Adventure stories; Boys -- Fiction; India -- Fiction; Irish -- India -- Fiction; Lamas -- Fiction; Orphans -- Fiction; Spy stories
'Thy mind is set on things unworthy. But she has skill. I am refreshed
all over. When we reach the lower hills I shall be yet stronger. The
hakim spoke truly to me this morn when he said a breath from the snows
blows away twenty years from the life of a man. We will go, up into the
Hills--the high hills--up to the sound of snow-water and the sound of
the trees--for a little while. The hakim said that at any time we may
return to the Plains, for we do no more than skirt the pleasant places.
The hakim is full of learning; but he is in no way proud. I spoke to
him--when thou wast talking to the Sahiba--of a certain dizziness that
lays hold upon the back of my neck in the night, and he said it rose
from excessive heat--to be cured by cool air. Upon consideration, I
marvelled that I had not thought of such a simple remedy.'
'Didst thou tell him of thy Search?' said Kim, a little jealously. He
preferred to sway the lama by his own speech--not through the wiles of
Hurree Babu.
'Assuredly. I told him of my dream, and of the manner by which I had
acquired merit by causing thee to be taught wisdom.'
'Thou didst not say I was a Sahib?'
'What need? I have told thee many times we be but two souls seeking
escape. He said--and he is just herein--that the River of Healing will
break forth even as I dreamed--at my feet if need be. Having found the
Way, seest thou, that shall free me from the Wheel, need I trouble to
find a way about the mere fields of earth--which are illusion? That were
senseless. I have my dreams, night upon night repeated; I have the
"Jataka"; and I have thee, Friend of all the World. It was written in
thy horoscope that a Red Bull on a green field--I have not
forgotten--should bring thee to honour. Who but I saw that prophecy
accomplished? Indeed, I was the instrument. Thou shalt find me my River,
being in return the instrument. The Search is sure!'
He set his ivory-yellow face, serene and untroubled, towards the
beckoning Hills; his shadow shouldering far before him in the dust.
CHAPTER XIII
'Who hath desired the Sea--the immense and contemptuous surges?
The shudder, the stumble, the swerve ere the star-stabbing bowsprit
emerges--
The orderly clouds of the Trades and the ridged roaring sapphire
thereunder--
Unheralded cliff-lurking flaws and the head-sails' low-volleying
thunder?
His Sea in no wonder the same--his Sea and the same in each wonder--
His Sea that his being fulfils?
So and no otherwise--so and no otherwise Hill-men desire their
Hills!'
'WHO goes to the Hills goes to his mother.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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