India -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, English
"I wasn't King," said Carnehan. "Dravot he was the King, and a handsome
man he looked with the gold crown on his head and all. Him and the other
party stayed in that village, and every morning Dravot sat by the side of
old Imbra, and the people came and worshipped. That was Dravot's order.
Then a lot of men came into the valley, and Carnehan and Dravot picks them
off with the rifles before they knew where they was, and runs down into
the valley and up again the other side, and finds another village, same as
the first one, and the people all falls down flat on their faces, and
Dravot says, 'Now what is the trouble between you two villages?' and the
people points to a woman, as fair as you or me, that was carried off, and
Dravot takes her back to the first village and counts up the dead--eight
there was. For each dead man Dravot pours a little milk on the ground and
waves his arms like a whirligig and 'That's all right,' says he. Then he
and Carnehan takes the big boss of each village by the arm and walks them
down into the valley, and shows them how to scratch a line with a spear
right down the valley, and gives each a sod of turf from both sides o' the
line. Then all the people comes down and shouts like the devil and all,
and Dravot says,--'Go and dig the land, and be fruitful and multiply,'
which they did, though they didn't understand. Then we asks the names of
things in their lingo--bread and water and fire and idols and such, and
Dravot leads the priest of each village up to the idol, and says he must
sit there and judge the people, and if anything goes wrong he is to be
shot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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