“When’d you find the path?” I demanded.
“Haven’t lost it,” he answered. “Why? Did you?”
“Haven’t seen it for five hours,” I replied.
“Great dingoes!” he gasped. “Thought you were close behind, or I’d have felt mighty little like singing.”
We had no difficulty in keeping to the path for the rest of the day, and passed several freight-carriers traveling westward. With never a hut on the way, we went hungry. Yet, had we but known it, there was food all about us. What a helpless being is civilized man without the tools of civilization.
Faint from hunger, we had halted at the edge of a mountain stream well on in the afternoon, when we were overtaken by the little brown soldiers. They had packed away their uniforms and wore only loin-cloths and caps.
“Kin-kow? Kin-kow?” (“Are you hungry?”) asked the sergeant, placing his hand on his stomach.
We nodded sadly. He chuckled to himself, and waved his arms about him as if to say there was food all about us. We shrugged our shoulders unbelievingly. He laughed gleefully, and turned to say something to his men. Two of the soldiers picked up clubs, and, returning along the path to a half-rotten log, began to move back and forth on both sides of it, striking it sharp blows here and there. They came back with a half-dozen lizards—those great, green reptiles that sing their she-kak! all night long in the grassy roofs of the Indian bungalows.
Meanwhile two others of the company were kneeling at the edge of a mud-hole. From time to time they plunged their bare arms into it, drawing out frogs and dropping them, still alive, into a hollow bamboo stick. The sergeant took his long, heavy knife, or dah, and cut down a small tree at the edge of the jungle. One servant dug some reddish-brown roots on the bank of the stream, while the other started a fire by rubbing two sticks together.
In a few minutes all were gathered beside us. The lizards were skinned, cut up with lumps of red curry in an iron pot, and set to boiling. A servant drew out the frogs, one by one, struck them on the head with a stick, and tossed them to his companion. The latter rolled them up inside mud balls and threw them into the fire. The sergeant split open his tree, pulled out a soft spongy stuff from the center of it, cut it into slices, toasted them on the point of his dah, and tossed them on to a large leaf spread out at our feet. The reddish roots were beaten to a pulp on a rock and sprinkled over the toasted slices. Rice was boiled.