Kim Rudyard Kipling (web ebook reader .TXT) 📖

if at will. There was a fakir by the Taksali Gate who had just this gift and made money by it, especially when cursing silly women. Kim stared with interest. His disreputable friend could further twitch his ears, almost like a goat, and Kim was disappointed that this new man could not imitate him.

“Do not be afraid,” said Lurgan Sahib suddenly.

“Why should I fear?”

“Thou wilt sleep here tonight, and stay with me till it is time to go again to Nucklao. It is an order.”

“It is an order,” Kim repeated. “But where shall I sleep?”

“Here, in this room.” Lurgan Sahib waved his hand towards the darkness behind him.

“So be it,” said Kim composedly. “Now?”

He nodded and held the lamp above his head. As the light swept them, there leaped out from the walls a collection of Tibetan devil-dance masks, hanging above the fiend-embroidered draperies of those ghastly functions⁠—horned masks, scowling masks, and masks of idiotic terror. In a corner, a Japanese warrior, mailed and plumed, menaced him with a halberd, and a score of lances and khandas and kuttars gave back the unsteady gleam. But what interested Kim more than all these things⁠—he had seen devil-dance masks at the Lahore Museum⁠—was a glimpse of the soft-eyed Hindu child who had left him in the doorway, sitting cross-legged under the table of pearls with a little smile on his scarlet lips.

“I think that Lurgan Sahib wishes to make me afraid. And I am sure that that devil’s brat below the table wishes to see me afraid.

“This place,” he said aloud, “is like a Wonder House. Where is my bed?”

Lurgan Sahib pointed to a native quilt in a corner by the loathsome masks, picked up the lamp, and left the room black.

“Was that Lurgan Sahib?” Kim asked as he cuddled down. No answer. He could hear the Hindu boy breathing, however, and, guided by the sound, crawled across the floor, and cuffed into the darkness, crying: “Give answer, devil! Is this the way to lie to a Sahib?”

From the darkness he fancied he could hear the echo of a chuckle. It could not be his soft-fleshed companion, because he was weeping. So Kim lifted up his voice and called aloud:

“Lurgan Sahib! O Lurgan Sahib! Is it an order that thy servant does not speak to me?”

“It is an order.” The voice came from behind him and he started.

“Very good. But remember,” he muttered, as he resought the quilt, “I will beat thee in the morning. I do not love Hindus.”

That was no cheerful night; the room being overfull of voices and music. Kim was waked twice by someone calling his name. The second time he set out in search, and ended by bruising his nose against a box that certainly spoke with a human tongue, but in no sort of human accent. It seemed to end in a tin trumpet and to be joined by wires to a smaller box on the floor⁠—so far, at least, as he could judge by touch. And the voice, very hard and whirring, came out of the trumpet. Kim rubbed his nose and grew furious, thinking, as usual, in Hindi.

“This with a beggar from the bazaar might be good, but⁠—I am a Sahib and the son of a Sahib and, which is twice as much more beside, a student of Nucklao. Yess” (here he turned to English), “a boy of St. Xavier’s. Damn Mr. Lurgan’s eyes!⁠—It is some sort of machinery like a sewing-machine. Oh, it is a great cheek of him⁠—we are not frightened that way at Lucknow⁠—No!” Then in Hindi: “But what does he gain? He is only a trader⁠—I am in his shop. But Creighton Sahib is a Colonel⁠—and I think Creighton Sahib gave orders that it should be done. How I will beat that Hindu in the morning! What is this?”

The trumpet-box was pouring out a string of the most elaborate abuse that even Kim had ever heard, in a high uninterested voice, that for a moment lifted the short hairs of his neck. When the vile thing drew breath, Kim was reassured by the soft, sewing-machine-like whirr.

“Chûp!”40 he cried, and again he heard a chuckle that decided him. “Chûp⁠—or I break your head.”

The box took no heed. Kim wrenched at the tin trumpet and something lifted with a click. He had evidently raised a lid. If there were a devil inside, now was its time, for⁠—he sniffed⁠—thus did the sewing-machines of the bazaar smell. He would clean that shaitan. He slipped off his jacket, and plunged it into the box’s mouth. Something long and round bent under the pressure, there was a whirr and the voice stopped⁠—as voices must if you ram a thrice-doubled coat on to the wax cylinder and into the works of an expensive phonograph. Kim finished his slumbers with a serene mind.

In the morning he was aware of Lurgan Sahib looking down on him.

“Oah!” said Kim, firmly resolved to cling to his Sahib-dom. “There was a box in the night that gave me bad talk. So I stopped it. Was it your box?”

The man held out his hand.

“Shake hands, O’Hara,” he said. “Yes, it was my box. I keep such things because my friends the Rajahs like them. That one is broken, but it was cheap at the price. Yes, my friends, the Kings are very fond of toys⁠—and so am I sometimes.”

Kim looked him over out of the corners of his eyes. He was a Sahib in that he wore Sahib’s clothes; the accent of his Urdu, the intonation of his English, showed that he was anything but a Sahib. He seemed to understand what moved in Kim’s mind ere the boy opened his mouth, and he took no pains to explain himself as did Father Victor or the Lucknow masters. Sweetest of all⁠—he treated Kim as an equal on the Asiatic side.

“I am sorry you cannot beat my boy this morning. He says he will kill