![]() Carnehan is carrying Dravot’s head, and his golden crown, in his bag. But Dravot had tried to take a wife terrified, she had bitten him until he bled, and he was seen to be “Not a God nor a Devil, but only a man!” The people, led by the priests, had turned against them, dropped Dravot from a high bridge to his death, and crucified Carnehan with wood splinters. They had indeed made themselves Kings, persuading the local people that they were gods, mustering their army, asserting their power over the local villages, and planning to build a Nation. Some two years later, on a hot summer’s night, Carnehan creeps into his office, a broken man, crippled and in rags, and tells an amazing story. The narrator, a journalist, encounters two ruffianly-looking adventurers, Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan, who announce that they are off to Kafiristan in the mountains of Afghanistan to make themselves Kings. ![]() ![]() This story first appeared in The Phantom Rickshaw and other Eerie Tales (Volume Five of the Indian Railway Library, published by Wheelers of Allahabad in 1888) and collected in Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories in 1895, and in numerous later editions of that collection. ![]()
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