disaster, who, not content with his exact and simple duty, insolently
overleaps the breach between East and West--the breach which Mr Kipling
himself so scrupulously observes. There was Trajego:

"He knew too much in the first instance; and he saw too much in the
second. He took too deep an interest in native life; but he will never
do so again."


His story is entitled _Beyond the Pale_, and is to be found among
_Plain Tales from the Hills_. There is also _The Man Who Would Be
King_. He, too, neglected the barriers. India may be ruled by the
resolute and challenged by the brave; but India may never be embraced.

India, who strikes out of a brazen sky; who poisons with her infected
breath and is served to the death without reward; who physically cows
her people with dust and fever and heat, and is possessed with devils
who must be pacified; where successive civilisations have left their
bones upon the soil and a hundred religions have decayed, leaving the
old air heavy with exhalations--this India slowly takes shape in Mr
Kipling's native stories. Her physical immensity and pressure is felt
in stories like _The End of the Passage_ and _William the Conqueror_.
Her sleepless tyranny, which has made men intricate and incalculable,
driving them to subterranean ways of thought and fancy, rules in every
page of a tale like _The Return of Imray_. Imray was an amiable
Englishman who incautiously patted the head of his servant's child.
Bahadur Khan speaks of it thus to Strickland of the Police:

"'Walking among us, his servants, he cast his eyes upon my child who
was four years old. Him he bewitched, and in ten days he died of the