Two hours after my arrival in Calcutta there entered the American consulate, high up above the Maidan, a white man who should have won the sympathy even of the hard-hearted manager who had denied him admittance to the Sailors’ Home for once having deserted that institution for a trip “up-country.” He was the possessor of a single rupee. His cotton garments, thanks to dhobies, Ganges mud, and forty-two hundred miles of third-class travel, were threadbare rags through which the tropical sun had reddened his once white skin. Under one arm he carried a tattered, sunburned bundle of the size of a kodak. European residents of a far-off district might have recognized in him the erstwhile ball-chaser of the tennis club of Delhi. In short, ’twas I.

“Years before you were born,” said the white-haired sahib who listened to my story, “I was American consul in Calcutta, the chief of whose duties since that day has been to listen to the hard-luck tales of stranded seamen. Times have changed, but the stories haven’t, and won’t, I suppose, so long as there are women and beer, and land-sharks ashore to turn sailors into beachcombers.”

As he talked he filled out a form with a few strokes of a pen.

“This chit,” he said, handing it to me, “is good for a week at the Methodist Seamens’ Institute. You have small chance of finding work in Calcutta, though you might try Smith Brothers, the American dentists, down the street; and you certainly won’t sign on. But get out of town, somewhere, somehow, before the week is over.”

“Yes, sir,” I answered, opening the door. “Oh, say, Mr. Consul, was there an American fellow by name of Haywood in to see you?”

“Haywood?” mused the old man. “You mean Dick Haywood, that poor seaman who was robbed and beaten on an Italian sailing vessel, and kicked ashore here without his wages?”

“Why—er—yes, sir, that’s him,” I replied.

“Yes, I sent him away a week ago, to Rangoon as a consul passenger. But his was an especially sad case. I can’t spend money on every Tom, Dick, and Har—”

355“Oh! I wasn’t askin’ that, sir,” I protested, closing the door behind me.

The Seamens’ Institute occupied the second story—and the roof—of a ramshackle building in Lall Bazaar street, just off Dalhousie square. Even about the foot of the stairway hovered a scent of squalor and compulsory piety. On the walls of the main room, huge placards, illuminated with texts from the tale of the prodigal son and the stains of tobacco juice, concealed the ravages which time and brawlers had wrought on the plaster. Magazines and books of the Sunday-school species littered chairs and shelves. Four sear-faced old Tars, grouped about a hunch-backed table, played checkers as if it were an imperative duty, and cursed only in an undertone. For the office door stood open. I entered and tendered my “chit” to the Irish manager.

“Ye’re welcome,” he asserted, as he inscribed my name in a huge volume; “but mind ye, this is a Methodist insteetootion and there’s to be no cuss-words on the primaces. An’ close the door be’ind ye.”

“The cuss-words ye’ve picked up,” growled a grizzled checker-player, when I had complied with the order, “ye must stow whilst ye’re here. But if ye want to learn some new wans, listen at yon keyhole when he’s workin’ his figyurs.”

My “chit” entitled me to three meals of forecastle fare a day, the privileges of Sunday-school literature and checkerboards, the use of a crippled cot, and the right to listen each evening to a two-hour sermon in the mission chapel. In the company that gathered around the mess-board at noon were few whose mother-tongue was other than my own. The British Isles were ably represented; there were wanderers from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and even two from “the States.”

My compatriots were Chicago youths whose partnership seemed singularly appropriate—in India. For the one was named William Curry and the other Clarence Rice.

“D’y ’iver put yer two eyes on a betther combeenation thon thot to be floatin’ about this land uv sunburn an’ nakedness?” demanded my companion on the right. “Why, whin they two be on the beach they’d ’ave only to look wan anither in the face to git a full meal. An’ yit they’re after tellin’ us they’re goin’ to break it oop.”

“You bet we be!” ejaculated Rice, forcing an extraordinary mouthful into one cheek to give full play to his tongue. “This bunch don’t go pards no more in this man’s land!”

356“Fer why?” asked a sailor.

“Here’s how,” continued Rice. “In Nagpore the commissioner give us a swell set-down an’ everything looked good fer tickets to Cally. ‘What’s yer name?’ sez the guy to Bill, when we come into the office after puttin’ away the set-down. ‘An’ what’s yours?’ he sez to me, after Bill had told him. ‘Clarence Rice,’ sez I. ‘Go on,’ hollers the commish. ‘None o’ yer phony names on me! Ye’re a pair o’ grafters. Git out o’ this office an’ out o’ Nagpore in a hour or I’ll have ye run in—wid yer currie an’ rice!’”

“Yes,” sighed Curry, “that’s what they handed us all the way from Bombay. We was three weeks gettin’ across.”

The meal over, I descended to the street with the one self-supporting guest of the mission. He was a clean-cut, stocky young man of twenty-five, named Gerald James, from Perth, Australia. Until the outbreak of the Boer war he had been a kangaroo hunter in his native land. A year’s service in South Africa had aroused his latent Wanderlust and, once discharged, he had turned northward with two companions. Arrived in Calcutta, his partners had joined the police force, while James, weary of bearing arms, had become a salesman in a well-known department store.

I disclosed my accomplishments to his manager that afternoon, but he did not need to glance more than once at my tattered garb to be certain that his staff was complete. At their barracks the Australian’s partners assured me that their knowledge of the city proved that the only choice left to a white man stranded in Calcutta was to don a police uniform. Evidently they knew whereof they spoke, for employers to whom I gained access during the days that followed laughed at the notion of hiring white laborers; and, though scores of ships lay at anchor in the Hoogly, their captains refused to listen even to my offer to work my passage. To join the police force, however, would have meant a long sojourn in Calcutta, and at any hour of the day one might catch sight of two coolies hurrying across the Maidan with the corpse of the latest victim of the plague.

Nothing short of foolhardy would have been an attempt to cross on foot the marshy, fever-stricken deltas to the eastward. One possible escape from the city presented itself. Through the Australian officers, whose beat was the station platform, I made the acquaintance of a Eurasian collector who promised to “set me right with the guard” as far as Goalando, on the banks of the Ganges. The signs portended 357however, that once arrived there I should be in far worse straits than in the capital.

A chance meeting with a German traveler, who spoke no English, raised my hoard to seven rupees; but the purchase of a new roll of films reduced it again to less than half that amount, and at that low level my fortunes remained for all my efforts. Sartorially, I came off better; for the manager of the mission, calling me into his office one morning, asked my assistance in auditing his account-book, and gave me for the service two duck suits left behind by some former guest. I succeeded, too, in trading my cast-off garments and my dilapidated slippers for a pair of shoes in good condition.

At the Institute, life moved smoothly on. Each day began with a stroll along the docks and two hours of loafing in the courtyard of the Sailors’ Home, where seamen, paying off, were wont to display their rolls, and captains had even been known, in earlier days, to seek recruits. After dinner, those of long experience in Oriental lands retired to their crippled cots or a shaded corner of the roof, while the “youngsters” played checkers or pieced together some story from the magazine leaves that the “boy” had thrown into a hasty jumble before morning inspection. From four to sunset was the period of individual initiative, when the inventive set off to try the effect of a new “tale of woe” on beneficent European residents. The “old hands,” less ambitious, lighted their pipes and turned out for a promenade around Dalhousie square. Thus passed the sunlit hours. He who had lived through one day with the “Lall Bazaar bunch” knew all the rest.

But as the days were alike, so were the nights different. Each evening of the week was dedicated by long custom to its own special attraction, and newcomers fell as quickly into the routine as a newly arrived prince into the social swirl of the capital. On Monday, supper over, the company rambled off to that section of the Maidan adjoining the viceroy’s palace to listen to the weekly band concert, during the course of which the fortunate occasionally picked up a rupee that had fallen from the pocket of some inebriated Tommy Atkins. On Tuesday the rendezvous was the Presbyterian church at the corner of the square; for it was then and there that charitable memsahibs, incorporated into a “Ladies’ Aid Society,” ended their weekly sewing-bee by distributing among the needy the evidences of their skill with the needle. Hour after hour, a long procession of beachcombers 358filed up the narrow stairway of the Institute, to dump strange odds and ends of cosmopolitan raiment on the floor. The night was far spent before the last trade had been consummated.

Wednesday, however, was the red-letter date in the Institute calendar. On that evening came the weekly “social.” In company with an “old timer,” I set off early for the English church far out beyond Fort William, in the chapel of which we were served such unfamiliar delicacies as ice cream—so the donators dared to name it—and cake. The invitations were issued to “all seamen on shore in the city,” but found acceptance, of course, only among the penniless, for the arrack-shops of Calcutta are subject to no early closing law.

In a corner of the chapel sat several young ladies and the junior rector of the parish, a handsome English youth, announced on the program as the president of the meeting. We were favored, however, only with a view of his well-tailored back, for the necessity of furnishing giggle motifs for the fair maidens and the consumption of innumerable cigarettes left him no time for sterner duties.

When the last plate had been licked clean, the gathering resolved itself into a soirée musicale. A snub-nosed English miss fell upon the piano beside the pulpit, and every ragged adventurer who could be dragged within pistol-shot of the maltreated instrument inflicted a song on his indulgent mates. More than once the performer, indifferent to memsahib blushes, refused either to expurgate or curtail the ballad of his choice, and it became the duty of a self-appointed committee to drag him back to his seat.

The suppression of a grog-shop ditty had been followed by several moments of fidgety silence when a chorus of hoarse whispers near the back of the chapel relieved the general embarrassment. A tow-headed beachcomber—a Swede by all seeming—was forced to his feet and advanced self-consciously up the aisle. He was the sorriest-looking “vag” in the gathering. His garb was a strange collection of tatters, through which his sunburned skin peeped out here and there; and his hands, calloused evidences of self-supporting days, hung heavily at his sides. The noises thus far produced would have been prohibited by law in a civilized country, and I settled back in my seat prepared to endure some new auditory atrocity. The Swede, ignoring the stairs by which more conventional mortals mounted, stepped from the floor to the rostrum, and strode to the piano. The audience, grinning nervously, waited for him to turn and bellow forth some halyard chantie. He squatted instead on the recently vacated 359stool and, running his stumpy fingers over the keys, fell to playing with unusual skill—Mendelssohn’s “Frühlingslied.” Such surprises befall, now and then, in the vagabond world. Its denizens are not always the unseeing, unknowing louts that those of a more laundered realm imagine.

“The Swanee River” was suggested as the Swede stalked back to his seat, and the rafters rang with the response; for there was scarcely one of these adventurers, from every corner of the globe, who could not sing it without prompting from beginning to end. During the rendition of “God Save the King,” the youthful rector tore himself away from the entrancing maidens, and puffing at his fortieth cigarette, shook us each by the hand as we passed out into the night. A pleasant evening he had spent, evidently, in spite of our presence.

“After all,” mused the “old timer,” as he hobbled across the Maidan at my side, “Holy Joes is a hell of a lot like other people, ain’t they?”

Of the entertainments of other evenings I may not speak with authority, for on that day I had concluded to take the Eurasian collector at his word and escape from Calcutta before I had outlived my welcome. As I stretched out on the roof of the Institute on my return from the chapel, the man beside me rolled over on his blanket and peered at me through the darkness.

“That you, Franck?” he whispered.

The voice was that of James, the Australian.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Some of the lads,” came the response, “told me you’re going to hit the trail again.”

“I’m off to-morrow night.”

“Where away?”

“Somewhere to the east.”

The Australian fell silent a moment, and his voice was apologetic when he spoke again.

“I quit my job to-day. There’s the plague, and the summer coming on, and they expected me to take orders from a babu manager. Calcutta is no good. I’d like to get to Hong Kong, but the boys say no beachcomber can make it in a year. Think you’ll come anywhere near there?”

“Expect to be there inside a couple of months.”

“How if we go pards?” murmured James. “I’ve never been on the road much, but I’ve bummed around Australia some after kangaroos, 360and I’ve got fourteen dibs. I’ll put that up for my part of the stake.”

“Sure,” I answered, for of all the inmates of the Institute there was no one I should sooner have chosen as a partner for the rough days to come, than James.

“How’ll we make it?” he queried. “It’s a long jump.”

“I’ll set you right to Goalando,” I replied, “and you can fix me up on the Ganges boat, if the skipper turns us down. If we can make Chittagong I think we can beat it through the jungle to Mandalay, though the boys say we can’t. Then we’ll drop down to Rangoon. They say shipping is good there. But let’s have it understood that when we hit Hong Kong each one goes where he likes.”

“All right,” said the Australian, lying down once more.

Thursday passed quickly in the overhauling of our gear, and, having stuffed our possessions into James’ carpetbag, we set off at nightfall for the station; not two of us, but three, for Rice of Chicago had invited himself to accompany us.

“What! So many?” cried the guard, when the Eurasian had introduced us, “That’s a big bunch of deadheads for one trip. Well, pile on. I’ll see that the collectors slip you.”

My companions returned to the waiting-room for the carpetbag, and I fell into step with the station policeman, James’ former partner. The platform was swarming with a cosmopolitan humanity. Afghans, Sihks, Bengalis, Tamils, and Mohammedans strolled back and forth or took garrulous leave of their departing friends through the train windows. Suddenly my attention was drawn to a priest of Buddha pushing his way through the throng. The yellow robe is rare in northern India, yet it was something more than the garment that led me to poke the policeman in the ribs. For the arms and shoulder of its wearer were white and the face that grinned beneath the shaven poll could have been designed in no other spot on earth than the Emerald Isle!

“Blow me,” cried the officer, “if it ain’t the Irish Buddhist, the bishop of Rangoon! I met ’im once in Singapore. Everybody in Burma knows ’im;” and he stepped forward with a greeting.

“Do I rimimber ye?” chuckled the priest, “I do thot. Ye were down in the Sthraits. Bless me, and ye’re up here on the force now, eh? Oo’s yer frind?”

“American,” said the Australian, “off fer Chittagong with a pard o’ mine.”

361“Foine!” cried the Irishman. “I’m bound the same. I’m second-class, but I’ll see ye on the boat the-morrow.”

He passed on and, as the train started, James and Rice tumbled into an empty compartment after me. The guard kept his promise and not once during the night were we disturbed. When daylight awakened us our car stood alone on a side-track at the end of the line.

Goalando was a village of mud huts, perched on a slimy, sloping bank of the Ganges like turtles ready to slip into the stream at the first hint of danger. A shriveled Hindu, frightened speechless by the appearance of three sahibs before his shop door, sold us a stale and fly-specked breakfast, and we turned down towards the river. On the sagging gangplank of a tiny steamer, moored at the foot of the slippery bank, stood the Irish Buddhist, his yellow robe drawn up about his knees, scrubbing his legs in the muddy water.

“Good mornin’ te ye!” he called, waving a dripping hand. “Come on board and we’ll have a chat. She don’t leave till noon.”

“The time’ll pass fast,” I suggested, “if you’ll give us your yarn.”

“Sure and I will,” answered the Irishman, “if ye’ll promise te listen te a good sthraight talk on religion after.”

What was it in my appearance that led every religious propagandist to look upon me as a possible convert? Even the missionary from Kansas had loaded me down with tracts.

The Irishman led the way to a cool spot on the deserted deck, sat down Turkish fashion, and, gazing out across the sluggish, brown Ganges, told us the story of an unusual life.

He was born in Dublin in the early fifties. As a young man he had emigrated to America, and, turning “hobo,” had traveled through every state in the union, working here and there. He was not long in convincing both Rice and me that he knew the secrets of the “blind baggage” and the ways of railroad “bulls.” More than once he growled out the name of some junction where we, too, had been ditched, and told of running the police gauntlet in cities that rank even to-day as “bad towns.”

“Two years after landin’ in the States,” he continued, “I hit Caleefornia and took a job thruckin’ on a blessed fruit-boat in the Sacreminto river, the Acme—”

“What!” I gasped, “The Acme? I was truckman on her in 1902.”

“Bless me eyes, were ye now?” cried the Irishman. “’Tis a blessed 362shmall worrld. Well, ’twas on the Acme thot I picked oop with a blessed ould sea dog of the name of Blodgett, and we shipped out of Frisco fer Japan. Blodgett, poor b’y, died on the vi’age, and after payin’ off I wint on alone, fitchin’ oop at last in Rhangoon. Th’ English were not houldin’ Burma thin, and white min were as rare as Siamese twins. Bless ye, but the natives were glad to see me, and I lived foine. But bist of all, I found the thrue religion, as ye wud call it, or philosophy as it shud be called. Whin I was sure ’twas right I took orders among thim, bein’ the foirst blessed white man te turn Buddhist priest.”

“Good graft,” grinned Rice.

“The remark shows yer ignerance,” retorted the son of Erin. “Listen. Oop te the day of me confirmation I was drhawin’ a hunder rupees a month. I quit me job. I gave ivery blessed thing I owned to a friend of moine, even te me socks. At the timple, an ould priest made me prisint of a strip of yellow cloth, but they tore it inte three paces te make it warthless, and thin sewed the paces togither agin fer a robe, and I’ve worn it or wan loike it iver since. If I’d put on European clothes agin, fer even wan day, I’d be expilled. I cut off me hair and as foine a mustache as iver ye saw. If I’d lit them grow agin I’d be expilled. If I’d put on a hat or shoes I’d be expilled. So wud I if I owned a farthin’ of money, if I shud kill so much as a flee, if I’d dhrink a glass of arrack, if I tuched the ouldest hag in the market place with so much as me finger.

“Foine graft, say you and yer loikes. Listen te more. Whin I tuk the robe, and that’s twinty year an’ gone, I become a novice in the faymous Tavoy monistary. Ivery blessed morning of me loife fer foive year, I wint out with the ither novices, huggin’ a big rhice bowl aginst me belly. We stopped at ivery blessed house. If we’d asked fer inything we’d ’a been expilled. The thrue Buddhists all put something inte the bowl, rhice generally and curry, sometoimes fish. Whin they were full we wint back te the monistary, an’ all the priests, ould wans and novices, had dinner from what we’d brung them. Thin we gave the rist te the biggars, fer blessed a thing can we ate from the noon te the nixt sunrise.

“’Twas harrd, the foirst months, atin’ nothin’ but curry and rhice. Now, bless ye, I’d not ate European fud if ’twas set down before me. Ivery blessed afternoon I sthudied the history of Buddha and Burmese with the ould priests. ’Twas a foine thing fer me. Before I found the thrue faith I was that blessed ignerent I cud hardly rade me ouwn 363tungue. To-day, bless ye, I know eight languages and the ins an’ outs of ivery religion on the futstool. I was a vile curser whin I was hoboin’ in the States, and ’twas harrd te quit it. But ivery toime I started te say a cuss-ward I thought of the revired Gautama and sid ‘blessed’ instead, and I’m master of me ouwn tungue, now.”

“Then you really worship the Buddhist god,” put in James.

“There agin,” cried the Irishman, “is the ignerance of them that follows that champeen faker, Jaysus, the son of Mary and a dhrunken Roman soldier. The Buddhists worship no wan. We riveere Buddha, the foinest man that iver lived, because he showed us the way te attain Nirvana, which is te say hiven. He was no god, but a man loike the rist of us.

“After foive year I was ordayned and foive more I was tachin’ th’ ither novices and the childr’, the Tavoy monistary bein’ the big school of Rhangoon. Thin I was made an ilder, thin the abbot of the monistary, thin after fifteen year, the bishop, as ye wud call it, of Rhangoon. Th’ abbots and the bishops have no nade te tache, but, bless ye, I’m tachin’ yit, it bein’ me duty te give te ithers of the thrue faith what I’ve larned.

“’Tis the bishop’s place te travel, and in these six years gone I’ve visited ivery blessed Buddhist kingdom in Asia, from Japan te Caylon; and I was in Lhassa talkin’ with the delai lama long before Yoonghusband wud have dared te show his face there. There’s niver a Buddhist king nor prince thot hasn’t traited me loike wan uv them, though they’d have cut the throats of iny ither European. I’m comin’ back now from three months with the prince uv Naypal, taychin’ his priests, him givin’ me the ticket te Chittagong.”

“But if you can’t touch money?—” I began.

“In haythen lands we can carry enough te buy our currie and rhice. I hove here three rupees,”—drawing out a knotted handkerchief from the folds of his robe—“if there’s a anna of it lift whin I land in Burma, I’ll give it te the foirst biggar te ask me. In Buddhist cuntries the blessed people give us what we nade, as they’ll give it te inywan ilse thot’s nadin’ it. They’re no superstitious, selfish bastes loike these dhirty Hindus. Whin we come te Chittagong ye can stop with me. Thin I’ll give ye a chit te the Tavoy in Rhangoon and ye can stay there as long as iver ye loike. If iver ye have no place te put oop in a Buddhist town, go te the monistary. And if ye till them ye know me, see how foine ye’ll be traited.”

“Aye, but we’d have to know your name,” I suggested.

364“As I was goin’ te tell ye, it’s U (oo) Damalaku.”

“Don’t sound Irish,” I remarked.

“No, indade,” laughed the priest, “that’s me Buddhist name. The ould wan was Larry O’Rourke.”

“Ye call thot graft, you and yer loikes,” he concluded, turning to Rice, “givin’ oop yer name and yer hair and a foine mustache, and yer clothes, an’ ownin niver a anna, and havin’ yer ouwn ignerant rhace laughin’ at ye, and havin’ yer body burned be the priests whin yer born agin in anither wan! But it’s the thrue philosophy, bless ye, and the roight way te live. Why is it the white min thot come out here die in tin year? D’ye think it’s the climate? Bless ye, no, indade, it’s the sthrong dhrink and the women. Luk at me. Wud ye think I was fifty-five if I hadn’t told ye?”

He was, certainly, the picture of health; deeply tanned, but with the clear eye and youthful poise of a man twenty years younger. Only one hardship, apparently, had he suffered during two decades of the yellow robe. His feet were broad and stumpy to the point of deformity, heavily calloused, and deeply scarred from years of travel over many a rough and stony highway.

“It’s a strange story,” said James.

“I’m askin’ no wan te take me word in this world of liars,” responded the Irishman, somewhat testily. “Here ye have the proof.”

He thrust a hand inside his robe and, drawing out a small, fat book, laid it in my lap. It contained more than a hundred newspaper clippings, bearing witness to the truth of nearly every assertion he had made. The general trend of all may be gleaned from one article, dated four years earlier. In it the reader was invited to compare the receptions tendered Lord Curzon and the Irish Buddhist in Mandalay. The viceroy, in spite of months of preparation for his visit, had been received coldly by all but the government officials. Damalaku had been welcomed by the entire population, and had walked from the landing stage to the monastery, nearly a half-mile distant, on a roadway carpeted with the hair of the female inhabitants, who knelt in two rows, foreheads to the ground, on either side of the route, with their tresses spread out over it.

When he had despatched a Gargantuan bowl of curry and rice in anticipation of eighteen hours of fasting, the Irishman drew us around him once more and began a long dissertation on the philosophy of Buddha. Two morning trains had poured a multicolored rabble into the mud village, and the deck of the steamer was crowded with natives 365huddled together in close-packed groups, each protected from pollution by a breastwork of bedraggled bundles. Newcomers picked their way gingerly through the network of alleyways between the isolated tribes, holding their garments—when such they wore—close round them, and joined the particular assembly to which their caste assigned them. The Irishman, at first the butt of Hindu stares, was soon surrounded by an excited throng of Burmese travelers.

As the afternoon wore on a diminutive Hindu, of meek and childlike countenance, appeared on board, and, hobbling in and out through the alleyways on a clumsily-fitted wooden leg, fell to distributing the pamphlets that he carried under one arm. His dress stamped him as a native Christian missionary. Suddenly, his eye fell on Damalaku, and he stumped forward open-mouthed.

“What are you, sahib?” he murmured in a wondering tone of voice.

“As you see,” replied the Irishman, “I am a Buddhist priest.”

“Bu—but what country do you come from?”

“I am from Ireland.”

Over the face of the native spread an expression of suffering, as if the awful suspicion that the missionaries to whom he owed his conversion had deceived him, were clutching at his heartstrings.

“Ireland?” he cried, tremulously, “Then you are not a Buddhist! Irishmen are Christians. All sahibs are Christians,” and he glanced nervously at the grinning Burmese about us.

“Yah! Thot’s what the Christian fakers tell ye,” snapped the Irishman. “What’s thot ye’ve got?”

The Hindu turned over several of the tracts. They were separate books of the Bible, printed in English and Hindustanee.

“Bah!” said Damalaku, “It’s bad enough to see white Christians. But the man who swallows all the rot the sahib missionaries dish oop fer him, whin the thrue faith lies not a day’s distance, is disgoostin’. Ye shud............