“Fer why?” asked a sailor.
“Here’s how,” continued Rice. “In Nagpore the commissioner give us a swell set-down an’ everything looked good fer tickets to Cally. ‘What’s yer name?’ sez the guy to Bill, when we come into the office after puttin’ away the set-down. ‘An’ what’s yours?’ he sez to me, after Bill had told him. ‘Clarence Rice,’ sez I. ‘Go on,’ hollers the commish. ‘None o’ yer phony names on me! Ye’re a pair o’ grafters. Git out o’ this office an’ out o’ Nagpore in a hour or I’ll have ye run in—wid yer currie an’ rice!’”
“Yes,” sighed Curry, “that’s what they handed us all the way from Bombay. We was three weeks gettin’ across.”
The meal over, I descended to the street with the one self-supporting guest of the mission. He was a clean-cut, stocky young man of twenty-five, named Gerald James, from Perth, Australia. Until the outbreak of the Boer war he had been a kangaroo hunter in his native land. A year’s service in South Africa had aroused his latent Wanderlust and, once discharged, he had turned northward with two companions. Arrived in Calcutta, his partners had joined the police force, while James, weary of bearing arms, had become a salesman in a well-known department store.
I disclosed my accomplishments to his manager that afternoon, but he did not need to glance more than once at my tattered garb to be certain that his staff was complete. At their barracks the Australian’s partners assured me that their knowledge of the city proved that the only choice left to a white man stranded in Calcutta was to don a police uniform. Evidently they knew whereof they spoke, for employers to whom I gained access during the days that followed laughed at the notion of hiring white laborers; and, though scores of ships lay at anchor in the Hoogly, their captains refused to listen even to my offer to work my passage. To join the police force, however, would have meant a long sojourn in Calcutta, and at any hour of the day one might catch sight of two coolies hurrying across the Maidan with the corpse of the latest victim of the plague.
Nothing short of foolhardy would have been an attempt to cross on foot the marshy, fever-stricken deltas to the eastward. One possible escape from the city presented itself. Through the Australian officers, whose beat was the station platform, I made the acquaintance of a Eurasian collector who promised to “set me right with the guard” as far as Goalando, on the banks of the Ganges. The signs portended however, that once arrived there I should be in far worse straits than in the capital.
A chance meeting with a German traveler, who spoke no English, raised my hoard to seven rupees; but the purchase of a new roll of films reduced it again to less than half that amount, and at that low level my fortunes remained for all my efforts. Sartorially, I came off better; for the manager of the mission, calling me into his office one morning, asked my assistance in auditing his account-book, and gave me for the service two duck suits left behind by some former guest. I succeeded, too, in trading my cast-off garments and my dilapidated slippers for a pair of shoes in good condition.
At the Institute, life moved smoothly on. Each day began with a stroll along the docks and two hours of loafing in the courtyard of the Sailors’ Home, where seamen, paying off, were wont to display their rolls, and captains had even been known, in earlier days, to seek recruits. After dinner, those of long experience in Oriental lands retired to their crippled cots or a shaded corner of the roof, while the “youngsters” played checkers or pieced together some story from the magazine leaves that the “boy” had thrown into a hasty jumble before morning inspection. From four to sunset was the period of individual initiative, when the inventive set off to try the effect of a new “tale of woe” on beneficent European residents. The “old hands,” less ambitious, lighted their pipes and turned out for a promenade around Dalhousie square. Thus passed the sunlit hours. He who had lived through one day with the “Lall Bazaar bunch” knew all the rest.
But as the days were alike, so were the nights different. Each evening of the week was dedicated by long custom to its own special attraction, and newcomers fell as quickly into the routine as a newly arrived prince into the social swirl of the capital. On Monday, supper over, the company rambled off to that section of the Maidan adjoining the viceroy’s palace to listen to the weekly band concert, during the course of which the fortunate occasionally picked up a rupee that had fallen from the pocket of some inebriated Tommy Atkins. On Tuesday the rendezvous was the Presbyterian church at the corner of the square; for it was then and there that charitable memsahibs, incorporated into a “Ladies’ Aid Society,” ended their weekly sewing-bee by distributing among the needy the evidences of their skill with the needle. Hour after hour, a long procession of beachcombers filed up the narrow stairway of the Institute, to dump strange odds and ends of cosmopolitan raiment on the floor. The night was far spent before the last trade had been consummated.
Wednesday, however, was the red-letter date in the Institute calendar. On that evening came the weekly “social.” In company with an “old timer,” I set off early for the English church far out beyond Fort William, in the chapel of which we were served such unfamiliar delicacies as ice cream—so the donators dared to name it—and cake. The invitations were issued to “all seamen on shore in the city,” but found acceptance, of course, only among the penniless, for the arrack-shops of Calcutta are subject to no early closing law.