FOLLOWING THE MENAM RIVER TO BANGKOK
The path to Bangkok, such as it was, lay on the eastern bank of the
Menam River. This time we crossed the stream in a dugout canoe fully
thirty feet long, which held, besides ourselves and four paddlers,
twenty-two natives, chiefly women. All day we tramped through jungle as
wild as that to the westward, following the course of the river. We
passed many bamboo villages, and for every hut at least a half dozen
yellow curs added their yelpings to the uproar that greeted us as we
came near.
The inhabitants were careless “wild men” like those of the mountains,
content to live and die in their nests of jungle rubbish, with never a
peep at the outside world. Both the men and the women wore their dull
black hair some two inches long and dressed in a bristling pompadour
that made them look like startled porcupines. Both had jet-black teeth.
The children were strong and healthy little animals.
On the way we had to swim across many branches of the Menam River.
Sometimes they were swift and deep. What we dreaded more were the almost
motionless streams through which we must wade waist-deep in acres of
green slime where poisonous snakes lay in hiding.
The sun was still high when we reached a handsome large bungalow set in
the center of a clearing on the bank of the Menam, with a half circle of
huts roundabout and at some distance from it. The bungalow was the home
of the “jungle king,” as he was called; his servants lived in the huts
about it.
We had heard of the king at breakfast that morning. The Dane had told us
of a white man from Sweden who was manager for a lumber company dealing
in teak forests, and that he was called the king on account of the style
in which he lived.
We found the royal person sitting on the veranda of his palace, gazing
peacefully out across the clearing. He was a white man who must have
weighed nearly a quarter ton. The servants who moved about near him
looked like manikins in his presence. We stopped at the foot of the
veranda and asked for a drink of water. He looked at us without a sign
of surprise, and with a calm wave of his hand ordered a servant to bring
it. One would have thought white men passed his palace every hour. He
watched us silently as we drank, asked from us where we came and where
we were going, and that was all. He was not enough interested in our
doings to ask more.
“I can let you stay in one of my bungalows,” he said, “if you have
planned on stopping here.”
We were of half a mind to push on. It was an hour before sunset, and, to
tell the truth, we were a bit disappointed at his coolness of manner. In
the end we swallowed our pride and thanked him for the offer. It was
fortunate for us that we did so.
The “king” waved a hand once more, and a servant in a scarlet uniform
stepped forth and led us to one of the half circle of bungalows. Five
servants were sent to look after our wants. They put water for us in two
bath-tubs, and stood ready with crash towels to rub us down. Our skins
were so painfully sunburned and scratched, however, that we had to do
without that service. When we had changed our garments, a laundryman
took charge of those we had worn. By this time a servant had brought a
phonograph from the palace and set it in action. How we did enjoy it!
For weeks we had heard no music save the shrill croaking of lizards.
Then came our evening feast. For days afterward James could not speak of
that without a trembling of his voice. It made the supper of the night
before seem like a penny lunch in comparison.
We had just settled down in our bungalow to talk matters over, when a
sudden hubbub burst forth. I dashed out upon the veranda. Around the
palace fluttered half the people of the place, squawking like excited
hens; and the others were tumbling out of their bungalows in their hurry
to join the crowd.
The palace was afire. From the back of the building a mass of black
smoke wavered upward in the evening breeze. When we had pushed our way
through the frightened crowd, a slim blaze was licking at a corner of
the back veranda. It was not hard to guess how it had started. At the
foot of a bamboo post lay a sputtering kettle over a heap of burning
sticks. Around it the natives were screaming, pushing, tumbling over one
another, doing everything except putting out the fire. A dozen of them
carried buckets. Twenty yards away was a stream. But they stood or
rushed about helplessly waiting for someone to tell them what to do.
James snatched a bucket and ran for the creek. I caught up the kettle
and dumped the half-boiled rice on the flame. The Australian’s first
bucketful lowered the blaze somewhat, and after that it took us only a
moment to put it out entirely. When the last spark had disappeared a
native arrived with water from the stream. Behind him stretched a long
line of servants with overflowing buckets. They fought with each other
in their eagerness to flood the blackened corner of the veranda. Those
who could not reach it dashed their water on the surrounding crowd and
the real firemen; then ran for more. We were obliged to pull the buckets
out of their hands to save ourselves from drowning.
[Illustration: An elephant, with a native dozing on his head, was
advancing toward us.]
As the last native was running across the clearing, I looked up to see
the “king” gazing down upon us. He showed not a sign of excitement.
“These wild men are a useless lot of animals,” he said. “I’m glad you
turned out.” Then he waddled back into his palace.
We returned to our bungalow and started the phonograph again. Fully an
hour afterward the “king” walked in upon us. He carried what looked like
a great sausage, wrapped in thick brown paper.
“I’m always glad to help a white man,” he said breathlessly, “especially
when he has done me a service.”
I took the parcel in one hand, and nearly lost my balance as he let it
go. It weighed several pounds. By the time I had recovered from my
surprise he was gone. I sat down and unrolled the package. It contained
fifty silver tecals.
Four days later we were miles beyond the place, on our way toward the
mouth of the Menam. As we lay resting in a tangled thicket, a crashing
of underbrush brought us anxiously to our feet. We peered out through
the maze of branches. An elephant was coming toward us. We jumped back
in terror. A second glance showed us, however, that a native sat dozing
on his head. Behind him came another and another of the great, heavy
animals, fifteen in all, some with armed men on their backs. We stepped
out of our hiding-place in time to meet the chief of the company, who
rode between the seventh and eighth elephants on a stout-limbed pony. He
was an Englishman, a manager for the Bombay-Burma Lumber Company, who
had spent fifteen years in wandering through the teak forests of Siam.
Never before, he declared, had he known white men to travel through
these forests alone and without guns. He urged us to turn back and spend
the night with him. When we declined, he warned us to keep a sharp
lookout in the forest beyond, declaring that he had killed two tigers
and a murderous savage within the past week.
For miles we struggled on through the tangle of vines, bushes, and
branches. Nowhere was there a sign that anyone had been there before us.
The shadows lengthened eastward; twilight fell and thickened to
darkness. To travel by night was utterly impossible. We tried to do so,
but lost our way and sank to our knees in a slimy swamp. When we had
dragged ourselves out, we found that we could not remember in which
direction we had been traveling. With raging thirst and gnawing hunger,
we threw ourselves down in the depths of the wilderness. The ground was
soft and wet. In ten minutes we had sunk until we were half buried. I
pulled my bundle loose and rolled over to another spot. It was softer
and wetter than the one I had left.
“Hark!” whispered James suddenly. “Is that a dog barking? Perhaps
there’s a village near.”
We held our breath and listened. A far-off howl sounded above the dull
humming of the jungle. Perhaps some dog was baying at the faint face of
the moon. Or possibly it was the roar of some beast roaming about in
search of prey. “Tigers abound,” the Englishman had said. So must snakes
in the undergrowth of this damp spot. A crackling of twigs close beside
me sent an electric shock along my spine. I opened my mouth to call to
James, but found I couldn’t speak. The noise had been made by the
Australian himself moving past me. He spoke before I could.
“Hello!” he whispered. “Say, I’ll get a fever if I sleep in this mud.
Let’s try that big tree.”
It was a giant of a tree. The lowest of its wide-spreading branches the
Australian could reach from my shoulders. He pulled me up after him, and
we climbed higher. I sat astride a great limb, tied my bundle above me,
and, leaning against the trunk, sank into a doze.
I was awakened suddenly by a blow in the ribs.
“Quit it!” cried James angrily, thumping me again. “What are you tearing
my clothes off for?”
I opened my mouth to tell him I was not doing anything of the kind, when
I was interrupted by a noisy chattering in the branches above as a band
of monkeys scampered away at the sound of our voices. They soon
returned. For half the night those jabbering, clawing little brutes kept
us awake, and ended by driving us from the tree. We spent the hours of
darkness left on the ground at its foot, caring nothing for either
snakes or tigers.
When daylight came we found the river again within a few hundred yards
of our resting-place. A good hour afterward we stumbled, more asleep
than awake, into a village on the northern bank. The place had a shop
where food was sold. In it we made up for the supper we had gone without
the night before.
Almost before we had finished eating we were in the center of a village
fight. It was all the fault of the natives. We offered them money to row
us across the river, but they turned scornfully away. When we stepped
into one of the boats, made of dugout logs, that were drawn up on the
bank, they charged down upon us. For a moment I thought we would end our
wanderings in that very village.
In the thick of the fight a howling fellow, swinging a great knife,
bounded suddenly into the boat. James caught him by an arm and a leg,
and a glistening body flashed high in the air, gave one long-drawn
shriek, and sank in the black water some distance behind us. When he
came to the surface again he had lost his knife and we had pushed off
from the shore.
“Beastly savages!” growled the Australian, catching up a paddle. “Serve
’em right if we kept their old hollow log and went down to Bangkok in
her. What say we do?” he cried. “My feet are nothing but two blisters.”
For answer I swung the boat half round, and we glided out and down the
Menam. A boat-load of natives put out behind us; but, instead of
following directly after us, they paddled across the river and down the
opposite bank. We stretched out in the bottom of the dugout, and,
drifting with the current, let them get ahead of us. Far down the stream
they landed and ran off into a grove of trees above which rose a white
building. I dozed a moment, and then sat up suddenly with a shout. They
had come back and were pushing off in the boat again, while behind them
came a second canoe bearing six khaki-clothed soldiers armed with
muskets. The white building was a military post, and a part of the
terrible Siamese army was after us.
“Swing her ashore,” shouted James, grasping his paddle. “No naval
battles for me.”
Our dugout ran aground near the bank. Between the jungle and the water’s
edge was a narrow open space. Throwing our bundles over our shoulders,
we set off down the bank at an easy walk. The “wild men” pulled their
boats up on the beach near the dugout, and dashed after us, shouting
angrily. When they came near enough, the soldiers drew up in a line and
leveled five guns at us. Their sergeant shouted the Siamese words for
“Ready! Fire!” An icy chill ran up and down my spine, but we marched
steadily on without a pause. They did not fire. When we had gone on a
few yards, the troop ran after us and drew up once more in firing line.
The sergeant bellowed in very loud tones; but the guns did not go off.
Seven times this move was repeated. We were already a half mile from the
landing-place. Suddenly a villager snatched a gun from a soldier, ran
close up on our heels, and took a careful aim at us. He looked like a
bold, bad man. My flesh crawled, in expectation of the sting of the
bullet. I caught myself wondering what part of my body it would
puncture. But the fellow merely aimed, and shrieked in anger; he dared
not pull the trigger.
Finding that we paid no attention when they attempted to frighten us,
the sergeant tried a new plan. One by one, the bare-footed soldiers
slipped up behind us and snatched at our packs and jackets. When we
turned on them they fell back wild-eyed. They continued to pester us in
this way until we lost all patience.
“Tell me when you see the next one trying it,” said James.
Out of a corner of an eve I watched a soldier steal up to my companion
and reach for his small bundle.
“Now!” I shouted.
The Australian whirled and caught the trooper’s gun in both hands. The
fellow let go of it with a scream, and the whole crowd—sergeant,
soldiers, villagers, and bold, bad man—turned tail and fled.
Miles beyond, we met two lone soldiers wandering northward, and, knowing
that they would stop at the white building, we made them take the gun
with them.
We plodded on. Once more we spent the night in the jungle, and again the
ground was wet and spongy and the trees alive with monkeys. On the
following day, for all our sleepiness and blistered feet, we tramped a
full thirty miles, and spent that night in a strongly scented bamboo
hut.
Forty-eight hours later we came upon an unfinished railroad that a
German company was building in Siam. It was the only railroad in the
country. We struck out along the top of it in the early afternoon, and
with no thorny bushes or tangled vines to hinder, we got on faster than
we had for weeks past. Long after dark we reached the house of the
German superintendent of the line. He gave us permission to sleep in a
neighboring hut in which were stored several tons of dynamite.
An hour’s tramp next morning brought us to the work train. Hundreds of
Chinese laborers, in mud-spattered trousers and leaf hats three feet
wide, swarmed upon the flat cars as they were unloaded. We climbed on to
one of these cars, and were jolted away with the Chinese coolies through
the sun-scorched jungle.
Ten miles south the train turned on to a side-track and stopped near a
helter-skelter Chinese village. A heavy storm drove us into a shop where
Chinese food was sold. We spent the whole morning talking about the
nature of the yellow race while the store-keepers quarreled over their
cards, and, when they tired of this, tossed back and forth about the
room a dozen boxes of dynamite. At noon they set out on those same boxes
a generous dinner of pork, duck, and rich wine, and invited us to join
them. We did so, for we were very hungry; but we feared that we would
have to part with most of our money when the time came to pay the bill.
Throughout the meal the Chinamen were most polite, helping us to
everything good to eat. When it was over they rolled cigarettes in
wooden wrappers for us. They themselves smoked these all the time, even
while eating.
“Suppose they’ll want all our cash, now,” groaned James, as I drew out
my purse to pay them. But, to our great surprise, they refused to take a
copper.
“Now, what do you suppose their game is?” gasped the Australian.
“Something tricky or I’m a dingo. Never saw a pig-tail look a coin in
the face yet without grabbing for it.”
The head shop-keeper, an old fellow with a straggly gray queue and
shifting eyes, swung suddenly round upon us.
“Belly fine duck,” he grinned.
Our faces froze with astonishment.
“Dinner all light?” he went on. “Belly good man, me. No takee dollies
for chow. Many Chinyman takee plenty. You find allee same me. No blamed
fear. One time me live ’Flisco by white man, allee same you, six year.
Givee plenty dollies for joss-stick. Me no takee dollies for chow.”
The rest of the company had grouped themselves about us, laughing
gleefully at the surprise which the old man had sprung on us. Of the
eight Chinamen in the hut, six spoke English and had understood every
word we had said.
We spent the afternoon there while those jungle merchants taught us the
Chinese names of things we would be likely to need. At dusk they
prepared a second feast, after which two of them shouldered our packs
and led the way through the wilderness to a place on the railroad where
the engine of the work-train would stop on its way south.
Freed of its burden of flat cars, the engine raced like a thing of life
through the cool, silent night, turning around the curves so swiftly
that it almost tipped sidewise. We sat high up, chatting with the
Eurasian driver, who allowed the engine to rush madly on until the
station lights of a large village flashed up out of the darkness.
At noon the next day we boarded a passenger train and rumbled across
flooded rice-fields, stopping often at excited bamboo villages. Then
towering pagodas rose slowly above the southern sky-line, the jungle
died away, and at five o’clock the daily train of Siam pulled in at the
Bangkok station. By that time we did not look like white men. Until we
had shaved and washed in a barber’s shop we did not dare introduce
ourselves as such to any innkeeper of the Siamese capital.