He made Kim learn whole chapters of the Koran by heart, till he could deliver them with the very roll and cadence of a mullah.
Moreover, he told Kim the names and properties of many native drugs, as well as the runes proper to recite when you administer them.

And in the evenings he wrote charms on parchment--elaborate pentagrams crowned with the names of devils--Murra, and Awan the Companion of Kings--all fantastically written in the corners.

More to the point, he advised Kim as to the care of his own body, the cure of fever-fits, and simple remedies of the Road.

A week before it was time to go down, Colonel Creighton Sahib--this was unfair--sent Kim a written examination paper that concerned itself solely with rods and chains and links and angles.
Next holidays he was out with Mahbub, and here, by the way, he nearly died of thirst, plodding through the sand on a camel to the mysterious city of Bikanir, where the wells are four hundred feet deep, and lined throughout with camel-bone.

It was not an amusing trip from Kim's point of view, because--in defiance of the contract--the Colonel ordered him to make a map of that wild, walled city; and since Mohammedan horse-boys and pipe-tenders are not expected to drag Survey-chains round the capital of an independent Native State, Kim was forced to pace all his distances by means of a bead rosary.