A moment later the tiny British engine shrieked, a man in the neighboring tower opened the block, and the diminutive freight screamed by us. We grasped the rods of a high, open car and swung ourselves up. On the floor, folded to the size of a large mattress, lay a tarpaulin car-cover. A cooling breeze, sweeping over the moving train, lulled us to sleep. Once we were awakened by the roar of a passing express, and peered over the edge of the car to find ourselves on a switch. Then the train rattled on and we stretched out again. A second time we were aroused by shunting engines, and the guard, passing by, called out that he had reached the end of his run. We climbed out, and, retreating to a grassy slope, slept out the night.
The morning sun showed an extensive forest close at hand. A red, sandy roadway, deep-shaded by thick overhanging branches, led off through the trees. Here and there in a tiny clearing a scrawny native cooked a scanty breakfast over a fire of leaves and twigs before his thatch hut. Above us sounded the note of a tropical bird. The jostling multitudes and sullen roar of Calcutta seemed innumerable leagues distant.
The forest opened and fell away on either hand; and we paused on the high, grassy bank of a broad river, glistening in the slanting sunlight. Below, in two groups, natives, male and female, were bathing. Along a highway following the course of the river stretched a one-row town, low hovels of a single story for the most part, above which a government building and a modest little church stood out conspicuously.
A quaint, old-fashioned spire against the background of an India horizon is a landmark not easily forgotten.
“Thunder!” snorted Martin. “Is this all we’ve made? That bloody train must have been side-tracked half the time we was poundin’ our list’ners. I know this burg. It’s Hoogly, not forty miles from Cally. But there’s a commish here. He’s a real sport, and ticketed me to Cally four years ago. Don’t believe he’ll remember my figure-’ead, neither. Come on.”
We strolled on down the highway. Before the government building a score of prisoners, with belts and heavy anklets of iron connected by two jointed bars, were piling cobble stones.
“But here!” I cried suddenly; “He’ll only give you a ticket back to Calcutta if we’re so near there.”
“No bloody fear,” retorted Marten; “he’ll ticket me the way I want to go. That’s old Lord Curzy’s law.”
“Then you’ll have to drop that yarn about the Guiseppe Sarto.”
Marten had thus christened his phantom ship, not because he hoped to win favor with the Pope, but because he had been hard-pressed for an Italian name. Commissioners who listened to his “song and dance” had a disconcerting habit of drawing from a pigeon-hole the latest marine guide at the mention of an English vessel. But Italian windjammers, unlisted, might be moved about as freely as pawns on a chessboard.