To correct these unimportant little faults, the corporation has a force of inspectors, occasionally sahibs, commonly Eurasians, clad in khaki uniforms and armed with report pads, who spring out unexpectedly from obscure side streets to offer expert assistance to passing conductors.
But, of course, mathematical experts do not dodge in and out of the sun-baked alleyways of Madras for the good of their health. The spirit of India is sure to attack them sooner or later, even if it has not been with them since birth. Cases of friendship between inspectors and conductors are not unknown, and it is not the way of the Oriental to attempt to reduce his friend’s income. In short, the auditors must be audited, and, all unknown to them or its other servants, the corporation employs a small select band of men who do not wear uniforms, and who do not line up before the wicket on pay day.
It was by merest chance that I learned of this state of affairs and found my way to a small office that no one would have suspected of being in any way connected with the transportation system of Madras. An Englishman who was ostensibly a private broker deemed my answers to his cross-examination satisfactory, and I was initiated at once into the mysterious masonry of inspector of inspectors. The broker warned me not to build hopes of an extended engagement, rather to anticipate an early dismissal; for the uniformed employés were famed for lynx-eyed vigilance, and my usefulness to the company, obviously, could not endure beyond the few days that might elapse before I was “spotted.” He did not add that a longer period might give me opportunity to form too intimate acquaintances, but he wore the air of a man who had not exhausted his subject.
My duties began forthwith. The Englishman supplied me with a handful of coppers that were to return to the corporation through its cash registers. I was to board a tramway, find place of observation in a back seat, and pay my fare as an ordinary passenger. The distance I should travel on each car, the routes I should follow, my changes from one line to another, were left to my own discretion. Upon alighting, I was to stroll far enough away from the line to allay suspicion and return to hail another car. The company required only that I make out each evening, in the private office, a report of my observations, with the numbers of the cars, and sign a statement to the effect that I had devoted the eight hours to the interests of the corporation. What could have been more entirely mon affaire? If there was a nook or corner of Madras that I did not visit during the few days that followed, it was not within strolling distance of any streetcar line.
Among the sights of the city must be noted her human bullocks. Horses are rare in Madras. The transportation of freight falls to a company of leather-skinned, rice-fed coolies whose strength and endurance pass belief. Their carts are massive, two-wheeled vehicles, as cumbersome as ever burdened a yoke of oxen. The virtues of axle-grease they know not, and through the streets of Madras resounds a droning as of the Egyptian sakkas on the plain of Thebes. Yet two of these emaciated creatures will drag a wagon, laden with great bales from the ships, or a dozen steel rails, for miles over hills and hollows, with fewer breathing spells than a truckman would allow a team of horses.
My devotion to corporate interests brought me the surprise supreme of my Oriental wanderings. At the corner of the Maidan, where the tramway swings round towards the harbor, a gang of coolies was repairing the roadway. That, in itself, was no cause for wonder. But among the workmen, dressed like the others in a ragged loin-cloth, swinging his rammer as stolidly, gazing as abjectly at the ground as his companions, was a white man! There could be no doubt of it. Under the tan of an Indian sun his skin was as fair as a Norseman’s, his shock of unkempt hair was a fiery red, and his eyes were blue! But a white man ramming macadam! A sahib so unmindful of his high origin as to join the ranks of the most miserable, the most debased, the most abhorred of human creatures! To become a sudra and ram macadam in the public streets, dressed in a clout! Here was the final, lasciate ogni speranza end. A terror came upon me, a longing to flee while yet there was time, from the blighted land in which a man of my own flesh and blood could fall to this.
Again and again my rounds of the city brought me back to the corner of the Maidan. The renegade toiled stolidly on, bending dejectedly over his task, never raising his head to glance at the passing throng. Twice I was moved to alight and speak, to learn his dreadful story, but the car had rumbled on before I gathered courage. Leaving the broker’s office as twilight fell, I passed that way again. A babu loitering on the curb drew me into conversation and I put a question to him.
“What! That?” he said, following the direction of my finger. “Why, that’s a Hindu albino.”
I turned away to an eating-shop, the proprietor of which had long since alienated his fellow-countrymen by professing conversion to Christianity, and sat down for supper. It was the official “bums’ retreat” of Madras. A half-dozen white wanderers were gathered. I looked for Marten among them; but he had found pleasure, evidently, in the company of his chocolate-colored cousins, and when the last yarn was spun he had not put in an appearance. I stepped out again into the night to find a lodging.
Had I imagined that I alone, of all Madras, was planning to sleep beneath the stars, I should have been doomed to disappointment. For an hour I roamed the city, seeking a bit of open space. If there was a passageway or a platband too small to accommodate a coolie or a street urchin, it was occupied by a mongrel cur. The night was black. There was danger of running upon some huddled family in the darkness, and the pollution of touch might prove mutual. I left the close-packed town behind and struck off across the Maidan. Here was room and to spare; but the law forbade, and if officers did not enforce the ordinance, sneak thieves did—Hindu thieves who can travel on their bellies faster than an honest man can walk, making less noise than the gentle southern breeze, and steal the teeth from a sleeper’s mouth and the eyes from under his lids ere he wakes. I kept on, stumbling over a knoll now and then, falling flat in a dry ditch, and fetching up against a fence. Groping along it, I came upon the highway that leads southward along the shore of the sea. A furlong beyond was a grove of high trees, with wide-spreading branches, like the pine; and beneath them soft beach sand. I halted there. A landward breeze had tempered the oppressive heat; the boughs above whispered hoarsely together. At regular intervals through the night, the sepulchral voice of the Bay of Bengal spoke faintly across the barren strand.