“Stand still!” shouted Marten, as I struggled to pull my legs from the clinging mud. “He’s a god, I tell you. Besides, he’s probably hungry. Don’t be so damn selfish.”
The trouser, well aimed, ended his speech abruptly as I reached dry land. I worked, thereafter, with wide-open eyes; and before the task was ended, caught sight of no less than fourteen of the river gods of India.
We regained the station in time for the train to Moghul Serai, and, catching the northwest express, arrived in Allahabad late at night. The Strangers’ Rest, vagabonds’ retreat a half mile from the station, was long since closed; but the Irish superintendent was a light sleeper, and we were soon weighing down two charpoys under the trees of the inner courtyard.
The jangling of the breakfast bell awakened us. The Allahabad “Rest” was famed far and wide for its “European chow.” All through the night we had embraced ourselves in joyful anticipation of reviving our flagging memories on the subject of the taste of meat. Marten had even dared to dream a wondrous dream, wherein he had pursued a Gargantuan beefsteak as broad as the arid plain below Benares, in thickness like unto a native hut, across half the land of India, only to wake as he was falling upon it in the foothills of the Himalayas.
“An’ the bloomin’ thing was steamin’ hot,” he driveled, as we raced for the dining-room with a mob of ordinarily phlegmatic roadsters, “an’ the juice was runnin’ out all over the fields”—we dropped into places at the table—“an’ it was that bloody rare that—ah—er—wha—what the devil’s this?” he gasped, pointing at the plate before him.
“Eh?” cried the superintendent, from the doorway.
“I was askin’,” murmured Marten, “what kind o’ meat this might be.”
“That?” smiled our portly host. “Why, ’tis dhried fish, to be sure. The day’s Good Friday, you’ll be remimberin’.”
So we were glad rather than sorry that the piety of the English rector, to whom that power was deputed, forbade him issuing tickets to stranded seamen until the next day.
Nothing short of a promise to set up a bottle of arrack would have enticed another sojourner at the Rest outside its shady grove. I set off to explore the city of Allah alone. Life moved sluggishly in its broad, straight streets; for the day’s inactivity of Europeans and Eurasians had clogged the wheels of industry. Lepers swarmed under the trees along the boulevard passing the Rest—lepers male and female, without fingers, or lips, or eyelids, some with stumps for feet, and others with great running sores where their faces should have been. Still others had lost their vocal cords, so that their speech, as they crept close up behind the passing sahib to solicit alms, was an inarticulate gurgle.