Page:The Phantom 'Rickshaw - Kipling (1890).djvu/99

 minute Dravot puts on the Master's apron that the girls had made for him the priest fetches a whoop and a howl and tries to overturn the stone that Dravot was sitting on. 'It's all up now,' I says. 'That's come of meddling with the Craft without warrant!' Dravot never winked an eye, not when ten priests took and tilted over the Grand-Master's chair which was to say the stone of Imbra. The priest begins rubbing the bottom end of it to clear away the black dirt, and presently he shows all the other priests the Master's Mark, same as was on Dravot's apron, cut into the stone. Not even the priest's of the temple of Imbra knew it was there. The old chap falls flat on his face at Dravot's feet and kisses 'em. 'Luck again,' says Dravot across the Lodge to me, 'They say it's the missing Mark that no one could understand the why of. We're more than safe now.' Then he bangs the butt of his gun for a gavel and says: 'By virtue of the authority vested in me by my own right hand and the help of Peachey I declare myself Grand Master of all Freemasonry in Kafiristan in this, the Mother Lodge o' the country, and King of Kafiristan equally with Peachey! At that he puts on his crown and I puts on mine—I was doing Senior Warden—and we opens the Lodge in most ample form. It was an amazing miracle! The priests moved in Lodge through the first two degrees almost without telling, as if the memory was coming back to them.

"After that, Peachey and Dravot raised such as was worthy—high priests and chiefs of far off villages. Billy Fish was the first, and I can tell you we scared the soul out of him. It was not in any way according to Ritual, but it served our turn. We didn't raise more than ten of the biggest men, because we didn't want to make the degree common. And they was clamouring to be raised.

In another six months,' says Dravot, 'we'll hold another communication and see how you are working.' Then he asks them about their villages, and learns that they was always fighting one against the other and were fair sick and tired of