Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/326

296 leaned on their alpenstocks and listened. Kim, squatting humbly, watched the low sunlight on their faces, and the blend and parting of their long shadows. They wore un-English leggings and curious girt-in belts that reminded him hazily of the pictures in a book at St. Xavier's library: The Adventures of a Young Naturalist in Mexico was its name. Yes, they looked very like the wonderful M. Sumichrast of that tale, and very unlike the 'highly unscrupulous folk' of Hurree Babu's imagining. The coolies, earth-coloured and mute, crouched reverently some twenty or thirty yards away, and the Babu, the slack of his thin gear snapping like a marking-flag in the chill breeze, stood by with an air of happy proprietorship.

'These are the men,' Hurree whispered, as the ritual went on and the two whites followed the grass blade sweeping from Hell to Heaven and back again. 'All their books are in the large kilta with the reddish top,—books and reports and maps,—and I have seen a murasla that either Hilás or Bunár have written. They guard it most carefully. They have sent nothing back from Hilás or Leh. That is sure.'

'Who is with them?'

'Only the beegar-coolies. They have no servants. They are so close. They cook their own food.'

'But what am I to do?'

'Wait and see. Only if any chance comes to me thou wilt know where to seek for the papers.'

'This were better in Mahbub Ali's hands than a Bengali's,' said Kim scornfully.

'There are more ways of getting to a sweetheart than butting down a wall.'

’''See here the Hell appointed for avarice and greed. Flanked upon''