Read Online Kim by Rudyard Kipling - Free Book Online

and even four crops a year—through patches of sugar-cane, tobacco, long white radishes, and nol-kol, all that day they strolled on, turning aside to every glimpse of water; rousing village dogs and sleeping villages at noonday; the lama replying to the volleyed questions with an unswerving simplicity. They sought a River—a River of miraculous healing. Had any one knowledge of such a stream? Sometimes men laughed, but more often heard the story out to the end and offered them a place in the shade, a drink of milk, and a meal. The women were always kind, and the little children as children are the world over, alternately shy and venturesome. Evening found them at rest under the village tree of a mud-walled, mud-roofed hamlet, talking to the headman as the cattle came in from the grazing-grounds and the women prepared the day’s last meal. They had passed beyond the belt of market-gardens round hungry Umballa, and were among the mile-wide green of the staple crops.
    He was a white-bearded and affable elder, used to entertaining strangers. He dragged out a string bedstead for the lama, set warm cooked food before him, prepared him a pipe, and, the evening ceremonies being finished in the village temple, sent for the village priest.
    Kim told the older children tales of the size and beauty of Lahore, of railway travel, and such-like city things, while the men talked, slowly as their cattle chew the cud.
    ‘I cannot fathom it,’ said the headman at last to the priest. ‘How readest thou this talk?’ The lama, his tale told, was silently telling his beads.
    ‘He is a Seeker,’ the priest answered. ‘The land is full of such. Remember him who came only last month—the fakir with the tortoise?’
    ‘Ay, but that man had right and reason, for Krishna Himself appeared in a vision promising him Paradise without the burning-pyre if he journeyed to Prayag. This man seeks no God who is within my knowledge.’
    ‘Peace, he is old: he comes from far off, and he is mad,’ the smooth-shaven priest replied. ‘Hear me.’ He turned to the lama. ‘Three kos to the westward runs the great road to Calcutta.’
    ‘But I would go to Benares—to Benares.’
    ‘And to Benares also. It crosses all streams on this side of Hind. Now my word to thee, Holy One, is rest here till tomorrow. Then take the road’ (it was the Grand Trunk Road he meant) ‘and test each stream that it overpasses; for, as I understand, the virtue of thy River lies neither in one pool nor place, but throughout its length. Then, if thy Gods will, be assured that thou wilt come upon thy freedom.’
    ‘That is well said.’ The lama was much impressed by the plan. ‘We will begin tomorrow, and a blessing on thee for showing old feet such a near road.’ A deep, sing-song Chinese half-chant closed the sentence. Even the priest was impressed, and the headman feared an evil spell: but none could look at the lama’s simple, eager face and doubt him long.
    ‘Seest thou my chela ?’ he said, diving into his snuff-gourd with an important sniff. It was his duty to repay courtesy with courtesy.
    ‘I see—and hear.’ The headman rolled his eye where Kim was chatting to a girl in blue as she laid crackling thorns on a fire.
    ‘He also has a Search of his own. No river, but a Bull. Yea, a Red Bull on a green field will some day raise him to honour. He is, I think, not altogether of this world. He was sent of a sudden to aid me in this search, and his name is Friend of all the World.’
    The priest smiled. ‘Ho there, Friend of all the World,’ he cried across the sharp-smelling smoke, ‘what art thou?’
    ‘This Holy One’s disciple,’ said Kim.
    ‘He says thou art a būt .’
    ‘Can būts eat?’ said Kim, with a twinkle. ‘For I am hungry.’
    ‘It is no jest,’ cried the lama. ‘A certain astrologer of that city whose name I have forgotten——’
    ‘That is no more than the city of Umballa where we slept last night,’ Kim whispered to the