Suddenly, while they were chattering, I thought I heard someone say that there was a white man on the floor above. We sprang toward the stairway at the end of the porch. The soldiers shrieked in alarm and snatched at my rags. We must not go up; it was strictly against barrack rules. A guardsman on duty at the foot of the stairs held his musket out before him and feebly shouted a command. James caught him by the shoulder and sent him spinning along the veranda. We dashed up the steps. Two doors stood partly open. James sprang to one, while I pushed open the other.
“Hello!” I shouted. “Where’s the white—”
A roar of delight from my companion sent me hurrying after him. He was dancing gleefully just inside the second door, and shaking a white man fiercely by the hand—an astonished white man in khaki uniform with officer’s stripes. I reminded the Australian of his costume, and he became quiet. The European invited us inside, and sent a servant for tea, biscuits, and cigars. Our host was commander of the soldiers—a Dane who spoke English well. That we had been wandering through the jungle he could see all too plainly without our telling him; but that we had come overland from Burma was a tale he could not believe until the sergeant had been called in to prove that what we said was true. Forgetting his military duties, the commander asked us wondering questions until dusk fell, and then ordered three of his soldiers to find us a place to spend the night.
On the veranda the soldiers spread a pair of army blankets. We were for turning in at once. They would not hear of it. For a half-hour they trotted back and forth between our bungalow and that of the commander, carrying steaming dishes. The table they had set up was groaning under its load before the sergeant signed to us to begin. There were broiled fish, a mutton roast, a great steak, a spitted fowl, and fruits and vegetables of many kinds.
We spent the night on the veranda. We did not sleep there. Our sun-scorched skins would not permit it. Even had they burned less fiercely, we could not have slept. One would have fancied the place a gigantic hen-yard during the hours of darkness. After every shower the unveiled moon was greeted with a din of crowing that was awful. In the moments of quiet between, we tossed about wide awake on our hard couch, listening to the musical tinkling of pagoda bells.
When dawn came the Dane sent for us. We hurried to his bungalow and joined him at breakfast. He had gathered together two pairs of shoes and four khaki uniforms. They were from his own tailor in Bangkok, still very useful, though fitting us a bit too tightly and chafing our blistered skins. Rolling up our extra garments and swinging them over our shoulders, we bade our host farewell.
CHAPTER XXV
FOLLOWING THE MENAM RIVER TO BANGKOK
The path to Bangkok, such as it was, lay on the eastern bank of the Menam River. This time we crossed the stream in a dugout canoe fully thirty feet long, which held, besides ourselves and four paddlers, twenty-two natives, chiefly women. All day we tramped through jungle as wild as that to the westward, following the course of the river. We passed many bamboo villages, and for every hut at least a half dozen yellow curs added their yelpings to the uproar that greeted us as we came near.
The inhabitants were careless “wild men” like those of the mountains, content to live and die in their nests of jungle rubbish, with never a peep at the outside world. Both the men and the women wore their dull black hair some two inches long and dressed in a bristling pompadour that made them look like startled porcupines. Both had jet-black teeth. The children were strong and healthy little animals.
On the way we had to swim across many branches of the Menam River. Sometimes they were swift and deep. What we dreaded more were the almost motionless streams through which we must wade waist-deep in acres of green slime where poisonous snakes lay in hiding.