WHAT BEFELL KIRKE AFTER HIS ESCAPE
Kirke had hurried away from Moulmein as fast as he could walk. He knew
that he must make his way northward but there all his knowledge ceased.
He had plenty of English gold with him, for he carried his money in a
belt round his waist, and thus had saved it when he lost all else in his
haste to leave the burning ship.
But though he had gold, he had nothing else, nor could he speak a word
of the language.
So great was his desperation, however, that he cared nothing for this.
He walked on and on, till he arrived at a small village, where, though
it was in the middle of the night, the people were all out and about
still.
Some girls were squatting behind a lamp blazing in an earthen vessel
raised upon three pieces of bamboo. They were smoking--like everyone
else--and selling sweetmeats and rice.
Kirke made signs that he wished to buy some, and offered a George IV.
coin.
The girls stared at him and his money, jabbered together, and shook
their heads. He did not understand them; but, supposing that they made
some mistake as to the value of the coin, not recognising it as gold,
produced another piece. He was naturally reckless of money, and now
wanted food, and silver change with which to proceed on his way.
The girls laughed, nodded, took the second coin, which had the Queen's
head on it, and gave him Indian silver change in profusion for it,
besides rice in a red bowl, fruit, and sweetmeats, for which they
reserved a small amount; but they would not have the coin with the man's
head.
Kirke could not comprehend their objection to it, which really was their
idea that only "woman coins" fructify and increase, but he was satisfied
with the result of his shopping, and proceeded on his way.
His road seemed to lie between a chain of villages; and, fearful of
being overtaken upon it, where he would be so easily recognised and
caught, he turned off towards the coast again, soon coming to a stream,
across which a man in a canoe took him.
The sun was now high, and he tried to find a place where he might lie
down and sleep. With some difficulty he made the boatman understand what
he wanted, and take him to a hut, where they spread a mat for him with a
rug, and he took a long rest.
He could purchase nothing except rice and fruit upon awaking, but the
owner of the hut offered oil and salt with the former, and some
unutterable abomination of putrid fish, which he called "ngapé," and
which he seemed surprised to find rejected with disgust.
When the heat of the day was over, his host offered milk and more rice,
from which Kirke made a second meal. He would have liked stronger
liquor, but could not make himself understood. He then obtained a seat
in a native bullock-cart, neither knowing nor caring where it was going,
so that it was still northwards, and not to any English station.
So he wandered for some days, aimlessly and drearily, with no object
before him, no one to speak to, no settled plan of action. By degrees he
became used to this existence; youth restored his energies, he became
less afraid of pursuit, learnt a few Burmese words, and liked this life
so full of new sights and sounds. He came to a large river, the course
of which he followed upwards for several days, for the rapids in it
caused all the people to shake their heads when he tried to get ferried
across.
He succeeded at last, and congratulated himself now upon being safe, but
here his luck deserted him.
He found that there was gold to be got in this place; and from the
contemptuous air with which the people turned over his coin, and the few
flat flakes which they showed him in return, chiefly worn as amulets, he
gathered that their gold was considered much purer than his, but he did
not seem able to find any of it for himself.
The people also evidently endeavoured to dissuade him from wandering
about alone, making him understand that there was danger from wild
beasts in so doing. This was a hindrance which had never before occurred
to him, but was a very sufficient obstacle.
The weather was extremely sultry now, and there had been several violent
thunderstorms. The place was mountainous, and the valleys between the
hills grew very wet. To his surprise the ground never seemed to dry up;
though after a tremendous storm, when the sun blazed out again, it
positively steamed, as a pot of water might steam over a fire.
The storms became more frequent, the deluges of rain heavier and more
constant, the valleys fuller and fuller of water. All wandering was at
an end perforce, except in canoes. The people expressed no surprise,
they appeared to be prepared for such a state of things. They all had
boats of some kind or other; old and young, men and women, were
evidently familiar with their management. The huts were raised upon
piles, in some places twelve feet high; even their bullocks and other
live stock were stabled aloft, and the stench from their close
accommodation was all but insufferable.
The children fished through holes in the floors of the huts; every foul
refuse was simply upset through them; all objects were damp and
ill-smelling.
The poor people were very hospitable and kind. They gave Kirke of their
best, charging him incredibly small sums for his keep. There was no
getting away until the floods abated, but life under such unhealthy
conditions was what none but a native could withstand; and in spite of
incessantly smoking, as they did, Kirke had not been two months in the
village where the rains had surprised him, before he was down in a
raging fever.
There he lay, in that secluded Burmese village, struggling between life
and death for a long time. His constitution had been severely tried by
his early excesses, and had he not passed some months upon enforced
abstinence from alcohol on board the poor _Pelican of the North_, so
that he had, in some measure, been restored to a more healthy state of
body, it is doubtful whether it would have been possible for him to have
fought through the terrible fever, which had been induced by hardship
and exposure to malaria.
His chief chance of life lay in the continuance of the impossibility of
obtaining stimulants where he was. The Burmese are a water drinking
race; and although they do distil a pernicious fiery liquor from rice,
it is not much used, or easily procured, in such out-of-the-way places
as those into which he had wandered.
Medical science is very imperfectly understood among this people; and
when his host fetched a native doctor for the sick stranger, he brought
with him such strange-looking compounds in gaily-painted joints of
bamboo canes, that Kirke could not bring himself to trust them any more
than the charms, in which the village Galen evidently possessed more
faith himself. Perhaps this was well for him, but he was brought to the
verge of the grave before the constantly recurring attacks of ague and
fever gradually subsided. And oh, how lonely he felt as he lay on his
bed of sickness now!
God seemed to have forsaken him; left him to his own stubborn, hard
heart, and allowed him to take his own way.
But not in reality. Lonely, suffering, weak, with no one to speak to,
none to care for him, none to help him, his hour had come at last.
Broken in spirit, he repented his evil courses, he sought his God in
prayer, and his Father did not despise his humble and contrite heart.
Exhausted by the struggle through the morning's rigor which attended his
complaint, he lay prone one day, in what was half sleep, half
unconsciousness, on his mat.
A pleasant breeze had sprung up, which rustled the branches of the
trees, and wafted towards him the scent of flowers, overpowering that of
rotting vegetation which always seemed to pervade everything. It brought
with it also the gentle tinkle of bells from a pagoda upon a rising
ground in this valley. In his half awake state, he fancied he smelt the
Gloire de Dijon roses that grew round the drawing-room bay window in his
father's rectory, and heard the church bells ringing afar off, calling
the villagers to the Sabbath service.
He remembered how, as a little child, he had been led by his gentle
mother's hand through the pleasant garden and shrubbery, to the gate
which opened thence into the churchyard heaped with grassy mounds. Among
them was a little white marble cross, over the grave of his baby sister
who had died. His mother stayed her feet at this place, and laid before
it the pure white rosebud which she had plucked as they went over the
lawn. A tear ran down her cheek as she did so.
"Jamie," said she, "little Leonora would have been five years old to-day
if God had spared her to us. Oh, my dear little girl, my dear little
lost one!"
His father had come up to them. "Not lost, wifey," said he,--"not lost,
but gone before."
Why did he recall all this now, when he had never thought about the
scene for so long. His mother had gone before too, ten years ago. He had
despised his father's simple piety because he was not intellectual. He
had scoffed at his attempts to teach him, scorned his affectionate
nature, neglected him for pleasures and friends which had brought him to
this.
What had he done with his stronger mind, his superior talents? His
father was beloved, respected, a welcome visitor beside many a dying
sinner's bed. He himself was a fugitive, an outcast, alone in the world.
Pondering these thoughts, he fell asleep, for he was very weak. His
slumber was not lengthy, nor did he seem to have dreamed through it; but
he started up from it suddenly, as at the call of a trumpet voice,
shouting with triumph--
"Not lost, but found!"
Bewildered, confused, this voice seemed to him real. What did it mean?
All at once the barriers of pride gave way; there was no one to see him,
and he turned his face to the wall, weeping bitterly.
A softer, better mood succeeded, and a stronger feeling of peace than he
had felt for long. He determined to remain in this place until he was
quite well; and did so, his health gradually returning to him.
Kirke's illness, and long residence among them, had been to these people
as good as a wreck to the Cornish seaside population of old,--it had
brought unusual prosperity to them. Small as their charges had appeared
to him, they were really four times as high as the true value of the
goods supplied to him had been to them. The simple villager was no
simpleton when matters of trade and finance were in question; and, if
they prayed at all, their petitions to Guadama, for years afterwards,
would have been that the Lord of the White Elephant would be pleased to
send them another sick stranger.
He had paid royally for the medicines in those red and yellow bamboo
bottles, which the doctor had carried away again as full as he brought
them. He had paid handsomely for the rice, the ngapé, the pickled tea
which he could not eat, and over which his entertainers had enjoyed a
high old time while their guest's butterfly soul was wandering about the
world, at sport with other butterfly spirits, leaving its lawful owner
unconscious upon his mat.
They were now reaping an abundant harvest, doubtless a part of the luck
which their hospitality to the stranger had brought to them, and they
were rich. They did not want to be rid of their invalid,--not they. No
hospitality was more genuine than theirs.
If they could only conceal their riches from the knowledge of the dacoit
chief,--who commanded his band of scoundrels from a neighbouring village
among the hills at a little distance,--they might, should their treasure
of a sick man recover,--and after all his money was spent, not
before,--conduct him to the nearest English military station, and be
paid all over again by the innocent white-faced Thakins there for their
kindness to their countryman.
So the virtuous Burman sang and laughed over his work, in his simple
_gaité du coeur_; and gathered the jungle flowers and fruit which cost
him nothing at all, but which the Thakin would doubtless be so grateful
to them for bringing to him.
And Kirke lay pondering as to what course he must pursue when he should
recover.
In the first instance he must write to his father, confess his sense of
the sins which he had committed, and ask pardon for his conduct.
But, after that, what? Would it be necessary to give himself up to
English justice, and to permit the law to take its way with him for his
attempt to lose the raft? That would be a very bitter pill to him,--must
it be swallowed? At anyrate, moving was impossible at present, though he
was recovering fast; that question must wait, but he could write to his
father and keep the letter by him, waiting for some chance of sending
it. He would be more at peace with himself were the confession made on
paper, even were no one ever to read it. He would feel more in earnest
as to his repentance.
Many days were spent over that letter, and it was a very pathetic one
when finished, for it was simple and manly in its tone. In it he
confessed his sorrow for his past life, and his hope that he might be
spared to redeem it, in some measure, by his future career. "If I can,"
he wrote, "I would wish to get something to do here, rather than return
home. I would like to prove to you that I can and will work hard at some
honest employment before asking you to receive me into your presence
again. I am recovering from a severe attack of jungle fever, and I
cannot say where I shall go, or what I must do when I can move; but if
you forgive me, please write to the Herfords' house in Rangoon, from
whence I will endeavour to obtain letters as soon as may be. I hope that
God will give me a fresh chance; but if I die, will you try to believe
that I am truly sorry for the past."
He wrote and rewrote this letter, now fearing that it did not express
enough humility and contrition, then dreading lest it should seem
servile; but he completed it at last, and laid it carefully aside.