It blazed in the morning light — all red and blue and green flashes, picked out with the vicious blue-white spurt of a diamond here and there.  Kim opened his eyes.

’Oh, they are quite well, those stones.  It will not hurt them to take the sun.  Besides, they are cheap.  But with sick stones it is very different.’  He piled Kim’s plate anew.  ’There is no one but me can doctor a sick pearl and re-blue turquoises.  I grant you opals — any fool can cure an opal — but for a sick pearl there is only me.  Suppose I were to die!  Then there would be no one ...  Oh no!  You cannot do anything with jewels.  It will be quite enough if you understand a little about the Turquoise — some day.’

He moved to the end of the veranda to refill the heavy, porous clay water-jug from the filter.

‘Do you want drink?’

Kim nodded.  Lurgan Sahib, fifteen feet off, laid one hand on the jar.  Next instant, it stood at Kim’s elbow, full to within half an inch of the brim — the white cloth only showing, by a small wrinkle, where it had slid into place.

‘Wah!’ said Kim in most utter amazement.  ‘That is magic.’  Lurgan Sahib’s smile showed that the compliment had gone home.

‘Throw it back.’

‘It will break.’

‘I say, throw it back.’

Kim pitched it at random.  It fell short and crashed into fifty pieces, while the water dripped through the rough veranda boarding.

‘I said it would break.’

‘All one.  Look at it.  Look at the largest piece.’

That lay with a sparkle of water in its curve, as it were a star on the floor.  Kim looked intently.  Lurgan Sahib laid one hand gently on the nape of his neck, stroked it twice or thrice, and whispered:  ’Look!  It shall come to life again, piece by piece.  First the big piece shall join itself to two others on the right and the left — on the right and the left.  Look!’

To save his life, Kim could not have turned his head.  The light touch held him as in a vice, and his blood tingled pleasantly through him.  There was one large piece of the jar where there had been three, and above them the shadowy outline of the entire vessel.  He could see the veranda through it, but it was thickening and darkening with each beat of his pulse.  Yet the jar — how slowly the thoughts came! — the jar had been smashed before his eyes.  Another wave of prickling fire raced down his neck, as Lurgan Sahib moved his hand.

‘Look!  It is coming into shape,’ said Lurgan Sahib.

So far Kim had been thinking in Hindi, but a tremor came on him, and with an effort like that of a swimmer before sharks, who hurls himself half out of the water, his mind leaped up from a darkness that was swallowing it and took refuge in — the multiplication-table in English!

‘Look!  It is coming into shape,’ whispered Lurgan Sahib.