e turned to me with a twinkle,
and said: "Do not alarm yourself about all these fellows round. They
may be all rascals, no doubt; but I have my Martini-Henry here, and if
anyone molests you, I will send a bullet through him." No doubt with
a good aim, too, for he was reputed the best marksman in the tribe,
a fact which I may illustrate by an anecdote.

Like most Afghans, he was very punctilious in the performance of the
prescribed Muhammadan prayers, and beyond the regular five times
used to indulge in those prayers of supererogation which Muhammad
appointed for the devout, or for those who had sins which might
be expiated by their performance. Chikki, too, appeared to believe
that he kept a credit and debit account of this kind, and that some
particularly unwarranted murder would be suitably balanced by the
repetition of a number of extra prayers. He had a little book of
Arabic prayers called the "Ganj-el-Arus" hung round his neck, and,
when at leisure from his more warlike pursuits, would employ himself
in the repletion of his credit account therefrom. He handed the book
to me, and showed me with some little pride a prayer in it which he
said he had composed himself, and which he said was always heard. It
was in his own vernacular Pashtu, for he did not know Arabic; and the
prayer was that, whenever he raised his rifle to his shoulder to shoot,
the bullet might not miss its mark.

Before I came away I left some Pashtu Testaments and other literature
with Chikki, and I have reason to believe that he studied them with
interest. He, at least, gave up some of his predatory and warlike
habits, and devoted himself to more peaceful avocations. When the
frontier war of 1897 broke out, not long after, and the tribes all
round him were flocking round the standards of jehad, and the tocsin
of war resounded from the valleys of Swat in the north to the Suliman
Mountains of Waziristan in the south, he resisted all the allurements
of the Mullahs to take part in the campaign against the Kafirs, the
English, and restrained the men of his own tribe from any participation
in the warfare. It can be seen by a reference to the map that this
abstention of the Zaimukht tribe, which numbers about eight thousand
fighting men, made a considerable difference to the troops acting
in the Miranzai and Kurram Valleys, in the angle between which their
territory is situate.

He pressed me to begin medical mission work in his own territory,
and pro