“I’m Salter from Gregory’s. Manders, the head assistant, asked me to meet you. I’ll be glad to help you get your things ashore and take you to the Strand Hotel, where I have booked you a room.”
“That is most awfully good of you,” replied Shafto. “On Monday I believe I am to get quarters in a chummery.”
“Ah, so you are settled, I see. Now, if you will show me your baggage, I have a couple of coolies here with a cart and a taxi for ourselves.”
Mr. Salter proved to be remarkably prompt in his measures, and in less than ten minutes Shafto found himself following his flat narrow back down the steep gangway and setting his foot for the first time on the soil of Burma. He halted for a moment to look about. Here was a landmark in his life, a new sphere lay before him; the street was humming and alive with people, and he stared at the jostling, motley crowd of British, Burmese, Chinese, mostly a gaily-clad ever-changing multitude. Among them were shaven priests in yellow robes. Shans in flapping hats; right in front of him stood a stalwart Burman, wearing a white jacket, a pink silk handkerchief, twisted jauntily around his bullet head, and a yellow Lungi, girded to the knee, displayed a three-tailed cat tattooed on the back of each substantial calf.
And what a curious, soft and penetrating atmosphere; moist and loaded with unfamiliar, aromatic odours!
However, Mr. Salter, a man of action, had no time to spare for contemplation, and briskly hustled the stranger into a waiting taxi—for the old days of the rattling, shattered gharry are numbered.
“I suppose this is all new to you?” said Shafto’s acquaintance as they struggled up the crowded Strand, lined with imposing offices and vast godowns, or warehouses.
“You may say so,” he replied, eagerly gazing at the dense passing throng—animated women with flower-decked hair, square-shouldered, sauntering men, carrying flat umbrellas and smoking huge cheroots, Khaki-clad Tommies and yellow-faced John Chinamen.
“Oh, there’s lots to see in Burma,” continued Salter, “an extraordinary mixture of people and races, and a most beautiful country; such splendid rivers and forests—but here, in Rangoon, everyone has but one idea.”
In answer to Shafto’s glance of interrogation he said: