CHAPTER XIX
ON FOOT ACROSS THE MALAY PENINSULA
“Now lads,” said our host, as we were finishing a late breakfast the next morning, “I’ll ’ave to ask you to move on. If I was fixed right you’d be welcome to ’ang out ’ere as long as you’re in town, but I don’t draw no viceroy’s salary an’ I’ve got a fair size family to support. Up on the ’ill there, lives an American Christer. Go up an’ give ’im your yarn an’ touch ’im fer a few dibs.”
We did not, of course, take the advice of the Englishman. James and I were agreed that it would not be consistent with our dignity to turn to so base a use as the purchase of currie and rice the funds needed for the distribution of Bibles and tracts among the aborigines. We did call on the good padre, but for no other purpose than to crave permission to inspect his cast-off foot wear. The tramp from Pegu had wrought disaster to our own. My companion wore on his right foot the upper portion of a shoe, the sole of which he had left somewhere in the Burmese jungle; on the left, the sole of its mate, to which there still adhered enough of the upper to keep it in place. He was better shod than I.
But missionaries domiciled in the far corners of the brown man’s land are not wont to be satisfied with a casual morning call from those of their own race. The “Christer” espied us as we started up the sloping pathway through his private park, and gave us American welcome at the foot of the steps. Our coming, he averred, was the red-letter event of that season. Before we had time even to broach the object of our visit, we found ourselves stammering denials to the assertion he was shouting to his wife within, that we were to stay at least a fortnight.
Our new host was a native of Indiana, a missionary among the Talaings, as the inhabitants of this region are known. His dwelling, the Talaing Mission, was a palatial bungalow set in a wooded estate on the outer rim of the city. Its windows commanded a far-reaching view over a gorgeous tropical landscape. Within, it was not merely spacious, airy, and lighted with soft tints of filtered sunshine—blessings easily attained in British-Burma, it was hung with rich tapestries, carpeted with downy rugs, decorated with Oriental works of art. The room to which we were assigned was all but sumptuously furnished; and it was by no means the “bridal chamber.” At table we were served formal dinners of many courses; a white-liveried chowkee dar slipped in and out of the room, salaaming reverentially each time he offered a new dish; a punkah-wallah on the back veranda toiled ceaselessly; a gardener clipped away at the shrubbery in the mission grounds; a native aya followed the two tiny memsahibs who drove about the house a team of lizards, harnessed in tandem with the reins tied to their hind legs. In short, the reverend gentleman lived in a style rarely dreamed of by men of the cloth at home, or by the sympathetic spinsters to whose charity the adjacent heathen owed their threatened evangelization.
For all his profession, however, the man from Indiana was one whose acquaintanceship was well worth the making. To us especially, for when he was once convinced that our plea for employment was genuine, he quickly found something to put us at. One would have fancied that a “handy man” had never before entered the mission grounds. There was barely a trade of which we knew the rudiments that we did not take a turn at during our stay. Having served apprenticeship in earlier days as carpenter, blacksmith, shoemaker, and “carriage trimmer,” I repaired the floor and several doors and windows, constructed two kitchen benches, forged wardrobe hooks, half-soled the family shoes, and upholstered two chairs used on “state occasions.” James, meanwhile, recovered the padre’s pack-saddle, overhauled and oiled his fire-arms, put new roosts in his henhouse, and set his lumber room in order. It was not that native workmen were scarce; a small army of servants flitted about the bungalow, leering at our loss of caste. But saddening experience had taught the missionary that Hindu or Burmese workmen not only made a botch of any task outside their narrow fields, but ruined with surprising rapidity the tools of which he had brought a well-stocked chest from his native land.
Our first day’s labor was enlivened with tales of the horrors that would befall us if we persisted in continuing our journey; the second, with pleas for a longer sojourn; the third, with preparations for our departure. As to the route, we could learn no more than the names of three villages through which the “wild men” of the interior passed on their way to Siam. To what section of Siam their trail might bring us no man knew.
A few hours over washtub and needle made our rags presentable, and we still had two extra cotton suits. That these and our other possessions might be protected from the tropical deluges, we bought two squares of oilcloth in which to roll our “swag.” My bundle contained one of the two pairs of half-worn shoes that I had come across in the lumber-room. Unfortunately, there was a marked pedal disparity between the Australian and the missionary, and my companion might have departed as poorly shod as he had arrived, had not the good sky pilot insisted on fitting him out in the bazaars. There, the stoutest shoes in stock proved to be a pair of football buskins, imported for some Moulmein exponent of Rugby. These the purchaser chose, in the face of the protest of the prospective wearer, arguing that the cleats made them just the thing for climbing steep mountain paths. In my pack, too, were our earnings at the mission, some four dollars in silver and copper; James having pleaded that he was too careless to be intrusted with such a fortune. Nor should the parting gifts of our hosts be forgotten,—a little pocket compass from the padre, and a bottle of “Superior Curry Dressing” from his solicitous spouse.
We left the Talaing Mission, then, on the morning of May twenty-third, and, boarding a tiny steamer plying on the Gyang river, disembarked as the sun was touching the western tree-tops, in the village of Choung Doa. It comprised two rows of spindle-shanked hutches facing a narrow clearing ankle-deep in mud. In one of the booths, boiled rice, tea, and a few stale biscuits from far-off England were for sale. The population, irrespective of age, sex, or dishabille, formed a gaping circle around us and flocked behind us as we set out, like country boys in the wake of the annual circus parade.
A jungle trail that was almost a highway led eastward through densest virgin forest. We set a sharp pace, for the hour was late and the next hamlet full fifteen miles distant. Not a hut nor a human being did we pass on the journey; only the trail, winding over thick-clothed foothills, gave evidence that man had been here before us.