The Man Who Would Be King | Page 5

drink—the Contrack doesn’t
begin yet, Peachey, so you needn’t look—but what we really want is
advice. We don’t want money. We ask you as a favor, because you did
us a bad turn about Degumber.”
I led from the press-room to the stifling office with the maps on the
walls, and the red-haired man rubbed his hands. “That’s something
like,” said he. “This was the proper shop to come to. Now, Sir, let me
introduce to you Brother Peachey Carnehan, that’s him, and Brother
Daniel Dravot, that is me, and the less said about our professions the
better, for we have been most things in our time. Soldier, sailor,
compositor, photographer, proof-reader, street-preacher, and
correspondents of the Backwoodsman when we thought the paper
wanted one. Carnehan is sober, and so am I. Look at us first and see
that’s sure. It will save you cutting into my talk. We’ll take one of your
cigars apiece, and you shall see us light.” I watched the test. The men
were absolutely sober, so I gave them each a tepid peg.
“Well and good,” said Carnehan of the eyebrows, wiping the froth from
his mustache. “Let me talk now, Dan. We have been all over India,
mostly on foot. We have been boiler-fitters, engine-drivers, petty
contractors, and all that, and we have decided that India isn’t big
enough for such as us.”
They certainly were too big for the office. Dravot’s beard seemed to fill
half the room and Carnehan’s shoulders the other half, as they sat on
the big table. Carnehan continued: —“The country isn’t half worked

out because they that governs it won’t let you touch it. They spend all
their blessed time in governing it, and you can’t lift a spade, nor chip a
rock, nor look for oil, nor anything like that without all the Government
saying—‘Leave it alone and let us govern.’ Therefore, such as it is, we
will let it alone, and go away to some other place where a man isn’t
crowded and can come to his own. We are not little men, and there is
nothing that we are afraid of except Drink, and we have signed a
Contrack on that. Therefore, we are going away to be Kings.”
“Kings in our own right,” muttered Dravot.
“Yes, of course,” I said. “You’ve been tramping in the sun, and it’s a
very warm night, and hadn’t you better sleep over the notion? Come
to-morrow.”
“Neither drunk nor sunstruck,” said Dravot. “We have slept over the
notion half a year, and require to see Books and Atlases, and we have
decided that there is only one place now in the world that two strong
men can Sar-a-whack. They call it Kafiristan. By my reckoning its the
top right-hand corner of Afghanistan, not more than three hundred
miles from Peshawar. They have two and thirty heathen idols there, and
we’ll be the thirty-third. It’s a mountainous country, and the women of
those parts are very beautiful.”
“But that is provided against in the Contrack,” said Carnehan. “Neither
Women nor Liquor, Daniel.”
“And that’s all we know, except that no one has gone there, and they
fight, and in any place where they fight a man who knows how to drill
men can always be a King. We shall go to those parts and say to any
King we find—‘D’ you want to vanquish your foes?’ and we will show
him how to drill men; for that we know better than anything else. Then
we will subvert that King and seize his Throne and establish a
Dy-nasty.”
“You’ll be cut to pieces before you’re fifty miles across the Border,” I
said. “You have to travel through Afghanistan to get to that country.
It’s one mass of mountains and peaks and glaciers, and no Englishman

has been through it. The people are utter brutes, and even if you
reached them you couldn’t do anything.”
“That’s more like,” said Carnehan. “If you could think us a little more
mad we would be more pleased. We have come to you to know about
this country, to read a book about it, and to be shown maps. We want
you to tell us that we are fools and to show us your books.” He turned
to the book-cases.
“Are you at all in earnest?” I said.
“A little,” said Dravot, sweetly. “As big a map as you have got, even if
it’s all blank where Kafiristan is, and any books you’ve got. We can
read, though we aren’t very educated.”
I uncased the big thirty-two-miles-to-the-inch map of India, and two
smaller Frontier maps, hauled down volume INF-KAN of the
Encyclopædia Britannica, and the men consulted them.
“See here!” said Dravot, his thumb on the map. “Up to Jagdallak,
Peachey and me know the road. We