We were awakened soon after daylight by a hubbub of shrill laughter and shouts behind the bungalow. I rose and peered through a window opening. In the yard below, a score of boys, some in yellow robes, some in nothing worth mentioning, were engaged in a game that seemed too energetic to be of Oriental origin. The players were divided into two teams; but neither band was limited to any particular part of the field, and all mingled freely together as they raced about in pursuit of what seemed at first sight to be a small basket. It was rather, as I made out when the game ceased an instant, a ball about a foot in diameter, made of open wickerwork. This the opposing contestants kicked alternately, sending it high in the air, the only rule of the game being, apparently, that it should not touch the ground nor any part of the player’s body above the knees. When this was violated, the offending side lost a point.
The wiry, brown youths were remarkably nimble in following the ball, and showed great skill in returning it—no simple matter, for they could not kick it as a punter kicks a pig-skin without driving their bare toes through the openings. They struck it instead with the sides of their feet or—when it fell behind them—with their heels; yet they often kept it constantly in the air for several minutes. It was a typical Burmese scene, with more mirth and laughter than one could have heard in a whole city in the land of the morose and apathetic Hindu.
The servants brought us breakfast. Behind them entered the American priest. He squatted on the floor before us, but refused to partake, having risen to gorge himself at the first peep of dawn. Whatever its original purpose, the rule forbidding wearers of the yellow robe to eat after noonday certainly makes them early risers.
The meal over, we fished our shoes out of the tub and, promising the American to return in time for supper and “evening devotions,” turned away. At the wooden bridge connecting the monastery with the world outside, we met the foraging party of novices returning from their morning rounds. Far down the street stretched a line of priests, certainly sixty in all, each holding in his embrace a huge bowl, filled to the brim with a strange assortment of native foodstuffs.
“Mate,” said James, later in the morning, as we stood before a world map in the Sailors’ Home, “it looks to me as if we’d bit off more ’n we can chew. There’s nothing doing in the shipping line here, and not a show to earn the price of a deck passage to Singapore. And if we could, it’s a thunder of a jump from there to Hong Kong.”
“Aye,” put in a grizzled seaman, limping forward, “ye’ll be lucky lads if ye make yer get-away from Rangoon. But once ye get on the beach in Singapore, ye’ll die of ould age afore iver ye see ’Ong Kong, if that’s ’ow yer ’eaded. Why mates, that bloody ’ole is alive with beachcombers that’s been ’ung up there so long they’d not know ’ow to eat with a knife if iver they got back to God’s country. Take my tip, an’ give ’er a wide berth.”
“It would seem foolish anyway,” I remarked, addressing James, “to go to Singapore. It’s a good fifteen degrees south of here, a week of loafing around on some dirty tub to get there, and a longer jump back up north—even if we don’t get stuck in the Straits.”
“But what else?” objected James.
“Look how narrow the Malay Peninsula is,” I went on, pointing at the map. “Bangkok is almost due east of here. We’d save a lot of travel by going overland, and run no risk of being tied up for months in Singapore.”
“But how?” demanded the Australian.