“Well, save yourselves the trouble,” returned the officer. “There is no way. The trip can’t be made. You’d be killed, and your government would come back at us for letting you go. I have orders from the chief of police that you are not to leave Rangoon except by sea, and I have warned the police on the east side of the city to head you off. Thought I’d tell you.”
“Thanks,” muttered James; “but we’ll hold down Rangoon for a while yet, anyway.”
But of course we could not give up the plan. One afternoon, as the manager of the Home was sleeping, we laid hold on the knapsack we had left in his keeping, and struck off through the crowded native town.
“This is no good,” objected James. “All the streets leading east are guarded.”
“The railroad to Mandalay isn’t,” I replied. “We’ll run up the line out of danger, and strike out from there.”
The Australian halted at a tiny drug-store, and, awakening the bare-legged clerk, bought twenty grains of quinine. “For jungle fever,” he muttered as he tucked the package away in his helmet. That was our “outfit” for a journey that might last one month or six. In the knapsack were two cotton suits and a few ragged shirts. As for weapons, we had not even a penknife.
A mile from the Home we entered a small station, bought tickets to the first important town, and a few minutes later were hurrying northward. James settled back in a corner, and fell to singing to himself:
“On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flying-fishes play—”
About us lay low rolling hills, deep green with tropical vegetation. Behind sparkled the golden tower of the Shwe Dagón pagoda, growing smaller and ever smaller, until the night, falling quickly, blotted it out. We fell asleep, and, awakening as the train pulled into Pegu, spent the rest of the night in two willow rockers in the waiting-room.