No More Learning

I showed the priests' families how
to make aprons of the degrees, but for Dravot's apron the blue border
and marks was made of turquoise lumps on white hide, not cloth. We took
a great square stone in the temple for the Master's chair, and little
stones for the officer's chairs, and painted the black pavement with
white squares, and did what we could to make things regular.

"At the levee which was held that night on the hillside with big
bonfires, Dravot gives out that him and me were Gods and sons of
Alexander, and Passed Grand Masters in the Craft, and was come to make
Kafiristan a country where every man should eat in peace and drink in
quiet, and specially obey us. Then the Chiefs come round to shake hands,
and they were so hairy and white and fair it was just shaking hands with
old friends. We gave them names according as they was like men we had
known in India--Billy Fish, Holly Dilworth, Pikky Kergan, that was
Bazaar-master when I was at Mhow, and so on, and so on.

"The most amazing miracles was at Lodge next night. One of the old priests
was watching us continuous, and I felt uneasy, for I knew we'd have to
fudge the Ritual, and I didn't know what the men knew. The old priest
was a stranger come in from beyond the village of Bashkai. The minute
Dravot puts on the Master's apron that the girls had made for him, the
priest fetches a whoop and a howl, and tries to overturn the stone
that Dravot was sitting on. 'It's all up now,' I says. 'That comes of
meddling with the Craft without warrant! ' Dravot never winked an
eye, not when ten priests took and tilted over the Grand Master's
chair--which was to say, the stone of Imbra. The priest begins rubbing
the bottom end of it to clear away the black dirt, and presently he
shows all the other priests the Master's Mark, same as was on Dravot's
apron, cut into the stone. Not even the priests of the temple of Imbra
knew it was there. The old chap falls flat on his face at Dravot's feet
and kisses 'em.
'Luck again,' says Dravot, across the Lodge, to me;
'they say it's the missing Mark that no one could understand the why of.

"'We're more than safe now. ' Then he bangs the butt of his gun for a
gavel and says, 'By virtue of the authority vested in me by my own right
hand and the help of Peachey, I declare myself Grand Master of all
Freemasonry in Kafiristan in this the Mother Lodge o' the country, and
King of Kafiristan equally with Peachey! ' At that he puts on his crown
and I puts on mine,--I was doing Senior Warden,--and we opens the Lodge
in most ample form. It was an amazing miracle! The priests moved in
Lodge through the first two degrees almost without telling, as if the
memory was coming back to them. After that Peachey and Dravot raised
such as was worthy--high priests and Chiefs of far-off villages. Billy
Fish was the first, and I can tell you we scared the soul out of him. It
was not in any way according to Ritual, but it served our turn. We
didn't raise more than ten of the biggest men, because we didn't want to
make the Degree common. And they was clamouring to be raised.

"'In another six months,' says Dravot, 'we'll hold another Communication
and see how you are working. ' Then he asks them about their villages,
and learns that they was fighting one against the other, and were sick
and tired of it. And when they wasn't doing that they was fighting with
the Mohammedans. 'You can fight those when they come into our country,'
says Dravot. 'Tell off every tenth man of your tribes for a Frontier
guard, and send two hundred at a time to this valley to be drilled.