ugs, as
well as the runes proper to recite when you administer them. 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