India -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, English
"'Peachey,' says Dravot, 'we don't want to fight no more. The Craft's the
trick so help me!' and he brings forward that same Chief that I left at
Bashkai--Billy Fish we called him afterward, because he was so like Billy
Fish that drove the big tank-engine at Mach on the Bolan in the old days.
'Shake hands with him,' says Dravot, and I shook hands and nearly dropped,
for Billy Fish gave me the Grip. I said nothing, but tried him with the
Fellow Craft Grip. He answers, all right, and I tried the Master's Grip,
but that was a slip. 'A Fellow Craft he is!' I says to Dan. 'Does he know
the word?' 'He does,' says Dan, 'and all the priests know. It's a miracle!
The Chiefs and the priests can work a Fellow Craft Lodge in a way that's
very like ours, and they've cut the marks on the rocks, but they don't
know the Third Degree, and they've come to find out. It's Gord's Truth.
I've known these long years that the Afghans knew up to the Fellow Craft
Degree, but this is a miracle. A God and a Grand-Master of the Craft am I,
and a Lodge in the Third Degree I will open, and we'll raise the head
priests and the Chiefs of the villages.'
"'It's against all the law,' I says, 'holding a Lodge without warrant from
any one; and we never held office in any Lodge.'
"'It's a master-stroke of policy,' says Dravot. 'It means running the
country as easy as a four-wheeled bogy on a down grade. We can't stop to
inquire now, or they'll turn against us. I've forty Chiefs at my heel, and
passed and raised according to their merit they shall be. Billet these men
on the villages and see that we run up a Lodge of some kind. The temple of
Imbra will do for the Lodge-room. The women must make aprons as you show
them. I'll hold a levee of Chiefs to-night and Lodge to-morrow.'
"I was fair run off my legs, but I wasn't such a fool as not to see what a
pull this Craft business gave us. I showed the priests' families how to
make aprons of the degrees, but for Dravot's apron, the blue border and
marks was made of turquoise lumps on white hide, not cloth. We took a
great square stone in the temple for the Master's chair, and little stones
for the officers' chairs, and painted the black pavement with white
squares, and did what we could to make things regular.
"At the levee which was held that night on the hillside with big bonfires,
Dravot gives out that him and me were Gods and sons of Alexander, and Past
Grand-Masters in the Craft, and was come to make Kafiristan a country
where every man should eat in peace and drink in quiet, and specially obey
us. Then the Chiefs come round to shake hands, and they was so hairy and
white and fair it was just shaking hands with old friends. We gave them
names according as they was like men we had known in India--Billy Fish,
Holly Dilworth, Pikky Kergan that was Bazar-master when I was at Mhow, and
so on and so on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account