A Singhalese woman stops often to give her children a bath.
“Your bed!” cried the newcomer. “Why, you’re sitting on it.”
I followed the example of the others—undressed and put on a thin garment that I found hanging over my “bed.” Then, using my bundle of clothing for a pillow, I lay down upon the table and sweated out the night.
Over the tea, bananas, and cakes of ground cocoanut that we had for breakfast, we told each other how we happened to be in that part of the world. The Swede was merely a sailor. But the older man was an Irishman named John Askins, once a professor in the Dublin University, who had been obliged to give up his work because of poor health.
Before many days had passed I had found work. An Englishman had advertised for a carpenter, and for three days following I superintended the labors of a band of coolies in laying a hardwood floor in his bungalow.
After the work was finished I set off early one morning for a trip into the interior of the island. At about noon I reached the open country. Tropical plant life ran wild over all the land. In the black shadows swarmed naked human beings. But the highway was wide, as well built as those in Europe, and closely bordered on both sides by thick forests of towering palm trees. Here and there bands of coolies repaired the roadway or fought back the war-like vegetation with ax-like knives.
Clumsy, heavy-wheeled carts, covered like a gypsy wagon, creaked slowly by behind humped oxen. At first sight the roof seemed made of canvas, but as the vehicle came nearer I saw that it was made of thousands of leaves sewn together. Under it the scrawny driver grinned cheerily and mumbled some strange words of greeting. The glare of sunshine was dazzling; a wrist uncovered for a moment was burned as red as if it had been branded, and my face shone browner in the mirror of each passing stream.
In the forest there were the slim bamboo, the broad-leafed banana tree, and most of all the cocoanut-palm. Natives armed with heavy knives clasped the trees like monkeys and walked up the slender trunks. Then, hiding themselves in the bunch of leaves sixty feet above, they chopped off the nuts, which struck the soft spongy earth and rebounded high into the air. All through the forest sounded this dull, muffled thump, thump, thump of falling cocoanuts.
In the middle of the afternoon, as I lay resting on a grassy slope under shady palms, I heard a crackling of twigs; and, turning around, I met a pair of eyes peering wonderingly at me. I nodded encouragingly. A native, dressed in a ribbon and a tangle of oily hair, stepped from behind a great drooping banana leaf and came slowly and timidly toward me. Behind him tiptoed about twenty naked men and boys. They moved toward me smilingly like stage dancers, but pausing often to make signs meant to encourage one another. How different was their behavior from that of the quarrelsome Arab! It seemed as if a harsh word or cross look on my part would send these simple countrymen scampering away through the forest. A white man is a tin god in Ceylon.
When they saw that I was not ill-natured, the natives gurgled some words of greeting and squatted in a half-circle at the foot of the slope on which I lay. We chatted in the language of signs. They seemed to be interested in my pipe. When it had burned out I turned it over to the leader. He passed it on to his companions. To my horror, they began testing the strange thing by thrusting the stem half way down their throats and sucking fiercely at it. After that they fell to examining the articles in my knapsack. When I took my camera from them, they begged me with tears in their eyes to allow them to open it. To turn their attention from it I began inquiring about their tools and betel-nut pouches. They offered to give me every article that I asked to see; and then sneaked round behind me to carry off the gift while I was examining another.