“Of what?” asked James.
“Sahib doctors feel all over,” shuddered the babu, “not nice.”
Our errand explained, the interpreter set off to announce our arrival to the head priest, and the grinning servants squatted in a semicircle about us. Suddenly James raised a hand and pointed towards the breach in the wall.
“Seems other beachcombers know this graft,” he laughed.
A burly negro, dressed in an old sweater of the White Star line and the rags and tatters of what had once been overalls and jumper, stepped into the inclosure. Anxious to make a favorable impression at the outset, he had halted in the street to remove his shoes, and, carrying them in one hand, he shuffled through the sand in his bare feet, about the ankles of which clung the remnants of a bright red pair of socks. In color, he was many degrees darker than the Burmese; and the apologetic, almost penitent mien with which he approached struck the assembled natives as so incongruous in one attired as a European that they greeted him with roars of laughter. When he addressed them in English they shrieked the louder, and left him to stand contritely at the foot of the steps until we, as the honored guests of the evening, had been provided for. There is needed more than the whiteman’s tongue and garb to be accepted as a sahib in British-India.
The babu returned, and, bidding us follow, led the way back into the village and up the out-door stairway of one of the largest bungalows. Inside, under a sputtering torch, squatted an aged priest of sour and leathery countenance. He squinted a moment at us in silence, and then demanded, through the interpreter, an account of our meeting with Damalaku. We soon convinced him that the note was no forgery. He dismissed us with a grimace that might have been expressive either of mirth or annoyance, and the babu set off towards a neighboring bungalow.
“You are sleeping in here,” he said, stopping several paces from the cottage, “Goo’ night.”
“Thunder!” muttered James, as we started to mount the steps to a deserted veranda, “He might, at least, have told ’em what we want. If there’s anything I hate, it’s talking to natives on my fingers and listening to their jabber all the evening without an interpreter. He—”
“Hello, Jack!” shouted a voice above us, “Where the blazes did you come from?”
We fell back in astonishment and looked up. Framed in the doorway of the brightly-lighted bungalow stood a white priest.