Book: The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition

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"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 beginning 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 he was sitting. 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 snow too, and they
fires a footy little arrow at us. Dravot he shoots above their heads,
and they all falls down flat. 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 Imbra--and lays a rifle and a cartridge at his feet, rubbing his
nose respectfuly with his own nose, patting him on the head, and
nods his head, and says, 'That's all right. I'm in the know too, and
these old jimjams 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
he 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?"

"Take some more whisky and go on," I 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 Dravot picks them off 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 villages?'

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 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 of the line. Then all the 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 anything 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 letting 'em into the
new Kingdom. That was to impress the people, and then they
settled down 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
matchlocks. We makes friends with the priest, and I stays there
alone with two of the Army, teaching the men how to drill; and a
thundering big Chief comes across the snow with kettledrums 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
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 looking 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 cipher of his own. He could, after the
lapse of days or hours, repeat the sentence which he had reeled up.

He had reduced the alphabet to eleven primitive sounds, and tried
to teach me his method, but I could not understand.

"I sent that letter to Dravot," said Carnehan, "and told him to come
back because this Kingdom 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
hundreds 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 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 I wore it for the glory.

Hammered gold it was--five pounds 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 me!' 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 is!' I 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 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
villages.'

" 'It's against all the law,' I says, 'holding a Lodge without warrant
from any one; and you know we never held office in any Lodge.'

" 'It's a master stroke o' policy,' says Dravot. 'It means running the
country as easy as a four-wheeled bogie 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 a 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 off my legs, but I wasn't such a fool as not to see
what a pull this Craft business 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 temple for the
Master's chair, and little stones for the officer's chairs, and painted
the black pavement 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
Alexander, and Passed 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 were 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 Bazaar-master when I was
at Mhow, and so on, and so on.

"The most amazing miracles 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 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 Imbra. 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
gavel 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 o' the
country, and King of Kafiristan equally with Peachey!' At that he
puts on his crown and I puts on mine,--I was doing Senior
Warden,--and we opens the Lodge in most ample form. It was an
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 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 clamouring 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 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, because 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 way
I 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, and make 'em throw rope bridges across the
ravines 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 about, and I just waited for orders.

"But Dravot never showed me disrespect before 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 villages. That was his Council of War,
and the four priests of Bashkai, Shu, Khawak, and Madora 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 Martini rifles, that
come out of the Amir's workshops at Kabul, from one of the
Amir's Herati regiments that would have sold the very teeth out of
their mouths for turquoises.

"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 in 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'll 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 o' little children. Two million
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, Serjeant Pensioner at Segowli-- many's the good dinner
he's given me, and his wife a pair of trousers. There's Donkin, the
Warder of Tounghoo 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
dispensation 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 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 living man would have followed me and made me what I am
as you have done. You're a first-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 I was sorry when I
made that remark, but it did hurt me sore to find Daniel talking so
superior, 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 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, all red like the gold of his
crown.

" 'I'm sorry, Daniel,' says I. 'I've done all I 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!' I says. 'We've both got
all the work we can, though I am a fool. Remember the Contrack,
and keep clear o' 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 out like chicken
and ham.'

" 'Don't tempt me!' I says. 'I will not have any dealings with a
woman, not till we are a dam' side more settled than we are now.

I've been doing the work o' two men, and you've been doing the
work of 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; and no
women.'"

" 'Who's talking o' women?' 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 affairs.

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 o' 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 too!'

" '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
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 sun
being on his crown and beard and all.

"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 bought your guns? Who repaired the bridges?
Who's the Grand Master of the sign cut in the stone?' says he, 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 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
knows everything? 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.'

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