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Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936

"From Mine Own People"

He could, after the lapse of days or hours, repeat the
sentence which he had reeled up.
He had reduced the alphabet to eleven primitive sounds, and tried to teach me
his method, but I could not understand.
"I sent that letter to Dravot," said Carnehan, "and told him to come back
because this Kingdom was growing too big for me to handle; and then I struck
for the first valley, to see how the priests were working. They called the
village we took along with the Chief, Bashkai, and the first village we took,
Er-Heb. The priests at Er-Heb was doing all right, but they had a lot of
pending cases about land to show me, and some men from another village had
been firing arrows at night. I went out and looked for that village, and fired
four rounds at it from a thousand yards. That used all the cartridges I cared
to spend, and I waited for Dravot, who had been away two or three months, and
I kept my people quiet.
"One morning I heard the devil's own noise of drums and horns, and Dan Dravot
marches down the hill with his Army and a tail of hundreds of men, and, which
was the most amazing, a great gold crown on his head. 'My Gord, Carnehan,'
says Daniel, 'this is a tremenjus business, and we've got the whole country as
far as it's worth having.


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