One of the men opens a black hair bag, and I slips the crown on. It was too small and too heavy, but I wore it for the glory. Hammered gold it was five pounds weight, like a hoop of a barrel.
Peachey, says Dravot, we dont want to fight no more. The Crafts the trick, so help me! and he brings forward that same Chief that I left at Bashkai Billy Fish we called him afterward, because he was so like Billy Fish that drove the big tank-engine at Mach on the Bolan in the old days. Shake hands with him, says Dravot; and I shook hands and nearly dropped, for Billy Fish gave me the Grip. I said nothing, but tried him with the Fellow-craft Grip. He answers all right, and I tried the Masters Grip, but that was a slip. A Fellow-craft he is! I says to Dan. Does he know the word? He does, says Dan, and all the priests know. Its a miracle! The Chiefs and the priests can work a Fellow-craft Lodge in a way thats very like ours, and theyve cut the marks on the rocks, but they dont know the Third Degree, and theyve come to find out. Its Gords Truth. Ive known these long years that the Afghans knew up to the Fellow-craft Degree, but this is a miracle. A God and a Grand Master of the Craft am I, and a Lodge in the Third Degree I will open, and well raise the head priests and the Chiefs of the villages.
Its against all the law, I says, holding a Lodge without warrant from any one; and you know we never held office in any Lodge.
Its a master stroke o policy, says Dravot. It means running the country as easy as a four-wheeled bogie on a down grade. We cant stop to inquire now, or theyll turn against us. Ive forty Chiefs at my heel, and passed and raised according to their merit they shall be. Billet these men on the villages, and see that we run up a Lodge of some kind. The temple of Imbra will do for a Lodge-room. The women must make aprons as you show them. Ill hold a levee of Chiefs to-night and Lodge to-morrow.
I was fair run off my legs, but I wasnt such a fool as not to see what a pull this Craft business gave us. I showed the priests families how to make aprons of the degrees, but for Dravots apron the blue border and marks was made of turquoise lumps on white hide, not cloth. We took a great square stone in the temple for the Masters chair, and little stones for the officers chairs, and painted the black pavement with white squares, and did what we could to make things regular.
At the levee which was held that night on the hillside with big bonfires, Dravot gives out that him and me were Gods and sons of Alexander, and Passed Grand Masters in the Craft, and was come to make Kafiristan a country where every man should eat in peace and drink in quiet, and specially obey us. Then the Chiefs come round to shake hands, and they were so hairy and white and fair it was just shaking hands with old friends. We gave them names according as they was like men we had known in India Billy Fish, Holly Dilworth, Pikky Kergan, that was Bazaar-master when I was at Mhow, and so on, and so on.
The most amazing miracles was at Lodge next night. One of the old priests was watching us continuous, and I felt uneasy, for I knew wed have to fudge the Ritual, and I didnt know what the men knew. The old priest was a stranger come in from beyond the village of Bashkai. The minute Dravot puts on the Masters apron that the girls had made for him, the priest fetches a whoop and a howl, and tries to overturn the stone that Dravot was sitting on. Its all up now, I says. That comes of meddling with the Craft without warrant! Dravot never winked an eye, not when ten priests took and tilted over the Grand Masters chair which was to say, the stone of Imbra. The priest begins rubbing the bottom end of it to clear away the black dirt, and presently he shows all the other priests the Masters Mark, same as was on Dravots apron, cut into the stone. Not even the priests of the temple of Imbra knew it was there. The old chap falls flat on his face at Dravots feet and kisses em. Luck again, says Dravot, across the Lodge, to me; they say its the missing Mark that no one could understand the why of. Were more than safe now. Then he bangs the butt of his gun for a gavel and says, By virtue of the authority vested in me by my own right hand and the help of Peachey, I declare myself Grand Master of all Freemasonry in Kafiristan in this the Mother Lodge o the country, and King of Kafiristan equally with Peachey! At that he puts on his crown and I puts on mine, I was doing Senior Warden, and we opens the Lodge in most ample form. It was an amazing miracle! The priests moved in Lodge through the first two degrees almost without telling, as if the memory was coming back to them. After that Peachey and Dravot raised such as was worthy high priests and Chiefs of far-off villages. Billy Fish was the first, and I can tell you we scared the soul out of him. It was not in any way according to Ritual, but it served our turn. We didnt raise more than ten of the biggest men, because we didnt want to make the Degree common. And they was clamouring to be raised.
In another six months, says Dravot, well hold another Communication and see how you are working. Then he asks them about their villages, and learns that they was fighting one against the other, and were sick and tired of it. And when they wasnt doing that they was fighting with the Mohammedans. You can fight those when they come into our country, says Dravot. Tell off every tenth man of your tribes for a Frontier guard, and send two hundred at a time to this valley to be drilled. Nobody is going to be shot or speared any more so long as he does well, and I know that you wont cheat me, because youre white people sons of Alexander and not like common black Mohammedans. You are my people, and, by God, says he, running off into English at the end, Ill make a damned fine Nation of you, or Ill die in the making!
I cant tell all we did for the next six months, because Dravot did a lot I couldnt see the hang of, and he learned their lingo in a way I never could. My work was to help the people plough, and now and again go out with some of the Army and see what the other villages were doing, and make em throw rope bridges across the ravines which cut up the country horrid. Dravot was very kind to me, but when he walked up and down in the pine wood pulling that bloody red beard of his with both fists I knew he was thinking plans I could not advise about, and I just waited for orders.
But Dravot never showed me disrespect before the people. They were afraid of me and the Army, but they loved Dan. He was the best of friends with the priests and the Chiefs; but any one could come across the hills with a complaint, and Dravot would hear him out fair, and call four priests together and say what was to be done. He used to call in Billy Fish from Bashkai, and Pikky Kergan from Shu, and an old Chief we called Kafuzelum, it was like enough to his real name, and hold councils with em when there was any fighting to be done in small villages. That was his Council of War, and the four priests of Bashkai, Shu, Khawak, and Madora was his Privy Council. Between the lot of em they sent me, with forty men and twenty rifles, and sixty men carrying turquoises, into the Ghorband country to buy those hand-made Martini rifles, that come out of the Amirs workshops at Kabul, from one of the Amirs Herati regiments that would have sold the very teeth out of their mouths for turquoises.
I stayed in Ghorband a month, and gave the Governor there the pick of my baskets for hush-money, and bribed the Colonel of the regiment some more, and, between the two and the tribes-people, we got more than a hundred hand-made Martinis, a hundred good Kohat Jezails thatll throw to six hundred yards, and forty man-loads of very bad ammunition for the rifles. I came back with what I had, and distributed em among the men that the Chiefs sent in to me to drill. Dravot was too busy to attend to those things, but the old Army that we first made helped me, and we turned out five hundred men that could drill, and two hundred that knew how to hold arms pretty straight. Even those cork-screwed, hand-made guns was a miracle to them. Dravot talked big about powder-shops and factories, walking up and down in the pine wood when the winter was coming on.
I stayed in Ghorband a month, and gave the Governor there the pick of my baskets for hush-money, and bribed the Colonel of the regiment some more, and, between the two and the tribes-people, we got more than a hundred hand-made Martinis, a hundred good Kohat Jezails thatll throw to six hundred yards, and forty man-loads of very bad ammunition for the rifles. I came back with what I had, and distributed em among the men that the Chiefs sent in to me to drill. Dravot was too busy to attend to those things, but the old Army that we first made helped me, and we turned out five hundred men that could drill, and two hundred that knew how to hold arms pretty straight. Even those cork-screwed, hand-made guns was a miracle to them. Dravot talked big about powder-shops and factories, walking up and down in the pine wood when the winter was coming on.
I wont make a Nation, says he. Ill make an Empire! These men arent niggers; theyre English! Look at their eyes look at their mouths. Look at the way they stand up. They sit on chairs in their own houses. Theyre the Lost Tribes, or something like it, and theyve grown to be English. Ill take a census in the spring if the priests dont get frightened. There must be a fair two million of em in these hills. The villages are full o little children. Two million people two hundred and fifty thousand fighting men and all English! They only want the rifles and a little drilling. Two hundred and fifty thousand men, ready to cut in on Russias right flank when she tries for India! Peachey, man, he says, chewing his beard in great hunks, we shall be Emperors Emperors of the Earth! Rajah Brooke will be a suckling to us. Ill treat with the Viceroy on equal terms. Ill ask him to send me twelve picked English twelve that I know of to help us govern a bit. Theres Mackray, Serjeant Pensioner at Segowli manys the good dinner hes given me, and his wife a pair of trousers. Theres Donkin, the Warder of Tounghoo Jail; theres hundreds that I could lay my hand on if I was in India. The Viceroy shall do it for me; Ill send a man through in the spring for those men, and Ill write for a dispensation from the Grand Lodge for what Ive done as Grand Master. That and all the Sniders thatll be thrown out when the native troops in India take up the Martini. Theyll be worn smooth, but theyll do for fighting in these hills. Twelve English, a hundred thousand Sniders run through the Amirs country in driblets, Id be content with twenty thousand in one year, and wed be an Empire. When everything was shipshape Id hand over the crown this crown Im wearing now to Queen Victoria on my knees, and shed say, Rise up, Sir Daniel Dravot. Oh, its big! Its big, I tell you! But theres so much to be done in every place Bashkai, Khawak, Shu, and everywhere else.