We'll fight for the ten men,' and with that he fires two rifles at the
twenty men, and drops one of them at two hundred yards from the rock
where he was sitting. The other men began to run, but Carnehan and
Dravot sits on the boxes picking them off at all ranges, up and down the
valley. Then we goes up to the ten men that had run across the snow too,
and they fires a footy little arrow at us. Dravot he shoots above their
heads, and they all falls down flat. Then he walks over them and kicks
them, and then he lifts them up and shakes hands all round to make them
friendly like. He calls them and gives them the boxes to carry, and
waves his hand for all the world as though he was King already. They
takes the boxes and him across the valley and up the hill into a pine
wood on the top, where there was half a dozen big stone idols. Dravot
he goes to the biggest--a fellow they call Imbra--and lays a rifle and
a cartridge at his feet, rubbing his nose respectfuly with his own nose,
patting him on the head, and nods his head, and says, 'That's all right.
I'm in the know too, and these old jimjams are my friends.' Then he
opens his mouth and points down it, and when the first man brings him
food, he says, 'No;' and when the second man brings him food, he says
'no;' but when one of the old priests and the boss of the village brings
him food, he says, 'Yes;' very haughty, and eats it slow. That was how
he came to our first village without any trouble, just as though we
had tumbled from the skies. But we tumbled from one of those damned
rope-bridges, you see, and--you couldn't expect a man to laugh much
after that?"

"Take some more whisky and go on," I said. "That was the first village
you came into. How did you get to be King?"

"I wasn't King," said Carnehan. "Dravot he was the King, and a handsome
man he looked with the gold crown on his head and all. Him and the other