men how to drill, and a thundering big Chief
comes across the snow with kettle-drums and
horns twanging, because he heard there was a
new God kicking about. Carnehan sights for
the brown of the men half a mile across the
snow and wings one of them. Then he sends a
message to the Chief that, unless he wished to be
killed, he must come and shake hands with me
and leave his arms behind. The chief comes
alone ﬁrst, and Carnehan shakes hands with him
and whirls his arms about, same as Dravot used,
and very much surprised that Chief was, and
strokes my eyebrows. Then Carnehan goes
alone to the Chief, and asks him in dumb show
if he had an enemy he hated. ‘I have,’ says the
Chief. So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his
men, and sets the two of the Army to show
them drill and at the end of two weeks the men
can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So


The Man Who Would be King 145

he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on
the top of a mountain, and the Chief’s men
rushes into a village and takes it; we three
Martinis ﬁring into the brown of the enemy. So
we took that village too, and I gives the Chief a
rag from my coat and says, ‘ Occupy till I come:’
which was scriptural. By way of a reminder,
when me and the Army was eighteen hundred
yards away, I drops a bullet near him standing _
on the snow, and all the people falls ﬂat on their
faces. Then I sends a letter to Dravot, wherever
he be by land or by sea.”
At the risk of throwing the creature out of
train I interrupted,—“How could you write a
letter up yonder ? ”
“The letter ?—Oh!—The letter! Keep look-
ing 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 sen-
tence 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 King-


146 The Man Who Would be King

dom was growing too big for me to handle, and
then I struck for the ﬁrst valley, to see how the
priests were working. They called the village
we took along with the Chief, Bashkai, and the
ﬁrst village we took, Er-Heb. The priests at Er-
Heb was doing all right, but they had a lot of
pending cases about land to show me, and some
men from another village had been ﬁring arrows
at night. I went out and looked for that village
and ﬁred four rounds at it from a thousand yards.
That used all the cartridges I cared to spend,
and I waited for Dravot, who had been away
two or three months, and I kept my people
quiet. -
“One morning I heard the devil’s own noise
of drums and horns, and Dan Dravot marches
down the hill with his Army and a tail of hun-
dreds of men, and, which was the most amazing
—a great gold crown on his head. ‘My Gord,
Carnehan,’ says Daniel, ‘this is a tremenjus
business, and we’ve got the whole country as
far as it’s worth having. I am the son of
Alexander by Queen Semiramis, and you’re my
younger brother and a God too! It’s the biggest
thing we’ve ever seen. I've been marching and
ﬁghting for six weeks with the Army, and every
footy little village for ﬁfty miles has come in
rejoiceful; and more than that, I’ve got the key
of the whole show, as you'll see, and I’ve got a


The Man Who Would be King 147

crown for you! I told ’em to make two of ’em
at a place called Shu, where the gold lies in the
rock like suet in mutton. Gold I’ve seen, and
turquoise I’ve kicked out of the cliffs, and there’s
garnets in the sands of the river, and here’s a
chunk of amber that a man brought me. Call up
all the priests and, here, take your crown.’
“One of the men opens a black hair bag and I
slips the crown on. It was too small and too
heavy, but Iwore 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 mel’
and he brings forward that same Chief that I left
at Bashkai—Billy Fish we called him afterward,
because he was so like Billy Fish that drove the
big tank-engine at Mach on the Bolan in the old
days. ‘ Shake hands with him,’ says Dravot, and
I shook hands and nearly dropped, for Billy Fish
gave me the Grip. I said nothing, but tried him
with the Fellow Craft Grip. He answers, all
right, and I tried the Master’s Grip, but that was
a slip. ‘A Fellow Craft he isl’l 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


148 The Man Who Would be King

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 vil-
lages.’
“ ‘It’s against all the law,’ I says, ‘holding a
Lodge without warrant from any one; and we
never held office in any Lodge.’
“ ‘ It’s a master-stroke of policy,’ says Dravot.
‘It means running the country-as easy as a four-
wheeled bogy on a down grade. We can’t stop
to inquire now, or they’ll turn against us. I’ve
forty Chiefs at my heel, and passed and raised
according to their merit they shall be. Billet
these men on the villages and see that we run up
a Lodge of some kind. The temple of Imbra
will do for the Lodge-room. The women must
make aprons as you show them. I’ll hold a
levee of Chiefs to-night and Lodge to-morrow.’
“I was fair run oh“ my legs, but I wasn’t such
a fool as not to see what a pull this Craft busi-
ness 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 tem-


The Man Who Would be King 149

pie for the Master's chair, and little stones for
the oﬁicers' chairs, and painted the black pave-
ment 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 Alex-
ander, 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 l was at Mhow, and so on
and so on.
“ The most amazing miracle was at Lodge next
night. One of the old priests was watching us
continuous, and I felt uneasy, for I knew we’d
have to fudge the Ritual, and I didn't know what
the men knew. The old priest was a stranger
come in from beyond the village of Bashkai.
The minute Dravot puts on the Master's apron
that the girls had made for him, the priest fetches
a whoop and a howl, and tries to overturn the
stone that Dravot was sitting on. ‘It’s all up
now,’ I says. ‘ That comes of meddling with the


150 The Man Who Would be King

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 lmbra. The priest begins rubbing the
bottom end of it to clear away the black dirt,
and presently he shows all the other priests the
Master’s Mark, same as was on Dravot’s apron,
cut into the stone. Not even the priests of the
temple of Imbra knew it was there. The old
chap falls ﬂat on his face at Dravot's feet and
kisses ’em. ‘ Luck again,’ says Dravot, across the
Lodge to me, ‘they say it’s the missing Mark
that no one could understand the why of. We’re
more than safe now.’ Then he bangs the butt
of his gun for a gave! 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 0’ the country, and King of Kaﬁr-
istan equally with Peachey!’ At that he puts on
his crown and I puts on mine—l was doing Senior
Warden—and we opens the Lodge in most ample
form. It was a amazing miracle! The priests
moved in Lodge through the ﬁrst two degrees
almost without telling, as if the memory was
coming back to them. After that, Peachey and
Dravot raised such as was worthy—high priests
and Chiefs of far-off villages. Billy Fish was the
ﬁrst, and I can tell you we scared the soul out of


The Man Who Would be King 151

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 be-
cause you’re white people—sons of Alexander—
and not like common, black Mohammedans. You
are my people and by God,’ says he, running off
into English at the end—‘ I’ll make a damned ﬁne
Nation of you, or I'll die in the making!’
“I can’t tell all we did for the next six months
because Dravot did a lot I couldn’t see the hang
of, and he learned their lingo in a wayl never
could. My work was to help the people plough,
and now and again go out with some of the
Army and see what the other villages were doing,


152 The Man Who Would be King

and make ’em throw rope-bridges across the ra-
vines 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 be-
fore the people. They were afraid of me and the
Army, but they loved Dan. He was the best of
friends with the priests and the Chiefs; but any
one could come across the hills with a complaint
and Dravot would hear him out fair, and call
four priests together and say what was to be
done. He used to call in Billy Fish from Bashkai,
and Pikky Kergan from Shu, and an old Chief
we called Kafuzelum—it was like enough to his
real name—and hold councils with ’em when
there was any ﬁghting to be done in small vil-
lages. That was his Council of War, and the
four priests of Bashkai, Shu, Khawak, and Ma-
dora 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 Mar-
tini riﬂes, that come out of the Amir’s workshops
at Kabul, from one of the Amir’s Herati regi-
ments that would have sold the very teeth out of
their mouths for turquoises.


The Man Who Would be King 153

“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 hand-made
Martinis, a hundred good Kohat jezails that'll
throw to six hundred yards, and forty man-loads
of very bad ammunition for the riﬂes. I came
back with what I had, and distributed 'em among
the men that the Chiefs sent to me to drill.
Dravot was too busy to attend to those things,
but the old Army that we ﬁrst made helped me,
and we turned out ﬁve hundred men that could
drill, and two hundred that knew how to hold
arms pretty straight. Even those cork-screwed,
hand-made guns was a miracle to them. Dravot
talked big about powder-shops and factories,
walking up and down in the pine wood when
the winter was coming on.
“ ‘I won't make a Nation,’ says he. ‘I’Il make
an Empire! These men aren’t niggers; they’re
English! Look at their eyes—look at their
mouths. Look at the way they stand up. They
sit on chairs in their own houses. They're the
Lost Tribes, or something like it, and they’ve
grown to be English. I’ll take a census in the
spring if the priests don’t get frightened. There
must be a fair two million of ’em in these hills.
The villages are full 0' little children. Two mil-


154 The Man Who Would be King

lion people—two hundred and ﬁfty thousand
ﬁghting men—and all English! They only want
the riﬂes and a little drilling. Two hundred and
ﬁfty thousand men, ready to cut in on Russia’s
right ﬂank when she tries for India! Peachey,
man,’ he says, chewing his beard in great hunks,
‘we shall be Emperors—Emperors of the Earth!
Rajah Brooke will be a suckling to us. I’ll treat
with the Viceroy on equal terms. I’ll ask him to
send me twelve picked English—twelve that I
know of—to help us govern a bit. There’s
Mackray, Sergeant-pensioner at Segowli—many’s
Ehe good dinner he’s given me, and his wife a
)air of trousers. There's Donkin, the Warder of
Iounghoo jail; there’s hundreds that I could lay
my hand on if I was in India. The Viceroy shall
do it for me. I’ll send a man through in the
spring for those men, and I’ll write for a dispen-
sation from the Grand Lodge for what I’ve done
as Grand-Master. That—and all the Sniders
that’ll be thrown out when the native troops in
' India take up the Martini. They’ll be worn
smooth, but they'll do for ﬁghting in these hills.
Twelve English, a hundred thousand Sniders run
through the Amir’s country in driblets—I’d be
content with twenty thousand in one year—and
we’d be an Empire. When everything was
shipshape, I'd hand over the crown—this crown
I’m_ wearing now—to Queen Victoria on my


' The Man Who Would be King 155

knees, and she’d say: “Rise up, Sir Daniel
Dravot.” Oh, it’s big! It’s big, I tell you! But
there’s so much to be done in every place—
Bashkai, Khawak, Shu, and everywhere else.’
“ ‘What is it?’ I says. ‘There are no more
men coming in to be drilled this autumn. Look
at those fat, black clouds. They're bringing the
snow.’
“ ‘It isn‘t that,’ says Daniel, putting his hand
very hard on my shoulder; ‘and I don't wish to
say anything that’s against you, for no other liv-
ing man would have followed me and made me
what I am as you have done. You're aﬁrst-class
Commander-in-Chief, and the people know you;
but—it’s a big country, and somehow you can't
help me, Peachey, in the way I want to be
helped.’
“ ‘Go to your blasted priests, then!’ I said,
and l was sorry when I made that remark, but it
did hurt me sore to find Daniel talking so supe-
rior when I'd drilled all the men, and done all he
told me.
“‘Don't let’s quarrel, Peachey,’ says Daniel,
without cursing. ‘You’re a King too, and the
half of this Kingdom is yours; but can’t you see,
Peachey, we want cleverer men than us now—
three or four of ’em, that we can scatter about
for our Deputies. It’s a hugeous great State, and
I can’t always tell the right thing to do, and I


156 The Man Who Would be King

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. '
“ ‘l’m sorry, Daniel,’ says I. ‘I've done allI
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!’
lsays. ‘We’ve both got all the work we can,
though I am a fool. Remember the Contrack,
and keep clear 0’ women.‘
_ “ ‘The Contrack only lasted till such time as
we was Kings; and Kings we have been these
months past,’ says Dravot, weighing his crown
in his hand. ‘ You go get a wife tOO, Peachey—
' a nice, strappin’, plump girl that’ll keep you
warm in the winter. They’re prettier than
English girls, and we can take the pick of ’em.
Boil ’em once or twice in hot water, and they’ll
come as fair as chicken and ham.’
“ ‘Don’t tempt me! ' I says. ‘I will not have


The Man Who Would be King 157

any dealings with a woman not till we are a
dam’ side more settled than we are now. I’ve
been doing the work 0’ two men, and you’ve
been doing the work 0’ 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 0' women 2’ 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 aﬂ’airs. 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 0’ good she was to me. She
taught me the lingo and one or two other things;
but what happened? She ran away with the
Station Master’s servant and half my month’s
pay. Then she turned up at Dadur junction in
tow of a half-caste, and had the impidence to
say I was her husband—all among the drivers in
the running-shed! ’
“ ‘ We’ve done with that,’ says Dravot.
‘These women are whiter than you or me, and
a Queen I will have for the winter months.’
“ ‘For the last time o’ asking, Dan, do not,’ I
says. ‘ It’ll only bring us harm. The Bible says
that Kings ain’t to waste their strength on


158 The Man Who Would be King

women, ’specially when they've got a new raw
Kingdom to work over.’
“ ‘For the last time of answering I will,’ said
Dravot, and he went away through the pine-trees
looking like a big red devil. The low sun hit
his crown and heard on one side and the two
blazed like hot coals.
“But getting a wife was not as easy as Dan
thought. He put it before the Council, and there
was no answer till Billy Fish said that he'd better
ask the girls. Dravot damned them all‘round.
‘What’s wrong with me?’ he shouts, standing
by the idol Imbra. ‘Am I a dog or am I not
enough of a man for your wenches? Haven’t I
put the shadow of my hand over this country?
Who stopped the last Afghan raid?’ It was me
really, but Dravot was too angry to remember.
‘Who brought your guns? Who repaired the
bridges? Who’s the Grand-Master of the sign
cut in the stone?’ and he thumped his hand on
the block that he used to sit on in Lodge, and at
Council, which opened like Lodge always. Billy
Fish said nothing and no more did the others.
‘Keep your hair on, Dan,’ said I; ‘and ask the
girls. That’s how it’s done at Home, and these
people are quite English.’
“‘The marriage of the King is a matter of
State,’ says Dan, in a white-hot rage, for he
could feel, I hope, that he was going against his


The Man Who Would be King 159

better mind. He walked out of the Council-
room, and the others sat still, looking at the
ground.
“ ‘Billy Fish,’ says I to the Chief of Bashkai,
‘what’s the difﬁculty here? A straight answer
to a true friend.’ ‘You know,’ says Billy Fish.
‘How should a man tell you who know every-
thing? How can daughters of men marry Gods
or Devils? It’s not proper.’
“I remembered something like that in the
Bible; but if, after seeing us as long as they had,
they still believed we were Gods, it wasn’t for
me to undeceive them.
“‘A God can do anything,’ says I. ‘If the
King is fond of a girl he’ll not let her die.’
‘She’ll have to,’ said Billy Fish. ‘There are all
sorts of Gods and Devils in these mountains, and
now and again a girl marries one of them and
isn’t seen any more. Besides, you two know
the Mark cut in the stone. Only the Gods know
that. We thought you were men till you
showed the sign of the Master.’
“I wished then that we had explained about
the loss of the genuine secrets of a Master-Mason
at the first go—off; but I said nothing. All that
night there was a blowing of horns in a little
dark temple half-way down the hill, and I heard
a girl crying ﬁt to die. One of the priests told us
that she was being prepared to marry the King.


160 The Man Who Would be King

“ ‘I’ll have no nonsense of that kind,’ says
Dan. ‘I don’t want to interfere with your cus-
toms, but I’ll take my own wife.’ ‘ The girl’s a
little bit afraid,’ says the priest. ‘She thinks
she's going to die, and they are a-heartening of
her up down in the temple.’
“ ‘ Hearten her very tender, then,’ says Dravot,
‘or I’ll hearten you with the butt of a gun so
that you’ll never want to be heartened again.’
He licked his lips, did Dan, and stayed up walk-
ing about more than half the night, thinking of
the wife that he was going to get in the morn-
ing. 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?’l says to the Bashkai
man, who was wrapped up in his furs and look-
ing 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 your-
self a great service.’
“ ‘That I do believe,’ says I. ‘But sure, you


The Man Who Would be King 161

know, Billy, as well as me, having fought against
and for us, that the King and me are nothing
more than two of the ﬁnest men that God A!-
mighty ever made. Nothing more, I do assure
you.
“‘That may be,’ says Billy Fish, ‘and yet I
should be sorry if it was.’ He sinks his head
upon his great fur cloak for a minute and thinks.
‘ King,’ says he, ‘be you man or God or Devil,
I’ll stick by you to-day. I have twenty of my
men with me, and they will follow me. We’ll
go to Bashkai until the storm blows over.’
“A little snow had fallen in the night, and
everything was white except the greasy fat
clouds that blew down and down from the north.
Dravot came out with his crown on his head,
swinging his arms and stamping his feet, and
looking more pleased than Punch.
“ ‘ For the last time, drop it, Dan,’ says I, in a
whisper. ‘ Billy Fish here says that there will be
a row.’
“‘A row among my people!’ says Dravot.
‘Not much. Peachey, you’re a fool not to get a
wife too. Where's the girl?’ says he, with a
voice as loud as the braying of a jackass. ‘ Call
up all the Chiefs and priests, and let the Emperor
see if his wife suits him.’
“There was no need to call any one. They
were all there leaning on their guns and spears


162 The Man Who Would be King

round the clearing in the centre of the pine woOd.
A deputation of priests went down to the little
temple to bring up the girl, and the horns blew
up ﬁt to wake the dead. Billy Fish saunters
round and gets as close to Daniel as he could,
and behind him stood his twenty men with
matchlocks. Not a man of them under six feet.
I was next to Dravot, and behind me was twenty
men of the regular Army. Up comes the girl,
and a strapping wench she was, covered with
silver and turquoises but white as death, and
looking back every minute at the priests.
“ ‘ She’ll do,’ said Dan, looking her over.
‘What’s to be afraid of, lass? Come and kiss
me.’ He puts his arm round her. She shuts her
eyes, gives a bit of a squeak, and down goes her
face in the side of Dan’s ﬂaming red beard.
“ ‘ The slut’s bitten me!’ says he, clapping his
hand to his neck, and, sure enough, his hand was
red with blood. Billy Fish and two of his match-
lock-men catches hold of Dan by the shoulders
and drags him into the Bashkai lot, while the
priests howls in their lingo,——‘ Neither God nor
Devil but a man!’ I was all taken aback, for a
priest cut at me in front, and the Army behind
began ﬁring into the Bashkai men.
“ ‘God A-mighty!’ says Dan. ‘What is the
meaning 0’ this?’
“ ‘ Come back! Come away!’ says Billy Fish.


The Man Who Would be King 163

‘ 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 0’ the regular Army—but it was
no use, so I ﬁred into the brown of ’em with an
English Martini and drilled three beggars in a
line. The valley was full of shouting, howling
creatures, and every soul was shrieking, ‘ Not a
God nor a Devil but only a man! ’ The Bashkai
troops stuck to Billy Fishall they were worth,
but their matchlocks wasn’t half as good as the
Kabul breech-loaders, and four of them dropped.
Dan was bellowing like a bull, for he was very
wrathy; and Billy Fish had a hard job to prevent
him running out at the crowd.
“ ‘We can’t stand,’ says Billy Fish. ‘Make a
run for it down the valley! The whole place is
against us.’ The matchlock-men ran, and we
went down the valley in spite of Dravot’s prot-
estations. He was swearing horribly and cry-
ing 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


164 The Man Who Would be King

we get to Bashkai. I can protect you there, but
I can’t do anything now.’
“My own notion is that Dan began to go mad
in his head from that hour. He stared up and
down like a stuck pig. Then he was all for
walking back alone and killing the priests with
his bare hands; which he could have done. ‘ An
Emperor am I,’ says Daniel, ‘ and next year I shall
be a Knight of the Queen.’
“ ‘All right, Dan,’ says I; ‘but come along
now while there's time.’
“ ‘It’s your fault,’ says he, ‘for not looking
after your Army better. There was mutiny in
the midst, and you didn’t know—you damned
engine-driving, plate—laying, missionary’s-pass-
hunting hound!’ He sat upon a rock and called
me every foul name he could lay tongue to. I
was too heart-sick to care, though it was all his
foolishness that brought the smash.
“ ‘l’m sorry, Dan,’ says I, ‘but there’s no ac-
counting for natives. This business is our Fifty-
Seven. Maybe we’ll make something out of it
yet, when we’ve got to Bashkai.’
“ ‘ Let’s get to Bashkai, then,’ says Dan, ‘and,
by God, when I come back here again I'll sweep
the valley so there isn’t a bug in a blanket left!’
“We walked all that day, and all that night
Dan was stumping up and down on the snow,
chewing his beard and muttering to himself.
I


166 The Man Who Would be King

done what you could, and now cut for it. Car-
nehan,’ says he, ‘shake hands with me and go
along with Billy. Maybe they won’t kill you.
I’ll go and meet ’em alone. It’s me that did it.
Me, the King!’
“ ‘Go!’ says I. ‘Go to Hell, Dan. I’m with
you here. Billy Fish, you clear out, and we two
will meet those folk.’
“ ‘ I’m a Chief,’ says Billy Fish, quite quiet. ‘I
stay with you. My men can go.’
“The Bashkai fellows didn't wait for a second
word but ran off, and Dan and Me and Billy Fish
walked across to where the drums were drum—
ming 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,


The Man Who Would be King 167

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, andl
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
saysz—‘We’ve had a dashed ﬁne run for our
money. What’s coming next?’ But Peachey,
Peachey Taliaferro, I tell you, Sir, in conﬁdence
as betwixt two friends, he lost his head, Sir.
No, he didn’t neither. The King lost his head,
so he did, all along 0’ one of those cunning rope-
bridges. Kindly let me have the paper-cutter,
Sir. It tilted this way. They marched him a
mile across that snow to a rope-bridge over a
ravine with a river at the bottom. You may
have seen such. They prodded him behind like
an ox. ‘Damn your eyes!’ says the King.
‘D’you suppose I can’t die like a gentleman?’
He turns to Peachey—Peachey that was crying
like a child. ‘ I've brought you to this, Peachey,’
says he. ‘Brought you out of your happy life
to be killed in Kaﬁristan, where you was late
Commander-in-Chief of the Emperor’s forces.
Say you forgive me, Peachey.’ ‘I do,’ says
Peachey. ‘Fully and freely do I forgive you,


168 The Man Who Would be King

Dan.’ ‘Shake hands, Peachey,’ says he. ‘I’m
going now.’ Out he goes, looking neither right
nor left, and when he was plumb in the middle
of those dizzy dancing ropes, ‘Cut, you beg-
gars,’ he shouts; and they cut, and old Dan fell,
turning round and round and round twenty
thousand miles, for he took half an hour to fall
till he struck the water, and I could see his
body caught on a rock with the gold crown close
beside.
“But do you know what they did to Peachey
between two pine trees? They cruciﬁed him,
Sir, as Peachey’s hand will show. They used
wooden pegs for his hands and his feet; and he
didn’t die. He hung there and screamed, and
they took him down next day, and said it was a
miracle that he wasn’t dead. They took him
down—poor old Peachey that hadn’t done them
any harm—that hadn't done them any. . . .”
He rocked to and fro and wept bitterly,
wiping his eyes with the back of his scarred
hands and moaning like a child for some ten
minutes.
“They was cruel enough to feed him up in the
temple, because they said he was more of a God
than old Daniel that was a man. Then they
turned him out on the snow, and told him to go
home, and Peachey came home in about a year,
begging along the roads quite safe; for Daniel


The Man Who Would be King - 169

Dravot he walked before and saidz—‘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 em-
broidered with silver thread; and shook there-
from on to my table—the dried, withered head
of Daniel Dravot! The morning sun that had
long been paling the lamps struck the red beard
and blind sunken eyes; struck, too, a heavy
circlet of gold studded with raw turquoises, that
Carnehan placed tenderly on the battered tem-
ples.
“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 mani-
fold, I recognized the head of the man of Mar-


170 The Man Who Would be King

war junction. Carnehan rose to go. Iattempted
to stop him. He was not ﬁt to walk abroad.
“ Let me take away the whiskey, and give me a
little money,” he gasped. “I was a King once.
I’ll go to the Deputy Commissioner and ask to set
in the Poorhouse till I get my health. No, thank
you, I can’t wait till you get a carriage for me.
I've urgent private affairs—in the south—at Mar-
war.”
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 road-
side, his hat in his hand, quavering dolorously
after the fashion of street-singers at Home.
There was not a soul in sight, and he was out of
all possible earshot of the houses. And he sang
through his nose, turning his head from right to
left:
“ The Son of Man goes forth to war,
A golden crown to gain;
His blood-red banner streams afar—
Who follows in his train ? "
I waited to hear no more, but put the poor
wretch into my carriage and drove him off to the
nearest missionary for eventual transfer to the
Asylum. He repeated the hymn twice while he
was with me whom he did not in the least


The Man Who Would be King I71

recognize, and I left him singing it to the mis-
sionary.
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 Superin-
'tendent.
And there the matter rests.


“THE FINEST STORY IN THE
WORLD”
" O1- ever the knightly years were gone
With the old world to the grave,
I was a king in Babylon
And you were a Christian slave."
— IV. E. Henley.
IS name was Charlie Mears; he was the only
son of his mother who was a widow, and
he lived in the north of London, coming into the
City every day to work in a bank. He was
twenty years old and suffered from aspirations.
I met him in a public billiard-saloon where the
marker called him by his given name, and he
called the marker “ Bullseyes.” Charlie exg
plained, a little nervously, that he had only come
to the place to look on, and since looking on at
games of skill is not a cheap amusement for the
young, I suggested that Charlie should go back
to his mother.
That was our ﬁrst step toward better acquaint-
ance. He would call on me sometimes in the
evenings instead of running about London with
his fellow-clerks; and before long, speaking of
himself as a young man must, he told me of his
175


“The Finest Story in the World” I77

little before I was implored to speak the truth as
to his chances of “writing something really
great, you know.” Maybe I encouraged him
too much, for, one night, he called on me, his
eyes ﬂaming with excitement, and said breath-
lessly:
“ Do you mind—can you let me stay here and
write all this evening? I won’t interrupt you, I
won't really. There’s no place for me to write
in at my mother’s.”
“What’s the trouble P” I said, knowing well
what that trouble was.
“I’ve a notion in my head that would make
the most splendid story that was ever written.
Do let me write it out here. It’s such a notion! ”
There was no resisting the appeal. I set him
a table; he hardly thanked me, but plunged into
the work at once. For half an hour the pen
scratched without stopping. Then Charlie sighed
and tugged his hair. The scratching grew
slower, there were more erasures, and at last
ceased. The ﬁnest story in the world would not
come forth.
“ It looks such awful rot now,” he said, mourn-
fully. “ And yet it seemed so good when I was
thinking about it. What's wrong ? "
I could not dishearten him by saying the truth.
So I answered: “ Perhaps you don’t feel in the
mood for writing.”


178 “The Finest Story in the World"

“Yes I do—except when I look at this stuff.
Ugh!”
“ Read me what you’ve done,” I said.
“He read, and it was wondrous bad, and he
paused at all the specially turgid sentences, ex-
pecting a little approval; for he was proud of
those sentences, as I knew he would be.
“It needs compression,” I suggested, cau-
tiously.
“I hate cutting my things down. I don’t
think you could alter a word here without spoil-
ing the sense. It reads better aloud than when I
was writing it.”
“Charlie, you’re suffering from an alarming
disease afﬂicting a numerous class. Put the
thing by, and tackle it again in a week.”
“I want to do it at once. What do you think
of it ? ”
“How can I judge from a half-written tale?
Tell me the story as it lies in your head.”
Charlie told, and in the telling there was every-
thing that his ignorance had so carefully pre-
vented from escaping into the written word. I
looked at him, and wondering whether it were
possible that he did not know the originality, the
power of the notion that had come in his way?
It was distinctly a Notion among notions. Men
had been puffed up with pride by notions not a
tithe as excellent and practicable. But Charlie


“The Finest Story in the World” 179

babbled on serenely, interrupting the current of
pure fancy with samples of horrible sentences
that he purposed to use. I heard him out to the
end. It would be folly to allow his idea to re-
main in his own inept hands, when I could do so
muCh with it. Not all that could be done in~
deed; but, oh so much!
“What do you think?” he said, at last. “I
fancy I shall call it ‘ The Story of a Ship.’ ”
“I think the idea’s pretty good; but you won’t
be able to handle it for ever so long. Now I”—
“Would it be of any use to you? Would you
care to take it? I should be proud,” said Charlie,
promptly.
There are few things sweeter in this world
than the guileless, hot-headed, intemperate, open
admiration of a junior. Even a woman in her
blindest devotion does not fall into the gait of the
man she adores, tilt her bonnet to the angle at
which he wears his hat, or interlard her speech
with his pet oaths. And Charlie did all these
things. Still it was necessary to salve my con-
science before I possessed myself of Charlie’s
thoughts.
“Let’s make a bargain. I’ll give you a ﬁver
for the notion,” I said.
Charlie became a bank-clerk at once.
“Oh, that’s impossible. Between two pals,
you know, if I may call you so, and speaking as


180 “The Finest Story in the World”

a man of the world, I couldn't. Take the notion
if it’s any use to you. I’ve heaps more.”
He had—none knew this better than l—but
they were the notions of other men.
“Look at it as a matter of business—between
men of the world,” I returned. “Five pounds
will buy you any number of poetry-books. Busi-
ness is business, and you may be sure I shouldn’t
give that price unless "—
“ Oh, if you put it that way,’ said Charlie,
visibly moved by the thought of the books. The
bargain was clinched with an agreement that he
should at unstated intervals come to me with all
the notions that he possessed, should have a table
of his own to write at, and unquestioned right to
inﬂict upon me all his poems and fragments of
poems. Then I said, “Now tell me how you
came by this idea.”
“It came by itself.” Charlie’s eyes opened a
little.
“ Yes, but you told me a great deal about the
hero that you must have read before somewhere.”
“I haven’t any time for reading, except when
you let me sit here, and on Sundays I’m on my
bicycle or down the river all day. There's noth-
ing wrong about the hero, is there ? "
“ Tell me again and I shall understand clearly.
You say that your hero went pirating. How did
he live P "


“The Finest Story in the World” 18!

“ He was on the lower deck of this ship—thing
that I was telling you about.”
“ What sort of ship?”
“ It was the kind rowed with oars, and the sea
spurts through the oar-holes and the men row
sitting up to their knees in water. Then there’s
a bench running down between the two lines of
oars and an overseer with a whip walks up and
down the bench to make the men work.”
“How do you know that?”
“ It’s in the tale. There’s a rope running over-
head, looped to the upper deck, for the overseer
to catch hold of when the ship rolls. When the
overseer misses the rope once and falls among
the rowers, remember the hero laughs at him and
gets licked for it. He’s chained to his oar of
course—the hero.”
“ How is he chained?”
“ With an iron band round his waist ﬁxed to
the bench he sits on, and a sort of handcuff on
his left wrist chaining him to the oar. He’s on
the lower deck where the worst men are sent,
and the only light comes from the hatchways
and through the oar-holes. Can’t you imagine
the sunlight just squeezing through between the
handle and the hole and wobbling about as the
ship moves ?”
“I can, but I can’t imagine your imagining it.”
“ How could it be any other way? Now you


182 “The Finest Story in the World"

listen to me. The long oars on the upper deck
are managed by four men to each bench, the
lower ones by three, and the lowest of all by
two. Remember it’s quite dark on the lowest
deck and all the men there go mad. When a
man dies at his oar on that deck he isn’t thrown
overboard, but cut up in his chains and stuffed
through the oar-hole in little pieces.”
“ Why?” I demanded, amazed, not so much at
the information as the tone of command in which
it was ﬂung out.
“To save trouble and to frighten the others.
It needs two overseers to drag a man’s body up
to the top deck; and if the men at the lower-
deck oars were left alone, of course they’d stop
rowing and try to pull up~the benches by all
standing up together in their chains.”
“ You’ve a most provident imagination. Where
have you been reading about galleys and galley—
slaves?"
“Nowhere that I remember. I row a little
when I get the chance. But, perhaps, if you say
so, I may have read something.” _
He went away shortly afterward to deal with
booksellers, and I wondered how a bank clerk
aged twenty could put into 'my hands with a
proﬂigate abundance of detail, all given with ab-
solute assurance, the story of extravagant and
bloodthirsty adventure, riot, piracy, and death


“The Finest Story in the World” I83

in unnamed seas. He had led his hero a des-
perate dance through revolt against the over-
seers, to command of a ship of his own, and ulti-
mate establishment of a kingdom on an island
“somewhere in the sea, you know"; and, de-
lighted with my paltry ﬁve pounds, had gone out
to buy the notions of other men, that these might
teach him how to write. I had the consolation
of knowing that this notion was mine by right
of purchase, and I thought that I could make
something of it.
When next he came to me he was drunk—
royally drunk on many poets for the ﬁrst time
revealed to him., His pupils were dilated, his
words tumbled over each other, and he wrapped
himself in quotations. Most of all was he drunk
with Longfellow.
“Isn't it splendid? Isn’t it superb?” he cried,
after hasty greetings. “ Listen to this—
“ ‘ Wouldst thou,'—~so the helmsman answered,
' Know the secret of the sea P
Only those who brave its dangers
_ Comprehend its mystery.’
By gum!
“ 'Only those who brave its dangers
Compreheud its mystery,’ ”
he repeated twenty times, walking up and down
the room and forgetting me. “But I can under-


184 ' “The Finest Story in the World”

stand it too,” he said to himself. “I don’t know
how to thank you for that ﬁver. And this;
listen --
H I I remember the black wharves and the ships
And the sea-tides tossing free,
And the Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the beauty and mystery of the ships,
And the magic of the sea.’
I haven't braved any dangers, but I feel as if I
knew all about it.”
“You certainly seem to have a grip of the sea.
Have you ever seen it?”
“When I was a little chap I went to Brighton
once; we used to live in Coventry, though, be-
fore we came to London. I never saw it,
" ‘ When descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic
Storm-wind of the Equinox.’ "
He shook me by the shoulder to make me un-
derstand the passion that was shaking himself.
“When that storm comes,” he continued, “I
think that all the oars in the ship that I was talk-
ing about get broken, and the rowers have their
chests smashed in by the bucking oar-heads. By
the way, have you done anything with that
notion of mine yet ?”
“No. I was waiting to hear more of it from
you. Tell me how in the world you’re so certain


“The Finest Story in the World” 185

about the ﬁttings of the ship. You know noth-
ing of ships.”
“ I don’t know. It’s as real as anything to
me until I try to write it down. I was thinking
about it only last night in bed, after you had
loaned me ‘Treasure Island’; and I made up a
whole lot of new things to go into the story.”
“What sort of things?”
“About the food the men ate; rotten ﬁgs and
black beans and wine in a skin bag, passed from
bench to bench.”
“ Was the ship built so long ago as that? ”
“As what? I don’t know whether it was long
ago or not. It’s only a notion, but sometimes it
seems just as real as if it was true. Do I bother
you with talking about it?"
“Not in the least. Did you make up anything
else ? ”
“ Yes, but it’s nonsense." Charlie ﬂushed a
little.
“ Never mind; let's hear about it.”
“Well, I was thinking over the story, and
after awhile I got out of bed and wrote down on
a piece of paper the sort of stuff the men might
be supposed to scratch on their oars with the
edges of their handcuffs. It seemed to make
the thing more lifelike. It is so real to me,
y’know.”
“ Have you the paper on you?”


I86 “The Finest Story in the World”

“Ye-es, but what’s the use of showing it?
It’s only a lot of scratches. All the same, we
might have 'em reproduced in the book on the
front page.”
“I’ll attend to those details. Show me what
your men wrote.”
He pulled out of his pocket a sheet of note-
paper, with a single line of scratches upon it,
and I put this carefully away.
“What is it supposed to mean in English?” I
said.
“Oh,I don’t know. Perhaps it means ‘I'm
beastly tired.’ It’s great nonsense,” he repeated,
“but all those men in the ship seem as real as
people to me. Do do something to the no-
tion soon; I should like to see it written and
printed.” .
“But all you’ve told me would make along
book.”
“Make it then. You've only to sit down and
write it out.”
“Give me a little time. Have you any more
notions ?”
“Not just now. I’m reading all the books I've
bought. They’re splendid.”
When he had left I looked at the sheet of note-
paper with the inscription upon it. Then I took
my head tenderly between both hands, to make
certain that it was not coming off or turning


“The Finest Story in the World” 187

round. Then . . . but there seemed to be
no interval between quitting my rooms and ﬁnd-
ing myself arguing with a policeman outside a
door marked Private in a corridor of the British
Museum. All I demanded, as politely as possi-
ble, was “the Greek antiquity man.” The police-
man knew nothing except the rules of the
Museum, and it became necessary to forage
through all the houses and ofﬁces inside the
gates. An elderly gentleman called away from
his lunch put an end to my search by holding the
note-paper between ﬁnger and thumb and sniff-
ing at it scornfully.
“What does this mean? H’mm,” said he.
“So far as I can ascertain it is an attempt to
write extremely corrupt Greek on the. part”—
here he glared at me with intention—“ of an ex-
tremely illiterate—ah—person.” He read slowly
from the paper, “Pollock, Erekmann, Tauehnitz,
Henni/zer "—four names familiar to me.
“Can you tell me what the corruption is sup-
posed to mean—the gist of the thing?” I asked.
“I have been—many times—overcome with
weariness in this particular employment. That
is the meaning.” He returned me the paper, and
I ﬂed without a word of thanks, explanation, or
apology.
I might have been excused for forgetting much.
To me of all men had been given the chance to


188 “The Finest Story in the World "

write the most marvelous tale in the world,
nothing less than the story of a Greek galley-
slave, as told by himself. Small wonder that his
dreaming had seemed real to Charlie. The Fates
that are so careful to shut the doors of each suc-
cessive life behind us had, in this case, been
neglectful, and Charlie was looking, though that
he did not know, where never man had been
permitted to look with full knowledge since Time
began. Above all, he was absolutely ignorant
of the knowledge sold to me for ﬁve pounds;
and he would retain that ignorance, for bank-
clerks do not understand metempsychosis, and a
sound commercial education does not include
Greek. He would supply me—here I capered
among the dumb gods of Egypt and laughed in
their battered faces—with material to make my
tale sure—so sure that the world would hail it as
an impudent and vamped ﬁction. And I—l
alone would know that it was absolutely and
literally true. I,—I alone held this jewel to my
hand for the cutting and polishing. Therefore I
danced again among the gods till a policeman
saw me and took steps in my direction.
It remained now only to encourage Charlie to
talk, and here there was no diﬂ’iculty. But I had
forgotten those accursed books of poetry. He
came to me time after time, as useless as a sur-
charged phonograph—drunk on Byron, Shelley, or


“The Finest Story in the World” 189

Keats. Knowing now what the boy had been in
his past lives, and desperately anxious not to lose
one word of his babble, I could not hide from him
my respect and interest. He misconstrued both
into respect for the present soul of Charlie Mears,
to whom life was as new as it was to Adam, and
interest in his readings; and stretched my pa-
tience to breaking point by reciting poetry—not
his own now, but that of others. I wished every
English poet blotted out of the memory of man-
kind. I blasphemed the mightiest names of song
because they had drawn Charlie from the path of
direct narrative, and would, later, spur him to
imitate them; but I choked down my impatience
until the ﬁrst ﬂood of enthusiasm should have
spent itself and the boy returned to his dreams.
“What’s the use of my telling you what I
think, when these chaps wrote things for the
angels to read ? ” he growled, one evening.
“ Why don’t you write something like theirs ? ”
“I don’t think you're treating me quite fairly,”
I said, speaking under strong restraint.
“I’ve given you the story,” he said, shortly,
replunging into “ Lara.”
“But I want the details.”
“ The things I make up about that damned
ship that you call a galley ? They’re quite easy.
You can just make ’em up yourself. Turn up
the gas a little, I want to go on reading.”


190 “The Finest Story in the World "

I could have broken the gas globe over his
head for his amazing stupidity. I could indeed
make up things for myself did I only know what
Charlie did not know that he knew. But since
the doors Were shut behind me I could only wait
his youthful pleasure and strive to keep him in
good temper. One minute’s want of guard
might spoil a priceless revelation: now and again
he would toss his books aside—he kept them in
my rooms, for his mother would have been
shocked at the waste of good money had she
seen them—and launched into his sea dreams.
Again I cursed all the poets of England. The
plastic mind of the bank-clerk had been overlaid,
colored and distorted by that which he had read,
and the result as delivered was a confused tangle
of other voices most like the muttered song
through a City telephone in the busiest part of
the day.
He talked of the galley—his own galley had he
but known it—With illustrations borrowed from
the “Bride of Abydos." He pointed the ex-
periences of his hero with quotations from
“The Corsair,” and threw in deep and desperate
moral reﬂections from “Cain” and “Manfred,”
expecting me to use them all. Only when the
talk turned on Longfellow were the jarring
cross-currents dumb, and I knew that Charlie
was speaking the truth as he remembered it.


“The Finest Story in the World” 191

“What do you think of this?” I said one even-
ing, as soon as I understood the medium in which
his memory worked best, and, before he could
expostulate, read him the whole of “The Saga
of King Olaf! ”
He listened open-mouthed, ﬂushed, his hands
drumming on the back of the sofa where he lay,
till I came to the Song of Einar Tamberskelver
and the verse:
“ Einar then, the arrow taking
From the loosened string,
Answered: ‘ That was Norway breaking
’Neath thy hand, 0 King.’ ”
He gasped with pure delight of sound.
“That’s better than Byron, a little,” I ventured.
“Better? Why it's true! How could he
have known ?”
I went back and repeated:
“ ‘ What was that? ’ said Olaf, standing
On the quarter-deck,
‘Something heard I like the stranding
Of a shattered wreck?’ "
“How could he have known how the ships
crash and the oars rip out and go {-{rp all along
the line? Why only the other night. . . .
But go back please and read ‘The Skerry of
Shrieks’ again.”


192 “The Finest Story in the World”

“No, I’m tired. Let’s talk. What happened
the other night?”
“I had an awful nightmare about that galley
of ours. I dreamed lwas drowned in a ﬁght.
You see we ran alongside another ship in harbor.
The water was dead still except where our oars
whipped it up. You know where I always sit
in the galley?” He spoke haltingly at ﬁrst, un-
der a ﬁne English fear of being laughed at.
“No. That's news to me,” I answered,
meekly, my heart beginning to beat.
“ On the fourth oar from the bow on the right
side on the upper deck. There were four of us
at that oar, all chained. I remember watching
the water and trying to get my handcuffs off be-
fore the row began. Then we closed up on the
other ship, and all their ﬁghting men jumped over
our bulwarks, and my bench broke and l was
pinned down with the three other fellows on top
of me, and the big oar jammed across our backs.”
“Well ?” Charlie’s eyes were alive and alight.
He was looking at the wall behind my chair.
“I don't know how we fought. The men
were trampling all over my back, and I lay low.
Then our rowers on the left side—tied to their
oars, you know—began to yell and back water.
I could hear the water sizzle, and we spun round
like a cockchafer and I knew, lying where I was,
that there was a galley coming up bow-on, t0


“The Finest Story in the World” 193

ram us on the left side. Icould just lift up my
head and see her sail over the bulwarks. We
wanted to meet her bow to bow, but it was too
late. We could only turn a little bit because the
galley on our right had hooked herself on to us
and stopped our moving. Then, by gum! there
was a crash! Our left oars began to break as the
other galley, the moving one y’know, stuck her
nose into them. Then the lower-deck oars shot
up through the deck planking, butt ﬁrst, and one
of them jumped clean up into the air and came
down again close to my head.”
“ How was that managed ? "
“The moving galley’s how was plunking them
back through their own oar-holes, and I could
hear the devil of a shindy in the decks below.
Then her nose caught us nearly in the middle,
and we tilted sideways, and the fellows in the
right-hand galley unhitched their hooks and
ropes, and threw things on to our upper deck—
arrows, and hot pitch or something that stung,
and we went up and up and up on the left side,
and the right side dipped, and I twisted my head
round and saw the water stand still as it topped
the right bulwarks, and then it curled over and
crashed down on the whole lot of us on the right
side, and I felt it hit my back, and I woke.”
“One minute, Charlie. When the sea topped
the bulwarks, what did it look like?” I had my


194 “The Finest Story in the World ”

reasons for asking. A man of my acquaintance
had once gone down with a leaking ship in a still
sea, and had seen the water-level pause for an
instant ere it fell on the deck.
“ It looked just like a banjo—string drawn tight,
and it seemed to stay there for years,” said
Charlie.
Exactly! The other man had said: “ It looked
like a silver wire laid down along the bulwarks,
and I thought it was never going to break.” He
had paid everything except the bare life for this
little valueless piece of knowledge, and I had
traveled ten thousand weary miles to meet him
and take his knowledge at second hand. But
Charlie, the bank-clerk on twenty-ﬁve shillings a
week, he who had never been out of sight of a
London omnibus, knew it all. It was no conso—
lation to me that once in his lives he had been
forced to die for his gains. I also must have died
scores of times, but behind me, because I could
have used my knowledge, the doors were shut.
“And then?”l said, trying to put away the
devil of envy.
“The funny thing was, though, in all the mess
I didn’t feel a bit astonished or frightened. It
seemed as if I’d been in a good many ﬁghts, be-
cause I told my next man so when the row be-
gan. But that cad of an overseer on my deck
wouldn’t unloose our chains and give us a chance.


“The Finest Story in the World” 195

He always said that we'd all be set free after a
battle, but we never were; we never were.”
Charlie shook his head mournfully.
“ What a scoundrell ”
“I should say he was. He never gave us
enough to eat, and sometimes we were so thirsty
that we used to drink salt-water. I can taste
that salt-water still."
“Now tell me something about the harbor
where the ﬁght was fought.”
“I didn’t dream about that. I know it was a
harbor, though; because we were tied up to a
ring on a white wall and all the face of the stone
under water was covered with wood to prevent
our ram getting chipped when the tide made us
rock.”
“That’s curious. Our hero commanded the
galley, didn’t he?”
“Didn’t he just! He stood by the bows and
shouted like a good ’un. He was the man who
killed the overseer.”
“But you were all drowned together, Charlie,
weren’t you?”
“I can't make that ﬁt quite,” he said, with a
puzzled look. “_The galley must have gone
down with all hands, and yet I fancy that the
hero went on living afterward. Perhaps he
climbed into the attacking ship. I wouldn’t see
that, of course. I was dead, you know."


196 “The Finest Story in the World”

He shivered slightly and protested that he
could remember no more.
I did not press him further, but to satisfy my-
self that he lay in ignorance of the workings of
his own mind, deliberately introduced him to
Mortimer Collins's “Transmigration,” and gave
him a sketch o'f the plot before he opened the
pages.
“What rot it all is!” he said, frankly, at the
end of an hour. “I don’t understand his non-
sense about the Red Planet Mars and the King,
and the rest of it. Chuck me the Longfellow
again.”
I handed him the book and wrote out as much
as I could remember of his description of the sea-
ﬁght, appealing to him from time to time for
conﬁrmation of fact or detail. He would answer
without raising his eyes from the book, as assur-
edly as though all his knowledge lay before him
on the printed page. I spoke under the normal
key of my voice that the current might not be
broken, and I know that he was not aware of
What he was saying, for his thoughts were out
on the sea with Longfellow.
“Charlie,” I asked, “when -the rowers on the
gallies mutinied how did they kill their over-
seers ? ”
“ Tore up the benches and brained ’em. That
happened when a heavy sea was running. An


“The Finest Story in the World” 197

overseer on the lower deck slipped from the
centre plank and fell among the rowers. They
choked him to death against the side of the ship
with their chained hands quite quietly, and it
was too dark for the other overseer to see what
had happened. When he asked, he was pulled
down too and choked, and the lower deck fought
their way up deck by deck, with the pieces of
the broken benches banging behind ’em. How
they howled! ”
“And what happened after that?”
“I don’t know. The hero went away—red
hair and red beard and all. That was after he
had captured our galley, I think.”
The sound of my voice irritated him, and he
motioned slightly with his left hand as a man
does when interruption jars.
“You never told me he was red-headed be-
fore, or that he captured your galley,” I said,
after a discreet interval.
Charlie did not raise his eyes.
“He was as red as a red bear,” said he, ab-
stractedly. “He came from the north; they said
so in the galley when he looked for rOWers—not
slaves, but free men. Afterward—years and
years afterward—news came from another ship,
or else he came back "—
l-lis lips moved in silence. He was rapturously
retasting some poem before him.


198 “The Finest Story in the World”

“Where had he been, then?" I was almost
whispering that the sentence might come gentle
to whichever section of Charlie’s brain was
working on my behalf.
“To the Beaches—the Long and Wonderful
Beaches! ” was the reply, after a minute of silence.
“To Furdurstrandi?”l asked, tingling from
head to foot.
“Yes, to Furdurstrandi,” he pronounced the
word in a new fashion. “And I too saw”—
The voice failed.
“Do you know what you have said ?" I
shouted, incautiously.
He lifted his eyes, fully roused now. “No! ”
he snapped. “I wish you’d let a_chap go on
reading. Hark to this:
" ‘ But Othere, the old sea captain,
He neither paused nor stirred
Till the king listened, and then
Once more took up his pen
And wrote down every word.
" ‘ And to the King of the Saxons
In witness of the truth,
Raising his noble head,
He stretched his brown hand and said,
‘ Behold this walrus tooth.“ ’
By jove, what chaps those must have been, to_
go sailing all over the shop never knowing where
they’d fetch the land! Hah! ”


“The Finest Story in the World” 199

“Charlie,” l pleaded, “if you’ll only be sensi-
ble for a minute or two I’ll make our hero in our
tale every inch as good as Othere.”
“Umph! Longfellow wrote that poem. I
don’t care about writing things any more. I
want to read.” He was thoroughly out of tune
now, and raging over my own ill-luck, I left him.
Conceive yourself at the door of the world’s
treasure-house guarded by a child—an idle irre-
sponsible child playing knuckle-bones—on whose
favor depends the gift of the key, and you will
imagine one half my torment. Till that evening
Charlie had spoken nothing that might not lie
within the experiences of a Greek galley-slave.
But now, or there was no virtue in books, he
had talked of some desperate adventure of the
Vikings, of Thorﬁn Karlsefne's sailing to Wine-
land, which is America, in the ninth or tenth
century. The battle in the harbor he had seen;
and his own death he had described. But this
was a much more startling plunge into the past.
Was it possible that he had skipped half a dozen
lives and was then dimly remembering some
episode of a thousand years later? It was a
maddening jumble, and the worst of it was that
Charlie Mears in his normal condition was the
last person in the world to clear it up. I could
only wait and watch, but I went to bed that
night full of the wildest imaginings. There was


200 “The Finest Story in the World”

nothing that was not possible if Charlie’s detest-
able memory only held good.
I might rewrite the Saga of Thorﬁn Karlsefne
as it had never been written before, might tell
the story of the ﬁrst discovery of America, my-
self the discoverer. But I was entirely at Charlie’s
mercy, and so long as there was a three-and-six-
penny Bohn volume within his reach Charlie
would not tell. I dared not curse him openly; I
hardly dared jog his memory, for I was dealing
with the experiences of a thousand years ago,
told through the mouth of a boy of to-day; and
a boy of to-day is affected by every change of
tone and gust of opinion, so that he lies even
when he desires to speak the truth.
I saw no more of him for nearly a week.
When next I met him it was in Gracechurch
Street with a billbook chained to his waist. Busi-
ness took him over London Bridge and I accom-
panied him. He was very full of the impor-
tance of that book and magniﬁed it. As we
passed over the Thames we paused to look at
a steamer unloading great slabs of white and
brown marble. A barge drifted under the
steamer’s stern and a lonely cow in that barge
bellowed. Charlie’s face changed from the face
of the bank-clerk to that of an unknown and—
though he would not have believed this—a much
shrewder man. He ﬂung out his arm across the


202 “The Finest Story in the World”

the cattle which Thorﬁn had brought with him
in the ships. But what in the world could a
Greek slave know of that affair? I wandered up
and down among the streets trying to unravel the
mystery, and the more I considered it, the more
bafﬂing it grew. One thing only seemed certain,
and that certainty took away my breath for the
moment. lfI came to full knowledge of anything
at all, it would not be one life of the soul in
Charlie Mears’s body, but half a dozen—half a
dozen several and separate existences spent on
blue water in the morning of the world!
Then I walked round the situation.
Obviously if I used my knowledge I should
stand alone and unapproachable until all men
were as wise as myself. That would be some-
thing, but manlike I was ungrateful. It seemed
bitterly unfair that Charlie’s memory should fail
me when I needed it most. Great Powers above
—-I looked up at them through the fog smoke—
did the Lords of Life and Death know what this
meant to me? Nothing less than eternal fame of
the best kind, that comes from One, and is shared
by one alone. I would be content—remember-
ing Clive, I stood astounded at my own modera-
tion,—With the mere right to tell one story, to
work out one little contribution to the light litera-
ture of the day. If Charlie were permitted full
recollection for one hour—for sixty short minutes


“The Finest Story in the World” 203

-—of existences that had extended over a thousand
years—I would forego all proﬁt and honor from
all that I should make of his speech. I would
take no share in the commotion that would fol-
low throughout the particular corner of the earth
that calls itself “the world.” The thing should
be put forth anonymously. Nay, I would make
other men believe that they had written it. They
would hire bull-hided self-advertising Englishmen
to bellow it abroad. Preachers would found a
fresh conduct of life upon it, swearing that it
was new and that they had lifted the fear of death
from all mankind. Every Orientalist in Europe
would patronize it discursively with Sanskrit and
Fall texts. Terrible women would invent un-
clean variants of the men’s belief for the elevation
of their sisters. Churches and religions would
war over it. Between the hailing and re-starting
of an omnibus I foresaw the scufﬂes that would
arise among half a dozen denominations all pro-
fessing “the doctrine of the True Metempsycho-
sis as applied to the world and the New Era”;
and saw, too, the respectable English newspapers
shying, like frightened kine, over the beautiful
simplicity of the tale. The mind leaped forward
a hundred—two hundred—a thousand years. I
saw with sorrow that men would mutilate and
garble the story ; that rival creeds would turn it
upside down till, at last, the western world which


204 “The Finest Story in the World”

clings to the dread of death more closely than the
hope of life, would set it aside as an interesting
superstition and stampede after some faith so
long forgotten that it seemed altogether new.
Upon this I changed the terms of the bargain that
I would make with the Lords of Life and Death.
Only let me know, let me write, the story with
sure knowledge that I wrote the truth, and I
would burn the manuscript as a solemn sacriﬁce.
Five minutes after the last line was written I
would destroy it all. But Imust be allowed to
write it with absolute certainty.
There was no answer. The ﬂaming colors of
an Aquarium poster caught my eye and I won-
dered whether it would be wise or prudent to
lure Charlie into the hands of the professional
mesmerist, and whether, if he were under his
power, he would speak of his past lives. If he
did, and if people believed him . . . but
Charlie would be frightened and ﬂustered, or
made conceited by the interviews. In either case
he would begin to lie, through fear or vanity.
He was safest in my own hands.
“They are very funny fools, your English,”
said a voice at my elbow, and turning round I
recognized a casual acquaintance, a young Bengali
law student, called Grish Chunder, whose father
had sent him to England to become civilized.
The old man was a retired native oﬁicial, and on


“The Finest Story in the World” 207

“ He does not know anything. Would I speak
to you if he did? Go on! ”
“ There is no going on at all. If you tell that
to your friends they will say you are mad and
put it in the papers. Suppose, now, you pros-
ecute for libel.”
“Let’s leave that out of the question en-
tirely. Is there any chance of his being made
to speak ?"
“There is a chance. Oah, yess! But if he
spoke it would mean that all this world would
end now—instanto—fall down on your head.
These things are not allowed, you know. As I
said, the door is shut.”
“Not a ghost of a chance?”
“How can there be? You are a Christi-an,
and it is forbidden to eat, in your books, of the
Tree of Life, or else you would never die. How
shall you all fear death if you all know what your
friend does not know that he knows? I am
afraid to be kicked, but I am not afraid to die,
because I know what I know. You are not
afraid to be kicked, but you are afraid to die. _If
you were not, by God! you English would be all
over the shop in an hour, upsetting the balances
of power, and making commotions. It would
not be good. But no fear. He will remember a
little and a little less, and he will call it dreams.
Then he will forget altogether. When I passed


208 “The Finest Story in the World"

my First Arts Examination in Calcutta that was
all in the cram-book on Wordsworth. Trailing
clouds of glory, you know." ‘
“This seems to be an exception to the rule.”
“There are no exceptions to rules. Some are
not so hard-looking as others, but they are all the
same when you touch. If this friend of yours said
so-and-so and so-and-so, indicating that he re-
membered all his lost lives, or one piece of a lost
life, he would not be in the bank another hour.
He would be what you called sack because he
was mad, and they would send him to an asylum
for lunatics. You can see that, my friend.”
“Of course I can, but I wasn't thinking of him.
His name need never appear in the story.”
“ Ah! I see. That story will never be written.
You can try.”
“I am going to.”
“ For your own credit and for the sake of
money, of course ? ”
“ No. For the sake of writing the story. On
my honor that will be all.”
“Even then there is no chance. You cannot
play with the Gods. It is a very pretty story
now. As they say, Let it go on that—I mean at
that. Be quick; he will not last long.”
“How do you mean ?”
“What I say. He has never, so far, thought
about a woman.”


2‘ The Finest Story in the World” 209

“Hasn’t he, though!” I remembered some of
Charlie’s conﬁdences.
“I mean no woman has thought about him.
When that comes; bus—hogya—all up! I know.
There are millions of women here. Housemaids,
for instance.”
I winced. at the thought of my story being
ruined by a housemaid. And yet nothing was
more probable.
Grish Chunder grinned.
“ Yes—also pretty girls—cousins of his house,
and perhaps not of his house. One kiss that he
gives back again and remembers will cure all this
nonsense, or else " —
“ Or else what? Remember he does not know
that he knows.”
“I know that. Or else, if nothing happens he
will become immersed in the trade and the ﬁnan-
cial speculations like the rest. It must be so.
You can see that it must be so. But the woman
will come ﬁrst, I think.”
There was a rap at the door, and Charlie
charged in impetuously. He had been released
from ofﬁce, and by the look in his eyes I could
see that he had come over for a long talk; most
probably with poems in his pockets. Charlie’s
poems were very wearying, but sometimes they
led him to talk about the galley.
Grish Chunder looked at him keenly for a minute.


210 “The Finest Story in the World "

“I beg your pardon,” Charlie said, uneasily;
“I didn't know you had any one with you.”
“I am going," said Grish Chunder.
He drew me into the lobby as he departed.
“ That is your man,” he said, quickly. “I tell
you he will never speak all you wish. That is
rot—bosh. But he would be most good to make
to see things. Suppose now we pretend that it
was only play ”—I had never seen Grish Chunder
so excited—“ and pour the ink-pool into his hand.
Eh, what do you think? I tell you that he could
see anything that a man could see. Let me get
the ink and the camphor. He is a seer and he
will tell us very many things.”
“He may be all you say, but I’m not going to
trust him to your gods and devils.”
“It will not hurt him. He will only feel a
little stupid and dull when he wakes up. You
have seen boys look into the ink-pool before.”
“ That is the reason why I am not going to see
it any more. You’d better go, Grish Chunder."
He went, declaring far down the staircase that
it was throwing away my only chance of look-
ing into the future.
This left me unmoved, for I was concerned for
the past, and no peering of hypnotized boys into
mirrors and ink-pools would help me to that.
But I recognized Grish Chunder’s point of view
and sympathized with it.


“The Finest Story in the World" 211

“What a big black brute that was!” said
Charlie, when I returned to him. “Well, look
here, I’ve just done a poem; did it instead of
playing dominoes after lunch. May I read it?”
“ Let me read it to myself.”
“Then you miss the proper expression. Be-
sides, you always make my things sound as if
the rhymes were all wrong.”
“Read it aloud, then. You're like the rest of
’em.”
Charlie mouthed me his poem, and it was not
much worse than the average of his verses. He
had been reading his books faithfully, but he was
not pleased when I told him that I preferred my
Longfellow undiluted with Charlie.
Then we began to go through the MS. line by
line; Charlie parrying every objection and cor-
rection with:
“ Yes, that may be better, but you don’t catch
What I’m driving at.”
Charles was, in one way at least, very like one
kind of poet.
There was a pencil scrawl at the back of the
paper and “ What’s that?” I said.
“Oh that’s not poetry at all. It's some rot I
wrote last night before I went to bed and it was
too much bother to hunt for rhymes; so I made
it a sort of blank verse instead.”
Here is Charlie’s “blank verse”:


“The Finest Story in the World ” 217

This greediness for silver was a new side in his
nature. I assumed that it had been developed in
the City, where Charlie was picking up the curi-
ous nasal drawl of the underbred City man.
“When the thing’s done we'll talk about it. I
can’t make anything of it at present. Red-haired
or black-haired hero are equally difﬁcult.”
He was sitting by the ﬁre staring at the red
coals. “I can’t understand what you ﬁnd so
difﬁcult. It’s all as clear as mud to me,” he re-
plied. A jet of gas puffed out between the bars,
took light and whistled softly. “Suppose we
take the red-haired hero’s adventures ﬁrst, from
the time that he came south to my galley and
captured it and sailed to the Beaches.”
I knew better now than to interrupt Charlie. I
was out of reach of pen and paper, and dared
not move to get them lest I should break the cur-
rent. The gas-jet puffed and whinnied, Charlie’s
voice dropped almost to a whisper, and he told
a tale of the sailing of an open galley to Furdur-
strandi, of sunsets on the open sea, seen under
the curve of the one sail evening after evening
when the galley’s beak was notched into the
centre of the sinking disc, and “we sailed by
that for we had no other guide,” quoth Charlie.
He spoke of a landing on an island and explora—
tions in its woods, where the crew killed three
men whom they found asleep under the pines.


“The Finest Story in the World” 219

“Something about the galley.”
“I remember now. It’s 25 per cent. of the
proﬁts, isn’t it P”
“It’s anything you like when I’ve done the
tale."
“I wanted to be sure of that. I must go
now. I’ve—I’ve an appointment.” And he left
me.
Had my eyes not been held I might have
known that that broken muttering over the ﬁre
was the swan-song of Charlie Mears. But I
thought it the prelude to fuller revelation. At
last and at last I should cheat the Lords of Life
and Death!
When next Charlie came to me I received him
with rapture. He was nervous and embarrassed,
but his eyes were very full of light, and his lips
a little parted.
“I’ve done a poem,” he said; and then,
quickly: “it’s the best I’ve ever done. Read it.”
He thrust it into my hand and retreated to the
window.
I groaned inwardly. It would be the wdrk of
half an hour to criticise—that is to say praise—
the poem sufficiently to please Charlie. Thenl
had good reason to groan, for Charlie, discarding
his favorite centipede metres, had launched into
shorter and choppier verse, and verse with a mo-
tive at the back of it. This is what I read:


“The Finest Story in the World” 221

“lsn’t it—isn’t it wonderful?” he whispered,
pink to the tips of his ears, wrapped in the rosy
mystery of ﬁrst love. “I didn’t know; Ididn't
think—it came like a thunderclap.”
“ Yes. It comes like a thunderclap. Are you
very happy, Charlie P ”
“ My God—she—she loves me! ” He sat down
repeating the last words to himself. l looked at
the hairless face, the narrow shoulders already
bowed by desk-work, and wondered when,
where, and how he had loved in his past lives.
“ What will your mother say P ” I asked, cheer-
fully.
“1 don't care a damn what she says.”
At twenty the things for which one does not
care a damn should, properly, be many, but one
must not include mothers in the list. I told him
this gently; and he described Her, even as Adam
must have described to the newly named beasts
the glory and tenderness and beauty of Eve.
lncidentallyl learned that She was a tobacconist's
assistant with a weakness for pretty dress, and
had told him four or ﬁve times already that She
had never been kissed by a man before.
Charlie spoke on and on, and on; while i, sepa-
rated from him by thousands of years, was consid-
ering the beginnings of things. Now I understood
why the Lords of Life and Death shut the doors
so carefully behind us. It is that we may not re-


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