“Oh, sahibs,” he wailed, “we have not food and to sleep in the station, and the superintendent has not said what I shall do. But you will give me your names to write, and to-morrow you will come back and pay the fares; and if you do not, I will send your names to the superintendent—”
“And he can have ’em framed and hung up in his bungalow,” concluded James. “Sure! You can have all the names you want.”
We gave them and turned away, pausing at the gate to ask the collector to direct us to the Buddhist monastery. He chuckled at the fancied joke and refused for some time to take our question seriously.
“It is very far,” he answered at last. “You are going through the town, making many turns, and through the forest and over the hill before you are coming to it by the crossroads.”
In spite of these explicit directions we wandered a full two hours along soft roadways and over rolling hillocks without locating the object of our search. Pedestrians listened respectfully to our inquiries, but though we used every word in our Oriental vocabularies that could in any way be applied to a religious edifice, they shook their heads in perplexity. One spot at the intersection of two roads seemed to answer vaguely to the collector’s description, but it was surrounded on every side by dense groves in which there was no sound of human occupancy.
We were passing it for the fourth time when a gruff voice sounded from the edge of the woods and a native policeman, toga-clad and armed with a musket, stepped towards us. His face was almost invisible in the darkness; the whites of his eyes, gleaming plainly, gave him the uncanny appearance of a masked figure.
“Buddha!” cried James, with a sweeping gesture, “Boodha, Buddhaha, Boodista? Buddha sahib keh bungalow kéhdereh?”
The officer shivered and peered nervously about him, like one convinced of the white man’s power over hobgoblins. As we turned away, however, he uttered a triumphant shout and dashed off into the forest. A moment later the sound of human voices came to us from the depth of the grove; a light flashed through the trees, swung to and fro as it advanced; and out of the woods, a lantern high above their heads, strode three yellow-robed figures.
“Bless me!” cried the tallest, in stentorian tones, “It’s the’ Americans! Where in the name uv white min have ye been spindin’ the blessed day? Lucky y’are te foind our house in th’ woods on a black noight like this. It’s hungry ye’ll be. Come te the monistary.”
He led the way through the forest to a square, one-story building, flanked by smaller structures; one of a score of native priests set before us a cold supper of currie and rice, gathered by the novices early that morning, and a half-hour later we turned in on three charpoys in a bamboo cottage behind the main edifice.