Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/154

130 caught him after breakfast, thrust a page of meaningless characters under his nose, gave them senseless names, and whacked him without reason. Kim thought seriously of poisoning him with opium borrowed from a barrack-sweeper, but reflected that, as they all ate at one table in public (this was peculiarly revolting to Kim, who preferred to turn his back on the world at meals), the stroke might be dangerous. Then he thought of running off to the village where the priest had tried to drug the lama—the village where the old soldier lived. It could only be a few miles to the westward. The heavy trousers and jacket seemed to cripple body and mind alike, and he abandoned the project with a sigh, and fell back, Oriental fashion, on time and chance. Three days of torment passed in the big, echoing white rooms. He walked out of afternoons under escort of the drummer-boy, and all he heard from his companion were the few useless words which seemed to make two-thirds of the white man's abuse. Kim knew and despised them all long ago. The boy resented his silence and lack of interest by beating him, as was only natural. He did not care for any of the bazars which were in bounds. He called all natives 'niggers'; yet servants and sweepers called him abominable names to his face, and, misled by their deferential attitude, he never understood. This somewhat consoled him for the beatings.

On the morning of the fourth day a judgment overtook that drummer. They had gone out together towards Umballa race-course. He returned alone, weeping, with news that young O'Hara, to whom he had been doing nothing in particular, had hailed a scarlet-bearded nigger on horseback; that the nigger then and there laid into him with a peculiarly adhesive quirt, picked up young O'Hara, and bore him off at full gallop. These tidings came to Father Victor, and he drew down his long upper lip. He had