Chapter XI: What Befell Kirke After His Escape

Kirke had hurried away from Moulmein as fast as he could walk. He knew that he must make his way northward but there all his knowledge ceased.

He had plenty of English gold with him, for he carried his money in a belt round his waist, and thus had saved it when he lost all else in his haste to leave the burning ship.

But though he had gold, he had nothing else, nor could he speak a word of the language.

So great was his desperation, however, that he cared nothing for this. He walked on and on, till he arrived at a small village, where, though it was in the middle of the night, the people were all out and about still.

Some girls were squatting behind a lamp blazing in an earthen vessel raised upon three pieces of bamboo. They were smoking--like everyone else--and selling sweetmeats and rice.

Kirke made signs that he wished to buy some, and offered a George IV. coin.

The girls stared at him and his money, jabbered together, and shook their heads. He did not understand them; but, supposing that they made some mistake as to the value of the coin, not recognising it as gold, produced another piece. He was naturally reckless of money, and now wanted food, and silver change with which to proceed on his way.

The girls laughed, nodded, took the second coin, which had the Queen's head on it, and gave him Indian silver change in profusion for it, besides rice in a red bowl, fruit, and sweetmeats, for which they reserved a small amount; but they would not have the coin with the man's head.

Kirke could not comprehend their objection to it, which really was their idea that only "woman coins" fructify and increase, but he was satisfied with the result of his shopping, and proceeded on his way.

His road seemed to lie between a chain of villages; and, fearful of being overtaken upon it, where he would be so easily recognised and caught, he turned off towards the coast again, soon coming to a stream, across which a man in a canoe took him.

The sun was now high, and he tried to find a place where he might lie down and sleep. With some difficulty he made the boatman understand what he wanted, and take him to a hut, where they spread a mat for him with a rug, and he took a long rest.

He could purchase nothing except rice and fruit upon awaking, but the owner of the hut offered oil and salt with the former, and some unutterable abomination of putrid fish, which he called "ngapé," and which he seemed surprised to find rejected with disgust.

When the heat of the day was over, his host offered milk and more rice, from which Kirke made a second meal. He would have liked stronger liquor, but could not make himself understood. He then obtained a seat in a native bullock-cart, neither knowing nor caring where it was going, so that it was still northwards, and not to any English station.

So he wandered for some days, aimlessly and drearily, with no object before him, no one to speak to, no settled plan of action. By degrees he became used to this existence; youth restored his energies, he became less afraid of pursuit, learnt a few Burmese words, and liked this life so full of new sights and sounds. He came to a large river, the course of which he followed upwards for several days, for the rapids in it caused all the people to shake their heads when he tried to get ferried across.

He succeeded at last, and congratulated himself now upon being safe, but here his luck deserted him.

He found that there was gold to be got in this place; and from the contemptuous air with which the people turned over his coin, and the few flat flakes which they showed him in return, chiefly worn as amulets, he gathered that their gold was considered much purer than his, but he did not seem able to find any of it for himself.

The people also evidently endeavoured to dissuade him from wandering about alone, making him understand that there was danger from wild beasts in so doing. This was a hindrance which had never before occurred to him, but was a very sufficient obstacle.

The weather was extremely sultry now, and there had been several violent thunderstorms. The place was mountainous, and the valleys between the hills grew very wet. To his surprise the ground never seemed to dry up; though after a tremendous storm, when the sun blazed out again, it positively steamed, as a pot of water might steam over a fire.

The storms became more frequent, the deluges of rain heavier and more constant, the valleys fuller and fuller of water. All wandering was at an end perforce, except in canoes. The people expressed no surprise, they appeared to be prepared for such a state of things. They all had boats of some kind or other; old and young, men and women, were evidently familiar with their management. The huts were raised upon piles, in some places twelve feet high; even their bullocks and other live stock were stabled aloft, and the stench from their close accommodation was all but insufferable.

The children fished through holes in the floors of the huts; every foul refuse was simply upset through them; all objects were damp and ill-smelling.

The poor people were very hospitable and kind. They gave Kirke of their best, charging him incredibly small sums for his keep. There was no getting away until the floods abated, but life under such unhealthy conditions was what none but a native could withstand; and in spite of incessantly smoking, as they did, Kirke had not been two months in the village where the rains had surprised him, before he was down in a raging fever.

There he lay, in that secluded Burmese village, struggling between life and death for a long time. His constitution had been severely tried by his early excesses, and had he not passed some months upon enforced abstinence from alcohol on board the poor _Pelican of the North_, so that he had, in some measure, been restored to a more healthy state of body, it is doubtful whether it would have been possible for him to have fought through the terrible fever, which had been induced by hardship and exposure to malaria.

His chief chance of life lay in the continuance of the impossibility of obtaining stimulants where he was. The Burmese are a water drinking race; and although they do distil a pernicious fiery liquor from rice, it is not much used, or easily procured, in such out-of-the-way places as those into which he had wandered.

Medical science is very imperfectly understood among this people; and when his host fetched a native doctor for the sick stranger, he brought with him such strange-looking compounds in gaily-painted joints of bamboo canes, that Kirke could not bring himself to trust them any more than the charms, in which the village Galen evidently possessed more faith himself. Perhaps this was well for him, but he was brought to the verge of the grave before the constantly recurring attacks of ague and fever gradually subsided. And oh, how lonely he felt as he lay on his bed of sickness now!

God seemed to have forsaken him; left him to his own stubborn, hard heart, and allowed him to take his own way.

But not in reality. Lonely, suffering, weak, with no one to speak to, none to care for him, none to help him, his hour had come at last. Broken in spirit, he repented his evil courses, he sought his God in prayer, and his Father did not despise his humble and contrite heart.

Exhausted by the struggle through the morning's rigor which attended his complaint, he lay prone one day, in what was half sleep, half unconsciousness, on his mat.

A pleasant breeze had sprung up, which rustled the branches of the trees, and wafted towards him the scent of flowers, overpowering that of rotting vegetation which always seemed to pervade everything. It brought with it also the gentle tinkle of bells from a pagoda upon a rising ground in this valley. In his half awake state, he fancied he smelt the Gloire de Dijon roses that grew round the drawing-room bay window in his father's rectory, and heard the church bells ringing afar off, calling the villagers to the Sabbath service.

He remembered how, as a little child, he had been led by his gentle mother's hand through the pleasant garden and shrubbery, to the gate which opened thence into the churchyard heaped with grassy mounds. Among them was a little white marble cross, over the grave of his baby sister who had died. His mother stayed her feet at this place, and laid before it the pure white rosebud which she had plucked as they went over the lawn. A tear ran down her cheek as she did so.

"Jamie," said she, "little Leonora would have been five years old to-day if God had spared her to us. Oh, my dear little girl, my dear little lost one!"

His father had come up to them. "Not lost, wifey," said he,--"not lost, but gone before."

Why did he recall all this now, when he had never thought about the scene for so long. His mother had gone before too, ten years ago. He had despised his father's simple piety because he was not intellectual. He had scoffed at his attempts to teach him, scorned his affectionate nature, neglected him for pleasures and friends which had brought him to this.

What had he done with his stronger mind, his superior talents? His father was beloved, respected, a welcome visitor beside many a dying sinner's bed. He himself was a fugitive, an outcast, alone in the world.

Pondering these thoughts, he fell asleep, for he was very weak. His slumber was not lengthy, nor did he seem to have dreamed through it; but he started up from it suddenly, as at the call of a trumpet voice, shouting with triumph--

"Not lost, but found!"

Bewildered, confused, this voice seemed to him real. What did it mean?

All at once the barriers of pride gave way; there was no one to see him, and he turned his face to the wall, weeping bitterly.

A softer, better mood succeeded, and a stronger feeling of peace than he had felt for long. He determined to remain in this place until he was quite well; and did so, his health gradually returning to him.

Kirke's illness, and long residence among them, had been to these people as good as a wreck to the Cornish seaside population of old,--it had brought unusual prosperity to them. Small as their charges had appeared to him, they were really four times as high as the true value of the goods supplied to him had been to them. The simple villager was no simpleton when matters of trade and finance were in question; and, if they prayed at all, their petitions to Guadama, for years afterwards, would have been that the Lord of the White Elephant would be pleased to send them another sick stranger.

He had paid royally for the medicines in those red and yellow bamboo bottles, which the doctor had carried away again as full as he brought them. He had paid handsomely for the rice, the ngapé, the pickled tea which he could not eat, and over which his entertainers had enjoyed a high old time while their guest's butterfly soul was wandering about the world, at sport with other butterfly spirits, leaving its lawful owner unconscious upon his mat.

They were now reaping an abundant harvest, doubtless a part of the luck which their hospitality to the stranger had brought to them, and they were rich. They did not want to be rid of their invalid,--not they. No hospitality was more genuine than theirs.

If they could only conceal their riches from the knowledge of the dacoit chief,--who commanded his band of scoundrels from a neighbouring village among the hills at a little distance,--they might, should their treasure of a sick man recover,--and after all his money was spent, not before,--conduct him to the nearest English military station, and be paid all over again by the innocent white-faced Thakins there for their kindness to their countryman.

So the virtuous Burman sang and laughed over his work, in his simple _gaité du coeur_; and gathered the jungle flowers and fruit which cost him nothing at all, but which the Thakin would doubtless be so grateful to them for bringing to him.

And Kirke lay pondering as to what course he must pursue when he should recover.

In the first instance he must write to his father, confess his sense of the sins which he had committed, and ask pardon for his conduct.

But, after that, what? Would it be necessary to give himself up to English justice, and to permit the law to take its way with him for his attempt to lose the raft? That would be a very bitter pill to him,--must it be swallowed? At anyrate, moving was impossible at present, though he was recovering fast; that question must wait, but he could write to his father and keep the letter by him, waiting for some chance of sending it. He would be more at peace with himself were the confession made on paper, even were no one ever to read it. He would feel more in earnest as to his repentance.

Many days were spent over that letter, and it was a very pathetic one when finished, for it was simple and manly in its tone. In it he confessed his sorrow for his past life, and his hope that he might be spared to redeem it, in some measure, by his future career. "If I can," he wrote, "I would wish to get something to do here, rather than return home. I would like to prove to you that I can and will work hard at some honest employment before asking you to receive me into your presence again. I am recovering from a severe attack of jungle fever, and I cannot say where I shall go, or what I must do when I can move; but if you forgive me, please write to the Herfords' house in Rangoon, from whence I will endeavour to obtain letters as soon as may be. I hope that God will give me a fresh chance; but if I die, will you try to believe that I am truly sorry for the past."

He wrote and rewrote this letter, now fearing that it did not express enough humility and contrition, then dreading lest it should seem servile; but he completed it at last, and laid it carefully aside.