When Mahbub woke, the Flower talked to him severely on the sin of drunkenness. Asiatics do not wink when they have outmanoeuvred an enemy, but as Mahbub Ali cleared his throat, tightened his belt, and staggered forth under the early morning stars, he came very near to it.
'What a colt's trick!' said he to himself. 'As if every girl in Peshawur did not use it! But 'twas prettily done. Now God He knows how many more there be upon the Road who have orders to test me--perhaps with the knife. So it stands that the boy must go to Umballa--and by rail--for the writing is something urgent. I abide here, following the Flower and drinking wine as an Afghan coper should.'
He halted at the stall next but one to his own. His men lay there heavy with sleep. There was no sign of Kim or the lama.
'Up!' He stirred a sleeper. 'Whither went those who lay here last even--the lama and the boy? Is aught missing?'
'Nay,' grunted the man, 'the old madman rose at second cockcrow saying he would go to Benares, and the young one led him away.'
'The curse of Allah on all unbelievers!' said Mahbub heartily, and climbed into his own stall, growling in his beard.
Continued next week. Tomorrow's installment from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain.
Kipling's novel of India and the British empire, published in 1900. Illustration was done for the book by Kipling's father.
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