JIM'S STORY
Joyce's a brick. She can do most things boys can, and we soon began
racing each other along those little raised bits of earth between the
beds in the paddy fields. I splashed right in once or twice and we
shrieked with laughter. By and by we found ourselves through that and
out on a flat place covered with thorns. They weren't very high mostly,
and we didn't feel them through our shoes, but now and again one caught
us on the ankles and then didn't we hop! By the time we had reached the
road I suppose we had lost sight of you altogether. I didn't think about
it. I just had a feeling we must scramble on in that fizzing red sunset
light, and then when we got tired turn plump round and go straight back
to the ship the same way. I didn't really think about it, though.
The road? Yes, it was a sort of a road, at least it was a clear space
marked all over with deep ruts and lined by little trees, and it ran
ever so far both ways, as Euclid says a line does. The first thing we
saw were two huge elephants, striding along with a wooden thing on the
neck of one, banging and rattling as his head went up and down. A man
was sitting on his neck and he took no notice of us at all, but
they--the elephants, I mean--just loped along in that swinging way they
do; I think it must make anyone sea-sick to be on their backs. We stared
at them till they got far away. Then I discovered that the little trees
were mimosa, which shrivel up when you touch them. They had dropped
seeds on the ground, I suppose, for under them were tiny little mimosas,
not trees but scrub stuff. Joyce had never seen any, and when I rubbed
my hand across them and she saw them wither up, she cried out, "What a
shame! Dear little things, don't be afraid of me!" and plumped herself
down beside them to cuddle them, but they withered more than ever. How
we laughed! The ones I had withered first were just beginning to come
right again, and I was going to make them shut up once more, and she had
caught my hand to stop me, when we heard a noise and looked up, and
there was a great buffalo coming right at us with his nose stuck up
straight in the air as if he smelt something nasty. You never saw
anything so comic! Joyce cried out, "Oh, what a darling!" But into my
head, quick as lightning, came what you told me about buffaloes, who
hate Europeans savagely, though a Burmese child of four can drive them
with a twig. I grabbed Joyce's hand and pulled her up, and then I saw he
was coming for us and no mistake, with his nose up in that absurd
fashion, and his great horns sticking out. We made a bolt for the
nearest tree just as the buffalo plunged across the place we had been,
like a runaway motor-car. Then he stopped and looked funny. All at once
he caught sight of my topee, which had fallen off and rolled away a bit,
and up went his nose again, and when he reached it down went his head
and into it like a battering-ram; and didn't he make the clods fly as he
spiked his horns into it. The trees were not very high, and had smooth
stems so far up, and then a lot of branches. If we could get up there
we'd be all right.
[Illustration: ALL AT ONCE HE CAUGHT SIGHT OF MY TOPEE.]
"Get up the tree, Joyce," I whispered. "I'll boost you."
So I did, shoving her up for all I was worth, and she hung on as high as
she could reach, and there she stuck; even the best girls aren't quite
like boys.
"Swarm up it," I urged.
"I can't," she said in an agonised voice, and I saw it was true, her
petticoats were to blame, of course; any boy would have been up before
you could say "knife."
Down she came again with a thud, and old Mr. Buffalo heard it and made
for us like a fiend. We ran for the next tree and dodged him round it;
it was a bit too exciting! He made rushes at us dead straight, and we
tried always to keep the trunk of the tree between us and him as if it
were the leader in Fox and Geese. When he came past like a bolt we ran
the other side, but once or twice he nearly spiked us, and if he had
knocked one of us down, or we had stumbled, it would have been all up
with us. It was exhausting too. I was fearfully out of breath myself;
being on a steamer a fellow can't keep in training, and as for Joyce,
she was panting so that she couldn't speak.
Then I noticed that across the road was a jungly thicket; it was not
open ground, as it was on the side we had come from, and I thought if we
could reach that we might perhaps lose the gentleman, or he would lose
us.
So I explained to Joyce in gasps that the next time he charged we must
run behind his back and bolt across the road; she nodded and clutched my
hand tighter than ever.
So we did it and were half-way over the road--it was very wide--before
he found it out.
All the time, I must tell you, he had been making a funny little noise,
a bit between a grunt and squeak, quite ridiculous for a huge black
hairy beast like him; if I had had any breath to waste it would have
made me laugh.
Now we heard that funny little noise--Uweekuweekuweek--just like that,
coming over the road; we hadn't time to look. Never did any road I ever
crossed seem so long; it was like a bad dream. We slipped and stumbled
and didn't seem to make any headway, and every moment I expected to
feel that great head in the flat of my back sending me sprawling ready
to be spiked. At last we reached the line of bushes, and I gave Joyce a
great pull with all my strength to pitch her to one side, for he was
close on us then, and she went headlong and fell full length into the
bushes, and I dropped on the top of her just as his majesty thundered
past.
We lay there quiet as mice, though it was awfully uncomfortable; I was
squashing Joyce to bits, and great thorns seemed running into me all
over. Then a dreadful thought occurred to me--there were probably snakes
there! Which was worst, snakes or the buffalo? And I asked cautiously--
"Have you been stung, Joyce?" and she answered so gravely, "Not yet,"
that I exploded, and, would you believe it, that old animal that had
been rootling about in the bushes to find us, heard it and came at us
again. We scrambled up and ran, tripping and tearing and crashing on
into that wood, and I think he found some difficulty in following us,
for after a while we couldn't hear him any more.
We stopped and listened with all our ears, but it seemed as if we were
safe, for he wasn't a crafty animal and didn't know enough to come along
quietly and surprise us. It was very dark there in that jungle, and for
the first time I thought of you and how anxious you and Joyce's mother
would be. So I said, "Come along home now," and pulled hold of Joyce.
But she resisted and said, "It's not that way, silly; it's just the
opposite."
I was positive and so was she.
I tried to think of all the things one tells by: the stars, but there
weren't any, and I couldn't have done much with them if there had been;
the moss on the north side of the trees, but there didn't seem to be
any. I guess it's different in Burma. However, there was just a
yellowish glow still, and I knew that must be in the west, and as the
river runs north and south, and we were on the left bank, I guessed the
way I wanted to go was about right. When I had proved it to Joyce she
gave in and said she had said it all the time, just as women always do!
So we walked and walked, but we never came to that old road again. Once
I thought I'd found it, but it was only some open, flat, thorny ground.
It was very dark then, the dark comes on so fast here. Suddenly we both
began to run as hard as we could, hand in hand; I don't know why,
something set us off and I felt just as if I must, and I suppose Joyce
did too, and then--crash!--before we knew where we were--smash!--we were
flying, slipping, tobogganing down through some bushes, with our feet
shooting out under us, and at last we reached the bottom. It was a steep
gully, a kind of nullah. When we did get down we arrived separately, for
we had had to let go to save ourselves. I was awfully sore, I know, and
I wondered what had happened to her, being a girl and so much softer.
But she didn't seem to mind much, for when I sang out, she answered
quite cheerfully, "I'm sitting in the middle of a bramble bush like a
bumble-bee. Do they sit in bushes, though? I think I'm getting a little
mixed!"
A girl like that is a jolly good pal, I can tell you!
It was a snaky place and that is what I was afraid of. We trod carefully
along the bottom and made noises to scare them off. Then I had a happy
thought; I had a box of matches with me, and I kept on striking them
till we found a handful of dry twigs which burnt up finely. It was so
still there that they blazed straight and steady, and I used them as a
torch and flourished them about low down as we walked.
I don't know if we really did see any snakes. Joyce is quite positive
she counted fourteen, sliding away in front of the light at different
times; but then she sees things much quicker than I do.
[Illustration: WE HAD TO PLUNGE THROUGH MARSHY GROUND.]
It took us a long time to get out of that nullah, and we tried all sorts
of different ways, but the sides were too steep. Often we had to stop to
get more twigs, and once, just as I had got a handful, Joyce said, "Why,
there are little plums growing on them." We ate quite a lot, and they
were refreshing and bitter, but it didn't mean much, for they were all
skin and stone.
The nullah sloped up at the end, and after a good deal of hard work I
hauled her up. It was jolly cold, I can tell you, and when we saw a
light moving about ahead we made a bee-line for it. Joyce thought it
was a will-o'-the-wisp; she had never seen one, but she had read of
them, and she said they moved up and down just like that. We had to
plunge through a lot of very marshy ground before we got to it, and
sometimes we lost sight of it altogether; but it came again, and then it
went out for good. We arrived at a high thorny hedge and I shouted, and
then there was such a noise you would have thought the world was coming
to an end,--dogs barking, cocks crowing, people chattering, and at last
a man with a lantern crept out from the hedge--it must have been his
light we had seen--and he was followed by heaps of others, all Burmans,
and they waved the light about; and when they saw who we were, and that
we were alone, they were very kind and took us in through an opening in
the hedge, and kicked the dogs away. We couldn't see much inside, for
the moon wasn't up then, but they led us to a house, and made us go up a
ladder on to a verandah and into a nice wooden room, where there was a
civilised oil lamp on a bracket, and several women and children sitting
and lying about on mats on the floor.
Joyce looked at me and I at her and we both knew what sights we were,
all scratched and torn and muddy. Her dress had been white when we
started, but you could hardly tell that now. I don't know how she felt,
but I was glad to drop down on to a mat they gave us. We tried to
explain who we were, but no one understood any English. Then they
brought us some water from a great jar in the corner; they handed it to
us in half a coco-nut, but it smelt so that we couldn't touch it, though
we were awfully thirsty. So one of the men who had followed us in took
up a round green thing with a smooth shell outside (I never knew
coco-nuts looked like that before), and with his great knife made four
cuts across the top in a neat square, and took out the piece as if it
were a lid, and offered us the nut, making signs we were to drink it.
Joyce tried first and nodded with pleasure. "It's good," she said, and
it was! A sort of sickly sweet stuff came out like sugary water, and
when you drank a lot of it it made you feel very full inside suddenly.
When I read about coco-nut milk in _Swiss Family Robinson_ I always
thought it was really like milk.
Then they opened a great tubful of cooked rice and put some on two
plates and gave it to us, and they put beside us two little bowls filled
with smashed-up sardines, at least I thought it was that, but oh----You
would have known it was there a mile off! I would have stood it, because
I didn't want to hurt their feelings, as they meant to be polite, but
Joyce stuffed her skirt into her mouth and held her nose, and they all
laughed and took it away quite easily. There were no forks or spoons,
but we were very hungry, so we just fell to with our fingers on the rice
and it wasn't at all bad, I can tell you. When we had done they gave us
some very good bananas--I could have done with more of them--and then
they tried us with a lump of stuff that was simply a bit of wood; it
came from the Jack-fruit tree. I saw one growing right out of the trunk
on a little stalk by itself next day, but how anyone ever eats it I
can't imagine.
When we had finished they poured water over our fingers to clean them, a
very unsatisfactory sort of wash it was, and the water ran away between
the boards, quite convenient that!
When we were satisfied we began to take more notice of what the house
was like. The walls were made of very coarse mats, and there were no
tables or chairs. There were a number of people; the father of the
house, who had brought us in, had a kind shrewd face, so that you
couldn't help liking him, and the mother was a very thin, plain, little
old woman, with twinkling eyes. Joyce thought first she was the cook,
for she had no jewellery on at all and no fine clothes, while the two
girls, the daughters, were quite smart. They were all ready to laugh and
smile, but the two girls were the most friendly; they sat down by Joyce
and fingered her skirt and examined her very dilapidated shoes. "I wish
they wouldn't, Jim," she said, trying to pull them up under her very
short skirt, which was no use at all. At last she took them off because
they were so wet, and one of the girls put her little brown toes into
them, and then they all shrieked with laughter again. You couldn't help
laughing too, they were so jolly nice.
I put my finger on Joyce and said "Joyce," then on me and said "Jim,"
and then pointed at the two girls; they understood at once and said Mah
Kway Yoh (Miss Dog's Bone) and Mee Meht (Miss Affection). Then they
pointed to a young man at the back and said Moung Poh Sin (Mr.
Grandfather Elephant).
I tried to make them understand we wanted to get back to the ship, but
nothing would do it. "Draw it," suggested Joyce. She had a wee gold
pencil on her gold bangle, but we had no paper and there was none
there--there wasn't anything, in fact, except a box. "On your cuff,"
Joyce suggested, but I hadn't any cuffs, only a soft shirt.
"On the floor," she said then.
I tried, but of course the lead broke. They all gathered round, much
interested, pushing their shiny black heads close together. It's funny
that they all have just the same sort of hair, isn't it? They followed
everything I did with the deepest interest, and then went into fits of
laughter, and so did we.
Just then a boy came in, not much older than me. He had on very few
clothes, and his legs looked as if they were stained dark blue. When he
came near to me and saw me looking at them with very much interest he
showed them to us. They were tattooed all over like a pair of breeches,
and the pictures on them were very well done; there were tigers and a
kind of dragon, like those we saw at the pagoda steps, and many other
animals, and each one was in a kind of scrollwork which made a little
frame. He spoke a few words of English and pointed at the two men and
said, "Them too," then, "All Burmans." It is odd they should go through
all that pain; what's the use of it?
[Illustration: THEY WERE TATTOOED ALL OVER LIKE A PAIR OF BREECHES.]
I tried to explain to him about the ship. I called it "ship," "steamer,"
"vessel," "craft," and everything else I could think of, but he shook
his head. At last Joyce suggested "big boat," and then he understood,
and got quite excited and told the others. Partly by gestures he made us
understand that we were a very long way off, and that no one could take
us back that night, but that we could go early in the morning. I wanted
to know why not now, but he waved his arms and said, "Nats, beloos," and
looked quickly over his shoulder.
"Nats are spirits," said Joyce. "I know all about it. The Burmese are
frightened of them, and put little bits of rag at the top of the posts
in the houses for them to live in, so that they won't come inside.
Mother read that to me out of a book."
We looked for the little rags, but couldn't see them, though I expect
they were there. Joyce knows a lot for a girl.
Well, we couldn't go home by ourselves, so presently we lay down on our
mats and went fast asleep, and I suppose everyone else did too. Anyway,
it was morning when I woke. Perfectly glorious it was! I shall never
forget that morning. Joyce was out on the verandah already, and I went
and stood beside her. The moon was there still, but every moment growing
paler and paler. The air was full of that burnt-wood smell which is
clean and rather nice. The sun seemed simply to rush up, and in five
minutes from a world of black shadows and no colours it turned to a
world of green and blue and yellow. The houses were all like ours, built
on legs with thatched roofs, and there were great shady mango trees and
plantains growing beside them. The dogs were everywhere, and the people
were squatting in the sun to warm their backs. We ate more rice and
drank more coco-nut milk, and then we shook hands all round and thanked
the people, and went away with the boy to guide us. His name was Moung
Ohn (Mr. Coco-Nut) he told us. We made him write down his own and his
sisters' names on a piece of paper in Burmese on the ship afterwards, so
that we could always keep them.
It was quite a long way, as he had said, but it was so beautiful we
wanted to dance and jump all the time. Moung Ohn scolded off the beastly
pariah dogs and led us out of the hole in the great stockade and through
a grove of palms. He pointed to two different sorts, one was the usual
kind, feathery, and coco-nuts grew on that. He pointed to himself and
grinned, but we didn't understand till afterwards that his name was
"Coco-Nut." The other sort of palm had leaves like the great fans people
sometimes have in drawing-rooms, at least Joyce said they were. A man
was walking down the long, straight stem of one, and I could see, as
Moung Ohn had said, that his legs were tattooed too. He just walked
down. He had a band round his waist and round the tree, so he leaned
against it and pressed the soles of his feet against the tree. I longed
to try, but Joyce was wanting to get back to her mother. When the man
came down he had a little iron pot filled with juice, and he offered it
to me to drink, but when I looked in and saw dead flies and insects by
the dozen I declined politely. He had hung up other little pots on the
tree near the stalks of the great leaves in which he had cut gashes, so
the juice dripped out into them. I found out this makes a strong drink
called toddy.
We passed over rice fields, where many of the people were at work
already, and then, after going a good distance, we got on to the road,
but it was not the same part where we were the day before. I'm beginning
now not to be quite so sure that my direction was right after all, but
don't say so before Joyce.
Just then we heard a most awful noise like a hundred demons groaning and
shrieking together.
"Nats!" exclaimed Joyce, standing stockstill. Moung Ohn laughed and
shook his head. Then there came into sight a slow lumbering bullock-cart
with the wheels screaming enough to give you toothache. Why on earth
don't they grease them?
"Perhaps they prefer them like that," said Joyce, and I expect she is
right.
It wasn't long before we reached the steamer, and then what a scene!
When I saw how Joyce was smothered I was glad men don't kiss. You just
shook hands with me and told me I was an object to scare crows with!
When we offered Moung Ohn some money for his trouble he refused to take
it, and went away saying good-bye so gracefully, bowing and touching his
forehead with his hand.
[Illustration: SAMPANS.]