Though he was burned black as any native though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue in a clipped uncertain sing-song though he consorted on terms of perfect equality with the small boys of the bazar Kim was white – a poor white of the very poorest. There was some justification for Kim – he had kicked Lala Dinanath’s boy off the trunnions – since the English held the Punjab and Kim was English. Who hold Zam-Zammah, that ‘fire-breathing dragon’, hold the Punjab, for the great green-bronze piece is always first of the conqueror’s loot. He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher – the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum.
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