“Let him live out his life.” The coiled thing hissed and half opened its hood. “May thy release come soon, brother!” the lama continued placidly. “Hast thou knowledge, by chance, of my River?”
“Never have I seen such a man as thou art,” Kim whispered, overwhelmed. “Do the very snakes understand thy talk?”
“Who knows?” He passed within a foot of the cobra’s poised head. It flattened itself among the dusty coils.
“Come, thou!” he called over his shoulder.
“Not I,” said Kim”. “I go round.”
“Come. He does no hurt.”
Kim hesitated for a moment. The lama backed his order by some droned Chinese quotation which Kim took for a charm. He obeyed and bounded across the rivulet, and the snake, indeed, made no sign.
“Never have I seen such a man.” Kim wiped the sweat from his forehead. “And now, whither go we?”
“That is for thee to say. I am old, and a stranger—far from my own place. But that the rêl-carriage fills my head with noises of devil-drums I would go in it to Benares now ... Yet by so going we may miss the River. Let us find another river.”
Where the hard-worked soil gives three and even four crops a year through patches of sugar-cane, tobacco, long white radishes, and nol-kol, all that day they strolled on, turning aside to every glimpse of water; rousing village dogs and sleeping villages at noonday; the lama replying to the volleyed questions with an unswerving simplicity. They sought a River: a River of miraculous healing. Had any one knowledge of such a stream?