Rudyard Kipling Quotes in The Man Who Would Be King (1975)

Peachy Carnehan: I've come back. Give me a drink, Brother Kipling. Don't you know me?

Rudyard Kipling: No. I don't know you. Who are you? What can I do for you?

Peachy Carnehan: I told you; give me a drink. It was all settled right here in this office. Remember? Danny and Me signed a contract, and you witnessed it. You stood over there. I stood there, and Daniel stood here. Remember?

Rudyard Kipling: Carnehan!

Peachy Carnehan: Peachy Toliver Carnehan.

Peachy Carnehan: Of course.

Peachy Carnehan: Keep looking at me. It helps to keep my soul from flying off.

Rudyard Kipling: Carnehan.

Peachy Carnehan: The same - and not the same, who sat besides you in the first class carriage, on the train to Marwar Junction, three summers and a thousand years ago.

Peachy Carnehan: [final lines] And old Danny fell. Round and round and round and round, like a penny whirligig. Twenty thousand miles and it took him half an hour to fall before he struck the rocks. But do you know what they did to Peachy? They crucified, him, sah, between two pine trees. As Peachy's hands will show.

[Peachy displays the mutilated palms of his hands to Kipling]

Peachy Carnehan: Put poor Peachy who had never done them any harm. He howled there and he screamed, but he didn't die. And one day they come and they took him down and they said it was a miracle he wasn't dead and then they set him down and they let him go. And Peachy come home, in about, a year. And the mountains they tried to fall on old Peachy, but he was quite safe because Daniel walked before him. And Daniel never let go of Peachy's hand and Peachy never let go of Daniel's head.

Rudyard Kipling: [aghast] His head?

Peachy Carnehan: You knew Danny, sir. Oh, yes, you knew, most Worshipful Brother.

[Takes something out of the sack he is carrying and places it on a table]

Peachy Carnehan: Daniel Dravot, Esquire. Well, he became king of Kafiristan, with a crown on his head and that's all there is to tell. I'll be on my way now sir, I've got urgent business in the south, I have to meet a man in Marwar Junction.

[Peachy limps out of the room. Kipling opens the sack and removes Daniel's decaying head with the golden crown still on his head]