The overland route thus proving impracticable, so far as the first part of the journey was concerned, the sea road alone remained. Of vessels plying between Bangkok and the ports of French Indo-China there were but two—the Bonite, a French packet slightly larger than a Hudson River tugboat, which twice monthly makes the round trip between the Siamese capital and Saigon; and a Danish tramp; the Chutututch, an unkempt vagrant of the seas which wanders at will along the Gulf Coast, touching at those obscure ports where cargo or passengers are likely to be found. The Bonite swung at her moorings in the Menam, opposite my hotel windows, so, made cautious by previous experiences on other coastwise vessels, I went out in a sampan to make a preliminary survey. But I did not go aboard. The odors which assailed me as I drew near caused me to decide abruptly that I wished to make no voyage on her. The Chutututch, I reasoned, must be better; it certainly could not be worse. And when I approached her owners they offered no objections to earning a few-score extra ticals by extending her itinerary so as to drop me at the tiny Cambodian port of Kep. The next day, then, saw me on the bridge of the Chutututch, smoking for politeness' sake one of the genial captain's villainous cigars, as we steamed slowly between the palm-fringed, temple-dotted banks of the Menam toward the Gulf.
Transportation in the Siamese jungle
Long files of elephants, bearing men and merchandise beneath the hooded howdahs, rocking and rolling down the dim and deep-worn jungle trails
On many kinds of vessels I have voyaged the Seven Seas. I once spent Christmas on a Russian steamer, jammed to her guards with lousy pilgrims bound for the Holy Land, in a tempest off the Syrian coast. On another memorable occasion I skirted the shores of Crete on a Greek schooner which was engaged in conveying from Canea to Candia a detachment of British recruits much the worse for rum. But that voyage on the Chutututch will linger longest in my memory. From stem to stern she was packed with yellow, half-naked, perspiring humanity—Siamese, Laos, Burmans, Annamites, Cambodians, Malays, Chinese—journeying, God knows why, to ports whose very names I had never before heard. They lay so thick beneath the awnings that the sailors literally had to walk upon them in order to perform their work. From the glassy surface of the Gulf the heat rose in waves—blasts from an opened furnace door. The flaming ball of molten brass that was the sun beat down upon the crowded decks until they were as hot to the touch as a railway station stove at white heat. The odors of crude, sugar, copra, tobacco, engine oil, perspiration and fish frying in the galley mingled in a stench that rose to heaven. In the sweat-box which had been allotted to me, called by courtesy a cabin, a large gray ship's rat gnawed industriously at my suit-case in an endeavor to ascertain what it contained; insects that shall be nameless disported themselves upon the dubious-looking blanket which formed the only covering of the bed; cockroaches of incredible size used the wash-basin as a public swimming-pool.
The other cabin passengers were all three Anglo-Saxons—a young Englishman and an American missionary and his wife. These last, I found, were convoying a flock of noisy Siamese youngsters, pupils at an American school in Bangkok, to a small bathing resort at the mouth of the Menam, where, it was alleged, the mercury had been known to drop as low as 90 on cold days. Because of its invigorating climate it is a favorite hot weather resort for the well-to-do Siamese. Here, in a bungalow that had been placed at their disposal by the King, the missionary and his charges proposed to spend a glorious fortnight away from the city's heat. Now do not draw a mental picture of a sanctimonious person with a Prince Albert coat, a white bow tie and a prominent Adam's apple. He was not that sort of a missionary at all. On the contrary, he was a very human, high-spirited, likeable fellow of the type that at home would be a Scout Master or in France would have made good as a welfare worker with the A. E. F. Once, when a particularly obstreperous youngster drew an over-draft on his stock of patience, he endorsed his disapproval with an extremely vigorous "Damn!" I took to him from that moment.
When, their energy temporarily exhausted, his charges had fallen asleep upon the deck and pandemonium had given place to peace, he told me something of his story. For four years he had labored in the Vineyard of the Lord in Chile, but, feeling that he "was having too good a time," as he expressed it, he applied to the Board of Missions for transfer to a more strenuous post. He obtained what he asked for, with something over for good measure, for he was ordered to a post in the northeastern corner of Siam, on the Annam frontier. If there is a more remote or inaccessible spot on the map it would be hard to find it. Here he and his wife spent ten years preaching the Word to the "black bellied Laos," as the tattooed savages of that region are known. Then he was transferred to Bangkok. There are no roads in Siam, so he and his wife and their five small children made the long journey by river, in a native dugout of less than two feet beam, in which they traveled and ate and slept for upwards of two weeks.
I asked him if he wasn't becoming weaned of Bangkok, which, as a place of residence, leaves much to be desired.
"Yes, I've had about enough of it," he admitted. "I'm anxious to get away."