“Chittagong!” gasped the babu. “Why, you going wrong, sahibs. Chittagong two hundred and eighty miles down there,” and he pointed along the track the way we had come.
“Then why the deuce did they let us take this train?” shouted James. “Where is it going, anyway?”
“This train going in Assam,” replied the native, “Where gentlemen coming from? Sure you wishing go Chittagong? Let me see tickets.”
“Oh, we know where we want to go, all right,” said James, hastily. “We’re coming from Chandpore.”
“Ah! Chandpore!” smiled the babu. “I understand. Train from Chandpore breaking in two thirty miles further. Part going to Chittagong, part coming here. You sitting in wrong car. Maybe you sleep?” “But,” he added, as a puzzled frown passed over his face, “many collectors are at this junction. Why they have not wake you?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” bellowed Rice. “This is a thunder of a railroad.”
The shriek of a locomotive sounded, and a moment later a south-bound train drew up on the switch.
“This train going in Chittagong,” said the babu, “you can go with it.”
“Do you think we’re going to pay our fare for two hundred and eighty miles,” demanded James, “just because the collectors didn’t tell us to change?”
“Oh, no, sahibs,” breathed the babu, “I will tell it to the guard. Let me take tickets that I show him.”