"
He stopped here, and crawled across the room for a drink of water.
He was very shaky and sick.
He referred several times to his "treasure"--some great possession that he
owned--but I held this to be the raving of drink. He was as poor and as proud
as he could be. His manner was not pleasant, but he knew enough about the
natives, among whom seven years of his life had been spent, to make his
acquaintance worth having. He used actually to laugh at Strickland as an
ignorant man--"ignorant West and East"--he said. His boast was, first, that he
was an Oxford Man of rare and shining parts, which may or may not have been
true--I did not know enough to check his statements--and, secondly, that he
"had his hand on the pulse of native life"--which was a fact. As an Oxford man,
he struck me as a prig: he was always throwing his education about. As a
Mahommedan faquir--as McIntosh Jellaludin--he was all that I wanted for my own
ends. He smoked several pounds of my tobacco, and taught me several ounces of
things worth knowing; but he would never accept any gifts, not even when the
cold weather came, and gripped the poor thin chest under the poor thin alpaca-
coat. He grew very angry, and said that I had insulted him, and that he was not
going into hospital.
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