ut
when one of the old priests and the boss of the village brings him food,
he says--'Yes,' very haughty, and eats it slow. That was how we came to
our first village, without any trouble, just as though we had tumbled
from the skies. But we tumbled from one of those damned rope-bridges,
you see, and--you couldn't expect a man to laugh much after that?"

"Take some more whiskey and go on," I said. "That was the first village
you came into. How did you get to be King?"

"I wasn't King," said Carnehan. "Dravot, he was the King, and a handsome
man he looked with the gold crown on his head and all. Him and the other
party stayed in that village, and every morning Dravot sat by the side
of old Imbra, and the people came and worshipped. That was Dravot's
order. Then a lot of men came into the valley, and Carnehan and Dravot
picks them off with the rifles before they knew where they was, and runs
down into the valley and up again the other side and finds another
village, same as the first one, and the people all falls down flat on
their faces, and Dravot says--'Now what is the trouble between you two
villages?' and the people points to a woman, as fair as you or me, that
was carried off, and Dravot takes her back to the first village and
counts up the dead--eight there was. For each dead man Dravot pours a
little milk on the ground and waves his arms like a whirligig and
'That's all right,' says he. Then he and Carnehan takes the big boss of
each village by the arm and walks them down into the valley, and shows
them how to scratch a line with a spear right down the valley, and gives
each a sod of turf from both sides of the line. Then all the people
comes down and shouts like the devil and all, and Dravot says--'Go and
dig the land, and be fruitful and multiply,' which they did, though they
didn't understand. Then we asks the names of things in their
lingo--bread and water and fire and idols and such, and Dravot leads the
priest of each village up to the idol, and says he must sit there and
judge the people, and if anything goes wrong he is to be shot.

"Next week they was all turning up the land in the valley as quiet as
bees and much prettier, and the priests heard all the complaints and
told Dravot in dumb show what it was about. 'That's just the beginning,'
says Dravot. 'They think we're Gods.' He and Carnehan picks out twenty
good men and shows them how to click off a rifle, and form fours, and
advance in line, and they