Chapter VII: Moulmein

Ralph was sitting, languid and feeble, in a long chair in front of the hospital, where he had lain ill for some weeks.

The hospital was a mile or two inland from Moulmein; a comfortable place, but Ralph was weary of it. Everything had a parched, burnt-up appearance; the little pagodas, to be seen on the surrounding hills, were all alike; the punkah was working, yet there seemed to be no air to breathe; nothing suggested freshness, or gave him a start towards recovery.

A grove of palm trees rose majestically on one hand, interspersed with tamarinds, and trees of strange form covered with brilliant flowers.

Along the road came a girl in native dress, carrying a huge basket of roses, on her way to sell them in the bazaar. She had the flowers of a white, purple-striped orchid nestled coquettishly in the coils of her hair; and was smoking a huge green cheroot.

Then a long procession of yellow-robed "phoongyees," or monks, came by; each clasping his lacquered begging-bowl, and staring before him into vacancy, with rapt concentration of thought.

An open carriage appeared. "Come along, Denham," cried Mr. Gilchrist from it, "the doctor orders a drive for you, and we will go out to the Battery Point, to see whether there is not a breath of air to be met with there."

"It will be very nice if there is," said Ralph; "this place is like a furnace. Is it always as hot as this here, Mr. Gilchrist?"

"Not always. The rains are at hand; after that it will be cooler."

They drove out to the Point, watching the native boats, light, square-sailed, fitted with thatched houses, rowed with great difficulty against the stream, by men standing, instead of sitting, to row.

They looked out over Washing Head Island, with its pagoda mounting guard over the Holy Well, whence, it is said, is drawn the water in which the king once a year cleanses his sacred head.

It was a pleasant evening, and Ralph felt its refreshment.

"I am very anxious," he said presently,--"I am very anxious to get quite well; for, unless I can get something to do, it will be 'up a tree' for me. I don't know how I am to pay all the expenses I am costing now, or to get a new outfit, or earn my living at all. I lie and fret dreadfully about this."

"You have not been yet in a fit state to bear much talking," replied Mr. Gilchrist, "or I would have relieved your mind. Your uncle wrote to me before he sailed for home, desiring me to let you want for nothing. Herford Brothers are disposed to be very liberal; and the captain's possessions, at least, were insured. Compensation will, I believe, be made to you; and there is little doubt but what this will take the form of a clerkship in the Rangoon house--a much better thing than the place you have lost. Your luck will be great if you get a berth in that house, for it is quite the first in the trade. But, Ralph, this must await letters from England. I also must await the replies from home, for all my scientific apparatus must be replaced there, and sent out to me; in the meantime the Rangoon house makes itself responsible for our expenses."

"It is very liberal of the Messrs. Herford," said Ralph. "I have no claim whatever on them."

"That I dispute," replied his friend. "You did your share of work for your passage, and did it so well and willingly that it quite entitled you to a claim upon them, for they made the agreement to let you go on those terms. You have suffered nobly; never a complaint whatever the hardships, for which you never bargained. You have lost everything you possess in their ship; and, besides all this, what can we not say of your attention to me, nursing me day and night, as you have done so kindly, and which was certainly not in the letter of your agreement. I am not ungrateful, my boy."

"You have been so kind to me, sir, teaching me, and all that. One would have been a brute to do less."

"Well, that is your way of putting it; mine is not exactly the same. But, Ralph, I am feeling better than I have done for years. This climate suits me, and will, I hope, suit you now that you have taken the turn. I will tell you what my plan is for you. I want you to go with me upon my orchid-hunting expedition. It will give your brain a rest, and set you up after this illness. The best time for the plants will come on when the rains are over, and the season be at its coolest. I mean to get what appliances I can here, and make a short expedition into the jungle around this place; then sending what I can collect to Rangoon to be shipped home. And by that time, having received better appliances from England, also having learnt to speak the language a little better,--we must study _that_, Ralph,--I shall make my way to Rangoon around the head of the bay; searching the various likely habitations for rare plants, at different elevations and in different kinds of soil. The weather will then be growing very hot, but we shall be seasoned to it. I hope thus to obtain an extremely valuable collection,--perhaps of insects as well as of flowers,--for we shall be collecting in every variety of weather and locality. Mr. Augustus Herford will not grudge money to this end; he gave me, virtually, _carte blanche_ to make what arrangements I found desirable when I got here; and if we do well, _there_ is your claim upon him."

"I should like it of all things," cried Ralph, with sparkling eyes.

"Well, you must be my assistant; and, as we shall need hands as well as heads, I have spoken to the rest of our poor raft's crew, and we have determined to keep together, hoping that our bad luck there will follow us no further. We feel that we all showed pluck enough over that affair to be able to trust each other in the future."

"I am sure, sir, that I would trust you anywhere, and should look upon it as a very jolly thing to go with you. I like the men, too; we should be ever such a comfortable party of us. But, Mr. Gilchrist, I don't see that we had _all_ bad luck with that raft. I am sure it was very good luck that it never upset. Those sharks swimming about us, like silent death waiting for us, have bothered me dreadfully since I was ill. And it was very good luck to be picked up when we were. Has anything been heard of the boat, sir?"

"Not yet, but the very absence of news is some hope. No wreck of it has been seen, no vestige at all. Ralph, when I think that we were cut adrift on purpose, from malice, I think sometimes it may be as well if that boat's crew never turns up."

"Oh, don't say so, don't say so! It was the doing of one only, and he might have been half mad at the time. Perhaps--most probably--he has been very sorry since."

"You are a good fellow, Denham, but it would never do to put more lives at the mercy of a person who could have doomed six unoffending people to all but certain death to gratify his own wicked spite. What the Commissioner may do were he to appear here, I cannot say. If they do turn up, I wish it might be anywhere else than here. I do not want to appear against him, yet it would be my duty to do so. The Commissioner is aware of the fact, and the severed line is in his keeping. If I had not spoken of it, old Wills and Osborn would have done so. They are very faithful to 'Miss Amy's chield,' Ralph. But see, there is the steamer from the Andamans in the offing."

A long slender line of grey smoke was plainly visible upon the horizon, becoming more distinct each minute; and all the European officers and gentlemen in the place were congregating, in their white garments, upon the quay to see the vessel come in. Amusement was not too plentiful for such people in Moulmein in those days; an arrival of any sort was interesting.

Mr. Gilchrist left the carriage to take Ralph home, and sauntered down to join the groups that were forming. Ralph was glad to be alone for a time, he was fatigued by the conversation, and much excited by the thought of making this expedition with his friends. The prospect was delightful to him, and on reaching home he resumed his former seat, thinking of all he might see, until thought became dreamy, and dreaminess sleep.

He was aroused by a familiar cheery voice.

"Hurrah! There he is! He has only left half of himself in the bay!"

It was Kershaw. Ralph sprang up to seize him by both hands in eager welcome.

"Oh, Kershaw! How glad I am, how very, very glad to see you again! How were you saved?"

"The steamer for the Andamans, with passengers from Rangoon, picked us up, and carried us straight on there. It had some sort of big bug on board who could not be hindered on his way for such a trifle as the announcement of our safety, and we have been brought back here as fast as our own news could have flown. So, like the clown in the circus, 'Here we are again.' But, Denham, I'll go back to the Andamans, if they expect us _all_ to practise Banting here. What have you done to yourself? You are as thin as a whipping-post, and your face is all eyes."

"Oh, I've been ill! but I shall pick up fast enough now. People are so kind to us. It is a very good world, after all, that we live in, Kershaw, in spite of what some folks say."

"'It is a very good world that we live in,
To lend, or to spend, or to give in;
But to beg or to borrow, or get a man's own,
'Tis the very worst world that ever was known,'"

sang Kershaw.

"Oh, most wise and sapient third mate," cried Ralph, "you are easily hoisted with your own petard! If folks lend, spend, and give, do not other folks receive?"

"Let me be among the other folks then. I have lost all the locks of hair of all the young ladies,--the dear creatures who adored me. There's a loss, Denham! Black, brown, golden, grey,--they have all gone to disagree with the sharks."

"Ugh! don't talk of sharks, they haunt me in my dreams yet."

"They use them for policemen in the Andamans. Fact!--the blue ones, because of the colour like the uniform, you know. They loaf about, round and round, just like bobbies on their beat; and if any poor devil of a prisoner tries to escape, and swim to the mainland,--hey, presto! they nip him up, and have him in a tight place in no time!"

"Your experience of life has been enlarged since I saw you, evidently."

"Yes, sir; nothing like foreign travel for enlarging the mind and perfecting the manners. Perfecting even the most charming natural manners, sir," said the mate, drawing himself up, and saluting with one finger.

It was good for Ralph to have this atmosphere of boyish nonsense restored to him. Between its bright influence, and the relief of finding his friends alive and well, he improved wonderfully fast.

All the officers and men of the _Pelican_ came to see him, and all appeared to be drawn more closely together from remembrance of the hardships through which they had struggled. There was but one exception, that of Kirke, and why he did not form one of that friendly group must be explained later.

The friends went to walk in the bazaar, amused to see the shops, or booths, so simply arranged by throwing upwards the side of the house, and propping it up with a pole; and the odd conglomeration of articles exposed for sale beneath this primitive awning.

Here, in a hole simply dug in the ground before the houses, were Burmese women cooking rice in the joints of the bamboo.

There were others selling "pickled tea," and other abominations, by means of weights fashioned after the semblance of the sacred duck.

Silver trinkets, lacquer ware, earthen jars and pots of native manufacture, were oddly mixed up with the commonest glass and earthenware from Staffordshire and St. Helens; stuffs of Oriental make and pattern lay beside Manchester coloured handkerchiefs and Madras muslin jackets; images of Guadama wore a suspiciously Brummagem air, and might be seen--though never sold--side by side with lamps of native pottery with distinctly classical shape, in the establishment of some Chinaman, over whose booth the picture of his patron saint presided. Mats, baskets, cylinders of gold, ornamented more or less, and worn by the ladies as earrings poked through the universal hole in the ear, were on every side,--together with Peak and Frean's biscuits and Bryant and May's matches,--looking oddly out of place.

The people who bought and sold were as mixed a lot, and as queer to the unsophisticated boy's eyes, as the goods in which they trafficked.

Burmese men and lads, whose close-fitting blue-patterned garments turned out to be their own skins tattooed; women, their abundant tresses dressed with exquisite roses or orchids, but displaying one leg bare to the knee beneath their gracefully-draped "tameins"; children, even babies in arms, smoking cheroots; bullock-carts, saffron-robed priests, officials; half-naked children everywhere, under everybody's feet; gongs sounding, bells tinkling, laughter echoing, strange calls and cries and speech on all sides,--formed a never-ending entertainment for Ralph, who had not previously seen more of the world than the rather dull and prosaic streets of mercantile Liverpool. All was new to him, all amusing, nothing more so than the idleness and merry temper of the natives, coming so suddenly upon him after so stern an early struggle with the grave realities of civilised life.

The rains were now over, and the pious Burmese, with great tenderness for the little fishes left behind in many pools, collected them in jars, and carried them in procession down to the river, that they might be thus carefully restored to their native element.

The fish would doubtless have proved to be as grateful for this humanity as the fish was to the queen in the old fairy story, did it not happen that they were nearly all dead before they reached the water.

Their would-be saviours then ate them, and all ends were secured. Piety and hunger were equally satisfied, and both "nats" and men pleased.