it was my good fortune to find employment the next morning. the job was suggestive of the spy and the tattle-tale, but the most indolent of vagabonds could not have dreamed of a more ideal means of amassing a fortune. i had merely to sit still and do nothing—and draw three rupees a day for doing it. almost the only condition imposed upon me was that the sitting must be done on a street car.
let me explain. the electric tramways of the city of madras are numerous and well-patronized. the company does not dare to entrust the position on the front platform to aborigines; for in case of emergency the hindu has a remarkable faculty of being anywhere but at his post, and of doing anything but the right thing. but as conductor, a native or eurasian of some slight education does as well as a real man. he has only to poke the pice and annas into the cash register he wears about his neck and punch and deliver a ticket. yet it is surprising, nay, sad, to find how many accidents befall him while engaged in this simple task. he will forget, for instance, to give the passenger the ticket that is his receipt for fare paid; coppers will cling tenaciously to his fingers in spite of his best efforts to dislodge them; he has even been known, in his absent-mindedness, to overlook his friends on his tour of collection through the car. don’t, for a moment, fancy that he is dishonest. it is merely because he is a hindu and was born that way.
to correct these unimportant little faults, the corporation has a force of inspectors, occasionally sahibs, commonly eurasians, clad in khaki uniforms and armed with report pads, who spring out unexpectedly from obscure side streets to offer expert assistance to passing conductors.
but, of course, mathematical experts do not dodge in and out of the sun-baked alleyways of madras for the good of their health. the spirit of india is sure to attack them sooner or later, even if it has not been with them since birth. cases of friendship between inspectors 310and conductors are not unknown, and it is not the way of the oriental to attempt to reduce his friend’s income. in short, the auditors must be audited, and, all unknown to them or its other servants, the corporation employs a small select band of men who do not wear uniforms, and who do not line up before the wicket on pay day.
it was by merest chance that i learned of this state of affairs and found my way to a small office that no one would have suspected of being in any way connected with the transportation system of madras. an englishman who was ostensibly a private broker deemed my answers to his cross-examination satisfactory, and i was initiated at once into the mysterious masonry of inspector of inspectors. the broker warned me not to build hopes of an extended engagement, rather to anticipate an early dismissal; for the uniformed employés were famed for lynx-eyed vigilance, and my usefulness to the company, obviously, could not endure beyond the few days that might elapse before i was “spotted.” he did not add that a longer period might give me opportunity to form too intimate acquaintances, but he wore the air of a man who had not exhausted his subject.
my duties began forthwith. the englishman supplied me with a handful of coppers that were to return to the corporation through its cash registers. i was to board a tramway, find place of observation in a back seat, and pay my fare as an ordinary passenger. the distance i should travel on each car, the routes i should follow, my changes from one line to another, were left to my own discretion. upon alighting, i was to stroll far enough away from the line to allay suspicion and return to hail another car. the company required only that i make out each evening, in the private office, a report of my observations, with the numbers of the cars, and sign a statement to the effect that i had devoted the eight hours to the interests of the corporation. what could have been more entirely mon affaire? if there was a nook or corner of madras that i did not visit during the few days that followed, it was not within strolling distance of any streetcar line.
among the sights of the city must be noted her human bullocks. horses are rare in madras. the transportation of freight falls to a company of leather-skinned, rice-fed coolies whose strength and endurance pass belief. their carts are massive, two-wheeled vehicles, as cumbersome as ever burdened a yoke of oxen. the virtues of axle-grease they know not, and through the streets of madras resounds a 311droning as of the egyptian sakkas on the plain of thebes. yet two of these emaciated creatures will drag a wagon, laden with great bales from the ships, or a dozen steel rails, for miles over hills and hollows, with fewer breathing spells than a truckman would allow a team of horses.
my devotion to corporate interests brought me the surprise supreme of my oriental wanderings. at the corner of the maidan, where the tramway swings round towards the harbor, a gang of coolies was repairing the roadway. that, in itself, was no cause for wonder. but among the workmen, dressed like the others in a ragged loin-cloth, swinging his rammer as stolidly, gazing as abjectly at the ground as his companions, was a white man! there could be no doubt of it. under the tan of an indian sun his skin was as fair as a norseman’s, his shock of unkempt hair was a fiery red, and his eyes were blue! but a white man ramming macadam! a sahib so unmindful of his high origin as to join the ranks of the most miserable, the most debased, the most abhorred of human creatures! to become a sudra and ram macadam in the public streets, dressed in a clout! here was the final, lasciate ogni speranza end. a terror came upon me, a longing to flee while yet there was time, from the blighted land in which a man of my own flesh and blood could fall to this.
again and again my rounds of the city brought me back to the corner of the maidan. the renegade toiled stolidly on, bending dejectedly over his task, never raising his head to glance at the passing throng. twice i was moved to alight and speak, to learn his dreadful story, but the car had rumbled on before i gathered courage. leaving the broker’s office as twilight fell, i passed that way again. a babu loitering on the curb drew me into conversation and i put a question to him.
“what! that?” he said, following the direction of my finger. “why, that’s a hindu albino.”
i turned away to an eating-shop, the proprietor of which had long since alienated his fellow-countrymen by professing conversion to christianity, and sat down for supper. it was the official “bums’ retreat” of madras. a half-dozen white wanderers were gathered. i looked for marten among them; but he had found pleasure, evidently, in the company of his chocolate-colored cousins, and when the last yarn was spun he had not put in an appearance. i stepped out again into the night to find a lodging.
had i imagined that i alone, of all madras, was planning to sleep 312beneath the stars, i should have been doomed to disappointment. for an hour i roamed the city, seeking a bit of open space. if there was a passageway or a platband too small to accommodate a coolie or a street urchin, it was occupied by a mongrel cur. the night was black. there was danger of running upon some huddled family in the darkness, and the pollution of touch might prove mutual. i left the close-packed town behind and struck off across the maidan. here was room and to spare; but the law forbade, and if officers did not enforce the ordinance, sneak thieves did—hindu thieves who can travel on their bellies faster than an honest man can walk, making less noise than the gentle southern breeze, and steal the teeth from a sleeper’s mouth and the eyes from under his lids ere he wakes. i kept on, stumbling over a knoll now and then, falling flat in a dry ditch, and fetching up against a fence. groping along it, i came upon the highway that leads southward along the shore of the sea. a furlong beyond was a grove of high trees, with wide-spreading branches, like the pine; and beneath them soft beach sand. i halted there. a landward breeze had tempered the oppressive heat; the boughs above whispered hoarsely together. at regular intervals through the night, the sepulchral voice of the bay of bengal spoke faintly across the barren strand.
when i awoke, it was broad daylight, and sunday. the day of rest brings small change to the teeming hordes of india, but conductors and inspectors were permitted to whisper together unobserved, and i took advantage of the holiday to put my wardrobe in the hands of a dhoby. a dhoby, in any language but hindustanee, is a laundryman. but the word fails dismally as a translation. within those two syllables lurks a volume of meaning to the sahib who has dwelt in the land of india. the editors of anglo-indian newspapers, who may only write and endure, are undecided whether to style him a fiend or a raving maniac. youthful philosophers and poets, grown eloquent under the inspiration of a newly returned basket, fill more columns than the reporter of the viceroy’s council.
for the dhoby is a man of energy. high above his head, like a flail, he swings each streaming garment and brings it down on his flat stone as if his principal desire in life were to split it to bits. not once, but as long as strength endures, and when he can swing no more he flings down the tog and jumps fiendishly upon it. his bare feet tread a wild terpsichorean orgie, and when he can dance no longer he falls upon the unoffending rag and tugs and strains and twists and 313pulls, as though determined that it shall come to be washed no more. flying buttons are his glee. if he can reduce the garment to the component parts in which the maker cut it, his joy is complete. when the power to beat and tramp and tug fails him, he tosses the shreds disdainfully into the stream or cistern and attacks the wardrobe of another helpless client. yet he is strictly honest. at nightfall he bears back to its owner the dirt he carried away, and the threads that hold it together. when all other words of vituperation seem weak and insipid, the anglo-indian calls his enemy a dhoby.
the cook of the rendezvous offered, for three annas, to wash all that i owned, save my shoes and the inner workings of my pith helmet. in a more commonplace land the possessor of a single suit would have been bedridden until the task was done. but not in india. a large handkerchief was ample attire within the “bums’ retreat.” the beachcombers gathered in the dining-room saw in the costume cause for envy, not ridicule; for few could boast of as much when wash-day came for them, and the hours that might have been spent under sheets and blankets in a sterner clime passed quickly in the writing of letters.
from the back yard, for a time, came the shrieks of maltreated garments. then all fell silent. in fear and trembling, i ventured forth to take inventory of my indispensable raiment. but as a dhoby the cook was a bungler. there were a few rents in the gear arrayed on the eaves gutter, a button was missing here and there, and there was no evidence of snowy whiteness. but every garment could still be easily identified, and an hour with a ship’s needle, when the blazing sun had done its work, sufficed to heal the wounds, though not the scars, of combat.
not a word of haywood had reached me since the police station had swallowed him up. evidently he was still forcibly separated from society; but had he escaped with a light sentence or fallen victim to “five years of the lock-step?” when my monday report had been filed, i set out to find the answer to that question. such cases, they told me, were tried at a court in a distant section of the city. its officials knew nothing of the new yorker however, and i tramped to the suburban station where the “crime” had been committed. inquiry seemed futile. the vendor was there, as blithesome as ever, and his bananas were hoary with age, but the fourteen words of hindustanee i had picked up were those he did not know. the policeman on the 314platform had heard some discussion of the case, but had no definite information to offer. then came the relief squad, and the officer who had made the arrest directed me to another distant court.
there were several buildings of judicial aspect scattered over the great campus, but they were closed for the night. the door of a hut, such as servants dwell in, stood ajar, and i entered. a high-caste native was gathering together books and papers from the desk of a miniature court room. i made known my errand.
“haywood?” answered the hindu, “ah! yes, i know about him. i know all about him, for he was tried before me.”
the new yorker had swallowed his pride, indeed, to consent to being tried by a “nigger” rather than to come into contact with white officers.
“and what did you hand him?” i ventured.
the justice, striving to appear at ease in a pompous dignity that was as much too large for him as the enormous blue and white turban that bellied out above his thin face like an un-reefed mainsail in a stiff breeze, chose a ledger from the desk and turned over the leaves.
“ah, here it is,” he exclaimed, pointing out an entry; “richard haywood, englishman. charge, assault. found in his possession, four annas, three pice, one pocketknife, one pipe, three cigarettes, two buttons.” they were nothing if not exact, but they had overlooked one of the uses of the bands on pith helmets. “plea, guilty. sentence, five rupees fine. prisoner alleging indigence, sentence was changed to one week in the presidency jail.”
“suppose i pay his fine?” i asked. “will he be released at once?”
“yes, but the case has passed out of my jurisdiction. you must pay it to the warden.”
no sojourner in madras need make inquiry for the great white building that houses her felons. i reached it in time to find the massive gate still unlocked and gained admittance to the warden’s office. he denied my request for an interview with haywood, however, on the ground that prisoners for so brief a period were not allowed visitors. i opened my mouth to mention the fine, then stopped. perhaps the new yorker had some secret reason for choosing to swelter seven days in an indian prison. if he was anxious to be free, he had only to take down his hat and, like the magician, produce from it the money that would set him at liberty. i resolved to run no risk of upsetting subtle plans, and turned back into the city.
two days later, the broker confided to me the sad news that i 315had been “spotted.” marten, who had joined me in the grove lodging, the night before, proposed to apply at once to the secretary of the friend-in-need society for a ticket northward. eager to investigate the home which the society operates in madras, i accompanied him. the secretary was an english magistrate who held court in a building facing the harbor. the court room was crowded to suffocation. while we waited for the native policeman to return with an answer to our note i caught enough of the interpreter’s words to learn that the perspiring briton under the punkahs was weighing the momentous question of the damages due a shopkeeper for temporary loss of caste.
the attaché, after long absence, brought the information that the trial was at its climax and that he dared not disturb proceedings. but marten, familiar with the “ropes” of official india, snorted in disgust and led the way down a passage that brought us to an anteroom behind the judgment seat. beckoning to me to follow, he pushed aside the officers who would have barred our progress, and marched boldly into the court room, halting before the stenographer’s table. i anticipated immediate imprisonment for contempt of court; but the magistrate, eager, as who would not have been, for a moment’s relief from native hair-splitting, signed to the interpreter to stay the case, and, sliding down in his da?s until he was all but lying on his back, bade us step up beside him. marten, who had transferred to calcutta the phantom ship he was pursuing, applied for a through ticket; i, for admission to the society home.
“i’ll give you both a chit to the manager for to-night,” said the justice, when we had spun our yarns. “the home is rather overcrowded, but we always try to find a place for englishmen, even if we can’t accommodate all the germans, italians, and turks that turn up.”
“but we’re not englishmen,” i put in.
“nonsense,” yawned the judge. “when i say englishmen of course i include americans, but as to you”—he turned to marten—“i can’t give you a ticket to calcutta. that’s more than a thousand miles. i’ll have the manager ship you to vizagapatam in the morning. that is half way, and the commissioner there will send you on.”
he made out the notes and we departed. as we passed the street entrance, the corpulent babu was again pouring forth the woes of the polluted plaintiff.
but for a sign over the entrance, the home might have been taken for the estate of an english gentleman of modest income. the grounds were extensive and well-wooded. the gate was guarded by a 316lodge, beyond which the home itself, a low, rambling bungalow, peeped through the trees. a score of vagabonds, burned brown in face and garb, loitered in the shade along the curb. half were eurasians. there is no more irreclaimable vagrant under the sun’s rays than the tropical half-breed when once he joins the fraternity of the great unwashed. reputation or personal appearance are to him matters of utter indifference. a threadbare jacket and trousers—sad commentaries of the willfulness of the dhoby—mark his social superiority to the coolie; but he goes barefooted by choice, often bareheaded, and in his abhorrence of unnecessary activity is as truly a hindu as his maternal ancestor. like the native, too, he is indifferent to bodily affliction—so it bring no pain—and laughs at encroaching disease as though he shared with the brahmin the conviction that his present form is only one of hundreds that he will inhabit.
at our arrival a youth of this class was entertaining the assembled wanderers with a spicy tale. his language was the lazy, half-enunciated english of the tropical hybrid, and he chuckled with glee as often as his companions. yet he was a victim of the dread “elephantiasis” so common among natives. his left foot and leg below the knee were swollen to four times their natural size, and to accommodate the abnormal limb his trouser leg was split to the thigh. as the gate opened, he rose and dragged his incurable affliction with him, leaving in the sand footprints like the nest of a mongrel cur.
the manager was a bullet-headed irishman, chosen, like many another, for his knowledge of the wily ways of the vagrant, gleaned in many a year “on the road.” the home, though more ambitious in its scope, resembled the asile rudolph of cairo. the meals, consisting of native food, were served in the same generous portions, and the cots, in spite of the unconventional habits of the inmates, were as scrupulously clean. adjoining the quarters of the transient guests, the society provided a permanent home for aged and crippled beachcombers. we sat late under the veranda, listening to strange tales of the road of earlier days from a score of old cronies who quarreled for a pinch of tobacco and wept when their words were discredited. sad fate, indeed, for those who, in the years of their strength and inspiration, had made the world their playground, to be sentenced thus to end their days in the meager bit of space to which sightless eyes or paralyzed limbs confined them, while they wandered on in spirit over boundless seas and trackless land.
early the next morning the manager led the way to the beach station 317and, having supplied marten with a ticket to vizagapatam and a day’s “batter,” bade us bon voyage. the journey was long; it might also have been uneventful but for my companion’s incorrigible longing to annoy his fellow-beings. the weak point in marten’s make-up was his head. years before, during his days before the mast, he had gone ashore in a disreputable port after paying off from a voyage of several months’ duration and, overladen with good cheer, had been so successfully sand-bagged that he not only lost his earnings but emerged from the encounter with a broken head. at the hospital it was found necessary to trepan his skull. but the metal plate had proved a poor substitute for sound bone; and the ex-pearl-fisher was wont to warn every new acquaintance to beware “horse-play,” as a blow on the head might result in serious injury.
the favorite occupation of the hindu on his travels is sleeping. if there is an alien voyager in his compartment he sits stiffly in his place, on guard against a loss of caste. when his companions are all of his own class, he stretches out on his back and slumbers, open-mouthed, like a dead fish. but the benches are short. the native, therefore, seeks relief by sticking his feet out the window. an indian train bristles from engine to guard-van with bare, brown legs that give it the aspect of a battery of small guns.
our express had halted, late in the afternoon, on a switch beside a train southward bound. marten, chancing to have a straw in his possession, leaned out of the window and fell to tickling the soles of a pair of protruding feet. their owner was a sound sleeper. for several moments he did not stir. as our train started, he awoke suddenly and sprang up with so startling a whoop that my companion recoiled in surprise and struck his head sharply on the top of the window.
the native was quickly avenged. for a moment his tormentor clung to the casement, straining in every limb, then fell to the floor, writhing in agony. plainly he had lost consciousness, but he thrashed about the compartment like a captive boa constrictor, twisting body and limbs in racking contortions, and foaming at the mouth until his ashy face was covered with spume, and dirt from the floor. his strength was supernatural. to attempt to control him was useless,—forbidden, in fact, on the day that he had warned me of his injury. i took refuge on one of the benches to escape his convulsions.
the express sped on in the falling darkness. the next station was far distant. before me rose a vision of myself surrounded by stern officials and attempting in vain to explain the presence of a corpse in 318my compartment. foolhardy, indeed, had i been to choose such a companion.
for a long hour his fit continued. then the contortions of his body diminished little by little; his arms and legs twitched spasmodically in lessening jerks; his eyes, glassy and bloodshot, opened for a moment, closed again, and he lay still. through the interminable night he stretched prone on the floor, motionless as a cadaver. when morning broke in the east he sat up suddenly with a jest on his lips and none the worse, apparently, for his ravings. but his memory retained no record of occurrences from the moment when the wild shout of the hindu had sounded in his ears three hundred miles away.
an hour later we were purchasing sweetmeats in the bazaars of vizagapatam. the flat, sun-baked fields of southern india had been left behind. the surrounding country was hilly and verdant; to the eastward stretched the blue bay of bengal. in the offing a ship lay at anchor. naked coolies, bent double under bales and bundles, waded waist-deep into the sea and cast their burdens into a lighter. adjoining the bazaars, a sudra village of inhabited haycocks huddled together in a valley. before the huts men, women, and children crouched on their haunches in the dust, their cadaverous knees on a level with their sunken eyes, their fleshless talons clawing at scraps of half-putrid food. now and again they snarled at each other. more often they stared away as vacantly as ruminating animals at the vista of squalor beyond. beside the village rose a barren rock, monument to the medley of religions that inflict india. on its summit, within a space of little more than an acre, commanding an outlook far out over the sea, stood a brahmin temple, a mohammedan mosque, and a christian church, each reached by its own stairway cut in the perpendicular face of the rock.
several miles separated the sudra village from the government buildings. on the way native policemen and soldiers drew up at attention and saluted as we passed. an entire squad, loitering before the central station, fell quickly into ranks and stood stiffly at present-arms as long as we remained in sight. in this english-governed land, the native sees in every sahib a possible superior officer to whom it is safest to be deferential.
we reached in due time the commissioner’s office. his only representative in the deserted bureaus was an emaciated punkah-wallah, turned watchman, who bowed his head in the dust before the door as marten addressed him.
319“nay, sahibs,” he murmured, “the commissioner sahib and the little commissioners are absent, protectors of the miserable. to-day is the brahmin new year”—it was april thirteenth—“oh, charitable one, and a holiday. the sahibs may come to-morrow. but nay! to-morrow is a feast of the mohammedans and a holiday also.”
“and the next day is sunday,” i put in, when marten had interpreted.
“the commissioner’s bungalow?” he demanded.
“in the forest beyond the hills,” murmured the coolie, pointing northward. “two cigarettes distant, oh, greatest of sahibs.”
to the grief of many a peregrinating beachcomber, the “appearances” of the british governors of india are as rare as those of world-famed tenors. we continued along a shimmering highway, winding among trees, the dense shadows of which gave our eyes occasional relief, and a mile beyond found the commissioner at home. marten gained a hearing and emerged with a note to the assistant commissioner. once entangled in the meshes of oriental red-tape, there was no escape; and from midday till late afternoon we raced back and forth through the streets and byways of vizagapatam, and routed out no fewer than twelve hindu officials from their holiday siestas. even then my companion won a ticket only halfway to the city on the hoogly.
we caught the night express and reached berhampore next morning. at his bungalow, a youthful commissioner was so moved by marten’s account of the loss of his phantom ship—the story had lost nothing in frequent repetitions—that he waived all legal formalities and gave him an order on the station master for a ticket to his destination. had he followed the movements of the abandoned seaman for the rest of the day he might have listened skeptically to the tale of the next wanderer to seek his assistance.
on the shores of the bay of bengal, some two hundred miles south of the capital and a day’s tramp from the main line, lies puri, the city of juggernaut. i should have visited it alone had not marten, utterly indifferent to the suspense of his grieving shipmates, insisted on accompanying me.
we alighted at khurda road and purchased tickets to the sacred city at a price that could scarcely have covered the cost of printing. a train of unusual length for a branch line was already so densely packed with pilgrims that those who tumbled out of the compartment which the station master chose to assign us were in imminent danger 320of being left behind. iron-voiced vendors danced about the platform. their wares were the usual greasy sweets, doughy bread-sheets and curried potatoes that had been our fare for long days past. but this was “holy food,” prepared by the priests of the hallowed city; for the hindu on his pilgrimages to a sacred shrine may not eat of worldly viands. for all that the hawkers sold to us gladly, not abating, however, by a copper, the exorbitant prices to which their monopoly and the superstitions of their regular customers entitled them.
night was falling when we descended at puri. the station, as part of a system abhorred of the gods of hind, stood in the open country, a full two miles from the sacred city. not even the inhabitants of benares are more fanatical than those of puri. natives coming upon us in the darkness along the road of sacrifice sprang aside in terror, and shrieked a long-drawn “sahib hai!” to warn others to beware our polluting touch. in the bazaars, many a merchant cried out in anger when we approached his tumble-down shop; and only with much wheedling could we draw one of them forth into the street to sell us sweetmeats and fruits. half the shacks were devoted to the sale of dude, which is to say, milk—of bullocks and goats, of course, for the udders of the sacred cow may not be violated. we paused at one to purchase. a vicious-faced youth took our pice gingerly and filled two vessels much like flowerpots. i emptied my own and stepped forward to replace it on the worm-eaten board that served as counter. the youth sprang at me with a scream of rage and fear, and, before the pot had touched the counter, marten knocked it out of my hand and shattered it to bits on the cobblestones, then smashed his own beside it. the two pice i had paid for the milk included the price of the vessel, great quantities of which are made of the red clay of neighboring pits. the crash of pottery that startled the silence of the night at frequent intervals were signs, not of some sad accident, as i had supposed, but that a drinker had finished his dude. the miserable, uneven streets were paved in fragments of broken pots.
there was not a native hut in puri that we could enter, much less sleep in, and, our evening meal finished en marche, we returned to the station and asked permission of the eurasian agent to occupy two of the wicker chairs in the waiting-room. he refused, not only because it was against the rules, which didn’t matter, but because he was sure to be found out if he disobeyed them. he knew of better quarters, however, and directed us accordingly. we stumbled off through the railway yards and came upon the first-class coach he had mentioned, on a deserted side track. it was the best “hotel” of our indian trip. the car was built on the lines of the american pullman, with great couches upholstered in soft leather. there were burnished lamps that we could light with impunity when the heavy curtains had been drawn, several large mirrors, and running water. small wonder if we slept late next morning and found it necessary to reconnoiter a bit, for the sake of the station master’s reputation, before making our exit.
the great road of puri, over which the massive juggernaut car is drawn once a year
321the inventive genius of the hindu has bedecked the dwelling of god juggernaut with that extravagance of barbaric splendor beloved of the oriental. admittance is denied the sahib, but without is much to be seen. the temple rises in seven domes, one above each of four stone stairways deep-worn by centuries of pilgrim feet and knees, and three within the crumbling, time-eaten wall. they are domes, though, only in general outline. the hindu strives for bizarre effects in his architecture; he dreads, above all, plain surfaces. the smaller domes rise en perron like the terraced vineyards of the alps, the steps half hidden under glittering ornamentations,—hideous-faced gods of many arms, repulsive distortions of sacred animals, haggard, misshapen gargoyles. above them towers juggernaut’s throne room, resembling a cucumber stood on end and suggesting that its builder, starting with the dome as his original conception, was loath to bring his creation to completion, and pushed his walls onward and upward to a dizzy height, to end at last abruptly in a flat cupola. mayhap his despotic master had doomed him to that fate which has so often befallen successful architects in the orient, of losing his hands when his masterpiece was completed.
everywhere the temple bears witness to the ravages of time. the splendors of earlier days are faded and crumbling; there hovers over all not so much an air of neglect as of the inability of these groveling, british-ruled descendants of the talented creators to arrest the decay, an acknowledgment that the days of such constructions and the hindus of such days are passé.
pilgrims swarm in puri at all seasons. our way through the narrow streets was often barred by shrieking processions; a hundred pious families had pitched their tents at the edge of the great road. but it is in the month of july, when the bloodthirsty god makes his annual excursion to a smaller temple two miles distant, that untold multitudes pour in upon the wretched hamlet. the car, weighing many tons, is set up outside the temple, and juggernaut, amid the clamor of barbaric rites, is placed on his throne therein. hordes of natives eager to 322“acquire merit” surge round the chariot, screaming and struggling in the frenzy of fanaticism for a place at the long ropes, and, to the accompaniment of weird incantations, the procession starts. the great road, scene in bygone centuries of uncounted human sacrifices, stretches away straight and level to the smaller temple. it is the most generous roadway in india, fully a furlong wide, in reality a great plain, covered with withered grass where the tramp of many feet has not worn it bare. a thousand naked bodies, burnished by the blazing sunlight, strain like demons at the ropes. as one falls, a hundred others surge forward to fight for his place. the aged peasant to whom this pilgrimage has dissipated the meager earnings of a lifetime, returns to his native village with inner assurance of the favor of the gods in his next existence if he can force his way through the rabble for one weak tug.
but the ponderous car moves slowly. a scanty rice diet is not conducive to great physical strength, and the massive wheels cut deep into the sandy plain. the ruts of the last journey, made nine months before, were by no means obliterated at the time of our visit. short as is the distance between the two temples, the passing oftentimes endures a week; and the struggle for places decreases day by day as those who have performed their act of devotion turn homeward. the last fanatics drop out one by one. the ropes lose their tautness and sag of their own weight. a scanty remnant of the multitude gives a few “dry pulls”; and the grim-visaged god completes his journey behind bands of coolies hired for the occasion.
they sacrifice no more to juggernaut. john bull has scowled on the custom. but the american superintendent of the mission hospital among the trees at the roadside bore witness that the insatiate monster has still a goodly quota of victims; for annually the plague breaks out among the superstitious, devitalized pilgrims and leaves hundreds to die on the flat, sandy coast like fish tossed ashore.
he who has journeyed through this strange land will be slow ever after to look upon animals as devoid of intelligence and the power to reason. encircling the temple, we chanced upon one of her sacred bulls setting forth on his morning rounds through the thatch-roofed bazaars that make up the town of puri. he was a sleek, plump beast, with short, stumpy horns and a hump, as harmless, apparently, as a child’s pet poodle. we kept him company, for, strange to say, the fanatics, who had all but mobbed us for setting foot on the flagging before a temple gate, offered no protest when we petted this most reverenced of animals. he was too near the gods no doubt to be polluted even by a sahib touch.
the main entrance to juggernaut’s temple in puri. i was mobbed for stepping on the flagging around the column
323setting a course for the nearest shop, he advanced with dignified tread, shouldering his way through the multitude, pushing aside all who stood in his path, not rudely, but firmly, something almost human in his manner, of waywardness, self-complacency, and arrogance. the impoverished descendants of an ancient house would have marched with that stately air of superiority, the son of a nouveau riche with that attitude of primary proprietorship in the world and its goods. native reverence for the animal was little short of disgusting. pilgrims prostrated themselves before him; hawkers stepped aside with muttered prayers; scores of women fell on their knees and elbows in the teeming streets, bowed their heads low in the dust, and ran to kiss his flanks.
marching boldly up to the first booth, the bull chose a morsel of green stuff from the inclined platform, and, chewing it leisurely after the manner of an epicure, strolled on to the next stall. in the days of his novitiate, ’tis said, the sacred calf eats his fill of the first food he comes upon. a few weeks of experience, however, make him discriminating in his tastes. through the long rows of shops the beast levied on all, stopping longest where the supplies were freshest, and awaking a mild protest from the keeper. it was only a protest, however; taking the form of a chanted prayer. for how may the hindu know that the soul of his grandfather does not look out through those bovine eyes! at any rate, he acquires merit for every leaf and stock that he loses. now and again, marten interpreted a rogation.
“hast thou not always had thy fill, oh, holy one!” prayed the native, rocking his body back and forth in time to his chant, “i would willingly feed thee. hast thou not always found welcome at my shop? but i am a poor man, o king of sacred beasts. i pray thee, therefore, take of the goods of my neighbor, who is the possessor of great wealth. for my poverty is extreme, and if thou dost not desist, to-morrow may i not be here to feed thee.”
as if in answer to the prayer, the animal moved on to the booth of the neighbor, who bore no outward sign, at least, of the great wealth that had been charged against him. his stock was fresh, however, and the bull ate generously in spite of the keeper’s incantation. a second and a third time the prayer was repeated, but to no effect. then the hindu, picking up the joint of a bamboo, murmured the prayer into it.
324“thou canst not hear the prayer of a poor man, o sacred one, through thy ears,” wailed the merchant. “listen then to this petition,” and, rising in his place, he struck the animal sharply over the nose with the bamboo. the bull turned a reproachful gaze on the violator of his sanctity, looked sorrowfully at him for a moment through half-closed eyelids, and strolled slowly away.
conspicuous among the swarming thousands of puri are the widows. with the death of her husband the hindu woman must shave her head and dress in a snow-white sheet that clings closely about her as she walks. under no circumstances may she marry again nor lay aside the garb that announces her bereavement. more often than not her departed spouse has left her unprovided with this world’s goods, and in india the woman’s means of earning a livelihood are—well, painfully limited. under a humane british rule the widow’s fate is less cruel than in the days when she mounted the funeral pyre with her dead, perhaps; but it is certainly no less humiliating. the uninformed sahib would seem justified in supposing that the chief interest of the indian wife is the preservation of her husband’s health.
the hindu woman of the masses enjoys an almost occidental freedom from seclusion. compared with the coarse females of mohammedan lands, she is modest, almost dainty—pretty, too, in her younger days, for all her color. but age comes early, and with the increase of wrinkles and barbaric jewelry her charms fade. her costume is more ample than that of the singhalese,—a single strip of cloth of ten or twelve yards wound round her body from neck to ankles, leaving only arms and left shoulder bare. lithe and supple by nature, her every movement might be graceful were it not the custom of her husband, dreading the tax collector, to load her down with his surplus wealth. as a girl she is bedecked with gaudy trinkets before her costume has advanced beyond the fig-leaf stage; as a matron, her passing sounds like a junk-shop in the grasp of a cyclone. it is no unusual experience to meet a female wearing rings on every finger and toe; bracelets on both arms from wrists to elbows; rings in the top, side, and lobe of each ear; and three nose-rings, one of which, some two inches in diameter, pierces the left nostril and swings back and forth against the cheek of the wearer. what a throb of joy must come to the husband who presses so precious a wife to his bosom! but on the other hand, as once i caught marten musing to himself, “suppose she flew de coop?”
“suttee” having been forbidden by their english rulers, hindu widows must now shave their heads, dress in white, and gain their livelihood as best they can
a seller of the wood with which the bodies of hindus are burned on the banks of the ganges. very despised caste.
the term “old maid” has no synonym in hindustanee, and needed 325none until the first female missionary invaded the peninsula. bachelors, too, are rare. there chanced to fall into my hands an anglo-indian sheet wherein was propounded this enigma over the signature of “a puzzled babu.”
“why,” demanded the puzzled one, after the usual incomprehensible introduction necessary to prove his knowledge of the sahib tongue, “is the englishman living many times without a wife? if the hindu is more than very young and has not yet married himself he is contemplated wicked and unclean. i am reading that in all the white man countries there live more women than the men are. why has not every sahib taken one for his wife?”
why not, indeed?
marten had begun to display an arrogant author’s pride in the tale that had carried him so rapidly northward. several times he had gone out of his way in puri to tell some eurasian or babu the sad story of his marooning, and, as afternoon crept on, he resolved to repeat it once more for the entertainment of the commissioner of the district.
“but,” i protested, “you have a ticket to calcutta. you can’t use two!”
“right,” he answered, “but it’s about six cigarettes from the commish’s bungalow to the station, and he may come up with the dibs without sending a nigger so far to buy the pasteboard. if he don’t loosen we’ll have to fix it up with the station master.”
the commissioner had fled to the hills and his deputy was a native; a strange one, though, for he not only acceded to the request of the stranded seaman for a through ticket, but actually and visibly hurried to complete the necessary formalities before the departure of the daily train. he did not “come up with the dibs,” however, nor would the station master buy back the ticket which a government clerk purchased for my companion. but there was some gain in the man?uvre; for upon his arrival in calcutta the railway officials very kindly refunded to marten some four rupees on the unused portion of the ticket from berhampore.
an express similar to that from which we had alighted twenty-four hours before rumbled into khurda road soon after we reached the main line. we strolled along the platform and pulled open the door of the european compartment—and fell back in astonishment. a familiar topee with bulging hatband swung from a peg near the ceiling. on a bench beneath, reposed the bundle which i had once lugged 326across the maidan of madras, and beside it sat haywood! for some cause unknown he had been released at the end of six days’ imprisonment and had lost no time in taking the north-bound express—without a ticket.
his joy at the reunion exceeded our own. marten grumbled under his breath at the fate that kept us in such baneful company, and, though he did not hesitate to invent fanciful tales to explain to querulous collectors the presence of three tropical helmets when only two travelers were visible, he said nothing of the extra ticket in his hatband. several times during the night haywood found it expedient to drop out the further door for a stroll in the darkness, but he escaped detection and, as the day dawned, alighted with us at the howrah terminal. he had “held down” the same train without paying an anna of fare, for 1,032 miles!
the pontoon bridge connecting howrah with calcutta was alive with coolies tramping from their wretched hovels on the western bank to a day of toil in the city. a multitude of natives disported in the muddy waters of the hoogly before a sacred bathing ghat. below the bridge scores of ships lay at anchor, native sampans and barges inveigled their way among them, from the docks came the rattle of steam cranes and the shrill chatter of stevedores at their labor. here, at last, was a real city, with all its familiar roar and bustle. my companions departed to visit a missionary notorious for his friendliness to beachcombers, and i plunged at random into the stream of humanity that surged through the dusty streets.