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The Gods are kind to us! Give me that. It was a tin box of opium pills among the rubbish of the Jat's bundle. E23 gulped down a half handful. 'They are good against hunger, fear, and chill. And they make the eyes red too, he explained. 'Now I shall have heart to play the Game. We lack only a Saddhu's tongs. What of the old clothes?
E23, with relaxed mouth, gave himself up to the opium that is meat, tobacco, and medicine to the spent Asiatic. So, in a silence of awe and great miscomprehension, they slid into Delhi about lamp-lighting time. Who hath desired the Sea the sight of salt-water unbounded? The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber wind-hounded?
'Nothing here but a parcel of holy-bolies, said the Englishman aloud, and passed on amid a ripple of uneasiness; for native police mean extortion to the native all India over. 'The trouble now, whispered E23, 'lies in sending a wire as to the place where I hid that letter I was sent to find. I cannot go to the tar-office in this guise. 'Is it not enough I have saved thy neck?
'Turn and look, O Jat! 'The Gods protect us, said the hooded Kamboh, emerging like a buffalo from the reeds. 'But whither went the Mahratta? What hast thou done? Kim had been trained by Lurgan Sahib; E23, by virtue of his business, was no bad actor.
'I don't know what you're saying, the Englishman flushed angrily 'but it's some piece of blasted impertinence. Come out of that! E23, affecting to misunderstand, gravely produced his ticket, which the Englishman wrenched angrily from his hand. 'Oh, zoolum! What oppression! growled the Jat from his corner.
'I have found my heart again, said E23, under cover of the platform's tumult. 'Hunger and fear make men dazed, or I might have thought of this escape before. I was right. They come to hunt for me. Thou hast saved my head. A group of yellow-trousered Punjab policemen, headed by a hot and perspiring young Englishman, parted the crowd about the carriages.
'Not if the work be left unfinished. Did never the healer of sick pearls tell thee so? Comes another Sahib! Ah! This was a tallish, sallowish District Superintendent of Police belt, helmet, polished spurs and all strutting and twirling his dark moustache. 'What fools are these Police Sahibs! said Kim genially. E23 glanced up under his eyelids. 'It is well said, he muttered in a changed voice.
Co come, child; we will play a game of hiding. Do not, for my sake, look from under the cloth. 'I see hope, said E23. 'What is thy scheme? 'This comes next, said Kim, plucking the thin body-shirt. E23 hesitated, with all a North-West man's dislike of baring his body. 'What is caste to a cut throat? said Kim, rending it to the waist. 'We must make thee a yellow Saddhu all over.
Incidentally, an over-zealous policeman had arrested, on charge of murder done in a far southern State, a horribly indignant Ajmir cotton-broker, who was explaining himself to a Mr Strickland on Delhi platform, while E23 was paddling through byways into the locked heart of Delhi city.
'I go to drink water. Keep my place. He blundered out almost into the Englishman's arms, and was bad-worded in clumsy Urdu. 'Tum mut? You drunk? You mustn't bang about as though Delhi station belonged to you, my friend. E23, not moving a muscle of his countenance, answered with a stream of the filthiest abuse, at which Kim naturally rejoiced.
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