Rudyard Kipling · 1888 · overland

Kipling's 1888 story, written when he was twenty-two and working on a newspaper in Lahore. Two loafers walk into the narrator's office, show him a contract they have signed with each other, and announce that they are going to Kafiristan to be kings of it - and three years later one of them comes back.

1. 1
   Lahore

   A newspaper office on a hot night, and Peachey Carnehan and Daniel Dravot showing the editor a document in which they swear off drink and women until they are kings - and asking to see the maps and encyclopaedias.

2. 2
   Peshawar

   They leave disguised as a mad priest and his servant, with twenty Martini rifles hidden in the camel loads - and the narrator watches them go north-west into country no European has come back from.

3. 3
   The Khyber

   Through the pass and into Afghanistan, and then off every road there is - the last of the world where a British passport means anything, and the last anyone hears of them for three years.

4. 4
   Kafiristan

   They drill the tribes, win their wars and are taken for gods - Dravot crowned on a masonic sign he did not know they knew - until he decides to take a wife, and she bites him, and he bleeds.

5. 5
   Lahore

   A crippled beggar comes into the same office at midnight with Dravot's head in a bag, crown still on it - having been crucified between two pines and cut down alive, and walked back with it across the mountains.