Joyce is seized with a brilliant idea. "Mother," she cries, "those toys we bought in the bazaar! Mayn't I give them to the children?"
Taking leave for granted she flies into her cabin and returns with two gaily painted wooden animals whose legs move on strings; there is a yellow tiger with a red mouth, and a purple monkey. Joyce stands as high as she can on the rail and makes the tiger jump its legs up and down. A yell of delight from the children on the shore shows that she is understood. They plunge into the water like porpoises, and after a minute Joyce drops the tiger straight down. It is a good distance to swim, some fifty yards, perhaps, and the little black heads bob up and down frantically as the youngsters make desperate attempts to get through the water.
Good! Go it! Two little boys about equal size are well ahead of the others and rapidly nearing the prize. It is just a toss-up which gets it; they grab simultaneously, but their fingers close on empty water. The tiger has disappeared, sucked down by something into the depths! Has it been eaten by a fish?
No, there it is, having risen to the surface again some yards distant, grasped by a thin little arm. The owner of the arm emerges the next instant, shaking back her long black hair. It is a small girl, who actually dived under the boys and snatched the prize away! She deserves it, and holding it on high lies on her back and kicks her way back to land with her legs. She is a magnificent swimmer. They all follow her and crowd around her on the shore while she dangles the treasure in the sun, but no one attempts to take it from her.
BURMESE BOYS.
At the moment everyone has forgotten that there may be more forthcoming, and when Joyce holds up the purple monkey only one tiny podgy fellow sees it, and slipping silently into the water exerts himself tremendously to get well out before the others discover him. He swims slowly, for he is very small, and when he is half-way across the others are after him like a pack of hounds; but he gets the monkey, and turns his bright eager face up to us radiant with delight. One of the elder boys carries his treasure back for him, and by the way the little fellow yields it up readily it is quite evident that he is not in the least afraid of its being taken from him. His faith is justified, for he gets it back directly he lands, and then the children dance round the two lucky ones, singing and making such a noise that a troop of anxious parents hurry down to find out what is the matter. Those toys will be treasures for many a long day.
The steamer screeches and we are off once more. Soon we see a great sugar-loaf hill in the distance, also a perfect forest of pagodas of all shapes and sizes along the river bank. This is Pagahn, a celebrated place, now deserted and melancholy. Imagine a strip of ground eight miles long and two broad, covered by hundreds of pagodas; it is said there are nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, but no one could count them, for half of them are mere heaps of stones, so possibly there may be one more to make a round number! Pagahn was once a capital city, and the then Burman king pulled down some of the pagodas to build up the defences of his walls when he heard that a Chinese king was coming to attack him; but of course he got the worst of it after such an impious act, as anyone would guess, and since then the place has been deserted. Some of the largest pagodas have been restored, which is rather a wonder in Burma as restoration does not make for "merit." You can see the snow-white outlines rising gracefully in the middle of the rough line of uneven buildings. Unluckily, instead of stopping here we go across the river and anchor at Yenangyaung, where there is a very strong smell of something. "I know," Joyce declares, wrinkling up her smooth little nose. "It's lamp oil."
She is right, it is petroleum; there are here wells of it, from which it bursts up with great force sometimes, like a geyser.
If we had been on a tourist steamer we should have visited Pagahn, but then we should have missed seeing much human life.