We livened up the fire and decided to remove our wet clothes and dry them. We had just about as much privacy as a goldfish, and the villagers flocked about us in great excitement as we proceeded to strip off our outer garments.
We stripped down to our flannel underwear and decided to sit about our roaring fire and get dry while our clothes dried. But the natives eagerly asked the privilege of taking our clothes and drying them for us. There seemed no way out of it and I wondered if I was going to be left to travel through the jungle in nothing but underwear. But I should not have feared. They were honest enough. They merely wished to borrow our clothes to strut about in for a while. One big chap had my hat cocked on his head at the “tough guy” angle as if he had worn one all his life. Two giggling young women divided my big boots, each wearing one, and marched proudly about, the thong ties dragging. An old man put on my coat. But the trousers were too wet, so they escaped. Next morning they were returned, well dried and nothing whatever missing from the pockets.
I sat in a hammock, slung close to the fire, drying my wet socks and the legs of my underclothes, watching the women prepare a meal of eggs, venison, labbas and cassiri for us, and grinned at the picture we must have made.
“Not quite up to the etiquette of polite society at home,” I said to Lewis.
“But we are overdressed, even now,” he answered, “according to the style down here.”
The houses are called “benabs.” Abraham said he would bring the food over to our benab. This he did. It was smoking hot, heaped up in one big wooden dish, and with it a calabash, or gourd, of cassiri. This was a bright pink liquid, most sickening in appearance. The Indians all drank out of the same big gourd and seemed to enjoy it.
Lewis took a taste.
“Great,” he said.
I didn’t like his expression when he said it, but was determined to try anything once, so I tasted it.