Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/389

Rh of Teshoo Lama from the Great Soul. Then a voice cried: "The River! Take heed to the River!" and I looked down upon all the world, which was as I have seen it before—one in time, one in place—and I said: "Yonder is the River of the Arrow at my feet." At that hour my soul was hampered by some evil or other whereof I was not wholly cleansed, and it lay upon my arms and coiled round my waist; but I put it aside, and I cast forth as an eagle in my flight for the very place of the River. I pushed aside world upon world for thy sake. I saw the River below me—the River of the Arrow—and, descending, the waters of it closed over me; and behold I was again in the body of Teshoo Lama, but free from sin, and the hakim from Dacca bore up my head in the water of the River. It is beyond the mango-tope here—even here!'

'Allah Kerim! Oh, well that the Babu was there! Wast thou very wet?'

'Why should I regard? I remember the hakim was concerned for the body of Teshoo Lama. He haled it out of the holy waters in his hands, and there came afterward a horse-seller from the North with a cot and men, and they put the body on the cot and bore it up to the Sahiba's house.'

'What said the Sahiba?'

'I was meditating in that body, and did not hear. So thus the Search is ended. For the merit that I have acquired, the River of the Arrow is here. It broke forth at our feet, as I have said. I have found it. Son of my soul, I have wrenched my soul back from the Threshold of Freedom to free thee from all sin—as I am free, and sinless. Just is the Wheel! Certain is our deliverance. Come!'

He crossed his hands on his lap and smiled, as a man may who has won Salvation for himself and his beloved.