Kim lit a rank cigarette — he had been careful to buy a stock in the bazar — and lay down to think.  This solitary passage was very different from that joyful down-journey in the third-class with the lama.  ‘Sahibs get little pleasure of travel,’ he reflected.

’Hai mai!  I go from one place to another as it might be a kickball.  It is my Kismet.  No man can escape his Kismet.  But I am to pray to Bibi Miriam, and I am a Sahib.’  He looked at his boots ruefully.  ’No; I am Kim.  This is the great world, and I am only Kim.  Who is Kim?’ He considered his own identity, a thing he had never done before, till his head swam.  He was one insignificant person in all this roaring whirl of India, going southward to he knew not what fate.

Presently the Colonel sent for him, and talked for a long time.  So far as Kim could gather, he was to be diligent and enter the Survey of India as a chain-man.  If he were very good, and passed the proper examinations, he would be earning thirty rupees a month at seventeen years old, and Colonel Creighton would see that he found suitable employment.

Kim pretended at first to understand perhaps one word in three of this talk.  Then the Colonel, seeing his mistake, turned to fluent and picturesque Urdu and Kim was contented.  No man could be a fool who knew the language so intimately, who moved so gently and silently, and whose eyes were so different from the dull fat eyes of other Sahibs.

’Yes, and thou must learn how to make pictures of roads and mountains and rivers, to carry these pictures in thine eye till a suitable time comes to set them upon paper.  Perhaps some day, when thou art a chain-man, I may say to thee when we are working together:  “Go across those hills and see what lies beyond.”  Then one will say:  “There are bad people living in those hills who will slay the chain-man if he be seen to look like a Sahib.”  What then?’

Kim thought.  Would it be safe to return the Colonel’s lead?

‘I would tell what that other man had said.’

’But if I answered:  “I will give thee a hundred rupees for knowledge of what is behind those hills — for a picture of a river and a little news of what the people say in the villages there"?’

‘How can I tell?  I am only a boy.  Wait till I am a man.’  Then, seeing the Colonel’s brow clouded, he went on:  ’But I think I should in a few days earn the hundred rupees.’

‘By what road?’

Kim shook his head resolutely.  ’If I said how I would earn them, another man might hear and forestall me.  It is not good to sell knowledge for nothing.’

‘Tell now.’  The Colonel held up a rupee.  Kim’s hand half reached towards it, and dropped.

’Nay, Sahib; nay.  I know the price that will be paid for the answer, but I do not know why the question is asked.’

‘Take it for a gift, then,’ said Creighton, tossing it over.  ’There is a good spirit in thee.  Do not let it be blunted at St Xavier’s.  There are many boys there who despise the black men.’