While I was in the dressing-room, preparing for the night, I heard a noise outside, and, looking out, saw an old man with a lantern, down on his knees looking under the berths. He said that he was looking for me, that he was afraid I had missed the train.
Finally, after a great ringing of bells, tooting of whistles, waving of lanterns, and chattering of natives, we pulled out into the darkness and heat. The electric fan burred, mosquitos hummed and bit, the train rocked wildly from side to side.
I was just dozing off, when lights were flashed in my eyes. More bells, whistles, and chattering natives! The door burst open, and an Englishman ordered his man to put his luggage in the compartment. I called out that it was reserved for ladies, and he disappeared with a "Sorry!"
Out into the darkness again, only to be aroused at the next station by the guard, who shouted, "Tickets, please!" The night was one prolonged nightmare of heat, noise, jolting, and mosquitos. By five, I was beginning to sleep, when I was startled by a cry of "Chota Hazree!" I sat up in alarm, wondering what those dreadful-sounding words could mean, when the shutters by my head were suddenly lowered, and a tray of toast and tea thrust in at me. I accepted it, and gave up all idea of sleep. The dreadful-sounding words, I found, meant "little breakfast."
Sometimes we had our meals from a tiffin basket which we carried with us, sometimes from a restaurant car, or again at the station café while the train waited, and sometimes, when all of these failed us, not at all. During the winter, traveling was more comfortable. It was so cold that we needed heavy rugs over us. Some of the express-trains go from twenty to thirty miles an hour.
Each time that the train stops, there is great confusion. The natives arrive at the station hours ahead of time. Here they squat patiently until the train arrives, when they quite lose their heads. In an attempt to find places in the crowded carriages, they run excitedly up and down the platform, clinging to one another, clutching at their clumsy luggage, and screaming at their servants and the trainmen. Equally agitated groups pour out of the cars and scurry off to find bullock carts or ekkas to drive them to the town, which is usually some distance from the station. Boys and women with sweets, fruit, drinking-water, toys, cheap jewelry, and various articles of native production cry their wares at the car windows. Others sell newspapers, which are apt to be weeks old, if the purchaser does not insist upon seeing the date. The platform presents a riot of strange costumes, bright colors, quick-moving figures with jingling bangles and ankles, unholy odors, and clamorous sounds.
At the stations, we were met in different parts of India by the greatest imaginable variety of conveyances—carriages with footmen and drivers in state livery, sent by the native princes, hotel and public carriages after models never dreamed of in America, bullock carts, elephants, camels, rickshaws, and, in Calcutta and Bombay, taxi-automobiles.
When your driver starts off down the street at a reckless gait, clanging a bell in the floor of the carriage with his foot, and a boy on a step at the back calls out "Tahvay!" as you bowl along, you wonder if you have not taken, by mistake, a police wagon or an ambulance. But it is all right; you hear the same shouting and clanging of bells from all the other carriages along the route. This noise is necessary to make the idlers who stroll along the streets hand in hand get out of the way of the carriages.
There are so many horses in India that one wonders why any one should ever walk, and, in fact, very few do. They are of all grades, differing as much as does the shabbiest beggar from the most gorgeous raja. The conveyances to which they are harnessed range from the rickety public ekkas to the royal gold and silver coaches used on state occasions. One sees these wretched-looking public carriages that can be hired for a few cents filled with lazy natives and pulled along by a poor little pony that looks as if it were half-starved. Contrasting with these poor over-worked creatures are the thoroughbreds which literally die in the stables of the princes for lack of exercise.
When we were visiting in the native states, the chiefs sometimes offered us saddle-horses. The first time I rode one of these, I started off gaily, nothing fearing. From a gentle canter my mount suddenly broke into a dead run. Supposing that horses in all countries understood the same language, I said "Whoa," first mildly, persuasively, then loudly, imploringly; but without the slightest effect. On he sped faster and faster, until he overtook another horse, apparently a friend of his, for he slowed down to a walk beside it. I learned afterward that a sound similar to that used in America to make a horse go is used in India to make him stop. So the poor dear did not understand in the least my frantic cries of "Whoa!"