Working my Way Around the World

by Harry Alverson Franck; Lena M. Franck

So we waited for the soldiers, and followed them along a wider path. The higher mountain ranges fell away; but the foot-hills were very steep, and the slopes were often bare and covered with deep mud. At the top of such a hill we overtook a troop of horsemen returning from some village off to the southwest. Burdened with huge packsaddles, the horses began the dangerous downward climb unwillingly. Suddenly three of them lost their footing, sat down on their haunches, and rolled over and over, their packs flying in every direction. James laughed loudly and slapped me on the back. The blow made me lose my balance. My feet shot from under me, and slipping, sliding, rolling, clutching in vain for something to hold to, I pitched down the five-hundred-yard slope and splashed head-first into a muddy stream at the bottom several seconds before the horses got there.

Another mile left me bare-footed and nearly as naked as my companion. Now and again we overtook a band of freight-carriers; one a young Buddhist priest in tattered yellow, attended by two servants. We had seen him somewhere a day or two before, and remembered him not only by his dress, but on account of the bold and impudent expression of his face. He joined our party without being invited, and tramped along with us, puffing at a long saybully, and chattering loudly and continuously. The soldiers roared with laughter at everything he said, and winked at us as if they thought we could understand his remarks. We were more sorry than ever that we did not understand the Siamese tongue.

James was complaining that he could not go on another yard, when we came most unexpectedly to the edge of the jungle. Before us stretched a vast rice-field, deeply flooded. The soldiers led the way along the tops of the ridges toward a thick wood two miles away. At least a hundred curs began howling as we drew near, and as many chattering brown people swarmed about us when we stopped to rest in a large, deeply shaded village at the edge of a river fully a mile wide. It could be no other than the Menam—the “great river” of Siam. Along the low eastern bank stretched a real city with white two-story buildings, before which were anchored large native boats. It was Rehang. The soldiers told us so with shouts of joy, and ran away to put on their uniforms.

We threw off what was left of our garments, and plunged into the stream to wash off the blood and grime of the jungle. When we had finished, the soldiers were gone. We asked the villagers to set us across the river. They refused. We pushed out one of a dozen dugout logs drawn up along the shore, and the village swarmed down upon us in a great landslide of men, women, children, and yellow curs. Catching up two paddles, we beat them off. In two minutes we were alone.

We pushed the dugout into the stream, and were climbing in when two ugly, wrinkled brown women ran down the bank and offered to ferry us across. They pointed the craft up-stream and fell to paddling. They were expert water dogs, and crossed the swift stream without accident, landing us at a crazy wooden wharf in the center of the town.

On nearer sight Rehang was disappointing. The white two-story buildings were poor, rickety things. The roads between were not much better paved than the jungle paths, and deeper in mud. There was no health department, it seemed, for here and there a dead dog or cat had been tossed out to be trampled underfoot. There were great crowds of people, but the passing throng was merely a larger gathering of those same strange “wild men” of the jungle villages. The fear of being arrested for having no clothes soon left us. James in national costume attracted much less attention than I in the remnants of jacket and trousers.

We were glad, however, to be in even this tumble-down city on the bank of the Menam; at least, it was a market town. James dashed into the first store with a whoop of delight, and startled the keeper out of his wits by demanding a whole three cents’ worth of cigarettes. He splashed on through the muddy streets, blowing great clouds of smoke through his nostrils, and forgetting for a time even the smarting of his torn and sun-scorched skin.

Half the merchants of the town were Chinamen. We stopped at a shop kept by three wearers of the pig-tail, and, seating ourselves before a bench, called for food. One of the keepers, moving as if he disliked having us there, set canned meat before us, and after a long time brought us as a can-opener, a hatchet with a blade considerably wider than the largest can.

When we rose to go, the Chinese demanded ten tecals. The market price of the stuff we had eaten was certainly not worth one. I gave them two. Three screams split the air, and half a dozen Chinamen bounded into the shop and danced wildly about us. One caught up the hatchet and swung it high above his head. James snatched it from him, kicked him across the room, and threw the weapon among the heaped-up wares. We fought our way to the street. The keeper nearest us gave one loud bellow that was answered from every side. Chinamen stumbled out through every open doorway, out of every hole in the surrounding shop walls; they sprang up from under the buildings, dropped from the low roofs, swarmed out of the alleyways, for all the world like rats, screaming, yelping, snarling, clawing the air as they ran, their pig-tails streaming behind them. In the twinkling of an eye the mob at our heels had increased to a hundred or more. We refused to disgrace ourselves by running. The crazed yellow men scratched us savagely with their overgrown finger-nails, caught at our legs, spattered us with mud. Not one of them used his fists. When we turned upon them they bounded away as if from a squad of cavalry, and we could get even only by catching a flying pig-tail in either hand, to send a pair of yellow-skinned rascals sprawling in the mud. They came back at us after every stand before we had taken a dozen steps. Our backs were a network of finger-nail scratches. We cast our eyes about us for some weapon, and found two muddy sticks. Before we could use them the Chinamen turned and fled, still screaming at the top of their lungs.

Not far beyond, we turned in at the largest building in the town—the Rehang barracks for soldiers. Among the half hundred little brown soldiers lounging about the porch were our comrades of the few days past. It was plain that they had told our story. The recruits gathered about us, laughing and asking questions in the deaf-and-dumb language. How had we liked lizard curry? What had turned our dainty skins so blood-red? What ignorant and helpless creatures were white men, were they not?