The Phantom Rickshaw

by Rudyard Kipling

  ‘But that is provided against in the Contrack,’ said Carnehan.

  ‘Neither Women nor Liquor, Daniel.’

  ‘And that’s all we know, except that no one has gone there, and they fight and in any place where they fight a man who knows how to drill men can always be a King. We shall go to those parts and say to any King we find—“D’you want to vanquish your foes?” and we will show him how to drill men; for that we know better than anything else. Then we will subvert that King and seize his Throne and establish a dynasty.’

  ‘You’ll be cut to pieces before you’re fifty miles across the border,’ I said. ‘You have to travel through Afghanistan to get to that country. It’s one mass of mountains and peaks and glaciers, and no Englishman has been through it. The people are utter brutes, and even if you reached them you couldn’t do anything.’

  ‘That’s more like,’ said Carnehan. ‘If you could think us a little more mad we would be more pleased. We have come to you to know about this country, to read a book about it and to be shown maps. We want you to tell us that we are fools and to show us your books.’ He turned to the bookcases.

  ‘Are you at all in earnest?’ I said.

  ‘A little,’ said Dravot sweetly. ‘As big a map as you have got, even if it’s all blank where Kafiristan is, and any books you’ve got. We can read, though we aren’t very educated.’

  I uncased the big thirty-two-miles-to-the-inch map of India, and the two smaller frontier maps, hauled down volume INF-KAN of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the men consulted them.

  ‘See here!’ said Dravot, his thumb on the map. ‘Up to Jagdallak, Peachey and me know the road. We was there with Roberts’s Army. We’ll have to turn off to the right at Jagdallak through Laghmann territory. Then we get among the hills— fourteen thousand feet—fifteen thousand—it will be cold work there, but it don’t look very far on the map.’

  I handed him Wood on the Sources of the Oxus. Carnehan was deep in the Encyclopaedia.

  ‘They’re a mixed lot,’ said Dravot reflectively; ‘and it won’t help us to know the names of their tribes. The more tribes the more they’ll fight, and the better for us. From Jagdallak to Ashang. H’mm!’

  ‘But all the information about the country is as sketchy and inaccurate as can be,’ I protested. ‘No one knows anything about it really. Here’s the file of the United Services’ Institute. Read what Bellew says.’

  ‘Blow Bellew!’ said Carnehan. ‘Dan, they’re an all-fired lot of heathens, but this book here says they think they’re related to us English.’

  I smoked while the men pored over Raverty, Wood, the maps and the Encyclopaedia.

  ‘There is no use your waiting,’ said Dravot politely. ‘It’s about four o’clock now. We’ll go before six o’clock if you want to sleep, and we won’t steal any of the papers. Don’t you sit up. We’re two harmless lunatics, and if you come, tomorrow evening, down to the Serai, we’ll say good-by to you.’

  ‘You are two fools,’ I answered. ‘You’ll be turned back at the frontier or cut up the minute you set foot in Afghanistan. Do you want any money or a recommendation down-country? I can help you to the chance of work next week.’

  ‘Next week we shall be hard at work ourselves, thank you,’ said Dravot. ‘It isn’t so easy being a King as it looks. When we’ve got our Kingdom in going order we’ll let you know, and you can come up and help us to govern it.’

  ‘Would two lunatics make a Contrack like that?’ said Carnehan with subdued pride, showing me a greasy half-sheet of note-paper on which was written the following. I copied it, then and there, as a curiosity:

  This Contract between me and you persuing witnesseth in the name of God—Amen and so forth.

  (One) That me and you will settle this matter together: i.e., to be Kings of Kafiristan.

  (Two) That you and me will not, while this matter is being settled, look at any Liquor, nor any Woman black, white or brown, so as to get mixed up with one or the other harmful.

  (Three) That we conduct ourselves with dignity and discretion, and if one of us gets into trouble the other will stay by him.

  Signed by you and me this day.

  Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan.

  Daniel Dravot.

  Both Gentlemen at Large.

  ‘There was no need for the last article,’ said Carnehan, blushing modestly; ‘but it looks regular. Now you know the sort of men that loafers are—we are loafers, Dan, until we get out of India—and do you think that we would sign a Contrack like that unless we was in earnest? We have kept away from the two things that make life worth having.’

  ‘You won’t enjoy your lives much longer if you are going to try this idiotic adventure. Don’t set the office on fire,’ I said, ‘and go away before nine o’clock.’

  I left them still poring over the maps and making notes on the back of the ‘Contrack’. ‘Be sure to come down to the Serai tomorrow,’ were their parting words.

  The Kumharsen Serai is the great four-square sink of humanity where the strings of camels and horses from the north load and unload. All the nationalities of Central Asia may be found there, and most of the folk of India proper. Balkh and Bokhara there meet Bengal and Bombay, and try to draw eye-teeth. You can buy ponies, turquoises, Persian pussy-cats, saddle-bags, fat-tailed sheep and musk in the Kumharsen Serai and get many strange things for nothing. In the afternoon I went down there to see whether my friends intended to keep their word or were lying about drunk.

  A priest attired in fragments of ribbons and rags stalked up to me, gravely twisting a child’s paper whirligig. Behind him was his servant bending under the load of a crate of mud toys. The two were loading up two camels, and the inhabitants of the Serai watched them with shrieks of laughter.

  ‘The priest is mad,’ said a horse-dealer to me. ‘He is going up to Kabul to sell toys to the Amir. He will either be raised to honour or have his head cut off. He came in here this morning and has been behaving madly ever since.’

  ‘The witless are under the protection of God,’ stammered a flat-checked Usbeg in broken Hindi. ‘They foretell future events.’

  ‘Would they could have foretold that my caravan would have been cut up by the Shinwaris almost within shadow of the Pass!’ grunted the Eusufzai agent of a Rajputana trading-house whose goods had been feloniously diverted into the hands of other robbers just across the border, and whose misfortunes were the laughing-stock of the bazaar. ‘Ohé, priest, whence come you and whither do you go?’

  ‘From Roum have I come,’ shouted the priest, waving his whirligig; ‘from Roum, blown by the breath of a hundred devils across the sea! O thieves, robbers, liars, the blessing of Pir Khan on pigs, dogs and perjurers! Who will take the Protected of God to the north to sell charms that are never still to the Amir? The camels shall not gall, the sons shall not fall sick, and the wives shall remain faithful while they are away, of the men who give me place in their caravan. Who will assist me to slipper the King of Roos with a golden slipper with a silver heel? The protection of Pir Khan be upon his labours!’ He spread out the skirts of his gaberdine and pirouetted between the lines of tethered horses.

  ‘There starts a caravan from Peshawar to Kabul in twenty days, Huzrut,’ said the Eusufzai trader. ‘My camels go therewith. Do thou also go and bring us good luck.’

  ‘I will go even now!’ shouted the priest. ‘I will depart upon my winged camels, and be at Peshawar in a day! Ho! Hazar Mir Khan,’ he yelled to his servant, ‘drive out the camels, but let me first mount my own.’

  He leaped on the back of his beast as it knelt, and, turning round to me, cried: ‘Come thou also, Sahib, a little along the road, and I will sell thee a charm—an amulet that shall make thee King of Kafiristan.’

  Then the light broke upon me, and I followed the two camels out of the Serai till we reached open road and the priest halted.

  ‘What d’you think o’ that?’ said he in English. ‘Carnehan can’t talk their patter, so I’ve made him my servant. He
makes a handsome servant. ’Tisn’t for nothing that I’ve been knocking about the country for fourteen years. Didn’t I do that talk neat? We’ll hitch on to a caravan at Peshawar till we get to Jagdallak, and then we’ll see if we can get donkeys for our camels, and strike into Kafiristan. Whirligigs for the Amir, O Lor! Put your hand under the camel-bags and tell me what you feel.’

  I felt the butt of a Martini, and another and another.

  ‘Twenty of ’em,’ said Dravot placidly. ‘Twenty of ’em. and ammunition to correspond, under the whirligigs and the mud dolls.’

  ‘Heaven help you if you are caught with those things!’ I said. ‘A Martini is worth her weight in silver among the Pathans.’

  ‘Fifteen hundred rupees of capital—every rupee we could beg, borrow, or steal—are invested on these two camels,’ said Dravot. ‘We won’t get caught. We’re going through the Khaiber with a regular caravan. Who’d touch a poor mad priest?’

  ‘Have you got everything you want?’ I asked, overcome with astonishment.

  ‘Not yet, but we shall soon. Give us a memento of your kindness, Brother. You did me a service yesterday, and that time in Marwar. Half my Kingdom shall you have, as the saying is.’ I slipped a small charm compass from my watch-chain and handed it up to the priest.

  ‘Good-by,’ said Dravot, giving me hand cautiously. ‘It’s the last time we’ll shake hands with an Englishman these many days. Shake hands with him Carnehan,’ he cried, as the second camel passed me.

  Carnehan leaned down and shook hands. Then the camels passed away along the dusty road, and I was left alone to wonder. My eye could detect no failure in the disguises. The scene in the Serai attested that they were complete to the native mind. There was just the chance, therefore, that Carnehan and Dravot would be able to wander through Afghanistan without detection. But, beyond, they would find death, certain and awful death.

  Ten days later a native friend of mine, giving me the news of the day from Peshawar, wound up his letter with: ‘There has been much laughter here on account of a certain mad priest who is going on his estimation to sell pretty gauds and insignificant trinkets which he ascribes as great charms to H.H. the Amir of Bokhara. He passed through Peshawar and associated himself to the Second Summer caravan that goes to Kabul. The merchants are pleased because through superstition they imagine that such mad fellows bring good-fortune.’

  The two, then, were beyond the border. I would have prayed for them, but, that night, a real King died in Europe, and demanded an obituary notice.

  *

  The wheel of the world swings through the same phases again and again. Summer passed and winter thereafter, and came and passed again. The daily paper continued and I with it, and upon the third summer there fell a hot night, a night-issue and a strained waiting for something to be telegraphed from the other side of the world, exactly as had happened before. A few great men had died in the past two years, the machines worked with more clatter and some of the trees in the office garden were a few feet taller. But that was all the difference.

  I passed over to the press-room, and went through just such a scene as I have already described. The nervous tension was stronger than it had been two years before, and I felt the heat more acutely. At three o’clock I cried, ‘Print off,’ and turned to go, when there crept to my chair what was left of a man. He was bent into a circle, his head was sunk between his shoulders, and he moved his feet one over the other like a bear. I could hardly see whether he walked or crawled—this rag-wrapped, whining cripple who addressed me by name, crying that he was come back. ‘Can you give me a drink?’ he whimpered. ‘For the Lord’s sake, give me a drink!’

  I went back to the office, the man following with groans of pain, and I turned up the lamp.

  ‘Don’t you know me?’ he gasped, dropping into a chair, and he turned his drawn face, surmounted by a shock of grey hair, to the light.

  I looked at him intently. Once before had I seen eyebrows that met over the nose in an inch-broad black band, but for the life of me I could not tell where.

  ‘I don’t know you,’ I said, handing him the whisky. ‘What can I do for you?’

  He took a gulp of the spirit raw, and shivered in spite of the suffocating heat.

  ‘I’ve come back,’ he repeated; ‘and I was the King of Kafiristan—me and Dravot—crowned Kings we was! In this office we settled it—you sitting there and giving us the books. I am Peachey—Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan, and you’ve been sitting here ever since—O Lord!’

  I was more than a little astonished, and expressed my feelings accordingly.

  ‘It’s true,’ said Carnehan, with a dry cackle, nursing his feet, which were wrapped in rags. ‘True as gospel. Kings we were, with crowns upon our heads—me and Dravot—poor Dan—oh, poor, poor Dan, that would never take advice, not though I begged of him!’

  ‘Take the whisky,’ I said, ‘and take your own time. Tell me all you can recollect of everything from beginning to end. You got across the border on your camels, Dravot dressed as a mad priest and you his servant. Do you remember that?’

  ‘I ain’t mad—yet, but I shall be that way soon. Of course I remember. Keep looking at me, or maybe my words will go all to pieces. Keep looking at me in my eyes and don’t say anything.’

  I leaned forward and looked into his face as steadily as I could. He dropped one hand upon the table and I grasped it by the wrist. It was twisted like a bird’s claw, and upon the back was a ragged, red, diamond-shaped scar.

  ‘No, don’t look there. Look at me,’ said Carnehan. ‘That comes afterwards, but for the Lord’s sake don’t distrack me. We left with that caravan, me and Dravot, playing all sorts of antics to amuse the people we were with. Dravot used to make us laugh in the evenings when all the people was cooking their dinners—cooking their dinners, and . . . what did they do then? They lit little fires with sparks that went into Dravot’s beard, and we all laughed—fit to die. Little red fires they was, going into Dravot’s big red beard—so funny.’ His eyes left mine and he smiled foolishly.

  ‘You went as far as Jagdallak with that caravan,’ I said at a venture, ‘after you had lit those fires. To Jagdallak, where you turned off to try to get into Kafiristan.’

  ‘No, we didn’t neither. What are you talking about? We turned off before Jagdallak, because we heard the roads was good. But they wasn’t good enough for our two camels—mine and Dravot’s. When we left the caravan, Dravot took off all his clothes and mine too, and said we would be heathen, because the Kafirs didn’t allow Mohammedans to talk to them. So we dressed betwixt and between, and such a sight as Daniel Dravot I never saw yet nor expect to see again. He burned half his beard, and slung a sheepskin over his shoulder and shaved his head into patterns. He shaved mine too, and made me wear outrageous things to look, like a heathen. That was in a most mountaineous country, and our camels couldn’t go along any more because of the mountains. They were tall and black, and coming home I saw them fight like wild goats—there are lots of goats in Kafiristan. And these mountains, they never keep still, no more than the goats. Always fighting they are, and don’t let you sleep at night.’

  ‘Take some more whisky,’ I said very slowly ‘What did you and Daniel Dravot do when the camels could go no further because of the rough roads that led into Kafiristan?’

  ‘What did which do? There was a party called Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan that was with Dravot. Shall I tell you about him? He died out there in the cold. Slap from the bridge fell old Peachey, turning and twisting in the air like a penny whirligig that you can sell to the Amir.—No; they was two or three ha’pence, those whirligigs, or I am much mistaken and woeful sore. And then these camels were no use, and Peachey said to Dravot—“For the Lord’s sake, let’s get out of this before our heads are chopped off,” and with that they killed the camels all among the mountains, not having anything in particular to eat, but first they took off the boxes with the guns and the ammunition, and two men came along driving four mules. Dravot up
and dances in front of them, singing,—“Sell me four mules.” Says the first man,—“lf you are rich enough to buy you are rich enough to rob;” but before ever he could put his hand to his knife, Dravot breaks his neck over his knee, and the other party runs away. So Carnehan loaded the mules with the rifles that was taken off the camels, and, together we starts forward into those bitter cold mountaineous parts, and never a road broader than the back of your hand.’

  He paused for a moment, while I asked him if he could remember the nature of the country through which he had journeyed.

  ‘I am telling you as straight as I can, but my head isn’t as good as it might be. They drove nails through it to make me hear better how Dravot died. The country was mountainous and the mules were most contrary and the inhabitants was dispersed and solitary. They went up and up, and down and down and that other party, Carnehan, was imploring of Dravot not to sing and whistle so loud, for fear of bringing down the tremenjus avalanches. But Dravot says that if a King couldn’t sing it wasn’t worth being a King, and whacked the mules over the rump and never took no heed for ten cold days. We came to a big level valley all among the mountains, and the mules were near dead, so we killed them, not having anything in special for them or us to eat. We sat upon the boxes, and played odd and even with the cartridges that was jolted out.

  ‘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 respectful with his own nose, patting him on the head and saluting in front of it. He turns round to the men and nods his head, and says,—“That’s all right. I’m in the know too, and all these old jim-jams 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 we 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.’