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 we 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 whiskey 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 party stayed in
that village, and every morning Dravot sat
by the side of old Imbra, and the people came
and worshipped. That was Dravot’s order.
Then a lot of men came into the valley, and
Carnehan and Dravot picks them off with
the rifles before they knew where they was,
and runs down into the valley and up again
the other side, and finds another village,
same as the first one, and the people all falls
down flat on their faces, and Dravot says,—