“Dō rúpika! Achá, sahib?” he pleaded.
“You’re crazy!” retorted the Australian, “Think I want to get a sunstroke?”
The Burman shrugged his shoulders with a disgruntled air and splashed sadly away.
Our host was a sulky “wild man” in the prime of life, his mate a buxom matron who had not yet lost the comeliness inherent in any healthy, well-developed female of the human species. The pair, evidently, had been long married, for they had but seven children.
A section of the bamboo floor of the tiny hut was raised a few feet above the level of the rest, forming a sort of divan. On this we squatted with the family, chatting over our after-supper saybullies. The wife, for all her race, was a true sister of Pandora. What especially awakened her curiosity was the color of our skins; though they were not, at that moment, particularly white. She was seated next to James, suckling two lusty infants, and gazing with monkeylike fascination at the hand of the Australian that rested on the divan beside her. Hugging the babes to her breast with one arm, she edged nearer and ran her fingers across the back of the Australian’s sunburned paw. To her astonishment the color would not rub off. She pushed up a sleeve of his jacket and began to examine the forearm; when my companion, till then absorbed in conversation, snatched his hand away with an exclamation of annoyance. No sooner had he let it fall again, than she resumed the examination.
“Quit it!” cried James, turning upon her, “Or I’ll pay you back in your own coin.” The husband snarled fiercely, sprang to his feet, and, crowding in between his wife and the Australian, glared savagely at him as long as the evening lasted.
We turned in soon afterward, eleven of us, on the divan. Though the front wall of the shack was lacking, we needed no covering; even when the rain poured we sweated as in the glare of sunlight. The sucklings took turns in maintaining a continual wailing through the night; the other brats amused themselves in walking and tumbling over our prostrate forms; a lizard chorus sang their monotonous selections with unusual vim and vigor. If we slept at all it was in brief, semi-conscious snatches.
With daylight, came the Burman to repeat his attempt to purchase my companion’s helmet. James spurned the offer as before.
“Then yours, sahib,” pleaded the fellow, in Hindustanee. “One rupee!”
“One?” I cried. “My dear fellow, do you know that the Swedish consul of Ceylon once wore that topee?”