‘Oho!’ thought Kim, behind close-shut eyes.  ’Once again it is Mahbub.  Indeed a white stallion’s pedigree is not a good thing to peddle to Sahibs!  Or maybe Mahbub has been selling other news.  Now what is to do, Kim?  I know not where Mahbub houses, and if he comes here before the dawn they will shoot him.  That would be no profit for thee, Kim.  And this is not a matter for the police.  That would be no profit for Mahbub; and’ — he giggled almost aloud — ’I do not remember any lesson at Nucklao which will help me.  Allah!  Here is Kim and yonder are they.  First, then, Kim must wake and go away, so that they shall not suspect.  A bad dream wakes a man — thus -’

He threw the blanket off his face, and raised himself suddenly with the terrible, bubbling, meaningless yell of the Asiatic roused by nightmare.

‘Urr-urr-urr-urr!  Ya-la-la-la-la!  Narain!  The churel!  The churel!’

A churel is the peculiarly malignant ghost of a woman who has died in child-bed.  She haunts lonely roads, her feet are turned backwards on the ankles, and she leads men to torment.

Louder rose Kim’s quavering howl, till at last he leaped to his feet and staggered off sleepily, while the camp cursed him for waking them.  Some twenty yards farther up the line he lay down again, taking care that the whisperers should hear his grunts and groans as he recomposed himself.  After a few minutes he rolled towards the road and stole away into the thick darkness.

He paddled along swiftly till he came to a culvert, and dropped behind it, his chin on a level with the coping-stone.  Here he could command all the night-traffic, himself unseen.

Two or three carts passed, jingling out to the suburbs; a coughing policeman and a hurrying foot-passenger or two who sang to keep off evil spirits.  Then rapped the shod feet of a horse.

‘Ah!  This is more like Mahbub,’ thought Kim, as the beast shied at the little head above the culvert.

‘Ohe’, Mahbub Ali,’ he whispered, ‘have a care!’

The horse was reined back almost on its haunches, and forced towards the culvert.

‘Never again,’ said Mahbub, ’will I take a shod horse for night-work.  They pick up all the bones and nails in the city.’  He stooped to lift its forefoot, and that brought his head within a foot of Kim’s.

‘Down — keep down,’ he muttered.  ’The night is full of eyes.’

’Two men wait thy coming behind the horse-trucks.  They will shoot thee at thy lying down, because there is a price on thy head.  I heard, sleeping near the horses.’

‘Didst thou see them? ...  Hold still, Sire of Devils!’ This furiously to the horse.

‘No.’

‘Was one dressed belike as a fakir?’

’One said to the other, “What manner of fakir art thou, to shiver at a little watching?"’

‘Good.  Go back to the camp and lie down.  I do not die tonight.’