Mahbub had business at Quetta , and there Kim , as Mahbub admitted , earned his keep , and perhaps a little over , by spending four curious days as scullion in the house of a fat Commissariat sergeant , from whose office-box , in an auspicious moment , he removed a little vellum ledger which he copied out -- it seemed to deal entirely with cattle and camel sales -- by moonlight , lying behind an outhouse , all through one hot night . Then he returned the ledger to its place , and , at Mahbub 's word , left that service unpaid , rejoining him six miles down the road , the clean copy in his bosom . ` That soldier is a small fish , ' Mahbub Ali explained , ` but in time we shall catch the larger one . He only sells oxen at two prices -- one for himself and one for the Government -- which I do not think is a sin . ' ` Why could not I take away the little book and be done with it ? ' ` Then he would have been frightened , and he would have told his master . Then we should miss , perhaps , a great number of new rifles which seek their way up from Quetta to the North . The Game is so large that one sees but a little at a time . ' ` Oho ! ' said Kim , and held his tongue . That was in the monsoon holidays , after he had taken the prize for mathematics . The Christmas holidays he spent -- deducting ten days for private amusements -- with Lurgan Sahib , where he sat for the most part in front of a roaring wood-fire -- Jakko road was four feet deep in snow that year -- and -- the small Hindu had gone away to be married -- helped Lurgan to thread pearls . He made Kim learn whole chapters of the Koran by heart , till he could deliver them with the very roll and cadence of a mullah . Moreover , he told Kim the names and properties of many native drugs , as well as the runes proper to recite when you administer them . And in the evenings he wrote charms on parchment -- elaborate pentagrams crowned with the names of devils -- Murra , and Awan the Companion of Kings -- all fantastically written in the corners . More to the point , he advised Kim as to the care of his own body , the cure of fever-fits , and simple remedies of the Road . A week before it was time to go down , Colonel Creighton Sahib -- this was unfair -- sent Kim a written examination paper that concerned itself solely with rods and chains and links and angles . Next holidays he was out with Mahbub , and here , by the way , he nearly died of thirst , plodding through the sand on a camel to the mysterious city of Bikanir , where the wells are four hundred feet deep , and lined throughout with camel-bone . It was not an amusing trip from Kim 's point of view , because -- in defiance of the contract -- the Colonel ordered him to make a map of that wild , walled city ; and since Mohammedan horse-boys and pipe-tenders are not expected to drag Survey-chains round the capital of an independent Native State , Kim was forced to pace all his distances by means of a bead rosary . He used the compass for bearings as occasion served -- after dark chiefly , when the camels had been fed -- and by the help of his little Survey paint-box of six colour-cakes and three brushes , he achieved something not remotely unlike the city of Jeysulmir .
XXXXX laughed a great deal , and advised him to make up a written report as well ; and in the back of the big account-book that lay under the flap of Mahbub 's pet saddle Kim fell to work .
Ali Jeysulmir Kings Mahbub Sahib horse-boys office-box paint-box week wood-fire