A moment later the British engine shrieked, and the freight screamed by us. We grasped the rods of a high open car and swung ourselves up. On the floor, folded to the size of a large mattress, lay a waterproof canvas. We lay down on it. A cooling breeze, sweeping over the moving train, lulled us to sleep. Once we were awakened by the roar of a passing express, and peered over the edge of the car to find ourselves on a switch. Then our train rattled on, and we stretched out again. A second time we were awakened when our train was turned off on to a side-track; and the brakeman, passing by, called out that he had reached the end of his run. We climbed out, and, finding a grassy slope, lay down and slept out the night.
The morning sun showed a large forest close at hand. A red, sandy roadway, deep-shaded by thick overhanging branches, led into the woods. We followed it. Here and there, in a tiny clearing, a scrawny native cooked a small breakfast over a fire of leaves and twigs before his grass hut. Above us sounded the song of a tropical bird. The pushing crowds and dull, ugly roar of Calcutta seemed hundreds of miles away.
The forest opened and fell away on both sides, and we paused on the high grassy bank of a broad river that glistened in the slanting sunlight. Below, in two groups, natives, men and women, were bathing. Along a road near the river stretched a one-row town of low huts, above which stood a government building and a little church.
“Thunder!” snorted Marten. “Is this all we’ve made? That old train must have been side-tracked half the time we slept. I know this burg. It’s Hoogly, not forty miles from Calcutta. But there’s a commissioner here. He’s the right kind—ticketed me to Calcutta four years ago. Don’t believe he’ll remember me, either. Come on.”
We strolled on down the road. Before the government building a score of prisoners, with belts and heavy anklets of iron connected by chains, were piling cobblestones.
We turned in at the gate of the park-like grounds, and followed a graveled walk toward a great white bungalow with windows overlooking a distant view of the sparkling Hoogly and the rolling plains beyond. From the veranda, curtained by trailing vines, richly clothed servants watched us, as we came near, with the half-ferocious, half-curious manner of faithful house-dogs. I did not intend to ask for a ticket, so I dropped on to a seat under a tree. A chatter of Hindustanee greeted my companion; a stout native rose from his heels and went inside the bungalow.
Then something happened that I had never experienced before in all my Indian travels. A tall, fine-looking Englishman, dressed in the whitest of ducks, stepped briskly out on to the veranda, and, seeming not to notice that we were mere penniless wanderers, called out:
“I say, you chaps, come inside and have some breakfast.”
I should have been less astonished had he suddenly pointed a gun in our direction. I looked up, to see Marten leaning weakly against a post.
“I have only come with my mate, sir,” I explained. “It’s he who wants the ticket. I’m only waiting, sir.”