And in the evenings he wrote charms on parchment — elaborate pentagrams crowned with the names of devils - Murra, and Awan the Companion of Kings — all fantastically written in the corners.  More to the point, he advised Kim as to the care of his own body, the cure of fever-fits, and simple remedies of the Road.  A week before it was time to go down, Colonel Creighton Sahib - this was unfair — sent Kim a written examination paper that concerned itself solely with rods and chains and links and angles.

Next holidays he was out with Mahbub, and here, by the way, he nearly died of thirst, plodding through the sand on a camel to the mysterious city of Bikanir, where the wells are four hundred feet deep, and lined throughout with camel-bone.  It was not an amusing trip from Kim’s point of view, because — in defiance of the contract - the Colonel ordered him to make a map of that wild, walled city; and since Mohammedan horse-boys and pipe-tenders are not expected to drag Survey-chains round the capital of an independent Native State, Kim was forced to pace all his distances by means of a bead rosary.  He used the compass for bearings as occasion served — after dark chiefly, when the camels had been fed — and by the help of his little Survey paint-box of six colour-cakes and three brushes, he achieved something not remotely unlike the city of Jeysulmir.  Mahbub laughed a great deal, and advised him to make up a written report as well; and in the back of the big account-book that lay under the flap of Mahbub’s pet saddle Kim fell to work..

’It must hold everything that thou hast seen or touched or considered.  Write as though the Jung-i-Lat Sahib himself had come by stealth with a vast army outsetting to war.’

‘How great an army?’

‘Oh, half a lakh of men.’

’Folly!  Remember how few and bad were the wells in the sand.  Not a thousand thirsty men could come near by here.’

’Then write that down — also all the old breaches in the walls and whence the firewood is cut — and what is the temper and disposition of the King.  I stay here till all my horses are sold.  I will hire a room by the gateway, and thou shalt be my accountant.  There is a good lock to the door.’

The report in its unmistakable St Xavier’s running script, and the brown, yellow, and lake-daubed map, was on hand a few years ago (a careless clerk filed it with the rough notes of E’s second Seistan survey), but by now the pencil characters must be almost illegible.  Kim translated it, sweating under the light of an oil-lamp, to Mahbub, the second day of their return-journey.

The Pathan rose and stooped over his dappled saddle-bags.

’I knew it would be worthy a dress of honour, and so I made one ready,’ he said, smiling.  ’Were I Amir of Afghanistan (and some day we may see him), I would fill thy mouth with gold.’  He laid the garments formally at Kim’s feet.  There was a gold-embroidered Peshawur turban-cap, rising to a cone, and a big turban-cloth ending in a broad fringe of gold.  There was a Delhi embroidered waistcoat to slip over a milky white shirt, fastening to the right, ample and flowing; green pyjamas with twisted silk waist-string; and that nothing might be lacking, russia-leather slippers, smelling divinely, with arrogantly curled tips.