“She-kak! she-kak! she-kak!”
Wherever there are dwellings in British-India, there are croaking lizards. I have listened to their shriek from Tuticorin to Delhi; I have seen them darting across the carpeted floor in the bungalows of commissioner sahibs; I have awakened many a time to find one dragging his clammy way across my face. But nowhere are they more numerous nor more brazen-voiced than in the jungles of the Malay Peninsula. There came a day when we were glad that they had not been exterminated—but of that later.
Early the next morning we fell into a passable roadway that led us every half-hour through a grinning village, between which were many isolated huts. We stopped at all of them for water. The natives showed us marked kindness, often awaiting us, chettie in hand, or running out into the highway at our shout of “yee sheedela?” This Burmese word for water (yee) gave James a great deal of innocent amusement. Ever and anon he paused before a hut, to drawl, in the voice of a court crier:—“Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye! We’re thirsty as Hottentots!” Householders young and old understood. At least they fetched us water in abundance.
The fourth day afoot brought two misfortunes. The rainy season, long delayed, burst upon us in pent-up fury not an hour after we had spent our last copper for breakfast. Where dinner would come from we could not surmise, but “on the road” one does not waste his energies in worry. Something would “turn up.” It is in wandering aimlessly about the streets of a great city in the midst of plenty that the penniless outcast feels the inexorable hand of fate at his throat—not on the open road among the fields and flowers and waving palm trees.
The first shower came almost without warning; one sullen roar of thunder, the heavens opened, and the water poured. Thereafter they were frequent. At times some hut gave us shelter; more often we could only plod on in the blinding torrent that, in the twinkle of an eye, drenched us to the skin. The storms were rarely of five minutes’ duration. With the last dull growl of thunder, the sun burst out more calorific than before, sopping up the pools in the highway as with a gigantic sponge, and drying our dripping garments before we had time to grumble at the wetting. Amid the extravagant beauties of the tropical landscape the vagaries of the season were so quickly forgotten that the next downpour took us as completely by surprise as though it had been the first of the season.
During the morning we met a funeral procession en route for the place of cremation. Wailing and mourning there were none. Why should death bring grief to the survivors when the deceased has merely lost one of his innumerable lives? There came first of all dozens of girls dressed as for a yearly festival. About their necks were garlands of flowers; in their jet-black hair, red and white blossoms. Each carried a flat basket, heaped high with offerings that made us envious of him who had been gathered to his fathers. Here one bore bananas of brightest yellow; another, golden mangoes; a third, great, plump pineapples. The girls held the baskets high above their heads, swaying their bodies from side to side and tripping lightly back and forth across the road as they advanced, the long cortège executing such a snake-dance as one sees on a college gridiron after a great contest. The chant that rose and fell in time with their movements sounded less a dirge than a pean of victory; now and again a singer broke out in merry laughter. The coffin was a wooden box, gayly decked with flowers and trinkets, and three of the eight men who bore it on their shoulders were puffing at long native cigars. Behind them more men, led by two saffron-clad priests, pattered through the dust, chattering like school girls, yet adding their discordant voices now and then to the cadenced chorus of the females.
The sun was blazing directly overhead, leaving our pudgy shadows to be trampled under foot, when we heard behind us a faint wail of “sahib! sahib.” Far down the green-framed roadway trotted a beclouted brown man, waving his arms above his head. We were already fifteen miles distant from the dak bungalow; small wonder if we were surprised to find our pursuer none other than that chowkee dar who had skinned our chicken so deftly the night before. A misgiving fell upon us. No doubt the fellow had found out that we were no railway officials after all, and had come to demand the bungalow fee of two rupees. We stepped into the shade and awaited anxiously the brown-skinned nemesis.
But there was no cause for alarm. Amid his chattering the night before, the babu custodian had forgotten his first duty—to register us. When his error came to light, we were gone; and he had sent the cook to get our names. That was all; and for that the Hindu had run the entire fifteen miles. When we had scribbled our names on the limp, wet rag of paper he carried in his hand, he turned aside from the road and threw himself face down in the edge of the forest.
The beauties of the landscape impressed themselves less and less upon us with every mile thereafter. Not that our surroundings had lost anything of their charm, the scenery was rather more striking; but the dinner hour had passed and our bellies had begun to pinch us. The Burmese, we had been told, were charitable to a fault. But what use to “batter” back doors, when we knew barely a dozen words of the native tongue? Here and there a bunch of bananas hung at the top of its stocky tree, but the fruit was hopelessly green; cocoanuts there were in abundance, but they supplied drink rather than food. Still hunger grew apace. The only alternative to starving left us was to exploit the shopkeepers,—to eat our fill and run away.
We chose a well-stocked booth in a teeming village, and, advancing with a millionaire swagger, sat down on the bamboo floor and called for food. The merchant and his family were enjoying a plenteous repast. The wife grinned cheerily upon us for the honor we had done her among all her neighbors, and brought us a bowl of rice and a strange vegetable currie. While we ate, the unsuspecting victims squatted around us, shrieking in our ears as though they would force us to understand by endless repetitions and lusty bellowing. When we addressed them in English, they cried “nămelay-voo,” and took deeper breath. When we spoke in Hindustanee, they grinned sympathetically and again bellowed “nămelay-voo.” How often I had heard those words since our departure from Rangoon! At first, I had fancied the speaker was attempting to converse in French. It was easy to imagine that he was trying to say “what is your name?” But he was not, for when I answered in the language of Voltaire, the refrain came back louder than before:—“Nămelay-voo?”