An hour after we had moved into the bungalow, we were resting in veranda chairs with our feet on the railing, watching the cook chasing one of the chickens that later appeared before us in our evening curry, when a white man turned into the grounds and walked lazily toward us, swinging his cane and striking off a head here and there among the tall flowers that bordered the path. When he reached the shade of the bungalow, he sprang up the steps with outstretched hand, and, having expressed his joy at the meeting, sat down beside us. Whoever he was, he was an expert story-teller, and entertained us with tales of life in the army until the shades of night fell. Suddenly he stopped at the most interesting point of a story to cry out:
“The commissioner sent for me this afternoon.”
“That so?” asked James.
“Yes. He thinks you fellows are going to start to Mandalay on foot. Mighty good joke, that”; and he fell to chuckling, while he glanced sidewise at us.
“No joke at all,” I put in. “We are going on foot, just as soon as we can find the road.”
“Don’t try it!” cried the Englishman, raising his cane on high. “I haven’t introduced myself, but I am chief of police for Chittagong. The commissioner has given orders that you must not go. The police have been ordered to watch you, the boatmen forbidden to row you across the river. Don’t try it.” With that, he said no more about it, and began telling another yarn.
Late that night, when James had finally agreed to leave off making strange noises on the piano, we made a surprising discovery. There was not a bed in the Home! While James hurried off to ask a servant about it, I went carefully through each room with the parlor lamp, peering under tables and opening drawers, in the hope of finding at least a ship’s hammock. I was still searching when the Australian returned with a frightened native, who assured us that there had never been a bed or a charpoy in the Home. Just why, he could not say. Probably because the manager babu had forgotten to get them.
So we turned in side by side on the pool-table, and took turns in falling off at regular intervals through the night.
With the first gray light of morning we slipped out the back door of the bungalow and struck off through the forest toward the uninhabited river-bank beyond. For, in spite of the warning of the chief of police, we had decided to try the overland journey.
To get past the police was easy; to escape the jungle, quite a different matter. A full two hours we tore our way through the undergrowth along the river without finding a single spot in the wall-like eastern bank that we dared to swim for. James grew peevish and cross; we both became painfully hungry. And finally we turned back, promising ourselves to continue hunting for an opening in the forest beyond the river on the following day.