“Only one?” I cried. “Two rupees.”
“One!” he shrieked. “Two for the sahib’s which is new. One for yours.”
The Burman gave in at last, however, and, dropping two coins in my hand, marched proudly away with my old helmet set down over his ears.
I handed one of the coins to the head of the family, and we hit the trail again. Out of sight of the hut, we halted to put on the extra suits in our bundles. From the rags and tatters of my old suit I made a band to wind around my head, after the fashion of Burma. Even with the top of my head uncovered to the sun and rain, I did not suffer.
CHAPTER XXIV
HUNGRY DAYS
The territory beyond Banpáwa was more savage than any we had yet seen. Everywhere the climbing and creeping plant life was so thick and interwoven that our feet could not reach the ground. Often, when we tried to plunge through a thicket, we were caught as if in a net. It was impossible to get through, and we crawled out with torn garments and bleeding hands and faces to fight our way around the spot. We were now in the very heart of the mountains. Range after range appeared, covered with unbroken jungle. From the top of every mountain there spread out before us an endless forest of teak and bamboo matted together with the wildest undergrowth. Mountains that were just blue wreaths in the morning climbed higher and higher into the sky—and beyond them were more mountains, all covered with a mass of waving tree-tops. Every valley was choked with vegetation.
Often, while climbing, we lost our footing and went plunging headlong through thorn-bristling thickets. There were no level spaces. No sooner had we reached the bottom of a narrow valley than we found ourselves at the base of another higher mountain, which we climbed hand over hand as a sailor climbs a rope. In our ears sounded the continual hum of insects; now and then a snake squirmed off through the bushes; more than once we heard the roar of some beast. Monkeys swarmed in the thick network of branches overhead, and fled screaming away, as we came near, into the dark depths of the forest.
At every mud-hole we halted to drink; for within us burned a thirst such as no man knows who has not suffered it in the jungle. Chocolate-colored water we drank, water alive with squirming animal life, in pools out of which wriggled brilliant green snakes. Often I rose to my feet to find a blood-sucker clinging to my lower lip.
As the day grew, a raging hunger fell upon us. In a sharp valley we came upon a tree on the trunk of which hung a dozen or more jack-fruits within easy reach. We grasped one and tried to pull it down. The short, tough stem was as stout as a manila rope, and knife we had none. We wrapped our arms around the fruit and tugged with the strength of despair; we might as well have tried to pull up a ship’s anchor by hand. We chopped at the stem with sharp stones; we hunted up great rocks and attempted to split the fruit open on the tree, screaming with rage and bruising our fingers. Streams of perspiration raced down our sun-scorched skins; our hunger and thirst grew maddening; and still nothing came of it. When we finally gave up and plunged on, our violent attack on the fruit had hardly scratched its stony rind.
Weary and half starved, matted with mud from crown to toe, and bleeding from countless cuts and scratches, we were still struggling with the entangling vegetation well on in the afternoon, when James, who was ahead of me, uttered a shriek of victory.