Kim(基姆)
Rudyard Kipling
Chapter 1
O ye who tread the Narrow Way
By Tophet-flare to judgment Day,
Be gentle when 'the heathen' pray
To Buddha at Kamakura!
Buddha at Kamakura.
He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam
Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher—the Wonder
House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum. Who hold Zam-Zammah,
that 'fire-breathing dragon', hold the Punjab, for the great
green-bronze piece is always first of the conqueror's loot.
There was some justification for Kim—he had kicked Lala
Dinanath's boy off the trunnions—since the English held the Punjab
and Kim was English. Though he was burned black as any native;
though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue
in a clipped uncertain sing-song; though he consorted on terms of
perfect equa…