y 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 Amir's workshops at Kabul, from one of the
Amir's 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 that'll 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 won't make a Nation,' says he. 'I'll make an Empire! These men
aren't niggers; they're English! Look at their eyes--look at their
mouths. Look at the way they stand up. They sit on chairs in their own
houses. They're the Lost Tribes, or something like it, and they've grown
to be English. I'll take a census in the spring if the priests don't 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 Russia's 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. I'll treat with the Viceroy on equal terms. I'll ask him to send me
twelve picked English--twelve that I know of--to help us govern a bit.
There's Mackray, Serjeant Pensioner at Segowli--many's the good dinner
he's given me, and his wife a pair of trousers. There's Donkin, the
Warder of Tounghoo Jail; there's hundreds that I could lay my hand on if
I was in India. The Viceroy shall do it for me; I'll send a man through
in the spring for those men, and I'll w