“Good mornin’ te ye!” he called, waving a dripping hand. “Come on board and we’ll have a chat. She don’t leave till noon.”
“The time’ll pass fast,” I suggested, “if you’ll give us your yarn.”
“Sure and I will,” answered the Irishman, “if ye’ll promise te listen te a good sthraight talk on religion after.”
What was it in my appearance that led every religious propagandist to look upon me as a possible convert? Even the missionary from Kansas had loaded me down with tracts.
The Irishman led the way to a cool spot on the deserted deck, sat down Turkish fashion, and, gazing out across the sluggish, brown Ganges, told us the story of an unusual life.
He was born in Dublin in the early fifties. As a young man he had emigrated to America, and, turning “hobo,” had traveled through every state in the Union, working here and there. He was not long in convincing both Rice and me that he knew the secrets of the “blind baggage” and the ways of railroad “bulls.” More than once he growled out the name of some junction where we, too, had been ditched, and told of running the police gauntlet in cities that rank even to-day as “bad towns.”
“Two years after landin’ in the States,” he continued, “I hit Caleefornia and took a job thruckin’ on a blessed fruit-boat in the Sacreminto river, the Acme—”
“What!” I gasped, “The Acme? I was truckman on her in 1902.”
“Bless me eyes, were ye now?” cried the Irishman. “’Tis a blessed shmall worrld. Well, ’twas on the Acme thot I picked oop with a blessed ould sea dog of the name of Blodgett, and we shipped out of Frisco fer Japan. Blodgett, poor b’y, died on the vi’age, and after payin’ off I wint on alone, fitchin’ oop at last in Rhangoon. Th’ English were not houldin’ Burma thin, and white min were as rare as Siamese twins. Bless ye, but the natives were glad to see me, and I lived foine. But bist of all, I found the thrue religion, as ye wud call it, or philosophy as it shud be called. Whin I was sure ’twas right I took orders among thim, bein’ the foirst blessed white man te turn Buddhist priest.”
“Good graft,” grinned Rice.