IN THE HEART OF INDIA
Late that afternoon we met at the Sailors’ Home. It was not long before
Marten and I decided that we must rid ourselves of Haywood once for all.
Go where we would, he was ever at our heels, bringing disgrace upon us.
Picking pockets was his glee. When there was no other excitement, he
took to filching small articles from the stores along the way. As we
were returning to the Home along a crowded street on our second day in
Calcutta, his behavior became unbearable. The natives of the big city
did not spring aside when they came near a white man, as those in the
country had done. Instead they were more likely to push him aside. To be
jostled by a coolie was more than Haywood could stand. He started
striking at those who pushed him, but could not reach them, for the
street was crowded, and the higher-caste natives who annoyed us carried
umbrellas.
Suddenly he thought of a way to get even with them. Opening his
pocket-knife, he marched boldly through the crowd, slashing wickedly at
every sun-shade whose owner crowded against him. An angry murmur rose
behind us. Before we had reached the Home, a screaming mob of tradesmen
surged around us, waving ruined umbrellas in our faces. Certainly it was
time to be rid of such a companion. It was useless to tell him of his
faults. There was nothing left but to skip out when he wasn’t looking.
Haywood ate heartily that evening. His plate was still heaped high with
curry and rice when Marten and I left, to sit on a bench in the garden
of the Home.
“Look here, mate,” said Marten in a stage-whisper, as soon as we were
seated, “we must get away from that fellow. The police will be running
us in along with him some day.”
I nodded. A seaman came to stretch himself out in the grass near at
hand, and we fell silent. Darkness was striding upon us when a servant
of the Home came to close the gate leading to the street.
Suddenly Marten raised a hand and called to the gateman.
“Wait!”
“Let’s get out,” he said to me.
“Where?” I asked.
“Up country.”
“All right,” I answered, springing to my feet.
We slipped out through the gate, walked across a park among the statues
of _sahibs_ who had made history in India, past old Fort William, and
down to the banks of the Hoogly. The tropical night had fallen, and
above the city behind blazed a shining mass of stars. For an hour we
tramped along the docks, jostled now and then by black stevedores and
native seamen. The cobblestones under our feet gave way to a soft
country road. A railway crossed our path, and we stumbled along it in
the darkness. Out of the night rose a large two-story bungalow.
“Trainmen’s shack,” said Marten.
A freight train stood on the near-by track. A European in the uniform of
a brakeman ran down the steps of the bungalow, a lantern in his hand.
Behind him came a coolie, carrying his lunch-basket.
“Goin’ out soon, mate?” bawled Marten.
“All ready to start,” answered the Englishman, peering at us a moment
with the lantern high above his head, and hurrying on.
“Think we’ll go along,” shouted Marten.
The brakeman was already swallowed up in the darkness; but his voice
came back to us out of the night:
“All right!”
A moment later the British engine shrieked, and the freight screamed by
us. We grasped the rods of a high open car and swung ourselves up. On
the floor, folded to the size of a large mattress, lay a waterproof
canvas. We lay down on it. A cooling breeze, sweeping over the moving
train, lulled us to sleep. Once we were awakened by the roar of a
passing express, and peered over the edge of the car to find ourselves
on a switch. Then our train rattled on, and we stretched out again. A
second time we were awakened when our train was turned off on to a
side-track; and the brakeman, passing by, called out that he had reached
the end of his run. We climbed out, and, finding a grassy slope, lay
down and slept out the night.
The morning sun showed a large forest close at hand. A red, sandy
roadway, deep-shaded by thick overhanging branches, led into the woods.
We followed it. Here and there, in a tiny clearing, a scrawny native
cooked a small breakfast over a fire of leaves and twigs before his
grass hut. Above us sounded the song of a tropical bird. The pushing
crowds and dull, ugly roar of Calcutta seemed hundreds of miles away.
The forest opened and fell away on both sides, and we paused on the high
grassy bank of a broad river that glistened in the slanting sunlight.
Below, in two groups, natives, men and women, were bathing. Along a road
near the river stretched a one-row town of low huts, above which stood a
government building and a little church.
“Thunder!” snorted Marten. “Is this all we’ve made? That old train must
have been side-tracked half the time we slept. I know this burg. It’s
Hoogly, not forty miles from Calcutta. But there’s a commissioner here.
He’s the right kind—ticketed me to Calcutta four years ago. Don’t
believe he’ll remember me, either. Come on.”
We strolled on down the road. Before the government building a score of
prisoners, with belts and heavy anklets of iron connected by chains,
were piling cobblestones.
We turned in at the gate of the park-like grounds, and followed a
graveled walk toward a great white bungalow with windows overlooking a
distant view of the sparkling Hoogly and the rolling plains beyond. From
the veranda, curtained by trailing vines, richly clothed servants
watched us, as we came near, with the half-ferocious, half-curious
manner of faithful house-dogs. I did not intend to ask for a ticket, so
I dropped on to a seat under a tree. A chatter of Hindustanee greeted my
companion; a stout native rose from his heels and went inside the
bungalow.
Then something happened that I had never experienced before in all my
Indian travels. A tall, fine-looking Englishman, dressed in the whitest
of ducks, stepped briskly out on to the veranda, and, seeming not to
notice that we were mere penniless wanderers, called out:
“I say, you chaps, come inside and have some breakfast.”
I should have been less astonished had he suddenly pointed a gun in our
direction. I looked up, to see Marten leaning weakly against a post.
“I have only come with my mate, sir,” I explained. “It’s he who wants
the ticket. I’m only waiting, sir.”
[Illustration: The Hindu street-sprinkler does not lay much dust.]
“Then come along and have some breakfast while you wait,” returned the
Englishman. “Early risers have good appetites, and where would you buy
anything fit to eat in Hoogly? I’ve finished, but Maghmood has covers
laid for you.”
We entered the bungalow on tiptoe, and sat down at a flower-decked
table. Two turbaned servants slipped noiselessly into the room and
served us with food from other lands. A _punkah-wallah_ on the veranda
kept the great fans in motion. Upon me fell a strange feeling of having
been in a scene like this before—somewhere—hundreds of years ago. Even
here, then, on the banks of the Hoogly, men ate with knives and forks,
from delicate chinaware, wiping their fingers on snow-white linen rather
than on a leg of their trousers, and left fruit peelings on their plates
instead of throwing them under the table. It seemed as if I were in a
dream.
“I told you,” murmured Marten, finishing his steak and a long silence,
and mopping his plate dry with a slice of bread plastered with butter
from far-off Denmark; “I told you he was the right sort.”
Maghmood entered to tell us we were to follow the commissioner to his
office, two miles distant.
An hour later we were journeying contentedly northwestward in a crowded
train that stopped at every village and cross-road. Marten had received
a ticket to Bankipore. In order to reach this city we had to change at
Burdwan. We alighted at this station three hours before the night
express. A gazing crowd gathered around us as we halted to buy
sweetmeats in the bazaars, and, flocking at our heels, quickly drew the
attention of the native police to us.
At that time Russia was at war with Japan, and the Indian government,
for some reason, was on the lookout for Russian spies. The police were
ordered to watch all foreigners in the country. The native policemen,
who wanted to please the English officers, were very anxious to discover
such spies. So they asked questions of every sahib stranger they met.
Two lynx-eyed officers hung on our heels, and, following us to the
station as night fell, joined a group of railway police on the platform.
They talked together for a long time; then they all lined up before the
bench on which we were seated, and a sergeant drew out one of the small
books that the government uses for recording facts about traveling
Europeans.
“Will the sahibs be pleased to give me their names?” coaxed the sergeant
in a timid voice.
I took the book and pencil from his hand, and wrote the answers to
printed questions on the page.
“And you, sahib?” said the officer, turning to Marten.
“Oh, go chase yourself!” growled my companion. “I ain’t no Roossian. You
got no business botherin’ Europeans.”
“The sahib must answer the questions or he cannot go on the train,”
murmured the native.
“How will you stop me from goin’?” demanded Marten.
The officer muttered something in his own language to his companions.
“You would, would you?” shouted Marten.
“Ah! The sahib speaks Hindustanee?” gasped the sergeant. “What is your
name, please, sir?”
“Look here,” growled Marten; “I’ll give you my name if you’ll promise
not to ask any more fool questions.”
The native smiled with delight, and raised his pencil.
“And the name, sir?”
“Higgeldy Piggeldy,” said Marten.
“Ah! And how is it spelled, please, sahib?”
The sergeant wrote the words slowly and solemnly as my companion spelled
them for him.
“And which is the sahib’s birthplace?” he coaxed.
“Look here, now,” roared Marten; “didn’t you say you wouldn’t ask
anything else?”
“Ah! Yes, sahib,” said the _babu_; “but we must have the informations.
Please, sir, which is your birthplace?”
“If you don’t chase yourself I’ll break your neck!” roared Marten,
springing to his feet.
The officers fell over each other in their haste to get out of Marten’s
way. My companion returned to the bench and sat down in ill-tempered
silence. The sergeant, urged forward by his fellow officers, came toward
us again, and, standing ready to spring, addressed me in gentle tones:
“Sahib, the police wish, please, sir, to know why the sahibs have come
to Burdwan.”
“Because the local train dropped us here, and we had to wait for the
express.”
“But why have you not take the express all the time?”
“We were at Hoogly. It doesn’t stop there.”
“Then why have you not stay in the station? Why have you walk in the
bazaars and in the temples?”
“To see the sights, of course.”
“But there are not sights in Burdwan. It is a dirty village and very
poor and very small. Europeans are coming to Benares and to Calcutta,
but they are not coming in Burdwan. Why have the sahibs come in Burdwan,
and the sun is very hot?”
“I told you why. The sun doesn’t bother us.”
“Then why have the sahibs bought sweets and chappaties in the bazaars?”
“Because we were hungry.”
“Sahibs are not eating native food; they must have European food. Why
have you bought these?”
“For goodness’ sake, hit that fellow on the head with something!” burst
out Marten. “I want to sleep.”
The sergeant moved away several paces and continued his examination:
“And why have the sahibs gone to the tem—?”
The shriek of an incoming train drowned the rest, and we hurried toward
the European compartment.
“You must not go in the train!” screamed the sergeant, while the group
of officers danced excitedly around us. “Stop! You must answer—”
We stepped inside and slammed the door.
“The train cannot be allowed to go!” screeched the _babu_, racing up and
down the platform. “The sahibs are not allowed to go. You must hold the
train, sahib!” he cried to a European conductor hurrying by.
“Hold nothing,” answered the conductor. “Are you crazy? This is the
Bombay mail.” And he blew his whistle.
The sergeant grasped the edge of the open window with one hand, and,
waving his note-book wildly in the other, raced along the platform
beside us.
“You must answer the questions, sahibs—”
The train was rapidly gaining headway.
“Get down, sahibs! Come out! You are not allowed—”
He could keep the pace no longer. With a final shriek he let go his
hold, and we sped on into the night.
We halted late at night in Buxar, and took a slower train next morning
to the holy city of Benares. The train was closely packed with wildly
excited natives. Every window framed eager, longing faces straining for
the first glimpse of the holy city.
To many of our fellow travelers this trip was one they had dreamed of
for years, and this twentieth of April would be the greatest day of
their lives. For if they merely looked at the holy city, and at the
river that flowed past, they believed the sight helped to purify them of
their sins, and assured them of a higher caste in their next life on
earth.
As we came round a low sand-hill a murmured chorus of outcries sounded
above the rumble of the train. We went to the open window to see what
had caused the excitement. There, a half mile distant, the holy river
Ganges swept round from the eastward in a graceful curve and flowed on
southward across our path. On the opposite shore, bathing its feet in
the sparkling stream, sprawled the holy city.
The train rumbled across the railway bridge, and halted on the edge of
the city. We plunged into the narrow, crooked streets, and almost lost
sight of each other as we were swallowed up in a great whirlpool of
people. We pushed our way forward only a short distance before we were
tossed aside among the goods placed in front of the shops. Here we
paused for breath, and then tried to go on. When we came to a corner,
pushing crowds carried us down side streets where we had not chosen to
go. People of all shades and castes, and from every part of India,
swarmed through the streets.
Holy bulls shouldered us aside as if they cared nothing for the color of
our skins. Twice great elephants crossed our path. On the fronts and
roofs of Hindu temples, monkeys, wearing glittering rings on every
finger, scampered and chattered daringly. No wonder the natives thought
that the souls of men lived in the bodies of these bold and lively
beasts.
We had been tossed back and forth through the winding streets for more
than an hour, when a wild beating of drums and a wailing of music from
pipes burst on our ears.
“Religious procession!” screamed Marten, dragging me after him up the
steps of a temple. “We’ll have to stand here till it gets by. How are
those for glad rags?”
Below us the street quickly filled with a parade of Hindus wearing
strange costumes of all kinds and colors. To the wild, screaming music a
thousand marchers kept uncertain step. One bold fellow was “made up” to
look like an Englishman. He was dressed in a suit of shrieking checks
that fitted his thin body as tightly as a glove; on his feet were shoes
with great, thick soles in which he might without harm have walked on
red-hot coals. His face was so covered with flour that he was far paler
than the palest of Englishmen. Over his long hair he wore a
close-cropped wig of sickly yellow; and the helmet on his head was big
enough to give shade to four men. He was smoking a pipe, and he swung a
queer-looking cane gaily back and forth as he walked. Every dozen yards
he pretended that he had become very angry, and danced about madly,
rushing toward the other paraders and striking wildly about him with his
fists. In these fits of anger he never once opened his lips. The natives
looking on laughed with delight. They thought he was acting just like a
sahib.
We fought our way onward to the center of the town, and climbed down the
great stone stairway of another temple, where we could watch the
pilgrims wash away their sins in the holy waters. Up and down the banks
of the river Ganges, groups of thinly dressed natives, dripping from
their baths in the holy waters, smoked bad-smelling cigarettes in the
shadow of the temple, or bought holy food from the straw-roofed shacks.
Bathing in the holy waters were men wearing almost no clothing, and
women wearing winding sheets. From time to time bands of pilgrims
covered with the dust of travel tumbled down the stairways and plunged
eagerly into the river. For the Hindu believes that, no matter how badly
a person has behaved, his sins can be washed away in the Ganges at the
foot of Benares.
The river did not look as if it could make one pure. Its waters are so
muddy that a ray of sunshine will not pass through a glassful of it. I,
for one, would be afraid to bathe in that fever infected flow of mud.
Yet the native pilgrims splashed about in it, ducking their heads
beneath the surface and dashing it over their faces; they rinsed their
mouths in it, scraped their tongues with sticks dipped in it, and blew
it out of their mouths in great jets, as if they were determined to get
rid of all the sin in their bodies.
[Illustration: I do a bit of laundry work washing my coat in the Ganges
below the city and at the same time keeping a good lookout for
crocodiles.]
We went through the city, and reached the station in time for a
“wash-up.” Twice that day we had been taken for Eurasians (a Eurasian is
a person who is half European and half Asiatic); so we thought it was
about time to wash our faces. The station stood at the end of the city.
Beyond it stretched a flat, sandy plain. Armed with a lump of soap of
the color of maple-sugar, we slid down the steep bank below the railway
bridge, with a mass of loose sand and rolling stones. When we reached
the spot, however, Marten decided that he was “too tired” to turn
_dhoby_, and stretched out in the shade on the bank. I waded out into
the river, sinking half way to my knees in the mud. It would not have
been impolite or out of place to undress at once, but there would
certainly have been a sadly sunburned sahib ten minutes afterward. So I
scrubbed my jacket while wearing my shirt, and the shirt while wearing
the jacket, and wrapped the jacket around me while I soaked my trousers
in waters filled with Hindu sins.
“Say, mate,” drawled Marten, as I daubed my trousers with the
maple-sugar soap, “you’ll surely go to heaven fer scrubbin’ your rags in
that mud. There’s always a bunch of Hindu gods hangin’ around here. I
don’t want to disturb a honest workin’-man, o’ course, but I’d be so
lonesome if you was gone that I’m goin’ to tell you that there’s one
comin’ to take you to heaven now, and if you’re finished with livin’—”
I looked up suddenly. Barely ten feet away, the ugly snout of a
crocodile was moving toward me.
“Stand still!” shouted Marten, as I struggled to pull my legs from the
clinging mud. “He’s a god, I tell you. Besides, he’s probably hungry.
Don’t be so selfish.”
The trousers, well aimed, ended his speech suddenly as I reached dry
land. After that I worked with wide-open eyes; and before I was through
with my washing I saw as many as fourteen of the river gods of India.
We reached the station in time for the train, and arrived in Allahabad
late that night. After walking half a mile from the station we found
“The Strangers’ Rest,” a home for wanderers, closed. But the Irish
superintendent was a light sleeper, and we were soon weighing down two
_charpoys_ under the trees.
After breakfast the next morning I set out to explore the city alone,
while my companion called on the commissioner. When evening came I was
again sitting under the spreading trees near the “Rest,” when I looked
up and saw Marten turning slowly and sorrowfully in at the gate. He had
been to ask the commissioner for a ticket. According to our plan, he had
promised to ask for a pass to Kurachee, a city at the mouth of the Indus
River. But he had made a mistake and had blurted out the familiar name
of Bombay. He had received, therefore, a ticket to the city on the west
coast.
Marten did not want to go to Bombay, because I had refused to go there
with him. But he had the ticket, and the law required that he leave by
the first train. Even if it had not, there was no one else to whom he
could apply. He felt very sad about it—so much so, indeed, that he began
to cry. To dry his tears I agreed to accompany him to the capital of the
next district, where he could ask for a ticket that would take him my
way.
Before the night was over we had reached the town of Jubbulpore, where
we passed a sharp-cornered rest in the station. Marten told a carefully
worded story to the commissioner of that district, and received a ticket
to Jhansi. To get there he had to take a train southward until he
reached the main line, where he could change cars and go northwest. I
wished to go by another line that would take me through a wilder part of
India. So we separated, promising to meet again at Bina.
The train on which I traveled was run by a Eurasian driver, who gave me
a compartment in the car all to myself. The country we passed through
was covered with hills and ridges, over which the train rose and fell
like a ship crossing the waves of the ocean. On both sides of the track
stretched a jungle where the vines and trees grew so thick and close
together that even the sunshine could not pierce its way into the woods.
The villages we passed were merely clusters of huts behind the railway
station. Every time our train stopped at one of these places, the people
flocked to the station to greet us. Now and then, as we went on, I
caught sight of some kind of deer bounding away through the shrubbery;
and once I saw that dreaded beast of India—a tiger. He was a lean,
lively beast, more dingy in color than those we see in cages. He moved
toward the track rapidly, yet cautiously, vaulting over the low jungle
shrubbery in long, easy bounds. On the track he halted a moment, gazed
scornfully at our slowly moving engine, then sprang into the thicket and
was gone.
We halted at noon at the station of Damoh. Never thinking that anyone
would enter my compartment, I left my knapsack on a bench, and went to
eat lunch in the station buffet. When I returned a strange sight greeted
my eyes. Before the door of my compartment was grouped the population of
Damoh. Inside stood a Hindu policeman, in khaki uniform and red turban.
Under one arm he held my guide-book, a spool of film, and my lunch
wrapped in a leaf, that he had taken from my knapsack. The sack itself,
half a dozen letters, and my camera cover lay on the floor at his feet.
In some way he had found the springs that opened the back of the camera,
and, having laid that on the bench beside him, was cheerfully turning
the screw that unwound the ruined film while his fellow countrymen
looked on with delight. All the pictures I had taken on that trip were
lost to me because of his meddling.
The natives fled when they saw me coming, and the policeman dropped my
possessions on the floor and dashed for the shelter of the
station-master’s office. I followed after to make complaint, and came
upon him cowering behind a heap of baggage, with his hands tightly
clasped over the badge that bore his number.
“He says,” explained the Eurasian station-agent, “that it is his duty to
look in empty compartments for lost articles, but that he has not taken
the littlest thing, not even a box of matches, and asks that you forgive
him. If you cannot put the queer machine together again, he will.”
I went on to Bina, where I stayed three days without seeing anything of
Marten. For some time I supposed he had failed to find me there and had
gone on without me. But three days later, when I arrived in Agra, I
found in a letter-rack at the station a post-card across which my name
was misspelled in bold blue letters. On the back was scrawled this
simple message:
Godawara, India, April 25th.
_Felow beech comer:_
Missed the train to Bina becaze I knoked the block off a black
polisman. They draged me down hear and the comish finned me
fifteen dibs and then payed the fine and put me rite as far as
Agra. I will pick you up ther on the 27th. yours,
BUSTED HEAD.
The twenty-seventh was past. The ex-pearl-fisher must have gone on, for
I saw him no more.
The next afternoon I went to see the wonderful Taj Mahal, a great white
marble building erected by a king as the burial-place of his wife. Then
I took the night train to Delhi. In that city I found almost an Arab
world. I began to fancy that I was back in Damascus, the stores and
people were so much like those of “Shaam.” The calls to prayer, the fez
headdress, the lean-faced Bedouins with their trains of camels, even the
stray dogs, reminded me that there was a time when the followers of
Mohammed ruled a large part of India. But there were also many Arab
eating-shops where the keepers were not afraid to let me pause to choose
my food from the steaming kettles that stood near the doorway.
It was these signs of a Western world, perhaps, that soon brought to my
mind that my side trip “up country” had carried me a thousand miles out
of my way. I awoke one morning with my mind made up to turn eastward
once more. I spent that day perspiringly as chief ball-chaser for the
Delhi Tennis Club, fagging three games for the district commissioner and
as many more for his friends. They did not reward me at once, however,
and at twilight I turned back penniless toward Delhi, four miles
distant.
[Illustration: A lady of Delhi out for a drive in a bullock cart.]
The stillness of the summer night was broken only by the murmuring hum
of insects, or by the leaves moving softly in the gentle breeze. Now and
then I heard the patter of native feet along the dusty roadway. Once I
was startled by a loud chorus of men’s voices that burst out suddenly
from the darkness in words of my own language; and a moment later a
squad of English soldiers trooped by me, arm in arm, singing at the top
of their lungs, “The Place Where the Punkah-wallah Died.” Plainly they
were returning to their barracks after spending a merry afternoon on
leave. They disappeared down the road, and I tramped on into the silence
of the night.
I had to find lodging somewhere; for, although the weather was warm,
Hindu thieves were numerous. As I crossed the railway tracks I recalled
the fine “hotel” we had occupied in Puri. The next moment I slid down
the bank into the broad railroad yards. Head-lights of puffing switch
engines sent streaks of bright light through the blackness of the night.
I wandered here and there, looking for an empty car. There were freight
cars without number, an endless forest of them; but they were all closed
or loaded with goods. Passenger cars there were none. I struck off
boldly across the tracks toward the lighted station. Coming into the
blinding glare of a head-light, I suddenly felt myself falling down,
down, into space. Long after the world above had disappeared, I landed
in utter darkness, unhurt except for the barking of my nose. Near at
hand several live coals gleamed like watching eyes. I had walked into a
cinder-pit on the track near the engine-house.
Giving a cat-like spring from the top of the largest heap of ashes, I
grasped the rail above and pulled myself out. Beyond the station lay a
thickly wooded park known as Queen’s Gardens. I climbed over the railing
and stretched out in the long grass. But the foliage overhead offered no
such shelter as had the trees of equatorial Ceylon, and I awoke in the
morning dripping wet from the falling dew.
That afternoon I received a ticket and two rupees for chasing the
tennis-balls, and I returned to Calcutta Saturday night.