Black night had fallen when we reached Kawkeriek. As the capital of the most eastern district of the Indian Empire, it posed as a city of importance; yet it was only a larger collection of those same one-story, bamboo huts, ranged in unsteady rows like the soldiers of an inebriated army, in the square clearing which its inhabitants had won by force of arms from the militant jungle. A sub-commissioner dwelt there. That much information had reached Moulmein. Perhaps he spoke a smattering of English. We fell to shouting an inquiry for his bungalow as we wandered in and out among the huts. Here and there, where a light cast a flickering gleam into the night, we startled the peace of a quiet family by intruding upon them—and seldom found them in a garb to receive callers. The few belated stragglers whom we came upon in the darkness listened with trembling limbs to our query, grunted unintelligibly, and sped noiselessly away.
It was surely nine and time all well-behaved residents of the capital should have been abed, when we captured a night-hawk on his way home after a little supper with the boys, or a round of the dance-halls. He was of bolder stuff, naturally, and better informed on who’s who in Kawkeriek than his hen-pecked neighbors, and consented like a man ready for any adventure to give us guidance.
Beyond the last row of dwellings, he plunged into a sub-sylvan pathway, and, mounting a gentle slope, paused before a forest-girdled bungalow. We turned to thank him, but he had slipped silently away, anxious, no doubt, to reach his apartment before the elevator stopped running.
The commissioner was reading in his study. He was a Burman from “over Mandalay way,” as much a foreigner in Kawkeriek as we, and so much a sahib in his habits that he had not yet dined. For that we were grateful. To have missed the formal repast to which he invited us would have been a misfortune indeed.
So rarely does England appoint any but a white man to rule over a district, that this native, who had risen so high in her esteem, awakened our keenest curiosity. In appearance he was like any other Burman of the prosperous class. His garb was the usual flowing robe, though his legs were dressed and his feet shod. His long, black hair, a bit wavy and of a thickness the other sex might have envied, was caught up at the back of his head in a “Psyche knot.” Like the police captain of Bankipore, however, he was in all but nationality and dress a European. Without the trace of a foreign accent, he couched even his casual remarks in an English that sounded like a reading from a master of style. His energy, his accomplishments, his very point of view were those of the Occident. Had we entered the bungalow blindfolded, we should never have suspected that his skin was brown. So little of the native was there left in his make-up that, though middle-aged, he was still a bachelor.
“I have been too busy in my short life,” he confided, “to give attention to such matters.”
There was a dak bungalow in Kawkeriek. The commissioner’s servant escorted us thither, prepared our bath, and arranged the sleeping-quarters for the reception of such distinguished guests. In the morning we took breakfast with the governor. No more important problem, apparently, than the planning of our itinerary had occupied his attention in many a day. He had summoned his entire council, six men of standing in the community, who approached the business in hand with the solemnity of delegates to a Hague conference.
The morning was half spent before the result of their deliberations was laid before us. It was tabulated under three heads. First: the country east of the capital was a trackless jungle overrun with savage dacoits, poisonous reptiles, and man-eating tigers, into which even the people of Kawkeriek dared not venture. Secondly: if we persisted in our suicidal project, would we not spend a few days of our closing existence with the commissioner, who was pining away for lack of congenial companions. Thirdly: if we denied him even this favor, there was outside his door a “wild man,” chief of a jungle village, whose route coincided with our own for one day’s journey.
We suggested an immediate departure. A servant stepped out on the veranda and summoned the boh into the council chamber. He was a “wild man” indeed. In physique, he was thin and angular, a tall man for his race, though small when judged by our standard. His skin was a leathery brown, his hair short and bristling, his eyes small and shifty, with a suggestion of the leopard in them. The chewing of betel-nut had left his teeth jet-black, and the prominence of his cheek bones under a sloping forehead made his face ugly to look upon. All in all, he was a creature who would have seemed in his proper element chattering in the tree-tops of the jungle.
His dress, nevertheless, was brilliant. Around his brow was wound a strip of pink silk; an embroidered jacket, innocent of buttons, left his chest bare to the waist-line; his loins and thighs were clothed in many yards of bright red stuff arranged in the fashion of bloomers. Below the knees he wore nothing. At his waist was fastened a betel-nut pouch. He carried a leather sack of the shape of a saddlebag, and—having fallen under the civilizing influence of Kawkeriek—an umbrella.