“Say, what are you giving us?” cried James. “Don’t you ever say ‘nămelay-voo’?”
“Certainly! Very often, every day, every hour!”
“Well, what do you mean when you say it?”
“I don’t understand. I don’t know.”
“Look here!” bellowed the Australian, “Don’t you go springing any stale jokes on us. We’re not in a mood for ’em.”
“Gentlemen,” gasped the half-breed, with tears in his voice, “I do not joke and I am not joking. ‘Nămelay-voo’ is a Burmese word which has for meaning ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I don’t understand!’”
It was black night when we stumbled down through the village of Martaban to the brink of the river of the same name, a swollen stream fully two miles wide where our day’s journey must have ended, had we not fallen in with the Eurasian. His home was in Moulmein, and, summoning a sampan, he invited us to embark with him. The native boat was either light of material or water-logged, and the waves that broke over the craft threatened more than once to swamp us. Crocodiles, whispered our companion, swarmed at this point. Now and then an ominous grunt sounded close at hand, and the boatman peered anxiously about him as he strained wildly at his single oar against the current that would have carried us out to sea. Panting with his exertions, he fetched the opposite shore, beaching the craft on a slimy slope; and we splashed through a sea of mud to a roughly-paved street flanking the river.
“You see Moulmein is a city,” said the Eurasian, proudly, pointing along the row of lighted shops, with fronts all doorway, like those of Damascus. “We have even restaurants and cabs. Will you not take supper?”
We would, and he led the way to a Mohammedan eating-house in which we were served several savory messes by an unkempt Islamite, who wiped his hands, after tossing charcoal on his fire or scooping up a plate of food, on his fez, and chewed betel-nut as he worked, spitting perilously near to the open pots. The meal over, the Eurasian called a “cab.” It was a mere box on wheels, about four feet each way, and had no seats. When we had packed ourselves inside, the driver imprisoned us by slamming the air-tight door, and we jolted away.
Fearful of calling paternal attention to his extravagance, the youth dismissed the hansom at the edge of the quarter in which he lived, and we continued on foot to his bungalow. His father was an emaciated Englishman of the rougher, half-educated type, employed in the Moulmein custom service. He greeted us somewhat coldly. When we had been duly inspected by his Burmese wife and their eighteen children, we threw ourselves down on the floor of the open veranda and, drenched and mud-caked as we were, sank into corpse-like slumber.