Where the western section of the embankment ended began a more open country, with many a sluggish stream to be forded. We were already knee-deep in the first of these when there sounded close at hand a snort like the blowing of a whale. I glanced in alarm at the rushes about us. From the muddy water protruded a dozen ugly, black snouts.
“Crocodiles!” screamed James, turning tail and splashing by me. “Beat it!”
“But hold on!” I cried, before we had regained the bank, “These things seem to have horns.”
The creatures that had startled us were harmless water buffaloes, which, being released from their day’s labor, had sought relief in the muddy stream from flies and the blazing sun.
As the day was dying, we entered a jungle city, named Kaikto, and jeopardized the honor in which sahibs are held in that metropolis of the delta by accepting a “shake-down” in the police barracks. From there the route turned southward, and the blazing sun beat in our faces during all the third day’s tramp. Villages became more numerous, more thickly populated, and the jungle was broken here and there by thirsty paddy-fields.
When twilight fell, however, we were tramping along the railway dyke between two dense and apparently unpeopled forests. The signs portended a night out of doors, and we were already resigned to that fate when we came upon a path leading from the foot of the embankment across the narrow ridge between two excavations. Hoping to find some thatch shelter left by the construction gangs, we turned aside and stumbled down the bank. The trail wound away through the jungle and brought us, a mile from the line, to a grassy clearing, in the center of which stood a capacious dak bungalow.
Public rest-houses of this sort are maintained by the government of British-India, where no other accommodations offer, for the housing of itinerant sahibs. They are equipped with rough sleeping quarters for a few guests, rougher bathing facilities, a few reclining chairs, and a babu keeper to register travelers and entertain them with his wisdom; for all of which a uniform charge of one rupee a day is made. There is, besides, a force of native servants at the beck and call of those who would pay more. A punkah-wallah will keep the velvet fans in motion all through the night for a few coppers; the chowkee dar or Hindu cook will prepare a “European” meal on more or less short notice.
But the bungalow that we had chanced upon in this Burmese wilderness was apparently deserted. We mounted the steps and, settling ourselves in veranda chairs, lighted our pipes and stretched our weary legs. We might have fallen asleep where we were, listening to the humming of the tropical night, had we not been hungry and choking with thirst.
The bungalow stood wide open, like every house in British-India. I rose and wandered through the building, lighting my way with matches and peering into every corner for a water bottle or a sleeping servant. In each of the two bedrooms there were two canvas charpoys; in the main room a table littered with tattered books and magazine leaves in English; in the back chamber several pots and kettles. There was water in abundance, a tubful of it in the lattice-work closet opening off from one of the bedrooms. But who could say how many travel-stained sahibs had bathed in it?
I returned to the veranda, and we took to shouting our wants into the jungle. Only the jungle replied, and we descended the steps for a circuit of the building, less in the hope of encountering anyone than to escape the temptation of the bathtub. Behind the bungalow stood three ragged huts. The first was empty. In the second, we found a snoring Hindu, stretched on his back on the dirt floor, close to a dying fire of fagots.