Chapter II

 And whoso will, from Pride released; Contemning neither creed nor priest, May feel the Soul of all the East. About him at Kamakura.

Buddha at Kamakura.

 They entered the fort-like railway station, black in the end of  night; the electrics sizzling over the goods-yard where they  handle the heavy Northern grain-traffic.

'This is the work of devils!' said the lama, recoiling from the  hollow echoing darkness, the glimmer of rails between the masonry  platforms, and the maze of girders above. He stood in a gigantic  stone hall paved, it seemed, with the sheeted dead third-class  passengers who had taken their tickets overnight and were  sleeping in the waiting-rooms. All hours of the twenty-four are  alike to Orientals, and their passenger traffic is regulated  accordingly.

'This is where the fire-carriages come. One stands behind that  hole' -Kim pointed to the ticket-office - 'who will give thee a  paper to take thee to Umballa.'

'But we go to Benares,' he replied petulantly.

'All one. Benares then. Quick: she comes!'

'Take thou the purse.'

The lama, not so well used to trains as he had pretended, started  as the 3.25a.m. south-bound roared in. The sleepers sprang to  life, and the station filled with clamour and shoutings, cries of  water and sweetmeat vendors, shouts of native policemen, and  shrill yells of women gathering up their baskets, their families,  and their husbands.

'It is the train - only the te-rain. It will not come here.  Wait!' Amazed at the lama's immense- simplicity (he had handed  him a small bag full of rupees), Kim asked and paid for a ticket  to Umballa. A sleepy clerk grunted and flung out a ticket to the  next station, just six miles distant.

'Nay,' said Kim, scanning it with a grin. 'This may serve for  farmers, but I live in the city of Lahore. It was cleverly done,  Babu. Now give the ticket to Umballa.'

The Babu scowled and dealt the proper ticket.

'Now another to Amritzar,' said Kim, who had no notion of  spending Mahbub Ali's money on anything so crude as a paid ride  to Umballa. 'The price is so much. The small money in return is  just so much. I know the ways of the te-rain ... Never did yogi  need chela as thou dost,' he went on merrily to the bewildered  lama. 'They would have flung thee out at Mian Mir but for me.  This way! Come!' He returned the money, keeping only one anna in  each rupee of the price of the Umballa ticket as his commission -  the immemorial commission of Asia.