We talked with them some time by signs. I tried to tell the sergeant that my own country owned the Philippine Islands, which were not far from his country. He thought I meant that my country owned Siam. He sneered at me most cuttingly. The very idea that the white man had any claim on the free country of Siam! How foolish! He told his soldiers about it. They scoffed at us, and even the carriers grinned scornfully. When they had eaten a jungle lunch the soldiers stretched out for their noonday nap, and we went on alone.
It was long hours afterward that we came to a break in the jungle. Through the undergrowth we made out two miserable huts. We dashed eagerly toward them, for we had had nothing to eat since the night before and our tramp had made us very hungry.
Two thin brown women, dressed in short skirts and broad-brimmed hats made of big leaves, were scratching the mud of a tiny garden before the first hut. I called for food and shook a handful of coppers in their faces; but, although they must have understood us, they would not answer. We danced excitedly about them, shrieking all the Siamese names for food that we knew. Still they stared with half-open mouths, showing uneven rows of black teeth. We had expected this. Even far back in Moulmein, we had been warned that the jungle folk of Siam would not sell food to travelers. Far off in this howling wilderness among the mountains, the people had never used money and did not know that our coins had any value.
We went on, and just at sunset burst into the scattered village of Banpáwa. About forty howling storms had poured upon us during the day, and we had waded through an even greater number of streams. My jacket was torn to ribbons; my back and shoulders were painfully sunburned; in a struggle with a stubborn thicket I had lost a leg of my trousers. And the Australian looked about as pretty as I.
Near the center of the village was a large roof of grass upheld by slender bamboo poles. Under it were huddled about twenty freight-carriers, surrounded by bales and bundles. They were the human freight trains of the Siamese jungle—cross, silent fellows, who, though they stared open-mouthed when we appeared, would not have anything to say to us.
They were strong-looking, with great knots of muscles standing out on their glistening brown bodies. A small rag was their only clothing. Above it the skin was thickly tattooed to the neck with strange figures of beasts. Among these the form of a fat pig seemed to be the favorite. Below the hip-cloth the figures were blue, even more closely crowded together, but stopping short at the knees.
We tried to buy food from our sulky companions. They growled for answer. Like the soldiers, each of them wore at his waist a bag of rice. A few were preparing supper over bonfires at the edge of the shelter; but not a grain of rice would they sell. A raging storm broke while we were wandering from one to another offering them our money. When the storm began to die down, we hobbled out into the night to try to buy from the villagers.
There were about twenty huts in the clearing. We climbed into one after another of them, in spite of our aching legs. But it was useless: nobody would sell. Too hungry to care what happened to us, we climbed boldly into the last hut, and caught up a kettle, intending to cook our own supper.
The householder shrieked wildly, and, before we had kindled a fire, a mob of his fellow townsmen swarmed into the shack and fell upon us. They were not the fiercest of fighters—we shook and kicked them off like puppies. But when the last one had tumbled down the ladder we saw that they had carried off every pot, pan, and eatable about the place. Besides the bare walls there remained only a naked brown baby, that rolled about the floor, howling uproariously.
The people of the village were screaming around the shanty in a way that made us glad we had a prisoner. James sat down, gazed sadly at the wailing infant, and shook his head.