Chapter: Give the man who is not made
  To his trade
  Swords to fling and catch again,
  Coins to ring and snatch again,
  Men to harm and cure again,
  Snakes to charm and lure again--
  He'll be hurt by his own blade,
  By his serpents disobeyed,
  By his clumsiness bewrayed,'
  By the people mocked to scorn--
  So 'tis not with juggler born!
  Pinch of dust or withered flower,
  Chance-flung fruit or borrowed staff,
  Serve his need and shore his power,
  Bind the spell, or loose the laugh!
  But a man who, etc.

  The Juggler's Song, op. 15


Followed a sudden natural reaction.

'Now am I alone--all alone,' he thought.  'In all India is no one so
alone as I! If I die today, who shall bring the news--and to whom? If I
live and God is good, there will be a price upon my head, for I am a
Son of the Charm--I, Kim.'

A very few white people, but many Asiatics, can throw themselves into a
mazement as it were by repeating their own names over and over again to
themselves, letting the mind go free upon speculation as to what is
called personal identity.  When one grows older, the power, usually,
departs, but while it lasts it may descend upon a man at any moment.

'Who is Kim--Kim--Kim?'

He squatted in a corner of the clanging waiting-room, rapt from all
other thoughts; hands folded in lap, and pupils contracted to
pin-points.  In a minute--in another half-second--he felt he would
arrive at the solution of the tremendous puzzle; but here, as always
happens, his mind dropped away from those heights with a rush of a
wounded bird, and passing his hand before his eyes, he shook his head.

A long-haired Hindu bairagi [holy man], who had just bought a ticket,
halted before him at that moment and stared intently.

'I also have lost it,' he said sadly.  'It is one of the Gates to the
Way, but for me it has been shut many years.'

'What is the talk?'  said Kim, abashed.

'Thou wast wondering there in thy spirit what manner of thing thy soul
might be.  The seizure came of a sudden.  I know.  Who should know but
I? Whither goest thou?'

'Toward Kashi [Benares].'

'There are no Gods there.  I have proved them.  I go to Prayag
[Allahabad] for the fifth time--seeking the Road to Enlightenment. Of
what faith art thou?'

'I too am a Seeker,' said Kim, using one of the lama's pet words.
'Though'--he forgot his Northern dress for the moment--'though Allah
alone knoweth what I seek.'

The old fellow slipped the bairagi's crutch under his armpit and sat
down on a patch of ruddy leopard's skin as Kim rose at the call for the
Benares train.

'Go in hope, little brother,' he said.  'It is a long road to the feet
of the One; but thither do we all travel.'

Kim did not feel so lonely after this, and ere he had sat out twenty
miles in the crowded compartment, was cheering his neighbours with a
string of most wonderful yarns about his own and his master's magical
gifts.

Benares struck him as a peculiarly filthy city, though it was pleasant
to find how his cloth was respected.  At least one-third of the
population prays eternally to some group or other of the many million
deities, and so reveres every sort of holy man.  Kim was guided to the
Temple of the Tirthankars, about a mile outside the city, near Sarnath,
by a chance-met Punjabi farmer--a Kamboh from Jullundur-way who had
appealed in vain to every God of his homestead to cure his small son,
and was trying Benares as a last resort.

'Thou art from the North?'  he asked, shouldering through the press of
the narrow, stinking streets much like his own pet bull at home.

'Ay, I know the Punjab.  My mother was a pahareen, but my father came
from Amritzar--by Jandiala,' said Kim, oiling his ready tongue for the
needs of the Road.

'Jandiala--Jullundur?  Oho!  Then we be neighbours in some sort, as it
were.'  He nodded tenderly to the wailing child in his arms.  'Whom
dost thou serve?'

'A most holy man at the Temple of the Tirthankers.'

'They are all most holy and--most greedy,' said the Jat with
bitterness.  'I have walked the pillars and trodden the temples till my
feet are flayed, and the child is no whit better.  And the mother being
sick too ...  Hush, then, little one ...  We changed his name when the
fever came.  We put him into girl's clothes.  There was nothing we did
not do, except--I said to his mother when she bundled me off to
Benares--she should have come with me--I said Sakhi Sarwar Sultan would
serve us best.  We know His generosity, but these down-country Gods are
strangers.'

The child turned on the cushion of the huge corded arms and looked at
Kim through heavy eyelids.

'And was it all worthless?'  Kim asked, with easy interest.

'All worthless--all worthless,' said the child, lips cracking with
fever.

'The Gods have given him a good mind, at least' said the father
proudly.  'To think he should have listened so cleverly.  Yonder is thy
Temple.  Now I am a poor man--many priests have dealt with me--but my
son is my son, and if a gift to thy master can cure him--I am at my
very wits' end.'

Kim considered for a while, tingling with pride.  Three years ago he
would have made prompt profit on the situation and gone his way without
a thought; but now, the very respect the Jat paid him proved that he
was a man.  Moreover, he had tasted fever once or twice already, and
knew enough to recognize starvation when he saw it.

'Call him forth and I will give him a bond on my best yoke, so that the
child is cured.'

Kim halted at the carved outer door of the temple.  A white-clad Oswal
banker from Ajmir, his sins of usury new wiped out, asked him what he
did.

'I am chela to Teshoo Lama, an Holy One from Bhotiyal--within there. He
bade me come.  I wait.  Tell him.'

'Do not forget the child,' cried the importunate Jat over his shoulder,
and then bellowed in Punjabi; 'O Holy One--O disciple of the Holy
One--O Gods above all the Worlds--behold affliction sitting at the
gate!'  That cry is so common in Benares that the passers never turned
their heads.

The Oswal, at peace with mankind, carried the message into the darkness
behind him, and the easy, uncounted Eastern minutes slid by; for the
lama was asleep in his cell, and no priest would wake him.  When the
click of his rosary again broke the hush of the inner court where the
calm images of the Arhats stand, a novice whispered, 'Thy chela is
here,' and the old man strode forth, forgetting the end of that prayer.

Hardly had the tall figure shown in the doorway than the Jat ran before
him, and, lifting up the child, cried:  'Look upon this, Holy One; and
if the Gods will, he lives--he lives!'

He fumbled in his waist-belt and drew out a small silver coin.

'What is now?'  The lama's eyes turned to Kim.  It was noticeable he
spoke far clearer Urdu than long ago, under ZamZammah; but father would
allow no private talk.

'It is no more than a fever,' said Kim.  'The child is not well fed.'

'He sickens at everything, and his mother is not here.'

'If it be permitted, I may cure, Holy One.'

'What!  Have they made thee a healer?  Wait here,' said the lama, and
he sat down by the Jat upon the lowest step of the temple, while Kim,
looking out of the corner of his eyes, slowly opened the little
betel-box.  He had dreamed dreams at school of returning to the lama as
a Sahib--of chaffing the old man before he revealed himself--boy's
dreams all.  There was more drama in this abstracted, brow-puckered
search through the tabloid-bottles, with a pause here and there for
thought and a muttered invocation between whiles.  Quinine he had in
tablets, and dark brown meat-lozenges--beef most probably, but that was
not his business.  The little thing would not eat, but it sucked at a
lozenge greedily, and said it liked the salt taste.

'Take then these six.'  Kim handed them to the man.  'Praise the Gods,
and boil three in milk; other three in water.  After he has drunk the
milk give him this' (it was the half of a quinine pill), 'and wrap him
warm.  Give him the water of the other three, and the other half of
this white pill when he wakes.  Meantime, here is another brown
medicine that he may suck at on the way home.'

'Gods, what wisdom!'  said the Kamboh, snatching.

It was as much as Kim could remember of his own treatment in a bout of
autumn malaria--if you except the patter that he added to impress the
lama.

'Now go!  Come again in the morning.'

'But the price--the price,' said the Jat, and threw back his sturdy
shoulders.  'My son is my son.  Now that he will be whole again, how
shall I go back to his mother and say I took help by the wayside and
did not even give a bowl of curds in return?'

'They are alike, these Jats,' said Kim softly.  'The Jat stood on his
dunghill and the King's elephants went by.  "O driver," said he, "what
will you sell those little donkeys for?"'

The Jat burst into a roar of laughter, stifled with apologies to the
lama.  'It is the saying of my own country the very talk of it.  So are
we Jats all.  I will come tomorrow with the child; and the blessing of
the Gods of the Homesteads--who are good little Gods--be on you both
...  Now, son, we grow strong again.  Do not spit it out, little
Princeling!  King of my Heart, do not spit it out, and we shall be
strong men, wrestlers and club-wielders, by morning.'

He moved away, crooning and mumbling.  The lama turned to Kim, and all
the loving old soul of him looked out through his narrow eyes.

'To heal the sick is to acquire merit; but first one gets knowledge.
That was wisely done, O Friend of all the World.'

'I was made wise by thee, Holy One,' said Kim, forgetting the little
play just ended; forgetting St Xavier's; forgetting his white blood;
forgetting even the Great Game as he stooped, Mohammedan-fashion, to
touch his master's feet in the dust of the Jain temple.  'My teaching I
owe to thee.  I have eaten thy bread three years.  My time is finished.
I am loosed from the schools.  I come to thee.'

'Herein is my reward.  Enter!  Enter!  And is all well?'  They passed
to the inner court, where the afternoon sun sloped golden across.
'Stand that I may see.  So!'  He peered critically.  'It is no longer a
child, but a man, ripened in wisdom, walking as a physician.  I did
well--I did well when I gave thee up to the armed men on that black
night.  Dost thou remember our first day under Zam-Zammah?'

'Ay,' said Kim.  'Dost thou remember when I leapt off the carriage the
first day I went to--'

'The Gates of Learning?  Truly.  And the day that we ate the cakes
together at the back of the river by Nucklao.  Aha!  Many times hast
thou begged for me, but that day I begged for thee.'

'Good reason,' quoth Kim.  'I was then a scholar in the Gates of
Learning, and attired as a Sahib.  Do not forget, Holy One,' he went on
playfully.  'I am still a Sahib--by thy favour.'

'True.  And a Sahib in most high esteem.  Come to my cell, chela.'

'How is that known to thee?'

The lama smiled.  'First by means of letters from the kindly priest
whom we met in the camp of armed men; but he is now gone to his own
country, and I sent the money to his brother.'  Colonel Creighton, who
had succeeded to the trusteeship when Father Victor went to England
with the Mavericks, was hardly the Chaplain's brother.  'But I do not
well understand Sahibs' letters.  They must be interpreted to me.  I
chose a surer way.  Many times when I returned from my Search to this
Temple, which has always been a nest to me, there came one seeking
Enlightenment--a man from Leh--that had been, he said, a Hindu, but
wearied of all those Gods.'  The lama pointed to the Arhats.

'A fat man?'  said Kim, a twinkle in his eye.

'Very fat; but I perceived in a little his mind was wholly given up to
useless things--such as devils and charms and the form and fashion of
our tea-drinkings in the monasteries, and by what road we initiated the
novices.  A man abounding in questions; but he was a friend of thine,
chela.  He told me that thou wast on the road to much honour as a
scribe.  And I see thou art a physician.'

'Yes, that am I--a scribe, when I am a Sahib, but it is set aside when
I come as thy disciple.  I have accomplished the years appointed for a
Sahib.'

'As it were a novice?'  said the lama, nodding his head.  'Art thou
freed from the schools?  I would not have thee unripe.'

'I am all free.  In due time I take service under the Government as a
scribe--'

'Not as a warrior.  That is well.'

'But first I come to wander with thee.  Therefore I am here.  Who begs
for thee, these days?'  he went on quickly.  The ice was thin.

'Very often I beg myself; but, as thou knowest, I am seldom here,
except when I come to look again at my disciple.  From one end to
another of Hind have I travelled afoot and in the te-rain.  A great and
a wonderful land!  But here, when I put in, is as though I were in my
own Bhotiyal.'

He looked round the little clean cell complacently.  A low cushion gave
him a seat, on which he had disposed himself in the cross-legged
attitude of the Bodhisat emerging from meditation; a black teak-wood
table, not twenty inches high, set with copper tea-cups, was before
him.  In one corner stood a tiny altar, also of heavily carved teak,
bearing a copper-gilt image of the seated Buddha and fronted by a lamp,
an incense-holder, and a pair of copper flower-pots.

'The Keeper of the Images in the Wonder House acquired merit by giving
me these a year since,' he said, following Kim's eye.  'When one is far
from one's own land such things carry remembrance; and we must
reverence the Lord for that He showed the Way.  See!'  He pointed to a
curiously-built mound of coloured rice crowned with a fantastic metal
ornament.  'When I was Abbot in my own place--before I came to better
knowledge I made that offering daily.  It is the Sacrifice of the
Universe to the Lord.  Thus do we of Bhotiyal offer all the world daily
to the Excellent Law.  And I do it even now, though I know that the
Excellent One is beyond all pinchings and pattings.'  He snuffed from
his gourd.

'It is well done, Holy One,' Kim murmured, sinking at ease on the
cushions, very happy and rather tired.

'And also,' the old man chuckled, 'I write pictures of the Wheel of
Life.  Three days to a picture.  I was busied on it--or it may be I
shut my eyes a little--when they brought word of thee.  It is good to
have thee here:  I will show thee my art--not for pride's sake, but
because thou must learn.  The Sahibs have not all this world's wisdom.'

He drew from under the table a sheet of strangely scented yellow
Chinese paper, the brushes, and slab of Indian ink.  In cleanest,
severest outline he had traced the Great Wheel with its six spokes,
whose centre is the conjoined Hog, Snake, and Dove (Ignorance, Anger,
and Lust), and whose compartments are all the Heavens and Hells, and
all the chances of human life.  Men say that the Bodhisat Himself first
drew it with grains of rice upon dust, to teach His disciples the cause
of things.  Many ages have crystallized it into a most wonderful
convention crowded with hundreds of little figures whose every line
carries a meaning.  Few can translate the picture-parable; there are
not twenty in all the world who can draw it surely without a copy:  of
those who can both draw and expound are but three.

'I have a little learned to draw,' said Kim.  'But this is a marvel
beyond marvels.'

'I have written it for many years,' said the lama.  'Time was when I
could write it all between one lamp-lighting and the next.  I will
teach thee the art--after due preparation; and I will show thee the
meaning of the Wheel.'

'We take the Road, then?'

'The Road and our Search.  I was but waiting for thee.  It was made
plain to me in a hundred dreams--notably one that came upon the night
of the day that the Gates of Learning first shut that without thee I
should never find my River.  Again and again, as thou knowest, I put
this from me, fearing an illusion.  Therefore I would not take thee
with me that day at Lucknow, when we ate the cakes.  I would not take
thee till the time was ripe and auspicious.  From the Hills to the Sea,
from the Sea to the Hills have I gone, but it was vain. Then I
remembered the Tataka.'

He told Kim the story of the elephant with the leg-iron, as he had told
it so often to the Jam priests.

'Further testimony is not needed,' he ended serenely.  'Thou wast sent
for an aid.  That aid removed, my Search came to naught. Therefore we
will go out again together, and our Search sure.'

'Whither go we?'

'What matters, Friend of all the World?  The Search, I say, is sure. If
need be, the River will break from the ground before us.  I acquired
merit when I sent thee to the Gates of Learning, and gave thee the
jewel that is Wisdom.  Thou didst return, I saw even now, a follower of
Sakyamuni, the Physician, whose altars are many in Bhotiyal.  It is
sufficient.  We are together, and all things are as they were--Friend
of all the World--Friend of the Stars--my chela!'

Then they talked of matters secular; but it was noticeable that the
lama never demanded any details of life at St Xavier's, nor showed the
faintest curiosity as to the manners and customs of Sahibs.  His mind
moved all in the past, and he revived every step of their wonderful
first journey together, rubbing his hands and chuckling, till it
pleased him to curl himself up into the sudden sleep of old age.

Kim watched the last dusty sunshine fade out of the court, and played
with his ghost-dagger and rosary.  The clamour of Benares, oldest of
all earth's cities awake before the Gods, day and night, beat round the
walls as the sea's roar round a breakwater.  Now and again, a Jain
priest crossed the court, with some small offering to the images, and
swept the path about him lest by chance he should take the life of a
living thing.  A lamp twinkled, and there followed the sound of a
prayer.  Kim watched the stars as they rose one after another in the
still, sticky dark, till he fell asleep at the foot of the altar.  That
night he dreamed in Hindustani, with never an English word...

'Holy One, there is the child to whom we gave the medicine,' he said,
about three o'clock in the morning, when the lama, also waking from
dreams, would have fared forth on pilgrimage.  'The Jat will be here at
the light.'

'I am well answered.  In my haste I would have done a wrong.'  He sat
down on the cushions and returned to his rosary.  'Surely old folk are
as children,' he said pathetically.  'They desire a matter--behold, it
must be done at once, or they fret and weep!  Many times when I was
upon the Road I have been ready to stamp with my feet at the hindrance
of an ox-cart in the way, or a mere cloud of dust. It was not so when I
was a man--a long time ago.  None the less it is wrongful--'

'But thou art indeed old, Holy One.'

'The thing was done.  A Cause was put out into the world, and, old or
young, sick or sound, knowing or unknowing, who can rein in the effect
of that Cause?  Does the Wheel hang still if a child spin it--or a
drunkard?  Chela, this is a great and a terrible world.'

'I think it good,' Kim yawned.  'What is there to eat?  I have not
eaten since yesterday even.'

'I had forgotten thy need.  Yonder is good Bhotiyal tea and cold rice.'

'We cannot walk far on such stuff.'  Kim felt all the European's lust
for flesh-meat, which is not accessible in a Jain temple.  Yet, instead
of going out at once with the begging-bowl, he stayed his stomach on
slabs of cold rice till the full dawn.  It brought the farmer, voluble,
stuttering with gratitude.

'In the night the fever broke and the sweat came,' he cried.  'Feel
here--his skin is fresh and new!  He esteemed the salt lozenges, and
took milk with greed.'  He drew the cloth from the child's face, and it
smiled sleepily at Kim.  A little knot of Jain priests, silent but
all-observant, gathered by the temple door.  They knew, and Kim knew
that they knew, how the old lama had met his disciple.  Being courteous
folk, they had not obtruded themselves overnight by presence, word, or
gesture.  Wherefore Kim repaid them as the sun rose.

'Thank the Gods of the Jains, brother,' he said, not knowing how those
Gods were named.  'The fever is indeed broken.'

'Look!  See!'  The lama beamed in the background upon his hosts of
three years.  'Was there ever such a chela?  He follows our Lord the
Healer.'

Now the Jains officially recognize all the Gods of the Hindu creed, as
well as the Lingam and the Snake.  They wear the Brahminical thread;
they adhere to every claim of Hindu caste-law.  But, because they knew
and loved the lama, because he was an old man, because he sought the
Way, because he was their guest, and because he collogued long of
nights with the head-priest--as free-thinking a metaphysician as ever
split one hair into seventy--they murmured assent.

'Remember,'--Kim bent over the child--.  'this trouble may come again.'

'Not if thou hast the proper spell,' said the father.

'But in a little while we go away.'

'True,' said the lama to all the Jains.  'We go now together upon the
Search whereof I have often spoken.  I waited till my chela was ripe.
Behold him!  We go North.  Never again shall I look upon this place of
my rest, O people of good will.'

'But I am not a beggar.'  The cultivator rose to his feet, clutching
the child.

'Be still.  Do not trouble the Holy One,' a priest cried.

'Go,' Kim whispered.  'Meet us again under the big railway bridge, and
for the sake of all the Gods of our Punjab, bring food--curry, pulse,
cakes fried in fat, and sweetmeats.  Specially sweetmeats.  Be swift!'

The pallor of hunger suited Kim very well as he stood, tall and slim,
in his sand-coloured, sweeping robes, one hand on his rosary and the
other in the attitude of benediction, faithfully copied from the lama.
An English observer might have said that he looked rather like the
young saint of a stained-glass window, whereas he was but a growing lad
faint with emptiness.

Long and formal were the farewells, thrice ended and thrice renewed.
The Seeker--he who had invited the lama to that haven from far-away
Tibet, a silver-faced, hairless ascetic--took no part in it, but
meditated, as always, alone among the images.  The others were very
human; pressing small comforts upon the old man--a betel-box, a fine
new iron pencase, a food-bag, and such-like--warning him against the
dangers of the world without, and prophesying a happy end to the
Search.  Meantime Kim, lonelier than ever, squatted on the steps, and
swore to himself in the language of St Xavier's.

'But it is my own fault,' he concluded.  'With Mahbub, I ate Mahbub's
bread, or Lurgan Sahib's.  At St Xavier's, three meals a day.  Here I
must jolly-well look out for myself.  Besides, I am not in good
training.  How I could eat a plate of beef now!  ...  Is it finished,
Holy One?'

The lama, both hands raised, intoned a final blessing in ornate
Chinese.  'I must lean on thy shoulder,' said he, as the temple gates
closed.  'We grow stiff, I think.'

The weight of a six-foot man is not light to steady through miles of
crowded streets, and Kim, loaded down with bundles and packages for the
way, was glad to reach the shadow of the railway bridge.

'Here we eat,' he said resolutely, as the Kamboh, blue-robed and
smiling, hove in sight, a basket in one hand and the child in the other.

'Fall to, Holy Ones!'  he cried from fifty yards.  (They were by the
shoal under the first bridge-span, out of sight of hungry priests.)
'Rice and good curry, cakes all warm and well scented with hing
[asafoetida], curds and sugar.  King of my fields,'--this to the small
son--'let us show these holy men that we Jats of Jullundur can pay a
service ...  I had heard the Jains would eat nothing that they had not
cooked, but truly'--he looked away politely over the broad
river--'where there is no eye there is no caste.'

'And we,' said Kim, turning his back and heaping a leafplatter for the
lama, 'are beyond all castes.'

They gorged themselves on the good food in silence.  Nor till he had
licked the last of the sticky sweetstuff from his little finger did Kim
note that the Kamboh too was girt for travel.

'If our roads lie together,' he said roughly, 'I go with thee.  One
does not often find a worker of miracles, and the child is still weak.
But I am not altogether a reed.'  He picked up his lathi--a five-foot
male-bamboo ringed with bands of polished iron--and flourished it in
the air.  'The Jats are called quarrel-some, but that is not true.
Except when we are crossed, we are like our own buffaloes.'

'So be it,' said Kim.  'A good stick is a good reason.'

The lama gazed placidly up-stream, where in long, smudged perspective
the ceaseless columns of smoke go up from the burning-ghats by the
river.  Now and again, despite all municipal regulations, the fragment
of a half-burned body bobbed by on the full current.

'But for thee,' said the Kamboh to Kim, drawing the child into his
hairy breast, 'I might today have gone thither--with this one.  The
priests tell us that Benares is holy--which none doubt--and desirable
to die in.  But I do not know their Gods, and they ask for money; and
when one has done one worship a shaved-head vows it is of none effect
except one do another.  Wash here!  Wash there!  Pour, drink, lave, and
scatter flowers--but always pay the priests.  No, the Punjab for me,
and the soil of the Jullundur-doab for the best soil in it.'

'I have said many times--in the Temple, I think--that if need be, the
River will open at our feet.  We will therefore go North,' said the
lama, rising.  'I remember a pleasant place, set about with
fruit-trees, where one can walk in meditation--and the air is cooler
there.  It comes from the Hills and the snow of the Hills.'

'What is the name?'  said Kim.

'How should I know?  Didst thou not--no, that was after the Army rose
out of the earth and took thee away.  I abode there in meditation in a
room against the dovecot--except when she talked eternally.'

'Oho!  the woman from Kulu.  That is by Saharunpore.'  Kim laughed.

'How does the spirit move thy master?  Does he go afoot, for the sake
of past sins?'  the Jat demanded cautiously.  'It is a far cry to
Delhi.'

'No,' said Kim.  'I will beg a tikkut for the te-rain.'  One does not
own to the possession of money in India.

'Then, in the name of the Gods, let us take the fire-carriage.  My son
is best in his mother's arms.  The Government has brought on us many
taxes, but it gives us one good thing--the te-rain that joins friends
and unites the anxious.  A wonderful matter is the te-rain.'

They all piled into it a couple of hours later, and slept through the
heat of the day.  The Kamboh plied Kim with ten thousand questions as
to the lama's walk and work in life, and received some curious answers.
Kim was content to be where he was, to look out upon the flat
North-Western landscape, and to talk to the changing mob of
fellow-passengers.  Even today, tickets and ticket-clipping are dark
oppression to Indian rustics.  They do not understand why, when they
have paid for a magic piece of paper, strangers should punch great
pieces out of the charm.  So, long and furious are the debates between
travellers and Eurasian ticket-collectors.  Kim assisted at two or
three with grave advice, meant to darken counsel and to show off his
wisdom before the lama and the admiring Kamboh.  But at Somna Road the
Fates sent him a matter to think upon.  There tumbled into the
compartment, as the train was moving off, a mean, lean little person--a
Mahratta, so far as Kim could judge by the cock of the tight turban.
His face was cut, his muslin upper-garment was badly torn, and one leg
was bandaged.  He told them that a country-cart had upset and nearly
slain him:  he was going to Delhi, where his son lived.  Kim watched
him closely. If, as he asserted, he had been rolled over and over on
the earth, there should have been signs of gravel-rash on the skin.
But all his injuries seemed clean cuts, and a mere fall from a cart
could not cast a man into such extremity of terror.  As, with shaking
fingers, he knotted up the torn cloth about his neck he laid bare an
amulet of the kind called a keeper-up of the heart.  Now, amulets are
common enough, but they are not generally strung on square-plaited
copper wire, and still fewer amulets bear black enamel on silver.
There were none except the Kamboh and the lama in the compartment,
which, luckily, was of an old type with solid ends.  Kim made as to
scratch in his bosom, and thereby lifted his own amulet.  The
Mahratta's face changed altogether at the sight, and he disposed the
amulet fairly on his breast.

'Yes,' he went on to the Kamboh, 'I was in haste, and the cart, driven
by a bastard, bound its wheel in a water-cut, and besides the harm done
to me there was lost a full dish of tarkeean.  I was not a Son of the
Charm [a lucky man] that day.'

'That was a great loss,' said the Kamboh, withdrawing interest.  His
experience of Benares had made him suspicious.

'Who cooked it?'  said Kim.

'A woman.'  The Mahratta raised his eyes.

'But all women can cook tarkeean,' said the Kamboh.  'It is a good
curry, as I know.'

'Oh yes, it is a good curry,' said the Mahratta.

'And cheap,' said Kim.  'But what about caste?'

'Oh, there is no caste where men go to--look for tarkeean,' the
Mahratta replied, in the prescribed cadence.  'Of whose service art
thou?'

'Of the service of this Holy One.'  Kim pointed to the happy, drowsy
lama, who woke with a jerk at the well-loved word.

'Ah, he was sent from Heaven to aid me.  He is called the Friend of all
the World.  He is also called the Friend of the Stars.  He walks as a
physician--his time being ripe.  Great is his wisdom.'

'And a Son of the Charm,' said Kim under his breath, as the Kamboh made
haste to prepare a pipe lest the Mahratta should beg.

'And who is that?'  the Mahratta asked, glancing sideways nervously.

'One whose child I--we have cured, who lies under great debt to us. Sit
by the window, man from Jullundur.  Here is a sick one.'

'Humph!  I have no desire to mix with chance-met wastrels.  My ears are
not long.  I am not a woman wishing to overhear secrets.'  The Jat slid
himself heavily into a far corner.

'Art thou anything of a healer?  I am ten leagues deep in calamity,'
cried the Mahratta, picking up the cue.

'This man is cut and bruised all over.  I go about to cure him,' Kim
retorted.  'None interfered between thy babe and me.'

'I am rebuked,' said the Kamboh meekly.  'I am thy debtor for the life
of my son.  Thou art a miracle-worker--I know it.'

'Show me the cuts.'  Kim bent over the Mahratta's neck, his heart
nearly choking him; for this was the Great Game with a vengeance. 'Now,
tell thy tale swiftly, brother, while I say a charm.'

'I come from the South, where my work lay.  One of us they slew by the
roadside.  Hast thou heard?'  Kim shook his head.  He, of course, knew
nothing of E's predecessor, slain down South in the habit of an Arab
trader.  'Having found a certain letter which I was sent to seek, I
came away.  I escaped from the city and ran to Mhow.  So sure was I
that none knew, I did not change my face.  At Mhow a woman brought
charge against me of theft of jewellery in that city which I had left.
Then I saw the cry was out against me.  I ran from Mhow by night,
bribing the police, who had been bribed to hand me over without
question to my enemies in the South.  Then I lay in old Chitor city a
week, a penitent in a temple, but I could not get rid of the letter
which was my charge.  I buried it under the Queen's Stone, at Chitor,
in the place known to us all.'

Kim did not know, but not for worlds would he have broken the thread.

'At Chitor, look you, I was all in Kings' country; for Kotah to the
east is beyond the Queen's law, and east again lie Jaipur and Gwalior.
Neither love spies, and there is no justice.  I was hunted like a wet
jackal; but I broke through at Bandakui, where I heard there was a
charge against me of murder in the city I had left--of the murder of a
boy.  They have both the corpse and the witnesses waiting.'

'But cannot the Government protect?'

'We of the Game are beyond protection.  If we die, we die.  Our names
are blotted from the book.  That is all.  At Bandakui, where lives one
of Us, I thought to slip the scent by changing my face, and so made me
a Mahratta.  Then I came to Agra, and would have turned back to Chitor
to recover the letter.  So sure I was I had slipped them. Therefore I
did not send a tar [telegram] to any one saying where the letter lay.
I wished the credit of it all.'

Kim nodded.  He understood that feeling well.

'But at Agra, walking in the streets, a man cried a debt against me,
and approaching with many witnesses, would hale me to the courts then
and there.  Oh, they are clever in the South!  He recognized me as his
agent for cotton.  May he burn in Hell for it!'

'And wast thou?'

'O fool!  I was the man they sought for the matter of the letter!  I
ran into the Fleshers' Ward and came out by the House of the Jew, who
feared a riot and pushed me forth.  I came afoot to Somna Road--I had
only money for my tikkut to Delhi--and there, while I lay in a ditch
with a fever, one sprang out of the bushes and beat me and cut me and
searched me from head to foot.  Within earshot of the terain it was!'

'Why did he not slay thee out of hand?'

'They are not so foolish.  If I am taken in Delhi at the instance of
lawyers, upon a proven charge of murder, my body is handed over to the
State that desires it.  I go back guarded, and then--I die slowly for
an example to the rest of Us.  The South is not my country.  I run in
circles--like a goat with one eye.  I have not eaten for two days.  I
am marked'--he touched the filthy bandage on his leg--'so that they
will know me at Delhi.'

'Thou art safe in the te-rain, at least.'

'Live a year at the Great Game and tell me that again!  The wires will
be out against me at Delhi, describing every tear and rag upon me.
Twenty--a hundred, if need be--will have seen me slay that boy.  And
thou art useless!'

Kim knew enough of native methods of attack not to doubt that the case
would be deadly complete--even to the corpse.  The Mahratta twitched
his fingers with pain from time to time.  The Kamboh in his corner
glared sullenly; the lama was busy over his beads; and Kim, fumbling
doctor-fashion at the man's neck, thought out his plan between
invocations.

'Hast thou a charm to change my shape?  Else I am dead.  Five--ten
minutes alone, if I had not been so pressed, and I might--'

'Is he cured yet, miracle-worker?'  said the Kamboh jealously.  'Thou
hast chanted long enough.'

'Nay.  There is no cure for his hurts, as I see, except he sit for
three days in the habit of a bairagi.'  This is a common penance, often
imposed on a fat trader by his spiritual teacher.

'One priest always goes about to make another priest,' was the retort.
Like most grossly superstitious folk, the Kamboh could not keep his
tongue from deriding his Church.

'Will thy son be a priest, then?  It is time he took more of my
quinine.'

'We Jats are all buffaloes,' said the Kamboh, softening anew.

Kim rubbed a finger-tip of bitterness on the child's trusting little
lips.  'I have asked for nothing,' he said sternly to the father,
'except food.  Dost thou grudge me that?  I go to heal another man.
Have I thy leave--Prince?'

Up flew the man's huge paws in supplication.  'Nay--nay.  Do not mock
me thus.'

'It pleases me to cure this sick one.  Thou shalt acquire merit by
aiding.  What colour ash is there in thy pipe-bowl?  White.  That is
auspicious.  Was there raw turmeric among thy foodstuffs?'

'I--I--'

'Open thy bundle!'

It was the usual collection of small oddments:  bits of cloth, quack
medicines, cheap fairings, a clothful of atta--greyish, rough-ground
native flour--twists of down-country tobacco, tawdry pipe-stems, and a
packet of curry-stuff, all wrapped in a quilt.  Kim turned it over with
the air of a wise warlock, muttering a Mohammedan invocation.

'This is wisdom I learned from the Sahibs,' he whispered to the lama;
and here, when one thinks of his training at Lurgan's, he spoke no more
than the truth.  'There is a great evil in this man's fortune, as shown
by the Stars, which--which troubles him.  Shall I take it away?'

'Friend of the Stars, thou hast done well in all things.  Let it be at
thy pleasure.  Is it another healing?'

'Quick!  Be quick!'  gasped the Mahratta.  'The train may stop.'

'A healing against the shadow of death,' said Kim, mixing the Kamboh's
flour with the mingled charcoal and tobacco ash in the red-earth bowl
of the pipe.  E, without a word, slipped off his turban and shook down
his long black hair.


'That is my food--priest,' the jat growled.

'A buffalo in the temple!  Hast thou dared to look even thus far?' said
Kim.  'I must do mysteries before fools; but have a care for thine
eyes.  Is there a film before them already?  I save the babe, and for
return thou--oh, shameless!'  The man flinched at the direct gaze, for
Kim was wholly in earnest.

'Shall I curse thee, or shall I--' He picked up the outer cloth of the
bundle and threw it over the bowed head.  'Dare so much as to think a
wish to see, and--and--even I cannot save thee.  Sit!  Be dumb!'

'I am blind--dumb.  Forbear to curse!  Co--come, child; we will play a
game of hiding.  Do not, for my sake, look from under the cloth.'

'I see hope,' said E23.  'What is thy scheme?'

'This comes next,' said Kim, plucking the thin body-shirt.  E23
hesitated, with all a North-West man's dislike of baring his body.

'What is caste to a cut throat?'  said Kim, rending it to the waist.
'We must make thee a yellow Saddhu all over.  Strip--strip swiftly, and
shake thy hair over thine eyes while I scatter the ash. Now, a
caste-mark on thy forehead.'  He drew from his bosom the little Survey
paint-box and a cake of crimson lake.

'Art thou only a beginner?'  said E23, labouring literally for the dear
life, as he slid out of his body-wrappings and stood clear in the
loin-cloth while Kim splashed in a noble caste-mark on the ash-smeared
brow.

'But two days entered to the Game, brother,' Kim replied.  'Smear more
ash on the bosom.'

'Hast thou met--a physician of sick pearls?'  He switched out his long,
tight-rolled turban-cloth and, with swiftest hands, rolled it over and
under about his loins into the intricate devices of a Saddhu's cincture.

'Hah!  Dost thou know his touch, then?  He was my teacher for a while.
We must bar thy legs.  Ash cures wounds.  Smear it again.'

'I was his pride once, but thou art almost better.  The Gods are kind
to us!  Give me that.'

It was a tin box of opium pills among the rubbish of the Jat's bundle.
E23 gulped down a half handful.  'They are good against hunger, fear,
and chill.  And they make the eyes red too,' he explained.  'Now I
shall have heart to play the Game.  We lack only a Saddhu's tongs.
What of the old clothes?'

Kim rolled them small, and stuffed them into the slack folds of his
tunic.  With a yellow-ochre paint cake he smeared the legs and the
breast, great streaks against the background of flour, ash, and
turmeric.

'The blood on them is enough to hang thee, brother.'

'Maybe; but no need to throw them out of the window ...  It is
finished.'  His voice thrilled with a boy's pure delight in the Game.
'Turn and look, O Jat!'

'The Gods protect us,' said the hooded Kamboh, emerging like a buffalo
from the reeds.  'But--whither went the Mahratta?  What hast thou done?'

Kim had been trained by Lurgan Sahib; E23, by virtue of his business,
was no bad actor.  In place of the tremulous, shrinking trader there
lolled against the corner an all but naked, ash-smeared, ochre-barred,
dusty-haired Saddhu, his swollen eyes--opium takes quick effect on an
empty stomach--luminous with insolence and bestial lust, his legs
crossed under him, Kim's brown rosary round his neck, and a scant yard
of worn, flowered chintz on his shoulders.  The child buried his face
in his amazed father's arms.

'Look up, Princeling!  We travel with warlocks, but they will not hurt
thee.  Oh, do not cry ...  What is the sense of curing a child one day
and killing him with fright the next?'

'The child will be fortunate all his life.  He has seen a great
healing.  When I was a child I made clay men and horses.'

'I have made them too.  Sir Banas, he comes in the night and makes them
all alive at the back of our kitchen-midden,' piped the child.

'And so thou art not frightened at anything.  Eh, Prince?'

'I was frightened because my father was frightened.  I felt his arms
shake.'

'Oh, chicken-man!'  said Kim, and even the abashed Jat laughed.  'I
have done a healing on this poor trader.  He must forsake his gains and
his account-books, and sit by the wayside three nights to overcome the
malignity of his enemies.  The Stars are against him.'

'The fewer money-lenders the better, say I; but, Saddhu or no Saddhu,
he should pay for my stuff on his shoulders.'

'So?  But that is thy child on thy shoulder--given over to the
burning-ghat not two days ago.  There remains one thing more.  I did
this charm in thy presence because need was great.  I changed his shape
and his soul.  None the less, if, by any chance, O man from Jullundur,
thou rememberest what thou hast seen, either among the elders sitting
under the village tree, or in thine own house, or in company of thy
priest when he blesses thy cattle, a murrain will come among the
buffaloes, and a fire in thy thatch, and rats in the corn-bins, and the
curse of our Gods upon thy fields that they may be barren before thy
feet and after thy ploughshare.' This was part of an old curse picked
up from a fakir by the Taksali Gate in the days of Kim's innocence.  It
lost nothing by repetition.

'Cease, Holy One!  In mercy, cease!'  cried the Jat.  'Do not curse the
household.  I saw nothing!  I heard nothing!  I am thy cow!'  and he
made to grab at Kim's bare foot beating rhythmically on the carriage
floor.  'But since thou hast been permitted to aid me in the matter of
a pinch of flour and a little opium and such trifles as I have honoured
by using in my art, so will the Gods return a blessing,' and he gave it
at length, to the man's immense relief.  It was one that he had learned
from Lurgan Sahib.

The lama stared through his spectacles as he had not stared at the
business of disguisement.  'Friend of the Stars,' he said at last,
'thou hast acquired great wisdom.  Beware that it do not give birth to
pride.  No man having the Law before his eyes speaks hastily of any
matter which he has seen or encountered.'

'No--no--no, indeed,' cried the farmer, fearful lest the master should
be minded to improve on the pupil.  E23, with relaxed mouth, gave
himself up to the opium that is meat, tobacco, and medicine to the
spent Asiatic.

So, in a silence of awe and great miscomprehension, they slid into
Delhi about lamp-lighting time.

 As Kim sits in his disguise at the Benares train station, he feels alone in the world and wonders, "Who is Kim--Kim--Kim?" A Hindu holy man approaches Kim and he tells him that he is having a spiritual crisis. The holy man sympathizes: he has been looking for Enlightenment for years. The holy man assures Kim that we are all in the same boat, trying to figure out life and our place in it. This thought cheers Kim up, and he drops the emo act and returns to his usual self. There is a Punjabi farmer outside the Jain temple where the lama is staying. He has a sick child with him. The farmer complains to Kim that he has been to every kind of priest, and none of them have been able to help his ailing son. He is almost out of money, but he will do what he can if Kim's lama can cure his son. Kim goes into the Jain temple to find his lama. The two of them go out together to the Punjabi farmer and his son, where Kim pulls out that medicine box he got from the Babu way back in Chapter 9. It's stocked with quinine pills and beef bouillon cubes . Kim recognizes that, yes, the kid has a fever, but the real problem is that he is malnourished. So Kim gives the boy a cube of beef bouillon to suck on . He also gives the father six cubes to boil up in water or milk. And he hands over a quinine pill. Kim tells the Punjabi farmer to come back the next day with his son, who should be fine now that he has food and medicine. The lama is deeply impressed by how much Kim has learned. But he isn't totally surprised--it turns out the lama has been keeping track of Kim, first through letters from Father Victor, and then through direct news from the Babu. The lama is glad to see that Kim is ready, because the time has come: they need to set out once again to search for the River of the Arrow. They wait until the next morning to see what news the Punjabi father brings of his son's health. The son is much better, and the lama brags about Kim's mad skillz in healing to the watching Jain monks. Kim offers the Punjabi farmer more medicine in case the sickness comes back--but this time, he has to pay with food. At this temple, Kim has to eat lightly, and it's all vegetarian. He's starving, and he can barely wait while the lama finishes saying goodbye to all the monks. Finally, they go to meet the Punjabi farmer, who is waiting with tons of food. They all pig out. Kim and the lama plan to board the train and head back up to the house of that Kulu woman from Chapter 4. The Punjabi farmer is also going that way, so he will travel with them for a bit. While they are riding the train north, something weird happens: A roughed-up Mahratta man comes into their train car, and Kim spots that this man has the same kind of silver amulet that Kim is wearing around his own neck. There's no one in the car except for the lama, Kim, the Punjabi farmer, and his son. So Kim takes a chance and displays his silver amulet. The Mahratta man notices it and drops a reference to the "Son of the Charm" in his next sentence. When the lama starts boasting to the Mahratta about Kim as the "Friend of all the World" , Kim jumps in to say that he is also a "Son of the Charm" . So now Kim knows that the Mahratta man is also an employee of the British Secret Service. The two of them talk together quietly, while Kim pretends to be looking at the man's wounds. The Mahratta is on the run from his enemies in the south, who have chased him from city to city--he has been so closely chased that he hasn't been able to deliver the secret letter that was his job. The Mahratta is sure that, as soon as the train reaches the city of Delhi in about five or ten minutes, he's done for. Kim decides to dress the guy up as a holy man, a Saddhu . He makes the man strip down to his loin cloth, covers the man in ash , and uses some of the red and yellow paints from his medicine box to add to the disguise. And voila--thanks to Kim's skill with disguise, where there once was a Mahratta, now there is a Hindu Saddhu. The agent, E23, is impressed with Kim's skills; he also recognizes the signs of Lurgan's training. The agent gulps down some opium pills to look authentically out of it and in a trance. The Punjabi farmer and the child think that Kim has actually taken up shape-shifting and magic. The Punjabi farmer also swears that he has seen nothing--not only is he grateful to Kim, but he is also afraid of him.

