was booked for Kim and his small trunk at the
rear of a Kalka tonga. His companion was the whale-like Babu, who,
with a fringed shawl wrapped round his head, and his fat
openwork-stockinged left leg tucked under him, shivered and grunted in
the morning chill.

'How comes it that this man is one of us?' thought Kim considering the
jelly back as they jolted down the road; and the reflection threw him
into most pleasant day-dreams. Lurgan Sahib had given him five
rupees--a splendid sum--as well as the assurance of his protection if
he worked. Unlike Mahbub, Lurgan Sahib had spoken most explicitly of
the reward that would follow obedience, and Kim was content. If only,
like the Babu, he could enjoy the dignity of a letter and a number--and
a price upon his head! Some day he would be all that and more. Some
day he might be almost as great as Mahbub Ali! The housetops of his
search should be half India; he would follow Kings and Ministers, as in
the old days he had followed vakils and lawyers' touts across Lahore
city for Mahbub Ali's sake. Meantime, there was the present, and not at
all unpleasant, fact of St Xavier's immediately before him. There
would be new boys to condescend to, and there would be tales of holiday
adventures to hear. Young Martin, son of the tea-planter at Manipur,
had boasted that he would go to war, with a rifle, against the
head-hunters.

That might be, but it was certain young Martin had not been blown half
across the forecourt of a Patiala palace by an explosion of fireworks;
nor had he... Kim fell to telling himself the story of his own
adventures through the last three months. He could paralyse St
Xavier's--even the biggest boys who shaved--with the recital, were that
permitted. But it was, of course, out of the question. There would be
a price upon his head in good time, as Lurgan Sahib had assured him;
and if he talked foolishly now, not only would that price never be set,
but Colonel Creighton would cast him off--and he would be left to the
wrath of Lurgan Sahib and Mahbub Ali--for the short space of life that
would remain to him.

'So I should lose Delhi for the sake of a fish,' was his proverbial
philosophy. It behoved him to forget his holidays (there would always
remain the fun of inventing imaginary adventures) and, as Lurgan Sahib
had said, to work. Of all the boys hurrying back to St Xavier's, from
Sukkur in the sands to Galle beneath the palms, none was so filled with