Somewhat back from the wharves, yet within earshot of the cadenced song of stevedores and coal-heavers, stand two shaded bungalows, well-known among the inhabitants of the metropolis of Burma. The larger is the Sailors’ Home, the less important the Seamen’s Mission. Rangoon, it transpired, was suffering a double visitation of beachcombers and the plague. The protest of the managers of both mariners’ institutions, that they were already “full up with dead ones,” gave us small grief. For were we not sure of admission to a more interesting residence? But there was real cause for wailing in the assurance of the cosmopolitan band who listened to the tale of our “get-away” from Calcutta, that we had fallen on one of the least auspicious ports in the Orient.

There was work ashore for all hands, white or brown, for the servants of the plague doctors had daubed on house-walls throughout the city the enticing offer:—“Dead Rats—Two pice each.” But even the penniless seamen, who had learned during long enforced residence in the Burmese capital that their services were useful in no other field, scorned to turn terriers.

It was my bad fortune to reach Rangoon a bit too late to be greeted by an old acquaintance.

“Up to tree day ago,” cried one of the band at the Home, “dere was one oder Yank on der beach here, ja. Min he made a pier’ead yump by er tramp tru der Straits.”

“That so?” I queried.

“Aye,” put in another of the boys, “’e was a slim chap with a bloody lot of mouth, always looking fer a scrap, but keepin’ ’is weather-eye peeled fer the Bobbies.”

“Bet a hat,” I shouted, “that I knew him. Wasn’t his name Haywood?”

“Dick ’Aywood, aye,” answered the tar; “leastway that was the ’andle ’e went by. But ’e’s off now fer good, an’ bloody glad we are to be clear of ’im.”

379We struck off through the city, taking leave of Rice before the door of the first European official whose beneficence he chose to investigate. The native town, squatting on the flat plain along the river, was reminiscent of the Western world. Its streets were wide and parallel, as streets should be, no doubt, yet lacking the picturesqueness of narrow, meandering passageways, so common elsewhere in the Orient. Sidewalks were there none, of course. Pedestrians mingled with vehicles and disputed the way with laden animals and human beasts of burden. Before and behind, on either side, as far as the eye could see, stretched unbroken vistas of heterogeneous wares and yawning shopkeepers. For to the Burman no other vocation compares with that of merchant. A flat city it was, with small, two-story hovels for the most part, above which gleamed a few golden pagodas.

In the suburbs the scene was different. Vine-grown bungalows and squat barracks littered a rolling, lightly-wooded country that sloped away to a clear-cut horizon. Here and there shimmered a sun-flecked lake; along umbrageous highways strolled khaki-clad mortals with white faces and a familiar vocabulary. High above all else, as the Eiffel tower over Paris, soared the pride of Burma, the Shwe Dagón pagoda.

We climbed the endless vaulted stairway to the sacred hilltop, in company with hundreds of natives bearing their shoes, when such they possessed, in their hands, and amid the bedlam of clamoring hawkers. Now and again a pious pilgrim glanced at our rough-shod feet, but smiled indulgently and passed us by. The village of shrines at the summit of the knoll was an animated bazaar, stocked with every devotional requisite from bottled arrack to pet snakes. Even the tables of the money-changers and the desks of the scribes were not lacking to complete the picture.

Barefooted worshipers, male and female, wandered among the glittering topes, setting up candles or spreading out lotus blossoms before the serene-visaged statues; kowtowing now and then, but puffing incessantly, one and all, at long native cigars. Near the mouth of the humanity-belching stairway creaked a diminutive clothes-reel overburdened with such booty as the red-man, returned from a scalping expedition, hangs over the entrance to his wigwam. While we marveled, a panting matron with close-cropped head pushed past us and added to the display a switch of oily, jet-black hair. Her prayer had been granted and the shorn locks bore witness to her gratitude.

380Shrines and topes were but doll-houses compared with the central mass of masonry, towering upward to neck-craning height and covered with untarnished gold from tapering apex to swollen base. It was a monument all too brilliant in the blazing sunlight. Tiny pagodas floated before our eyes as we glanced for relief into the deep shadows of the encircling sanctuaries. Burmen from the sea to the sources of the Irawaddy are inordinately proud of the Shwe Dagón. Its destruction, they are convinced, would bring national disaster in its train. Their rulers have turned this superstition to account. Down at the edge of the cantonment below, John Bull has mounted two heavy cannon that are trained on the pagoda day and night. A brief word of command from the officer in charge would reduce the sacred edifice to a tumbled mass of ruins. Ten regiments of red-coats would be far less effective than those two pieces of ordnance, in maintaining the sahib sway over Burma.

Rice of Chicago scorned to share the simple life among the wearers of the yellow robe. As the day waned, he joined us at the Home with the announcement that he had “dug up a swell graft” among the European residents and, declining to disclose the details thereof, strutted away towards the harbor.

We set off alone, therefore, the Australian and I, to the monastery that had witnessed the metamorphosis of the erstwhile Larry O’Rourke. The far-famed institution occupied an extensive estate flanking Godwin Road, a broad, shaded thoroughfare leading to the Shwe Dagón. Its grounds were surrounded by a crumbling wall and a shallow, weed-choked ditch that could not be styled moat for lack of water. Three badly-warped planks, nailed together into a drawbridge that would not draw, led through a breach in the western wall, the main entrance, evidently, for many a year.

Inside was a teeming village of light, two-story buildings, with deep verandas above and below, scattered pell-mell about the inclosure as if they had been constructed in some gigantic carpenter-shop, shipped to their destination, and left where the expressman had thrown them off. The irregular plots and courts between them were trodden bare and hard or were ankle-deep in loose sand. Here and there swayed a tall, untrimmed tree, but within the area was neither grass nor flower nor garden patch. For the priest of Buddha, forbidden to kill even a grub or an earthworm, may not till the soil about his dwelling.

Bungalows along the way in rural Burma

Women of the Malay Peninsula wear nothing above the waist-line and not much below it

The surrounding town was no more densely populated than the 381monastery village. Besides a small army of servants, male and female, in layman garb, there were yellow-robed figures everywhere. Wrinkled, sear-faced seekers after Nirvana squatted in groups on the verandas, poring over texts in the weak light of the dying day. More sprightly priests, holding a fold of their gowns over an arm, strolled back and forth across the barren grounds. Scores of novices, small boys and youths, saffron-clad and hairless like their elders, flitted in and out among the buildings, shouting gleefully at their games.

We turned to the first bungalow, a servants’ cottage evidently; for there were both men and women and no shaven polls in the group that crowded the veranda railing. Twice we addressed them in English, once in Hindustanee; but the only response was a babel of strange words that rose to an uproar. The women screamed excitedly, the men shouted half-angrily, half-beseechingly and motioned to us to be off. As we mounted the steps the shrieking folk took to their heels and tumbled through the doors of the cottage, or over the ends of the veranda, leaving only a few decrepit crones and grandsires to keep us company.

Here was no such welcome as the Irishman had prophesied; but first impressions count for little in the Orient, and we sat down to await developments. For a time the driveling ancients stared vacantly upon us, mumbling childishly to themselves. Then there arose a chorus of excited whispers; around the corners of the bungalow peered gaping brown faces that disappeared quickly when we made the least movement. At last a native whom we had not seen before advanced bravely to the foot of the steps.

“Goo’ evening,” he stammered, “will you not go way? There is not plague in the monastery.”

“Eh!” cried James, “We’d be more like to go if there was.”

“But are the sahibs not doctors?” queried the Burman.

The suggestion set the Australian choking with laughter.

“Doctors!” I gasped, “We’re sailors, and we were sent by Damalaku.”

The babu uttered a mighty shout and dashed up the steps. The fugitives swarmed upon the veranda from all sides and crowded around us, laughing and chattering.

“They all running way when you coming,” explained the spokesman, “because they thinking you plague doctors and they ’fraid.”

“Of what?” asked James.

“Sahib doctors feel all over,” shuddered the babu, “not nice.”

382Our errand explained, the interpreter set off to announce our arrival to the head priest, and the grinning servants squatted in a semicircle about us. Suddenly James raised a hand and pointed towards the breach in the wall.

“Seems other beachcombers know this graft,” he laughed.

A burly negro, dressed in an old sweater of the White Star line and the rags and tatters of what had once been overalls and jumper, stepped into the inclosure. Anxious to make a favorable impression at the outset, he had halted in the street to remove his shoes, and, carrying them in one hand, he shuffled through the sand in his bare feet, about the ankles of which clung the remnants of a bright red pair of socks. In color, he was many degrees darker than the Burmese; and the apologetic, almost penitent mien with which he approached struck the assembled natives as so incongruous in one attired as a European that they greeted him with roars of laughter. When he addressed them in English they shrieked the louder, and left him to stand contritely at the foot of the steps until we, as the honored guests of the evening, had been provided for. There is needed more than the whiteman’s tongue and garb to be accepted as a sahib in British-India.

The babu returned, and, bidding us follow, led the way back into the village and up the out-door stairway of one of the largest bungalows. Inside, under a sputtering torch, squatted an aged priest of sour and leathery countenance. He squinted a moment at us in silence, and then demanded, through the interpreter, an account of our meeting with Damalaku. We soon convinced him that the note was no forgery. He dismissed us with a grimace that might have been expressive either of mirth or annoyance, and the babu set off towards a neighboring bungalow.

“You are sleeping in here,” he said, stopping several paces from the cottage, “Goo’ night.”

“Thunder!” muttered James, as we started to mount the steps to a deserted veranda, “He might, at least, have told ’em what we want. If there’s anything I hate, it’s talking to natives on my fingers and listening to their jabber all the evening without an interpreter. He—”

“Hello, Jack!” shouted a voice above us, “Where the blazes did you come from?”

We fell back in astonishment and looked up. Framed in the doorway of the brightly-lighted bungalow stood a white priest.

383“Englishmen?” he queried.

“I’m American,” I apologized.

“The thunder you are!” cried the priest, “So’m I. On the beach, eh?”

“Yep,” I answered.

“Well, come up on deck, mates. But first,” he added hastily, in more solemn tones, “in respect for the revered Buddha and his disciples, take off your shoes down there.”

“And socks?” I asked, struggling with a knot in one of my laces.

“Naw,” returned the priest, “just the kicks.”

We crossed the veranda and, having deposited our shoes in a sort of washtub outside the door, followed the renegade inside.

The typical Indian bungalow is a very simple structure. The Oriental carpenter considers his task finished when he has thrown together—if the actions of so apathetic a workman may be so described—a frame-work of light poles, boarded them up on the outside, and tossed a roof of thatch on top. The interior he leaves to take care of itself, and the result is a dwelling as rough and ungarnished as an American hay-loft.

The room in which we found ourselves was some twenty feet square and extremely low of ceiling, its skeleton of unhewn beams all exposed, like the ribs of a cargo steamer. Two rectangular openings in opposite walls, innocent of frame or glass, admitted a current of night air that made the chamber almost habitable. In the center of the floor, which was polished smooth and shining by the shuffle of bare feet, was a large grass mat; while beyond, on a low da?s, squatted a gorgeous, life-sized statue of Buddha.

At the moment of our appearance, a score of native priests were crouched on as many small mats ranged round the walls. They rose slowly, really agog with curiosity, yet striving to maintain that phlegmatic air of indifference that is cultivated among them, and grouped themselves about us. In the brilliant light cast by several lamps and long rows of candles before the statue, we had our first clear view of the American priest. He was tall and thin of figure, yet sinewy, with a suggestion of hidden strength. His face, gaunt and lantern-jawed, was seared and weather-beaten and marked with the unmistakable lines of hardships and dissipation. It was easy to see that he was a recruit from the ranks of labor. His hands were coarse and disproportionately large. As he moved they hung half open, his elbows a bit bent, as though he were ready at a word of command to grasp a 384rope or a shovel. The rules of the priesthood had not been framed to enhance his particular style of beauty. A thick shock of hair would have concealed the displeasing outline of a bullet head, the yellow robe hung in loose folds about his lank form, his feet were broad and stub-toed. But it was none of these points in his physical make-up that caused James to choke with suppressed mirth. A Buddhist priest, be it remembered, must ever keep aloof from things feminine. The American had been a sailor, and his bare arms were tattooed from wrist to shoulder with female figures that would have outdone those on the raciest posters of a burlesque show!

Our hosts placed mats for us in a corner of the room and brought forth a huge bowl of rice and a smaller one of blistering currie. While we scooped up handfuls alternately from the dishes, they squatted on their haunches close at hand, watching us, it must be admitted, somewhat hungrily. The American had not yet mastered the native tongue. His interpreter was a youthful priest who spoke fluent English. With these two at our elbows, the conversation did not drag. The youth was a human interrogation point; the convert, for the nonce, a long-stranded mariner eager for news of the world outside. Were “the boys” still signing on in Liverpool at three pound ten? Did captains still ship out of Frisco with shanghaied crews, as of yore? Were the Home in Marseilles and the Mission in Sydney still closed to beachcombers? Was the Peter Rickmers still above the waves? His questions fell fast and furious, interspersed with queries from his companion. Then he grew reminiscent and told us, in the vocabulary of them that go down to the sea in ships, tales of his days before the mast and of his uninspiring adventures in distant ports. For the moment he was plain Jack Tar again, swapping yarns with his fellows.

The youth rose at last and laid a hand on the convert’s shoulder. He started, blinked a moment, and glanced at his brilliant garment. Then he rose to dignified erectness and stood a moment silent, gazing down upon us with the half-haughty, half-pitying mien of a true believer addressing heathen.

“You will excuse us,” he said, in his sacerdotal voice. “It is time for our evening devotions.”

He moved with the others to the further side of the room, where each of the band lighted a candle and came to place it on the altar. Then all knelt on a large mat, sank down until their hips touched their heels and, with their eyes fixed steadfastly on the serene countenance 385of the statue, rocked their bodies back and forth to the time of a chant set up by one of the youngest priests. It was a half-monotonous wail, rising and falling in uneven cadence, lacking something of the solemnity of the chanted Latin of a Catholic office, yet more musical than the three-tone song of the Arab. One theme, often repeated, grew familiar even to our unaccustomed ears, a long-drawn refrain ending in:—
“Vooráy kalma-á-y s-?-?-mée,”

which the swaying group, one and all, caught up from time to time and droned in deep-voiced chorus.

The worship lasted some twenty minutes. When the American returned to us, every trace of the seaman—save the tattooing—had disappeared. He was a missionary now, fired with zeal for the “true faith”; though into his arguments crept occasionally a suggestion that his efforts were less for conversion than for self-justification. Now and again he called on his sponsor in Buddhist lore and ritual to expatiate on the doctrines he was striving to set forth. The youth needed no urging. He drew a book from the folds of his gown and, for every point brought up by the American, read us several pages of dissertations or tales of the miracles performed by the Wandering Prince.

The hour grew late for beachcombers. A dreadful fear assailed us that the night would be all sermon and no sleep. We sank into an open-eyed doze, from which we started up now and then half determined to turn Buddhists that we might be left in peace. Towards midnight the propagandists tired of their monologues and rose to their feet. The white man led the way to a back room, littered with kettles and bowls, bunches of drying rattan, and all the odds and ends of the establishment, and pointed out two mats that the servants had spread for us on the billowy, yet yielding floor of split bamboo.

“Take my tip, mate,” said the Australian, as we lay down side by side, “that bloke don’t swallow any more of this mess about the transmigration of souls than I do. Loafing in the shade’s his religion.”

We were awakened soon after daylight by a hubbub of shrill laughter and shouts behind the bungalow. I rose and peered through a window opening. In the yard below, a score of boys, some in yellow robes, some in nothing worth mentioning, were engaged in a game that seemed too energetic to be of Oriental origin. The players were divided into two teams; but neither band was limited to any 386particular part of the field, and all mingled freely together as they raced about in pursuit of what seemed at first sight to be a small basket. It was rather, as I made out when the game ceased an instant, a ball about a foot in diameter, made of open wickerwork. This the opposing contestants kicked alternately, sending it high in the air, the only rule of the game being, apparently, that it should not touch the ground nor any part of the player’s body above the knees. When this was violated, the offending side lost a point.

The wiry, brown youths were remarkably nimble in following the ball, and showed great skill in returning it—no simple matter, for they could not kick it as a punter kicks a pig-skin without driving their bare toes through the openings. They struck it instead with the sides of their feet or—when it fell behind them—with their heels; yet they often kept it constantly in the air for several minutes. It was a typical Burmese scene, with more mirth and laughter than one could have heard in a whole city in the land of the morose and apathetic Hindu.

The servants brought us breakfast. Behind them entered the American priest. He squatted on the floor before us, but refused to partake, having risen to gorge himself at the first peep of dawn. Whatever its original purpose, the rule forbidding wearers of the yellow robe to eat after noonday certainly makes them early risers.

The meal over, we fished our shoes out of the tub and, promising the American to return in time for supper and “evening devotions,” turned away. At the wooden bridge connecting the monastery with the world outside, we met the foraging party of novices returning from their morning rounds. Far down the street stretched a line of priests, certainly sixty in all, each holding in his embrace a huge bowl, filled to the brim with a strange assortment of native foodstuffs.

“Mate,” said James, later in the morning, as we stood before a world map in the Sailors’ Home, “it looks to me as if we’d bit off more ’n we can chew. There’s nothing doing in the shipping line here, and not a show to earn the price of a deck passage to Singapore. And if we could, it’s a thunder of a jump from there to Hong Kong.”

“Aye,” put in a grizzled seaman, limping forward, “ye’ll be lucky lads if ye make yer get-away from Rangoon. But once ye get on the beach in Singapore, ye’ll die of ould age afore iver ye see ’Ong Kong, if that’s ’ow yer ’eaded. Why mates, that bloody ’ole is alive 387with beachcombers that’s been ’ung up there so long they’d not know ’ow to eat with a knife if iver they got back to God’s country. Take my tip, an’ give ’er a wide berth.”

“It would seem foolish anyway,” I remarked, addressing James, “to go to Singapore. It’s a good fifteen degrees south of here, a week of loafing around on some dirty tub to get there, and a longer jump back up north—even if we don’t get stuck in the Straits.”

“But what else?” objected James.

“Look how narrow the Malay Peninsula is,” I went on, pointing at the map. “Bangkok is almost due east of here. We’d save a lot of travel by going overland, and run no risk of being tied up for months in Singapore.”

“But how?” demanded the Australian.

“Walk, of course.”

The sailors grouped about us burst out in a roar of laughter.

“Aye, ye’d walk across the Peninsula like ye’d swim to Madras,” chuckled one of them. “It’s bats ye have in yer belfry, from a touch o’ the sun.”

“But Hong Kong,” I began—

“If it’s ’Ong Kong, ye’ll go to Singapore,” continued the seaman, “or back the other way. There’s no man goes round the world in the north ’emisphere without touching Singapore. Put that down in yer log.”

“If we walk across the Peninsula,” I went on, still addressing James, “it would—”

“Yes,” put in the “Askins” of the party, “it would be a unique and onconventional way of committin’ suicide, original, interestin’, maybe slow, but damn sure.”

“Now look ’ere, lads,” said the old seaman, almost tearfully, “d’ ye know anything about that country? There’s no wilder savages nowhere than the Siameese. I know ’em. When I was bo’s’n on a windjammer from the Straits to China, that’s fourt—fifteen year gone, we was blowed into the bay an’ put ashore fer water. We rowed by thousands o’ dead babies floatin’ down the river. We ’adn’t no more ’n stepped ashore when down come a yelpin’ bunch o’ Siameese, with knives as long as yer arm, an’ afore we could shove off they’d killt my mate an’ another ’and—chopped ’em all to pieces. Them’s the Siameese, an’ the dacoits in the mountains is worse.”

In short, the suggestion raised such an uproar of derision and chatter among “the boys” that we were forced to retreat to the 388street to continue our planning. For all the raillery, I was still convinced that the overland trip was possible; necessary, in fact, for there was no other escape from the city. “The boys” might be right, but there was a promise of new adventures in the undertaking, and, best of all, the territory was unknown to beachcombers. For the truest satisfaction of the Wanderlust is to explore the world by virgin routes and pose as a bold pioneer in the rendezvous of the “profession” ever after.

James asserted that he was “game for anything,” and, though we had no intention of quitting Rangoon for a week, we turned our attention at once to gathering information concerning the route. The task proved fruitless. Our project was branded idiotic in terms far more cutting than I had heard even in Palestine and Syria. We appealed to the American consul; we canvassed half the bungalows in the cantonment and every European office in the city; we tramped far out past the Gymkana station to the headquarters of the Geographical Society of Burma, and, surrounded by excited bands of native clerks, pored over great maps and folios ten feet square. All to no purpose. The original charts showed only wavy, brown lines through the heart of the Peninsula; and not a resident of Rangoon, apparently, had the slightest knowledge of the territory ten miles east of the city.

Our inquiries ended, as we had dreaded, by attracting the attention of the police. Late in the afternoon, while we were lounging in the Home, an Englishman in khaki burst in upon us.

“Are you the chaps,” he began, “who are talking of starting for Bangkok on foot?”

“We’ve been asking the way,” I admitted.

“Well, save yourselves the trouble,” returned the officer. “There is no way. The trip can’t be made. You’d be killed sure, and your governments would come back at us for letting you go. I have orders from the chief of police that you are not to leave Rangoon except by sea, and I have warned the patrolmen on the eastern side of the city to head you off. Thought I’d tell you.”

“Thanks,” said James, “but we’ll hold down Rangoon for a while yet anyway.”

“Yes, I know,” laughed the Englishman. “So the government is going to give you a guide to show you the sights. Come in, Pearson!”

“Pearson” entered, grinning. He was a sharp-eyed Eurasian in uniform, gaunt of face and long of limb. The Englishman took his 389leave and the half-breed sat down beside us. When we left the Home he followed us to the monastery. When we slipped on our shoes next morning, he was waiting for us at the foot of the steps. He was a pleasant companion and his stories were well told; but we could no more shake him off than we could find work in Rangoon. For three days he camped relentlessly on our trail.

“Look here, James,” I protested, as we were breakfasting on Monday morning, “the longer we hang around Rangoon, the closer we’ll be watched. If ever we get away, it must be now, before they think we’re going.”

“But Pearson—” began James.

“There’s one scheme that always works with Eurasians,” I answered.

The Australian raised his eyebrows.

“Firewater,” I murmured.

“Swell,” grinned James.

We put the plan into execution at once, halting at the first arrack-shop beyond the monastery to show the detective our appreciation of his services. By eight bells he was the most jovial man in Rangoon; by noon he felt in duty bound to slap on the back every European we encountered. Luckily, good cheer sells cheaply in Burma, or the project would have made a serious inroad on our fortune of seven rupees.

We halted, well on in the afternoon, at an eating house hard by the Chinese temple. The Eurasian, alleging lack of appetite, ignored the plate of food that was set before him.

“See here, Pearson,” I suggested, “you’ve been sticking close to us for a long time. The government should be proud of you. But I should think, after three days, you’d like to get a glimpse of your wife and the kids.”

“Yesh, yesh,” cried the half-breed, starting up with a whoop, “I’m close to ’ome ’ere. I’ll run round a minute. Don’t mind, old fel, eh? I’ll be back fore you’re ’alf through,” and he stumbled off up the street.

Once he was out of sight, we left our dinner unfinished, and hurried back to the Home. The manager was sleeping. We laid hold on the knapsack that we had left in his keeping and struck off through the crowded native town.

“This is no good,” protested James. “All the streets leading east are guarded.”

390“The railroad to Mandalay isn’t,” I replied. “We’ll run up the line out of danger, and strike out from there.”

The Australian halted at a tiny drug store, and, arousing the bare-legged clerk, purchased twenty grains of quinine. “For jungle fever,” he muttered as he tucked the package away in his helmet. That was our “outfit” for a journey that might last one month or six. In the knapsack were two cotton suits and a few ragged shirts. As for weapons, we had not even a penknife.

Just beyond the drug store we turned a corner and came face to face with Rice, sauntering along in the shade of the shops as if life were a perpetual pastime, a huge native cigar stuck in a corner of his frog’s mouth.

“We’re off, Chi!” cried James, hardly lessening his pace. “Want to go along?”

“Eh!” gasped our former partner, “Hit the trail? An’ the rains comin’ on? Not on yer tintype. Ye’re bughouse to quit this burg. The graft is swell, an’ I see yer finish in the jungle.”

“Well, so long,” we called, over our shoulders.

A mile from the Home we entered a small suburban station. The native policeman strutting up and down the platform eyed us curiously, but offered no interference. We purchased tickets to the first important town, and a few moments later were hurrying northward. James settled back in a corner of the compartment, and fell to singing in sotto voce:—
“On the road to Mandalay,
“Where the flying fishes play—”

About us lay low, rolling hills, deep green with tropical vegetation. Behind, scintillated the golden shaft of the Shwe Dagón pagoda, growing smaller and smaller, until the night, descending swiftly, blotted it out. We fell asleep, and, awakening as the train pulled into Pegu, took possession of two wicker chairs in the waiting-room. A babu, sent to rout us out, murmured an apology when he had noted the color of our skins, and stole quietly away.

Dawn found us already astir. A fruit-seller in the bazaars, given to early rising, served us breakfast and we were off; not, however, until the sun, peering boldly over the horizon, showed us the way, for we had no other guide to follow.

A sandy highway, placarded the “Toungoo Road,” led forth from the village, skirting the golden pagoda of Pegu, a rival of the Shwe 391Dagón; but soon swung northward, and we struck across an untracked plain. Far away to the eastward a deep blue range of rugged hills, forerunners of the wild mountain chains of the peninsula, bounded the horizon; but about us lay a flat, monotonous stretch of sandy lowlands, embellished neither by habitation nor inhabitant.

Ten miles of plodding, with never a mud hole in which to quench our thirst, brought us to a teeming bamboo village hidden away in a tangled grove. When we had driven off a canine multitude and drunk our fill, we should have gone on had not a babu pushed his way through the gaping, beclouted throng and invited us to his bungalow. He was an employé of a projected railway line from Pegu to Moulmein, even then under construction, that was to bring him, on the day of its completion, the coveted title of station-master. In anticipation of that honor he had already donned a brilliant uniform of his own designing, the sight of which filled his fellow townsmen with unutterable awe.

We squatted with him on the floor of his open hut and dispatched a dinner of rice, fruit, and bread-cakes—and red ants; no Burmese lunch would be complete without the latter. When we offered payment for the meal, the babu rose up chattering with indignation and would not be reconciled until we had patted him on the back and hidden our puerile fortune from view.

Railways are strictly handmade in Burma. Within hail of the village appeared the first mound of earth, its summit some feet above the high-water mark of flood time; and a few miles beyond we came upon a construction gang at work. There were neither steam cranes, “slips,” nor “wheelers” to scoop up the earth of the paddy-fields. Of the band, full three hundred strong, a few toiled with shovels in the shallow trenches; the others swarmed up the embankment in endless file, carrying flat baskets of earth on their heads. They were Hindus, one and all, of both sexes; for the Burman scorns coolie labor. The workers toiled steadily, mechanically, though ever at a snail’s pace, and the basketfuls fell too rapidly to be counted. But many thousands raised the mound only an inch higher; and, where the grading had but begun, one day’s labor did not suffice to cover the short grass.

Beyond, were other gangs and between them deserted trenches and sections of embankment. The dyke was not continuous. The company sub-let the grading by the cubic yard to dozens of Hindu contractors, each of whom, having staked out some ten rods along the right of 392way, threw up a ridge of the required height and moved on with his band to the head of the line. Their trenches were sharp-cornered, flat-bottomed, and contained little pagoda-shaped mounds of earth with a tuft of grass on top, by which the depth could be estimated.

Early in the afternoon we came upon a small, sluggish stream, beyond which stood a two-story bungalow of unusual magnificence for this corner of the world. A rope was stretched from shore to shore, and the primitive ferry to which it was attached was tied up at the western bank. We boarded the raft and had all but pulled ourselves across when a greeting in our own tongue drew our attention to the bungalow. On the veranda stood an Englishman, bareheaded and smiling.

James sprang hastily ashore, leaving me to bring up the rear—and the knapsack; but at the top of the bank he stopped suddenly and grasped me by the arm.

“Holy dingoes!” he gasped. “Do my eyes deceive me? I’m a Hottentot if it isn’t a white woman!”

It was, sure enough. Beside the Englishman stood a youthful memsahib, in snow-white gown. A millinery shop could not have looked more out of place in these blistered paddy fields of the Irawaddy delta.

“Trouble you for a drink of water?” I panted, halting in the shade of the bungalow, which, like all dwellings in this region, stood some eight feet above the ground, on bamboo stilts.

“A drink of water!” cried the lady, smiling down upon us. “Do you think we see white men so often that we let them go as easily as that? Come up here at once.”

“We’re just sitting down to lunch,” said the man. “I had covers laid for you as soon as you hove in sight.”

“Thanks,” I answered, “we had lunch three hours ago.”

“Great C?sar! Where?” gasped the Englishman.

“In a bamboo vil—”

“What! Native stuff?” he cried, while the lady shuddered, “With red ants, eh? Well, then, you’ve been famished for an hour and a half.”

We could not deny it, so we mounted to the veranda.

“Put your luggage in the corner,” said the Englishman. “Do you prefer lemonade or seltzer?”

I dropped the bedraggled knapsack on the top step and followed 393my companion inside. In our vagabond garb, covered from crown to toe with the dust of the route, the perspiration drawing fantastic arabesques in the grime on our cheeks, we felt strangely out of place in the daintily-furnished bungalow. But our hosts would not hear our excuses. When our thirst had been quenched, we followed the Englishman to the bathroom to plunge our heads and arms into great bowls of cold water and, greatly refreshed, took our places at the table.

The Burmese cook who slipped noiselessly in and out of the room was a magician, surely, else how could he have prepared in this outpost of civilization such a dinner as he served us—even without red ants? If conversation lagged, it was chiefly the Australian’s fault. His remarks were ragged and brief; for, as he admitted later in the day: “It’s so bloody long since I’ve talked to a white man that I was afraid of making a break every time I opened my mouth.”

The Englishman was superintendent of construction for the western half of the line. He had been over the route to Moulmein on horseback, and though he had never known a white man to attempt the journey on foot, he saw no reason why we could not make it if we could endure native “chow” and the tropical sun. But he scoffed at the suggestion that any living mortal could tramp from Moulmein to Bangkok, and advised us to give up at once so foolhardy a venture, and to return to Rangoon as we had come. We would not, and he mapped out on the table-cloth the route to the frontier town, pricking off each village with the point of his fork. When we declined the invitation to spend the night in his bungalow, even his wife joined him in vociferous protest. But we pleaded haste, and took our leave with their best wishes.

“If you can walk fast enough to reach Sittang to-night,” came the parting word, “you will find a division engineer who will be delighted to see you. That is, if you ............