“But Hong-Kong—” I began.
“If it’s ’Ong-Kong, ye’ll go to Singapore,” continued the seaman, “or back the other way. There’s no man goes round the world in the north ’emisphere without touching Singapore. Put that down in yer log.”
“If we walk across the Peninsula,” I went on, still addressing James, “it would—”
“Yes,” put in an old fellow, “it would be a new and onusual way of committin’ suicide—original, interestin’, maybe slow, but blamed sure.”
“Now look ’ere, lads,” said the old seaman, almost in tears, “d’ye know anything about that country? There’s no wilder savages nowhere than the Siamese. I know ’em. When I was sailin’ from Singapore to China, that’s fourt—fifteen year gone, we was blowed into the bay, an’ put ashore fer water. We rowed by thousands o’ dead babies floatin’ down the river. We ’adn’t no more’n stepped ashore when down come a yelpin’ bunch o’ Siamese, with knives as long as yer arm, an’ afore we could shove off they’d kilt my mate an’ another and—chopped ’em all to pieces. Them’s the Siamese, an’ the wild men in the mountains is worse.”
In short, the “boys” had so much to say against such a trip that we were forced to go out into the street to continue our planning. For, in spite of their jeers, I still believed the overland trip was possible, and it would be more interesting to travel through a wilderness that had never before been explored.
James told me he was “game for anything,” and we began studying maps for trails and rivers. Natives who had lived in Rangoon all their lives could tell us nothing whatever of the wilds seven miles east of the city.
Late one afternoon, as we were lounging in the Home talking it over, an Englishman in khaki uniform burst in upon us.
“Are you the chaps,” he began, “who are talking of starting for Bangkok on foot?”
“We’ve been asking the way,” I answered.