The last call for dinner interrupted any further comments on the mysterious message. Tonight was a big event, for the chief steward of the Northern Star had gone the limit to please the three youthful passengers on the freighter. The meal consisted of specialties in Brazilian, Hawaiian, and American dishes, with little speeches in between.
But the boys found it difficult to share the spirit of the other passengers and ship's officers, who were doing their best to entertain them on this last evening together. Biff was sure that morning would bring some confirmation of his father's message, while Li and Kamuka were wondering whether or not he had sufficient reason to be that confident.
Early the next morning, the three boys were up and on deck when a mail boat came to the Northern Star. A uniformed Hindu handed a telegram to Captain Peterson, the skipper of the freighter, who passed it on to Biff with the comment:
"This is for you rather than for me."
Li and Kamuka were peering over Biff's shoulders as he read the message aloud:
"NOTIFY BIFF BREWSTER HIS FATHER CANNOT MEET HIM IN CALCUTTA. HE AND FRIENDS ARE TO PICK UP PLANE RESERVATIONS FOR DARJEELING AND JOIN HIS FAMILY THERE."
The message was signed by the New Delhi representative of the Ajax Mining Company, for which Biff's father worked. Captain Peterson told the boys to let him know if they had any trouble finding their plane reservations at the Grand Hotel, where the bus left for the Calcutta Airport at Dum Dum. Biff and his two companions said good-by and packed themselves ashore.
They took a taxicab past the Maidan, the huge park where hundreds of Hindus were asleep on the grassy expanse. Still more were sprawled along the sidewalk of Chowringhi Road, which brought them to the Grand Hotel. There, they found that plane reservations had been made for Darjeeling, but instead of picking them up immediately, Biff inquired the way to the New India Bazaar and found that it was a short rickshaw ride from the hotel.
Soon the boys were riding swiftly through the native quarter of Calcutta, in a two-wheeled, man-hauled carriage that followed narrow streets flanked by rows of old tenement houses and other crude structures filled with the city's teeming population.
At the New India Bazaar, they found rows of small shops surrounding a busy square where shoppers in Hindu attire carefully side-stepped a sacred cow that was sprawled complacently on the sidewalk. Barkers were babbling in Hindustani, trying to attract trade and one youth, attired in shorts and loose white jacket, was drumming up business by beating the ends of a wooden keg, tom-tom style, drawing a crowd along with him.