Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/216

190 drying in the sun, and through the cracks of the verandah showed, all ribbed, the white house-wall below—and thrice twelve was thirty-six!

'Look! Is it coming into shape?' asked Lurgan Sahib.

'But it is smashed—smashed,' he gasped—Lurgan Sahib had been muttering softly for the last half-minute. Kim wrenched his head aside. 'Look! Dekko! It is there as it was there.'

'It is there as it was there,' said Lurgan, watching Kim closely while the boy rubbed his neck. 'But you are the first of a many who have ever seen it so.' He wiped his broad forehead.

'Was that more magic?' Kim asked suspiciously. The tingle had gone from his blood; he felt unusually wide awake.

'No, that was not magic. It was only to see if there was a flaw in a jewel. Remember when any man asks you to look close at anything and waves his hand—so!—you must not do it. But'—he went on to himself—'it is very curious that he should have saved himself. Tell me, did you see the shape of the pot?'

'For a little time. It began to grow like a flower from the ground.'

'And then what did you do? I mean, how did you think?' 'Oah! I knew it was broken, and so I think that was what I thought—and it was broken.'

'H'm! Has any one ever done that same sort of magic to you before?'

'If it was,' said Kim, 'do you think I should let it again? I should run away.'

'And now you are not afraid—eh?' 'No.'

Lurgan Sahib looked at him more closely than ever. 'I shall ask Mahbub Ali—not now, but some day later,' he muttered.