Adventure stories; Boys -- Fiction; India -- Fiction; Irish -- India -- Fiction; Lamas -- Fiction; Orphans -- Fiction; Spy stories
blows; denied that any blows had been dealt that unseemly first night
under the pines. He asked neither pension nor retaining fee, but, if
they deemed him worthy, would they write him a testimonial? It might be
useful to him later, if others, their friends, came over the Passes. He
begged them to remember him in their future greatnesses, for he “opined
subtly” that he, even he, Mohendro Lal Dutt, MA of Calcutta, had “done
the State some service”.
They gave him a certificate praising his courtesy, helpfulness, and
unerring skill as a guide. He put it in his waist-belt and sobbed with
emotion; they had endured so many dangers together. He led them at high
noon along crowded Simla Mall to the Alliance Bank of Simla, where they
wished to establish their identity. Thence he vanished like a
dawn-cloud on Jakko.
Behold him, too fine-drawn to sweat, too pressed to vaunt the drugs in
his little brass-bound box, ascending Shamlegh slope, a just man made
perfect. Watch him, all Babudom laid aside, smoking at noon on a cot,
while a woman with turquoise-studded headgear points south-easterly
across the bare grass. Litters, she says, do not travel as fast as
single men, but his birds should now be in the Plains. The holy man
would not stay though Lispeth pressed him. The Babu groans heavily,
girds up his huge loins, and is off again. He does not care to travel
after dusk; but his days’ marches—there is none to enter them in a
book—would astonish folk who mock at his race. Kindly villagers,
remembering the Dacca drug-vendor of two months ago, give him shelter
against evil spirits of the wood. He dreams of Bengali Gods, University
text-books of education, and the Royal Society, London, England. Next
dawn the bobbing blue-and-white umbrella goes forward.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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