Several miles separated the sudra village from the government buildings. On the way native policemen and soldiers drew up at attention and saluted as we passed. An entire squad, loitering before the central station, fell quickly into ranks and stood stiffly at present-arms as long as we remained in sight. In this English-governed land, the native sees in every sahib a possible superior officer to whom it is safest to be deferential.
We reached in due time the commissioner’s office. His only representative in the deserted bureaus was an emaciated punkah-wallah, turned watchman, who bowed his head in the dust before the door as Marten addressed him.
“Nay, sahibs,” he murmured, “the commissioner sahib and the little commissioners are absent, protectors of the miserable. To-day is the Brahmin new year”—it was April thirteenth—“oh, charitable one, and a holiday. The sahibs may come to-morrow. But nay! To-morrow is a feast of the Mohammedans and a holiday also.”
“And the next day is Sunday,” I put in, when Marten had interpreted.
“The commissioner’s bungalow?” he demanded.
“In the forest beyond the hills,” murmured the coolie, pointing northward. “Two cigarettes distant, oh, greatest of sahibs.”
To the grief of many a peregrinating beachcomber, the “appearances” of the British governors of India are as rare as those of world-famed tenors. We continued along a shimmering highway, winding among trees, the dense shadows of which gave our eyes occasional relief, and a mile beyond found the commissioner at home. Marten gained a hearing and emerged with a note to the assistant commissioner. Once entangled in the meshes of Oriental red-tape, there was no escape; and from midday till late afternoon we raced back and forth through the streets and byways of Vizagapatam, and routed out no fewer than twelve Hindu officials from their holiday siestas. Even then my companion won a ticket only halfway to the city on the Hoogly.
We caught the night express and reached Berhampore next morning. At his bungalow, a youthful commissioner was so moved by Marten’s account of the loss of his phantom ship—the story had lost nothing in frequent repetitions—that he waived all legal formalities and gave him an order on the station master for a ticket to his destination. Had he followed the movements of the abandoned seaman for the rest of the day he might have listened skeptically to the tale of the next wanderer to seek his assistance.
On the shores of the Bay of Bengal, some two hundred miles south of the capital and a day’s tramp from the main line, lies Puri, the city of Juggernaut. I should have visited it alone had not Marten, utterly indifferent to the suspense of his grieving shipmates, insisted on accompanying me.
We alighted at Khurda Road and purchased tickets to the sacred city at a price that could scarcely have covered the cost of printing. A train of unusual length for a branch line was already so densely packed with pilgrims that those who tumbled out of the compartment which the station master chose to assign us were in imminent danger of being left behind. Iron-voiced vendors danced about the platform. Their wares were the usual greasy sweets, doughy bread-sheets and curried potatoes that had been our fare for long days past. But this was “holy food,” prepared by the priests of the hallowed city; for the Hindu on his pilgrimages to a sacred shrine may not eat of worldly viands. For all that the hawkers sold to us gladly, not abating, however, by a copper, the exorbitant prices to which their monopoly and the superstitions of their regular customers entitled them.