BEYOND THE GANGES
Two hours after my arrival in Calcutta there entered the American
consulate, high up above the Maidan, a white man who should have won the
sympathy even of the hard-hearted manager who had denied him admittance
to the Sailors’ Home for once having deserted that institution for a
trip “up-country.” He was the possessor of a single rupee. His cotton
garments, thanks to dhobies, Ganges mud, and forty-two hundred miles of
third-class travel, were threadbare rags through which the tropical sun
had reddened his once white skin. Under one arm he carried a tattered,
sunburned bundle of the size of a kodak. European residents of a far-off
district might have recognized in him the erstwhile ball-chaser of the
tennis club of Delhi. In short, ’twas I.
“Years before you were born,” said the white-haired sahib who listened
to my story, “I was American consul in Calcutta, the chief of whose
duties since that day has been to listen to the hard-luck tales of
stranded seamen. Times have changed, but the stories haven’t, and won’t,
I suppose, so long as there are women and beer, and land-sharks ashore
to turn sailors into beachcombers.”
As he talked he filled out a form with a few strokes of a pen.
“This chit,” he said, handing it to me, “is good for a week at the
Methodist Seamens’ Institute. You have small chance of finding work in
Calcutta, though you might try Smith Brothers, the American dentists,
down the street; and you certainly won’t sign on. But get out of town,
somewhere, somehow, before the week is over.”
“Yes, sir,” I answered, opening the door. “Oh, say, Mr. Consul, was
there an American fellow by name of Haywood in to see you?”
“Haywood?” mused the old man. “You mean Dick Haywood, that poor seaman
who was robbed and beaten on an Italian sailing vessel, and kicked
ashore here without his wages?”
“Why—er—yes, sir, that’s him,” I replied.
“Yes, I sent him away a week ago, to Rangoon as a consul passenger. But
his was an especially sad case. I can’t spend money on every Tom, Dick,
and Har—”
“Oh! I wasn’t askin’ that, sir,” I protested, closing the door behind
me.
The Seamens’ Institute occupied the second story—and the roof—of a
ramshackle building in Lall Bazaar street, just off Dalhousie square.
Even about the foot of the stairway hovered a scent of squalor and
compulsory piety. On the walls of the main room, huge placards,
illuminated with texts from the tale of the prodigal son and the stains
of tobacco juice, concealed the ravages which time and brawlers had
wrought on the plaster. Magazines and books of the Sunday-school species
littered chairs and shelves. Four sear-faced old Tars, grouped about a
hunch-backed table, played checkers as if it were an imperative duty,
and cursed only in an undertone. For the office door stood open. I
entered and tendered my “chit” to the Irish manager.
“Ye’re welcome,” he asserted, as he inscribed my name in a huge volume;
“but mind ye, this is a Methodist insteetootion and there’s to be no
cuss-words on the primaces. An’ close the door be’ind ye.”
“The cuss-words ye’ve picked up,” growled a grizzled checker-player,
when I had complied with the order, “ye must stow whilst ye’re here. But
if ye want to learn some new wans, listen at yon keyhole when he’s
workin’ his figyurs.”
My “chit” entitled me to three meals of forecastle fare a day, the
privileges of Sunday-school literature and checkerboards, the use of a
crippled cot, and the right to listen each evening to a two-hour sermon
in the mission chapel. In the company that gathered around the
mess-board at noon were few whose mother-tongue was other than my own.
The British Isles were ably represented; there were wanderers from
Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and even two from “the States.”
My compatriots were Chicago youths whose partnership seemed singularly
appropriate—in India. For the one was named William Curry and the other
Clarence Rice.
“D’y ’iver put yer two eyes on a betther combeenation thon thot to be
floatin’ about this land uv sunburn an’ nakedness?” demanded my
companion on the right. “Why, whin they two be on the beach they’d ’ave
only to look wan anither in the face to git a full meal. An’ yit they’re
after tellin’ us they’re goin’ to break it oop.”
“You bet we be!” ejaculated Rice, forcing an extraordinary mouthful into
one cheek to give full play to his tongue. “This bunch don’t go pards no
more in this man’s land!”
“Fer why?” asked a sailor.
“Here’s how,” continued Rice. “In Nagpore the commissioner give us a
swell set-down an’ everything looked good fer tickets to Cally. ‘What’s
yer name?’ sez the guy to Bill, when we come into the office after
puttin’ away the set-down. ‘An’ what’s yours?’ he sez to me, after Bill
had told him. ‘Clarence Rice,’ sez I. ‘Go on,’ hollers the commish.
‘None o’ yer phony names on me! Ye’re a pair o’ grafters. Git out o’
this office an’ out o’ Nagpore in a hour or I’ll have ye run in—wid yer
currie an’ rice!’”
“Yes,” sighed Curry, “that’s what they handed us all the way from
Bombay. We was three weeks gettin’ across.”
The meal over, I descended to the street with the one self-supporting
guest of the mission. He was a clean-cut, stocky young man of
twenty-five, named Gerald James, from Perth, Australia. Until the
outbreak of the Boer war he had been a kangaroo hunter in his native
land. A year’s service in South Africa had aroused his latent Wanderlust
and, once discharged, he had turned northward with two companions.
Arrived in Calcutta, his partners had joined the police force, while
James, weary of bearing arms, had become a salesman in a well-known
department store.
I disclosed my accomplishments to his manager that afternoon, but he did
not need to glance more than once at my tattered garb to be certain that
his staff was complete. At their barracks the Australian’s partners
assured me that their knowledge of the city proved that the only choice
left to a white man stranded in Calcutta was to don a police uniform.
Evidently they knew whereof they spoke, for employers to whom I gained
access during the days that followed laughed at the notion of hiring
white laborers; and, though scores of ships lay at anchor in the Hoogly,
their captains refused to listen even to my offer to work my passage. To
join the police force, however, would have meant a long sojourn in
Calcutta, and at any hour of the day one might catch sight of two
coolies hurrying across the Maidan with the corpse of the latest victim
of the plague.
Nothing short of foolhardy would have been an attempt to cross on foot
the marshy, fever-stricken deltas to the eastward. One possible escape
from the city presented itself. Through the Australian officers, whose
beat was the station platform, I made the acquaintance of a Eurasian
collector who promised to “set me right with the guard” as far as
Goalando, on the banks of the Ganges. The signs portended however, that
once arrived there I should be in far worse straits than in the capital.
A chance meeting with a German traveler, who spoke no English, raised my
hoard to seven rupees; but the purchase of a new roll of films reduced
it again to less than half that amount, and at that low level my
fortunes remained for all my efforts. Sartorially, I came off better;
for the manager of the mission, calling me into his office one morning,
asked my assistance in auditing his account-book, and gave me for the
service two duck suits left behind by some former guest. I succeeded,
too, in trading my cast-off garments and my dilapidated slippers for a
pair of shoes in good condition.
At the Institute, life moved smoothly on. Each day began with a stroll
along the docks and two hours of loafing in the courtyard of the
Sailors’ Home, where seamen, paying off, were wont to display their
rolls, and captains had even been known, in earlier days, to seek
recruits. After dinner, those of long experience in Oriental lands
retired to their crippled cots or a shaded corner of the roof, while the
“youngsters” played checkers or pieced together some story from the
magazine leaves that the “boy” had thrown into a hasty jumble before
morning inspection. From four to sunset was the period of individual
initiative, when the inventive set off to try the effect of a new “tale
of woe” on beneficent European residents. The “old hands,” less
ambitious, lighted their pipes and turned out for a promenade around
Dalhousie square. Thus passed the sunlit hours. He who had lived through
one day with the “Lall Bazaar bunch” knew all the rest.
But as the days were alike, so were the nights different. Each evening
of the week was dedicated by long custom to its own special attraction,
and newcomers fell as quickly into the routine as a newly arrived prince
into the social swirl of the capital. On Monday, supper over, the
company rambled off to that section of the Maidan adjoining the
viceroy’s palace to listen to the weekly band concert, during the course
of which the fortunate occasionally picked up a rupee that had fallen
from the pocket of some inebriated Tommy Atkins. On Tuesday the
rendezvous was the Presbyterian church at the corner of the square; for
it was then and there that charitable memsahibs, incorporated into a
“Ladies’ Aid Society,” ended their weekly sewing-bee by distributing
among the needy the evidences of their skill with the needle. Hour after
hour, a long procession of beachcombers filed up the narrow stairway of
the Institute, to dump strange odds and ends of cosmopolitan raiment on
the floor. The night was far spent before the last trade had been
consummated.
Wednesday, however, was the red-letter date in the Institute calendar.
On that evening came the weekly “social.” In company with an “old
timer,” I set off early for the English church far out beyond Fort
William, in the chapel of which we were served such unfamiliar
delicacies as ice cream—so the donators dared to name it—and cake. The
invitations were issued to “all seamen on shore in the city,” but found
acceptance, of course, only among the penniless, for the arrack-shops of
Calcutta are subject to no early closing law.
In a corner of the chapel sat several young ladies and the junior rector
of the parish, a handsome English youth, announced on the program as the
president of the meeting. We were favored, however, only with a view of
his well-tailored back, for the necessity of furnishing giggle motifs
for the fair maidens and the consumption of innumerable cigarettes left
him no time for sterner duties.
When the last plate had been licked clean, the gathering resolved itself
into a soirée musicale. A snub-nosed English miss fell upon the piano
beside the pulpit, and every ragged adventurer who could be dragged
within pistol-shot of the maltreated instrument inflicted a song on his
indulgent mates. More than once the performer, indifferent to memsahib
blushes, refused either to expurgate or curtail the ballad of his
choice, and it became the duty of a self-appointed committee to drag him
back to his seat.
The suppression of a grog-shop ditty had been followed by several
moments of fidgety silence when a chorus of hoarse whispers near the
back of the chapel relieved the general embarrassment. A tow-headed
beachcomber—a Swede by all seeming—was forced to his feet and advanced
self-consciously up the aisle. He was the sorriest-looking “vag” in the
gathering. His garb was a strange collection of tatters, through which
his sunburned skin peeped out here and there; and his hands, calloused
evidences of self-supporting days, hung heavily at his sides. The noises
thus far produced would have been prohibited by law in a civilized
country, and I settled back in my seat prepared to endure some new
auditory atrocity. The Swede, ignoring the stairs by which more
conventional mortals mounted, stepped from the floor to the rostrum, and
strode to the piano. The audience, grinning nervously, waited for him to
turn and bellow forth some halyard chantie. He squatted instead on the
recently vacated stool and, running his stumpy fingers over the keys,
fell to playing with unusual skill—Mendelssohn’s “Frühlingslied.” Such
surprises befall, now and then, in the vagabond world. Its denizens are
not always the unseeing, unknowing louts that those of a more laundered
realm imagine.
“The Swanee River” was suggested as the Swede stalked back to his seat,
and the rafters rang with the response; for there was scarcely one of
these adventurers, from every corner of the globe, who could not sing it
without prompting from beginning to end. During the rendition of “God
Save the King,” the youthful rector tore himself away from the
entrancing maidens, and puffing at his fortieth cigarette, shook us each
by the hand as we passed out into the night. A pleasant evening he had
spent, evidently, in spite of our presence.
“After all,” mused the “old timer,” as he hobbled across the Maidan at
my side, “Holy Joes is a hell of a lot like other people, ain’t they?”
Of the entertainments of other evenings I may not speak with authority,
for on that day I had concluded to take the Eurasian collector at his
word and escape from Calcutta before I had outlived my welcome. As I
stretched out on the roof of the Institute on my return from the chapel,
the man beside me rolled over on his blanket and peered at me through
the darkness.
“That you, Franck?” he whispered.
The voice was that of James, the Australian.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Some of the lads,” came the response, “told me you’re going to hit the
trail again.”
“I’m off to-morrow night.”
“Where away?”
“Somewhere to the east.”
The Australian fell silent a moment, and his voice was apologetic when
he spoke again.
“I quit my job to-day. There’s the plague, and the summer coming on, and
they expected me to take orders from a babu manager. Calcutta is no
good. I’d like to get to Hong Kong, but the boys say no beachcomber can
make it in a year. Think you’ll come anywhere near there?”
“Expect to be there inside a couple of months.”
“How if we go pards?” murmured James. “I’ve never been on the road much,
but I’ve bummed around Australia some after kangaroos, and I’ve got
fourteen dibs. I’ll put that up for my part of the stake.”
“Sure,” I answered, for of all the inmates of the Institute there was no
one I should sooner have chosen as a partner for the rough days to come,
than James.
“How’ll we make it?” he queried. “It’s a long jump.”
“I’ll set you right to Goalando,” I replied, “and you can fix me up on
the Ganges boat, if the skipper turns us down. If we can make Chittagong
I think we can beat it through the jungle to Mandalay, though the boys
say we can’t. Then we’ll drop down to Rangoon. They say shipping is good
there. But let’s have it understood that when we hit Hong Kong each one
goes where he likes.”
“All right,” said the Australian, lying down once more.
Thursday passed quickly in the overhauling of our gear, and, having
stuffed our possessions into James’ carpetbag, we set off at nightfall
for the station; not two of us, but three, for Rice of Chicago had
invited himself to accompany us.
“What! So many?” cried the guard, when the Eurasian had introduced us,
“That’s a big bunch of deadheads for one trip. Well, pile on. I’ll see
that the collectors slip you.”
My companions returned to the waiting-room for the carpetbag, and I fell
into step with the station policeman, James’ former partner. The
platform was swarming with a cosmopolitan humanity. Afghans, Sihks,
Bengalis, Tamils, and Mohammedans strolled back and forth or took
garrulous leave of their departing friends through the train windows.
Suddenly my attention was drawn to a priest of Buddha pushing his way
through the throng. The yellow robe is rare in northern India, yet it
was something more than the garment that led me to poke the policeman in
the ribs. For the arms and shoulder of its wearer were white and the
face that grinned beneath the shaven poll could have been designed in no
other spot on earth than the Emerald Isle!
“Blow me,” cried the officer, “if it ain’t the Irish Buddhist, the
bishop of Rangoon! I met ’im once in Singapore. Everybody in Burma knows
’im;” and he stepped forward with a greeting.
“Do I rimimber ye?” chuckled the priest, “I do thot. Ye were down in the
Sthraits. Bless me, and ye’re up here on the force now, eh? Oo’s yer
frind?”
“American,” said the Australian, “off fer Chittagong with a pard o’
mine.”
“Foine!” cried the Irishman. “I’m bound the same. I’m second-class, but
I’ll see ye on the boat the-morrow.”
He passed on and, as the train started, James and Rice tumbled into an
empty compartment after me. The guard kept his promise and not once
during the night were we disturbed. When daylight awakened us our car
stood alone on a side-track at the end of the line.
Goalando was a village of mud huts, perched on a slimy, sloping bank of
the Ganges like turtles ready to slip into the stream at the first hint
of danger. A shriveled Hindu, frightened speechless by the appearance of
three sahibs before his shop door, sold us a stale and fly-specked
breakfast, and we turned down towards the river. On the sagging
gangplank of a tiny steamer, moored at the foot of the slippery bank,
stood the Irish Buddhist, his yellow robe drawn up about his knees,
scrubbing his legs in the muddy water.
“Good mornin’ te ye!” he called, waving a dripping hand. “Come on board
and we’ll have a chat. She don’t leave till noon.”
“The time’ll pass fast,” I suggested, “if you’ll give us your yarn.”
“Sure and I will,” answered the Irishman, “if ye’ll promise te listen te
a good sthraight talk on religion after.”
What was it in my appearance that led every religious propagandist to
look upon me as a possible convert? Even the missionary from Kansas had
loaded me down with tracts.
The Irishman led the way to a cool spot on the deserted deck, sat down
Turkish fashion, and, gazing out across the sluggish, brown Ganges, told
us the story of an unusual life.
He was born in Dublin in the early fifties. As a young man he had
emigrated to America, and, turning “hobo,” had traveled through every
state in the Union, working here and there. He was not long in
convincing both Rice and me that he knew the secrets of the “blind
baggage” and the ways of railroad “bulls.” More than once he growled out
the name of some junction where we, too, had been ditched, and told of
running the police gauntlet in cities that rank even to-day as “bad
towns.”
“Two years after landin’ in the States,” he continued, “I hit
Caleefornia and took a job thruckin’ on a blessed fruit-boat in the
Sacreminto river, the Acme—”
“What!” I gasped, “The Acme? I was truckman on her in 1902.”
“Bless me eyes, were ye now?” cried the Irishman. “’Tis a blessed shmall
worrld. Well, ’twas on the Acme thot I picked oop with a blessed ould
sea dog of the name of Blodgett, and we shipped out of Frisco fer Japan.
Blodgett, poor b’y, died on the vi’age, and after payin’ off I wint on
alone, fitchin’ oop at last in Rhangoon. Th’ English were not houldin’
Burma thin, and white min were as rare as Siamese twins. Bless ye, but
the natives were glad to see me, and I lived foine. But bist of all, I
found the thrue religion, as ye wud call it, or philosophy as it shud be
called. Whin I was sure ’twas right I took orders among thim, bein’ the
foirst blessed white man te turn Buddhist priest.”
“Good graft,” grinned Rice.
“The remark shows yer ignerance,” retorted the son of Erin. “Listen. Oop
te the day of me confirmation I was drhawin’ a hunder rupees a month. I
quit me job. I gave ivery blessed thing I owned to a friend of moine,
even te me socks. At the timple, an ould priest made me prisint of a
strip of yellow cloth, but they tore it inte three paces te make it
warthless, and thin sewed the paces togither agin fer a robe, and I’ve
worn it or wan loike it iver since. If I’d put on European clothes agin,
fer even wan day, I’d be expilled. I cut off me hair and as foine a
mustache as iver ye saw. If I’d lit them grow agin I’d be expilled. If
I’d put on a hat or shoes I’d be expilled. So wud I if I owned a
farthin’ of money, if I shud kill so much as a flee, if I’d dhrink a
glass of arrack, if I tuched the ouldest hag in the market place with so
much as me finger.
“Foine graft, say you and yer loikes. Listen te more. Whin I tuk the
robe, and that’s twinty year an’ gone, I become a novice in the faymous
Tavoy monistary. Ivery blessed morning of me loife fer foive year, I
wint out with the ither novices, huggin’ a big rhice bowl aginst me
belly. We stopped at ivery blessed house. If we’d asked fer inything
we’d ’a been expilled. The thrue Buddhists all put something inte the
bowl, rhice generally and curry, sometoimes fish. Whin they were full we
wint back te the monistary, an’ all the priests, ould wans and novices,
had dinner from what we’d brung them. Thin we gave the rist te the
biggars, fer blessed a thing can we ate from the noon te the nixt
sunrise.
“’Twas harrd, the foirst months, atin’ nothin’ but curry and rhice. Now,
bless ye, I’d not ate European fud if ’twas set down before me. Ivery
blessed afternoon I sthudied the history of Buddha and Burmese with the
ould priests. ’Twas a foine thing fer me. Before I found the thrue faith
I was that blessed ignerent I cud hardly rade me ouwn tungue. To-day,
bless ye, I know eight languages and the ins an’ outs of ivery religion
on the futstool. I was a vile curser whin I was hoboin’ in the States,
and ’twas harrd te quit it. But ivery toime I started te say a cuss-ward
I thought of the revired Gautama and sid ‘blessed’ instead, and I’m
master of me ouwn tungue, now.”
“Then you really worship the Buddhist god,” put in James.
“There agin,” cried the Irishman, “is the ignerance of them that follows
that champeen faker, Jaysus, the son of Mary and a dhrunken Roman
soldier. The Buddhists worship no wan. We riveere Buddha, the foinest
man that iver lived, because he showed us the way te attain Nirvana,
which is te say hiven. He was no god, but a man loike the rist of us.
“After foive year I was ordayned and foive more I was tachin’ th’ ither
novices and the childr’, the Tavoy monistary bein’ the big school of
Rhangoon. Thin I was made an ilder, thin the abbot of the monistary,
thin after fifteen year, the bishop, as ye wud call it, of Rhangoon. Th’
abbots and the bishops have no nade te tache, but, bless ye, I’m tachin’
yit, it bein’ me duty te give te ithers of the thrue faith what I’ve
larned.
“’Tis the bishop’s place te travel, and in these six years gone I’ve
visited ivery blessed Buddhist kingdom in Asia, from Japan te Caylon;
and I was in Lhassa talkin’ with the delai lama long before Yoonghusband
wud have dared te show his face there. There’s niver a Buddhist king nor
prince thot hasn’t traited me loike wan uv them, though they’d have cut
the throats of iny ither European. I’m comin’ back now from three months
with the prince uv Naypal, taychin’ his priests, him givin’ me the
ticket te Chittagong.”
“But if you can’t touch money?—” I began.
“In haythen lands we can carry enough te buy our currie and rhice. I
hove here three rupees,”—drawing out a knotted handkerchief from the
folds of his robe—“if there’s a anna of it lift whin I land in Burma,
I’ll give it te the foirst biggar te ask me. In Buddhist cuntries the
blessed people give us what we nade, as they’ll give it te inywan ilse
thot’s nadin’ it. They’re no superstitious, selfish bastes loike these
dhirty Hindus. Whin we come te Chittagong ye can stop with me. Thin I’ll
give ye a chit te the Tavoy in Rhangoon and ye can stay there as long as
iver ye loike. If iver ye have no place te put oop in a Buddhist town,
go te the monistary. And if ye till them ye know me, see how foine ye’ll
be traited.”
“Aye, but we’d have to know your name,” I suggested.
“As I was goin’ te tell ye, it’s U (oo) Damalaku.”
“Don’t sound Irish,” I remarked.
“No, indade,” laughed the priest, “that’s me Buddhist name. The ould wan
was Larry O’Rourke.”
“Ye call thot graft, you and yer loikes,” he concluded, turning to Rice,
“givin’ oop yer name and yer hair and a foine mustache, and yer clothes,
an’ ownin niver a anna, and havin’ yer ouwn ignerant rhace laughin’ at
ye, and havin’ yer body burned be the priests whin yer born agin in
anither wan! But it’s the thrue philosophy, bless ye, and the roight way
te live. Why is it the white min thot come out here die in tin year?
D’ye think it’s the climate? Bless ye, no, indade, it’s the sthrong
dhrink and the women. Luk at me. Wud ye think I was fifty-five if I
hadn’t told ye?”
He was, certainly, the picture of health; deeply tanned, but with the
clear eye and youthful poise of a man twenty years younger. Only one
hardship, apparently, had he suffered during two decades of the yellow
robe. His feet were broad and stumpy to the point of deformity, heavily
calloused, and deeply scarred from years of travel over many a rough and
stony highway.
“It’s a strange story,” said James.
“I’m askin’ no wan te take me word in this world of liars,” responded
the Irishman, somewhat testily. “Here ye have the proof.”
He thrust a hand inside his robe and, drawing out a small, fat book,
laid it in my lap. It contained more than a hundred newspaper clippings,
bearing witness to the truth of nearly every assertion he had made. The
general trend of all may be gleaned from one article, dated four years
earlier. In it the reader was invited to compare the receptions tendered
Lord Curzon and the Irish Buddhist in Mandalay. The viceroy, in spite of
months of preparation for his visit, had been received coldly by all but
the government officials. Damalaku had been welcomed by the entire
population, and had walked from the landing stage to the monastery,
nearly a half-mile distant, on a roadway carpeted with the hair of the
female inhabitants, who knelt in two rows, foreheads to the ground, on
either side of the route, with their tresses spread out over it.
When he had despatched a Gargantuan bowl of curry and rice in
anticipation of eighteen hours of fasting, the Irishman drew us around
him once more and began a long dissertation on the philosophy of Buddha.
Two morning trains had poured a multicolored rabble into the mud
village, and the deck of the steamer was crowded with natives huddled
together in close-packed groups, each protected from pollution by a
breastwork of bedraggled bundles. Newcomers picked their way gingerly
through the network of alleyways between the isolated tribes, holding
their garments—when such they wore—close round them, and joined the
particular assembly to which their caste assigned them. The Irishman, at
first the butt of Hindu stares, was soon surrounded by an excited throng
of Burmese travelers.
As the afternoon wore on a diminutive Hindu, of meek and childlike
countenance, appeared on board, and, hobbling in and out through the
alleyways on a clumsily-fitted wooden leg, fell to distributing the
pamphlets that he carried under one arm. His dress stamped him as a
native Christian missionary. Suddenly, his eye fell on Damalaku, and he
stumped forward open-mouthed.
“What are you, sahib?” he murmured in a wondering tone of voice.
“As you see,” replied the Irishman, “I am a Buddhist priest.”
“Bu—but what country do you come from?”
“I am from Ireland.”
Over the face of the native spread an expression of suffering, as if the
awful suspicion that the missionaries to whom he owed his conversion had
deceived him, were clutching at his heartstrings.
“Ireland?” he cried, tremulously, “Then you are not a Buddhist! Irishmen
are Christians. _All_ sahibs are Christians,” and he glanced nervously
at the grinning Burmese about us.
“Yah! Thot’s what the Christian fakers tell ye,” snapped the Irishman.
“What’s thot ye’ve got?”
The Hindu turned over several of the tracts. They were separate books of
the Bible, printed in English and Hindustanee.
“Bah!” said Damalaku, “It’s bad enough to see white Christians. But the
man who swallows all the rot the sahib missionaries dish oop fer him,
whin the thrue faith lies not a day’s distance, is disgoostin’. Ye shud
be ashamed of yerself.”
“It’s a nice religion,” murmured the convert.
“Prove it,” snapped the Irishman.
The Hindu accepted the challenge, and for the ensuing half-hour we were
witnesses of the novel spectacle of a sahib stoutly defending the faith
of the East against a native champion of the religion of the West.
Unfortunately, he of the wooden leg was no match for the learned bishop.
He began with a parrot-like repetition of Christian catechisms and,
having spoken his piece, stood helpless before his adversary. A school
boy would have presented the case more convincingly. The Irishman, who
knew the Bible by heart, evidently, from Genesis to Revelations, quoted
liberally from the Scriptures in support of his arguments, and, when the
Hindu questioned a passage, caught up one of the pamphlets and turned
without the slightest hesitation to the page on which it was set forth.
Entangled in a network of texts and his own ignorance, the native soon
became the laughing-stock of the assembled Burmese. He attempted to
withdraw from the controversy by asserting that he spoke no English.
Damalaku addressed him in Hindustanee. He pretended even to have
forgotten his mother tongue, and snatched childishly at the pamphlets in
the hands of the priest. When all other means failed, he fell back on
the final subterfuge of the Hindu—and began to weep. Amid roars of
laughter he clutched the tracts that the Irishman held out to him and,
with tears coursing down his cheeks, hobbled away, looking neither to
the right nor left until he had disappeared in the mud village.
The steamer put off an hour later and, winding in and out among the
tortuous channels of the delta, landed us at sundown in Chandpore, a
replica of Goalando. Our passage—for the captain had refused to “slip”
us—had reduced our combined fortunes to less than one fare to
Chittagong. We scrambled with the native throng up the slimy bank to the
station, resolved to attempt the journey without tickets. It lacked an
hour of train time.
“Will you take this to Chittagong?” I asked, thrusting the carpetbag
into the hands of the Irish bishop. “We’re going to beat it.”
“Sure,” replied the priest, “it shud be easy be night with this crowd.”
It soon became apparent, however, that some tattling Hindu had warned
the railway officials against us. As we strolled along the platform,
peering casually into the empty compartments and striving to assume the
air of men of unlimited means, the station-master emerged from his
office and fell into step with us.
“The evening breeze is very pleasant, is it not, sahibs?” he murmured,
smiling benignly.
“Damn hot,” growled James.
“The gentlemen are going by the train?”
“Sure.”
“There will be many people go to Chittagong. Much nicer if the sahibs
buy their tickets early.”
“We bought tickets in Goalando,” I answered.
“Ah! Just so,” smiled the babu, but the smile suggested that he knew as
well as we the destination of those Goalando tickets.
He dropped gradually behind and was swallowed up in the crowd. Rumor
runs with incredible swiftness among the Hindus, and the natives who
stepped aside to let us pass stared suspiciously at us. We turned back
at the end of the platform to find a police officer strolling along a
few paces in the rear, ostensibly absorbed in the study of the
firmament. Three others flitted in and out among the travelers. The
police of Chandpore could not, of course, arrest us, could not, indeed,
keep us out of any compartment we chose to enter. But well we knew that,
if they reported us on board, the station-master would hold the train
until we dismounted, were it not till morning.
We strolled haughtily past the baggage-car and dodged around to the
other side of the train. Here in the darkness it should be easy to
escape observation. Barely three steps had we taken, however, when we
ran almost into the arms of a native sentry, and his cry was answered by
at least three others out of the night. The coaches were well guarded
indeed.
“The nerve o’ that damn babu!” exploded Rice, “thinkin’ he can keep
you’n me, what’s got away from half the yard bulls in the States, from
holdin’ down his two-fer-a-nickle train! Bet he never heard of a hobo.
Come on! We’ll put James onto the ropes an’ do it in Amurican style.
It’ll be like takin’ cowries away from a blind nigger baby wid
elephanteesees.”
We returned to the station to glance at the clock. Rice, in his scorn,
could not refrain from making a pair of ass’s ears at the astonished
babu. With a half hour to spare, we struck off through the bazaars and,
munching as we went, picked our way along the track to a box-car a
furlong from the station. In an American railroad yard the detectives
would have been thickest at this vantage-point, but the babu knew naught
of the ways of hoboes.
A triumphant screech from the engine put an end to James’ schooling;
and, as the silhouette of the fireman before the open furnace door sped
by, we darted out of our hiding place. The Australian, urged on by our
bellowing, dived at an open window and dragged himself onto the
running-board. We swung up after him, and making our way forward,
entered an empty compartment.
“Well, we made her,” gasped James, throwing aside his topee and mopping
his face, “but what about the collectors?”
“Yah! There’s the trouble,” scowled Rice.
“The only game,” I answered, “is to refuse to wake up.”
“Fine!” cried the Chicago lad, “that’s the best scheme yet.”
I thought so too—until later.
We had slept two hours, perhaps, possibly three, when our dreams were
disturbed by the thump of a ticket-punch on the window-sill and the
unmistakable dulcet of a Eurasian:—
“Tickets, please, sahibs. Give me your tickets.”
We lay on our backs, imperturbable.
“Tickets, sahibs!” shrieked the Eurasian.
James was snoring lightly and peacefully; Rice, with long-drawn snarls,
like the death-rattle of a war-horse, as if striving not merely to
deceive the collector but to frighten him off.
“Tickets, I say, sahibs, tickets!”
The voice was high-pitched now, and the rapping of the punch echoed back
to us from the station building. Three more collectors joined their
colleague and murderously assaulted the car door.
“Hello there! Tickets! It’s the collector! Wake up! _Tickets!_”
The uproar drowned the mumble in which Rice cursed the unusual length of
the train’s halt. An official thrust an arm through the open window and
shook me savagely. The others, bellowing angrily, followed his example,
and rolled us back and forth on the hard benches. The helmet that had
shaded my eyes rolled to the floor. Rice, who had lain down, as he
afterward expressed it, “wrong end to,” was caught by the ankle and
dragged to the window. Still we slumbered.
Suddenly the uproar subsided.
“What’s this?” cried a sterner voice outside.
I opened my eyes ever so slightly and caught a fleeting glimpse of a
Eurasian in the uniform of a station-master.
“Let them alone,” he ordered, “they’ve had too much arrack. No matter if
their tickets are not punched at every station.”
The train started with a jerk, the station lights faded, and we sat up
simultaneously.
“Worked like a charm,” chuckled James.
“Thought it would,” I answered.
“Great!” grinned Rice, “Wouldn’t go in the States, though;” and we lay
down again.
Three more times during the night we were assaulted by a force of
collectors, but slumbered peacefully on. When I awoke again it was broad
daylight. The train was speeding along through unpeopled jungle.
Evidently it was behind time, or we should long since have reached
Chittagong. James stirred on his bench, sat up, and took to filling his
pipe. Rice opened his eyes a moment later and fished through his pockets
for the “makings” of a cigarette. I took seat at the window and stared
ahead for signs of the seaport.
Suddenly a white mile-post flashed by, and my shout of astonishment
brought James and Rice to their feet in alarm. My eyes had deceived me,
perhaps, but I fancied the stone had borne three figures. We crowded
together and waited anxiously for the next.
“There it is!” cried my companions, in chorus. “Two hundred and
seventy-three!”
“Two hundred and seventy-three miles?” shrieked James. “The whole run to
Chitty’s not half that far! Soorah Budjah! Where have we been snaked off
to?”
“Let’s see whether we’re going or coming,” I suggested.
“Two hundred and seventy-four!” bellowed Rice, who was riding half out
the window, “An’ they ain’t no dot between ’em! We’re goin’, all right!”
“Oh Lord! And all our swag!” groaned James.
Still it was possible that the posts indicated the distance to some
other city than Chittagong, and we sat down and waited anxiously until
the train drew up at the next station. It was nothing more than a bamboo
hamlet in the wilderness. We sprang out and hurried towards the babu
station-master.
“How soon do we get to Chittagong?” I demanded.
“Chittagong!” gasped the babu. “Why, you going wrong, sahibs. Chittagong
two hundred and eighty miles down there,” and he pointed along the track
the way we had come.
“Then why the deuce did they let us take this train?” shouted James.
“Where is it going, anyway?”
“This train going in Assam,” replied the native, “Where gentlemen coming
from? Sure you wishing go Chittagong? Let me see tickets.”
“Oh, we know where we want to go, all right,” said James, hastily.
“We’re coming from Chandpore.”
“Ah! Chandpore!” smiled the babu. “I understand. Train from Chandpore
breaking in two thirty miles further. Part going to Chittagong, part
coming here. You sitting in wrong car. Maybe you sleep?” “But,” he
added, as a puzzled frown passed over his face, “many collectors are at
this junction. Why they have not wake you?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” bellowed Rice. “This is a thunder of a
railroad.”
The shriek of a locomotive sounded, and a moment later a south-bound
train drew up on the switch.
“This train going in Chittagong,” said the babu, “you can go with it.”
“Do you think we’re going to pay our fare for two hundred and eighty
miles,” demanded James, “just because the collectors didn’t tell us to
change?”
“Oh, no, sahibs,” breathed the babu, “I will tell it to the guard. Let
me take tickets that I show him.”
“But we’ll have to hurry or we’ll miss her,” said James, starting
towards the side-tracked train.
“Oh, plenty time,” murmured the babu, “Let me take tickets;” and he
stretched out a hand.
Apparently it had come to a “show down.”
“Holy cats!” screamed Rice, suddenly springing into the air. “I remember
now! I had all the bloody tickets in my pocket, and when the collector
hollered fer ’em I give ’em to him. But I went to sleep an’ he never
give ’em back.”
“Very poor collector,” condoled the babu, “but, never mind, I will tell
to the guard how it is.”
The north-bound train pulled out and he stepped across the track to
chatter a moment in excited Hindustanee with a uniformed half-breed.
“Ah! Very nice!” he smiled, coming back, “On this train is riding the
sahib superintendent. You telling him and he tell you what do.”
Our jaws fell. No doubt it seemed “very nice” to the babu, but had we
suspected that there was an Englishman within a hundred miles of where
we stood, Rice certainly would have invented no such tale. It was too
late to retract, however, and the Chicago lad, as the author of the
story and the only one familiar with its details, crossed to the
first-class coach. At his first words, a burly Englishman, dressed in
light khaki, opened the door of a compartment and stepped down to the
ground.
“It’s all off,” muttered James.
But the Englishman listened gravely, nodded his head twice or thrice,
and pointed towards a third-class coach.
“Didn’t call me a liar an’ didn’t say he believed me,” explained Rice,
when the compartment door had closed behind us. “Says he’ll look into
the matter when we get back to the junction. I see somethin’ doin’ when
we land there.”
Late in the afternoon the train drew up at the scene of our pummelling
the night before, and the Englishman led the way to the station-master’s
quarters. That official, however, was as certain as we that no tickets
for Chittagong had been taken up.
“Three sahibs have gone through in the night,” asserted his assistant,
“but with much noise we have not made them awake. Certainly our
collectors do not take up Chittagong tickets here.”
“You see how it is, my men?” said the superintendent, “If they had been
taken up he would have them.”
“By thunder,” shouted Rice, “I’ll bet a pack o’ Sweet-Caps the guy that
took ’em was no collector at all. He was some bloomin’ nigger that
wanted to take his family to Chittagong.”
“It is possible,” replied the Englishman, as gravely as though he were
discussing a philosophical problem, “but the company does not guarantee
travelers against theft. As we have found no trace of the tickets you
will have to pay your fare to Chittagong.”
“We can’t!” cried the three of us, in chorus. On that point we could
second Rice without feeling a prick of conscience.
“Yes,” murmured the superintendent, as if he had not heard, “you will
have to pay.”
He took a turn about the platform.
“But we’re busted!” we wailed, when he again stopped before us.
“Get into your compartment,” he said, quietly. “I will wire the agent at
Chittagong to collect three fares.”
“I tell you we haven’t got—”
But he was already out of earshot. No doubt he was convinced that with
time for reflection we should be able to unearth several rupees which we
had forgotten. Certainly he did not believe that white men would venture
into that wilderness without money—no Englishman of his class would.
Dark night had fallen when we alighted at Chittagong. A babu agent
awaited us, telegram in hand. Luckily, his superior, an Englishman, had
retired to his bungalow. The Hindu led the way to a lighted window and
read the message aloud. It was a curt order to collect three fares, with
never a hint of the unimportant detail we had confided to the
superintendent.
The agent, of course, would not be convinced of our indigency. To our
every protest he replied unmoved:—
“But you must pay, sahibs.”
“You bloody fool!” shrieked Rice, “How can we pay when we’re busted?”
“You may not pass through the gates until you have paid,” returned the
babu.
“All right,” said James, wearily, “we won’t. Show us where we’re going
to sleep and send up supper.”
The shot told. The babu unfolded the telegram meditatively and backed up
to the window to read it again. He scratched his head in perplexity,
stood now on one leg, now on the other, and stared from us to the paper
in his hand. Then he trudged down the platform to seek advice of the
baggage master, paused to chatter with the telegraph operator, and
returned to the truck on which we were seated.
“Oh, sahibs,” he wailed, “we have not food and to sleep in the station,
and the superintendent has not said what I shall do. But you will give
me your names to write, and to-morrow you will come back and pay the
fares; and if you do not, I will send your names to the superintendent—”
“And he can have ’em framed and hung up in his bungalow,” concluded
James. “Sure! You can have all the names you want.”
We gave them and turned away, pausing at the gate to ask the collector
to direct us to the Buddhist monastery. He chuckled at the fancied joke
and refused for some time to take our question seriously.
“It is very far,” he answered at last. “You are going through the town,
making many turns, and through the forest and over the hill before you
are coming to it by the crossroads.”
In spite of these explicit directions we wandered a full two hours along
soft roadways and over rolling hillocks without locating the object of
our search. Pedestrians listened respectfully to our inquiries, but
though we used every word in our Oriental vocabularies that could in any
way be applied to a religious edifice, they shook their heads in
perplexity. One spot at the intersection of two roads seemed to answer
vaguely to the collector’s description, but it was surrounded on every
side by dense groves in which there was no sound of human occupancy.
We were passing it for the fourth time when a gruff voice sounded from
the edge of the woods and a native policeman, toga-clad and armed with a
musket, stepped towards us. His face was almost invisible in the
darkness; the whites of his eyes, gleaming plainly, gave him the uncanny
appearance of a masked figure.
“Buddha!” cried James, with a sweeping gesture, “Boodha, Buddhaha,
Boodista? Buddha sahib keh bungalow kéhdereh?”
The officer shivered and peered nervously about him, like one convinced
of the white man’s power over hobgoblins. As we turned away, however, he
uttered a triumphant shout and dashed off into the forest. A moment
later the sound of human voices came to us from the depth of the grove;
a light flashed through the trees, swung to and fro as it advanced; and
out of the woods, a lantern high above their heads, strode three
yellow-robed figures.
“Bless me!” cried the tallest, in stentorian tones, “It’s the’
Americans! Where in the name uv white min have ye been spindin’ the
blessed day? Lucky y’are te foind our house in th’ woods on a black
noight like this. It’s hungry ye’ll be. Come te the monistary.”
He led the way through the forest to a square, one-story building,
flanked by smaller structures; one of a score of native priests set
before us a cold supper of currie and rice, gathered by the novices
early that morning, and a half-hour later we turned in on three charpoys
in a bamboo cottage behind the main edifice.
As the sun was declining the next afternoon we climbed the highest of
the verdure-clad hills on which Chittagong is built, to seek information
from the district commissioner. For the native residents, priest or
layman, knew naught of the route to Mandalay. The governor, aroused from
a Sunday siesta on his vine-curtained veranda, received us kindly, nay,
delightedly, and, having called a servant to minister to our thirst,
went in person to astonish his wife with the announcement of European
callers. That lady, being duly introduced, consented, upon the
solicitation of her husband, to contribute to our entertainment at the
piano.
White men come rarely to Chittagong. Chatting, like social equals, with
a district ruler stretched out in a reclining chair between us, we came
near to forgetting for the nonce that we were mere beachcombers.
“And now, of course,” said our host, when James had concluded an
expurgated account of our journey from Calcutta, “you will wait for the
steamer to Rangoon?”
“Why, no, Mr. Commissioner,” I answered, “we’re going to walk overland
to Mandalay, and we took the liberty of calling on you to—”
“Mandalay!” gasped the Englishman, dropping his slippered feet to the
floor, “_Walk_ to Man—Why, my dear fellow, come here a moment.”
He rose and stepped to a corner of the veranda, and, raising an arm,
pointed away to the eastward.
“That,” he said, almost sadly, “is the way to Mandalay. Does that look
like a country to be traversed on foot?”
It did not, certainly. Beyond the river, dotted here and there with
crazy-quilt sails, lay a primeval wilderness. Range after range of bold
hills and mountain chains commanded the landscape, filling the view with
their stern summits until they were lost in the blue and hazy eastern
horizon. At the very brink of the river began a riotous tropical jungle,
covering hill and valley as far as the eye could see, and broken nowhere
in all its extent by clearing or the suggestion of a pathway.
“There,” went on the commissioner, “is one of the wildest regions under
British rule. Tigers abound, snakes sun themselves on every bush, wild
animals lie in wait in every thicket. The valleys are full of
dacoits—savage outlaws that even the government fears; and the spring
freshets have made the mountain streams raging torrents. There is
absolutely nothing to guide you. If you succeeded in traveling a mile
after crossing the river, you would be hopelessly lost; and if you were
not, what would you eat and drink in that wilderness?”
“Why,” said James, “we’d eat the wild animals and drink the mountain
streams. Of course we’d carry a compass. That’s what we do in the
Australian Bush.”
“We thought you might have a map,” I put in.
The commissioner stepped into the bungalow. The music ceased and the
player followed her husband out onto the veranda.
“This,” he said, spreading out a chart he carried, “is the latest map of
the region. You mustn’t suppose, as many people do, that all India has
been explored and charted. You see for yourselves that there is nothing
between Chittagong and the Irawaddy but a few wavy lines to represent
mountain ranges. That’s all any map shows and all any civilized man
knows of that section. Bah! Your scheme is idiotic. You might as well
try to walk to Lhassa.”
He rolled up the map and dropped again into his chair.
“By the way,” he asked, “where are you putting up in Chittagong?”
“We’re living at the Buddhist monastery,” I answered.
“What!” he shouted, springing up once more. “In the Buddhist monastery?
You! White men and Christians? Disgraceful! Why, as the governor of this
district, I forbid it. Why haven’t you gone to the Sailors’ Home?”
“Never imagined for a moment,” I replied, “that there was a Home in a
little port like this.”
“There is, and a fine one,” answered the commissioner, “and just waiting
for someone to occupy it.”
“No place for us,” retorted James. “We’re busted.”
“Nothing to do with it,” cried the Englishman. “Money or no money,
you’ll stop there while you’re here. I’ll write you a chit to the
manager at once.”
Had we rented by cable some private estate we could not have been more
comfortably domiciled than in the Sailors’ Home of Chittagong. The city
itself was a garden-spot, the Home a picturesque white bungalow, set in
the edge of the forest on the river bank. The broad lawn before it was
several acres in extent, the graveled walk led through patches of
brilliant flowers. Within, the building was furnished almost
extravagantly. The library numbered fully a thousand volumes—by no means
confined to the output of mission publishing houses—in one corner were
ranged the latest English and American magazines, their leaves still
uncut. The parlor was carpeted with mats, the dining-room furnished with
punkahs. In the recreation room, instead of a dozen broken and greasy
checkerboards, stood a pool-table, and—_comble de combles_—a piano!
Three native servants, housed in an adjoining cottage, were at our beck
and call. For, though weeks had passed since the Home had sheltered a
guest, everything was as ready for our accommodation as though the
manager—for once a babu—had been living in daily expectation of our
arrival.
An hour after our installation, we were reclining in veranda chairs with
our feet on the railing, watching the cook in hot pursuit of one of the
chickens that was doomed to appear before us in the evening currie, when
a white man turned into the grounds and advanced listlessly, swinging
his cane and striking off a head here and there among the tall flowers
that bordered the route. Once in the shade of the bungalow, he sprang up
the steps with outstretched hand, and, having vociferated his joy at the
meeting, sat down beside us. Whatever other vocation he professed, he
was a consummate storyteller, and entertained us with tales of frontier
life until the shades of night fell. Suddenly, he interrupted a story at
its most interesting point to cry out, à propos of nothing at all:—
“The commissioner sent for me this afternoon.”
“That so?” queried James.
“Yes, he thinks you fellows are going to start to Mandalay on foot.
Mighty good joke, that,” and he fell to chuckling, glancing askance at
us the while.
“No joke at all,” I protested. “We _are_ going on foot, just as soon as
we can find the road.”
“Don’t try it!” cried the Englishman, raising his cane aloft to
emphasize his warning. “I haven’t introduced myself. I am chief of
police for Chittagong. The commissioner has given orders that you must
not go. The force has been ordered to watch you, the boatmen forbidden
to row you across the river. Don’t try it, or my department will be
called in,” and with that he dropped the subject abruptly and launched
forth into another yarn.
Late that night, when Rice had been prevailed upon to leave off pounding
atrocious discords on the piano, we made a startling discovery. There
was not a bed in the Home! While James hurried off to rout out a
servant, we of “the States” went carefully through each room with the
parlor lamp, peering under tables and opening drawers in the hope of
finding at least a ship’s hammock. We were still engaged in the search
when the Australian returned with a frightened native, who assured us
that we were wasting our efforts. There had never been a bed nor a
charpoy in the Home. Just why, he could not say. Probably because the
manager babu had forgotten to get them. Other sailor sahibs had slept,
he knew not where, but they had made no protest.
It was too late to appeal to the manager babu to correct his oversight.
We turned in side by side on the pool table and took turns in falling
off at regular intervals through the night.
With the first grey of dawn we slipped out the back door of the bungalow
and struck off through the forest towards the uninhabited river bank
beyond. For in spite of the warning of the chief of police and Rice’s
protest that we should “hold down such a swell joint” as long as
possible, we had decided by majority vote to attempt the overland
journey.
To elude the police force was easy; to escape the jungle, quite a
different matter. A full two hours we tore our way through the
undergrowth along the river without finding a single break in the sheer
eastern bank that we should have dared to swim for. Rice grew petulant,
our appetites aggressive, and we turned back promising ourselves to
continue the search for a route on the following day.
The servants at the Home, knowing the predeliction of sahibs for morning
strolls, greeted our return with grinning servility and an ample _chotah
hazry_. While we were eating, the chief of police bounded into the room
with a new story and the information that the commissioner wished to see
us at once; and bounded away again, protesting that he was being worked
to death.
In his bungalow on the hilltop, the ruler of the district was pacing
back and forth between obsequious rows of secretaries and assistants.
“I have given orders that you are not to start for Mandalay,” he began,
without preliminary.
“And how the deuce will we get out any other way?” demanded James.
“If you were killed in the jungle,” went on the governor, as if he had
heard nothing, “your governments would blame me. But, of course, I have
no intention of keeping you in Chittagong. I have arranged, therefore,
with the agents of the weekly steamer to give you deck passages, with
European food, to Rangoon. Apply to them at once and be ready to start
to-morrow morning.”
This proposition found favor with James, and with two against me I was
forced to yield or be unfaithful to our partnership. We returned to the
monastery that afternoon to bid the Irish bishop farewell and to get the
note that he had promised us. In a blinding tropical shower we were
rowed out to the steamer _Meanachy_ next morning and for four days
following lolled about the winch, on the drum of which the Chinese
steward served our “European chow.” The steamer drifted slowly down the
eastern coast of the Bay of Bengal, touching at Akyab, and, rounding the
delta of the Irawaddy on the morning of May thirteenth, dropped anchor
three hours later in the harbor of Rangoon.