It was still early in the morning when, down the green-framed roadway, came a funeral procession on its way to the place where the body was to be burned. There came, first of all, dozens of girls dressed as if for a holiday. About their necks were garlands of flowers; in their jet-black hair, red and white blossoms. Each carried a flat basket heaped high with bananas of the brightest yellow, with golden mangoes and great plump pineapples, for the dead. The girls held the baskets high above their heads, swinging their bodies from side to side and tripping lightly back and forth across the road, the long line performing a snake-dance as they came. The strange music that rose and fell in time with their movements sounded like a song of victory; now and again a singer broke out in merry laughter.
The coffin was a wooden box gayly decked with flowers and trinkets, and three of the eight men who carried it on their shoulders were puffing at long native cigars. Behind them more men, led by two yellow-robed priests, pattered through the dust, chattering like schoolgirls, or now and then adding their harsh voices to the singing.
We reached the village of Moulmein late at night, and went home with a Eurasian youth who had invited us to sleep on his veranda. There we threw ourselves down on the floor, and, drenched and mud-caked as we were, sank into corpse-like slumber.
CHAPTER XXII
IN THE JUNGLES OF BURMA
The next morning we went to call on an American missionary. He lived in a handsome bungalow set in a wooded park on a hill just outside the town. The first persons we saw when we reached the place were a native gardener clipping away at the shrubbery on the grounds, and another servant following two very little girls who drove about the house a team of lizards harnessed together with reins tied to their hind legs.
When we told the missionary that we were looking for work, he quickly found something to put us at. Among other things, I repaired the floor and several windows, and made two kitchen benches. James put a new cover on the missionary’s saddle, cleaned and oiled his fire-arms, put new roosts in his hen-house, and set his lumber-room in order.
We found some work in the city also, and, with some four dollars in silver and copper, set off once more. A jungle trail led eastward through a dark forest. We walked as fast as we could, for the hour was late and the next village was fully fifteen miles distant. Not a hut or a human being did we pass on the journey; only the path showed that someone had been there before us.
Black night had fallen when we reached Kawkeriek. The town was only a collection of those same one-story bamboo huts standing in uneven rows in the square clearing which its inhabitants had won after a hard fight with the wilderness.
We had heard that a commissioner lived at Kawkeriek. We wandered among the huts, asking passers-by to direct us to his bungalow. The few whom we came upon in the darkness listened with trembling limbs to our question, grunted something that we couldn’t understand, and hurried noiselessly away.
The hour was late when we came upon one who must have been made of bolder stuff than his fellow townsmen, for he agreed to guide us. Beyond the last row of huts, he plunged into a pathway that led into the woods, and, climbing a low hill, stopped before a bungalow almost hidden in the trees. We turned to thank him, but found that he had slipped silently away.