Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/72

54 A yellow and brown streak glided from the purple rustling stems to the bank, stretched its neck to the water, drank, and lay still—a big cobra with fixed, lidless eyes.

'I have no stick—I have no stick,' said Kim. 'I will get me one and break his back.'

'Why? He is upon the Wheel as we are—a life ascending or descending—very far from deliverance. Great evil must the soul have done that is cast into this shape.'

'I hate all snakes,' said Kim. No native training can quench the white man's horror of the Serpent.

'Let him live out his life.' The coiled thing hissed and half opened his hood. 'May thy release come soon, brother,' the lama continued placidly. 'Hast thou knowledge, by chance, of my river?'

'Never have I seen such a man as thou art,' Kim whispered, overwhelmed. 'Do the very snakes understand thy talk?'

'Who knows?' He passed within a foot of the cobra's poised head. It flattened itself among the dusty coils.

'Come thou!' he called over his shoulder.

'Not I,' said Kim. 'I go round.'

'Come. He does no hurt.'

Kim hesitated for a moment. The lama backed his order by some droned Chinese quotation which Kim took for a charm. He obeyed and stepped across the rivulet, and the snake indeed made no sign.

'Never have I seen such a man.' Kim wiped the sweat from his forehead. 'And now, whither go we?' 'That is for thee to say. I am old, and a stranger—far from my own place. But that the rel-carriage fills my head with the noises of devil-drums I would go in it to Benares now. . . yet