“Walk, of course.”
The sailors grouped about us burst out in a roar of laughter.
“Aye, ye’d walk across the Peninsula like ye’d swim to Madras,” chuckled one of them. “It’s bats ye have in yer belfry, from a touch o’ the sun.”
“But Hong Kong,” I began—
“If it’s ’Ong Kong, ye’ll go to Singapore,” continued the seaman, “or back the other way. There’s no man goes round the world in the north ’emisphere without touching Singapore. Put that down in yer log.”
“If we walk across the Peninsula,” I went on, still addressing James, “it would—”
“Yes,” put in the “Askins” of the party, “it would be a unique and onconventional way of committin’ suicide, original, interestin’, maybe slow, but damn sure.”
“Now look ’ere, lads,” said the old seaman, almost tearfully, “d’ ye know anything about that country? There’s no wilder savages nowhere than the Siameese. I know ’em. When I was bo’s’n on a windjammer from the Straits to China, that’s fourt—fifteen year gone, we was blowed into the bay an’ put ashore fer water. We rowed by thousands o’ dead babies floatin’ down the river. We ’adn’t no more ’n stepped ashore when down come a yelpin’ bunch o’ Siameese, with knives as long as yer arm, an’ afore we could shove off they’d killt my mate an’ another ’and—chopped ’em all to pieces. Them’s the Siameese, an’ the dacoits in the mountains is worse.”
In short, the suggestion raised such an uproar of derision and chatter among “the boys” that we were forced to retreat to the street to continue our planning. For all the raillery, I was still convinced that the overland trip was possible; necessary, in fact, for there was no other escape from the city. “The boys” might be right, but there was a promise of new adventures in the undertaking, and, best of all, the territory was unknown to beachcombers. For the truest satisfaction of the Wanderlust is to explore the world by virgin routes and pose as a bold pioneer in the rendezvous of the “profession” ever after.
James asserted that he was “game for anything,” and, though we had no intention of quitting Rangoon for a week, we turned our attention at once to gathering information concerning the route. The task proved fruitless. Our project was branded idiotic in terms far more cutting than I had heard even in Palestine and Syria. We appealed to the American consul; we canvassed half the bungalows in the cantonment and every European office in the city; we tramped far out past the Gymkana station to the headquarters of the Geographical Society of Burma, and, surrounded by excited bands of native clerks, pored over great maps and folios ten feet square. All to no purpose. The original charts showed only wavy, brown lines through the heart of the Peninsula; and not a resident of Rangoon, apparently, had the slightest knowledge of the territory ten miles east of the city.