On the Irrawaddy Part 24

"Then we had better follow that, Meinik. In this broken country, and forest, we should be losing our way continually."

"How will you go, master? On horse or foot?"

"We will go on horseback, as far as we can; we are not likely to meet people travelling along the road, at present. Another thing is that, if we can get the horses as near the town as possible, they would be very useful for, if Mr. Brooke has been wounded badly, he may not be able to walk far.

"You do not know whether the country near the town is open, or whether the forests approach it closely?"

The natives were again applied to.

"It is a rich country there, they say; and well cultivated, for five or six miles round the town."

"I will go and have a talk with them, presently. It will, of course, be necessary for me to disguise myself again."

Meinik nodded.

"Yes, you must do that, master."

"Do you think that we can get two or three men to go with us, from here?"

"If you will pay them, master, no doubt they will be ready to go.

They are well content with the white rulers. They find that they are not oppressed, and everything is paid for; and that the white officers treat them kindly and well. They have lost many things, in this affair today, and would be glad to earn a little money.

"How many would you like to have?"

"Four or five, Meinik. I don't exactly know, at present, what there would be for them to do; but they could help to make fires, and keep watch, while we are doing something. At any rate, they may be useful.

"Of course, I shall get the trooper out, too, if I can. Very likely they will be confined together and, if we rescue one, we can of course rescue the other.

"Now I must do some writing. Get me a torch of some sort, and I will do it while you are speaking to the natives."

Stanley always carried a notebook and pen and ink, to take down statements and complaints, as he rode about. He now sat down and wrote an account of what had taken place during his absence.

"We had no previous news of the existence of the band," he went on, "and the natives, themselves, had certainly no fear of any attack being imminent. Had I thought that there was the slightest risk, I should not have made the village my headquarters; or have left Mr.

Brooke there, with only his servant and two troopers. I regret the matter, most deeply; and am about to set off to Toungoo, with my man. I shall, of course, go in disguise; and shall make every endeavour to free my cousin.

"I trust, General, that you will grant me leave for this purpose. I am, of course, unable to say how long it may take me but, however long, I shall persevere until I learn that my cousin is dead, or until I am, myself, killed. I trust that in starting at once, on the a.s.sumption that you will grant me leave, I am not committing a breach of duty. But if so, and you feel that you cannot, under the circ.u.mstances in which you are placed, grant leave to an officer to be absent on private business, I inclose a formal resignation of my commission, stating why I feel myself constrained, even in the presence of the enemy, to endeavour to rescue my cousin from the band that has carried him off. At any rate, it could not be said that I resigned in order to shirk danger.

"I sent off two days ago, by one of the natives here, a report of my proceedings up to that date; and have now the honour to inclose the notes I took of my investigations, today, into the conduct of the headman of Pilboora, and my reasons for depriving him of his office. I shall leave the two troopers of my escort here, with orders to remain until either I return, or they receive instructions from Prome. I am taking a few of the villagers with me. Should anything occur to me, at Toungoo, they will bring back the news to the troopers; and I shall leave instructions with them to carry it, at once, to you. If I find that Mr. Brooke has been sent on to Ava I shall, of course, follow and endeavour to effect his rescue on the road.

"As it is possible, General, that I may not have another opportunity of thanking you for the many kindnesses that you have shown me, allow me to do so, most heartily, now."

When Stanley had concluded the letter, and written the paper offering his resignation, and giving his reasons for so doing, he called Meinik to him.

"Well, Meinik, have you found men willing to go with us?"

"Yes, master, I have got five men; two of them know Toungoo well.

All are stout fellows. I offered them the terms that you mentioned--fifty ounces of silver, to each man, if you succeeded by their aid in rescuing the officer. They were delighted at the offer, which would enable them to replace everything that they have lost.

"I told them, of course, that if it were necessary to fight, they would have to do so; and that, as many of their countrymen were enlisted, as gun lascars and in other occupations, with the English; and are, of course, exposed to the attacks of their countrymen, they would only be doing what others have been willing to do.

"They said that they were ready enough to fight. You were the government, now; and you were a good government, and they would fight for you and, besides, as the officer was carried off from their village, it was their duty to help to get him back.

"One of them said, 'These men who attacked us are Burmese soldiers.

As they attack us, there is no reason why we should not attack them.'

"So I think, master, that you can count upon them. The Burmese have always been fond of fighting, because fighting means booty. The troops don't want to fight any more, because they get no booty, and a number of them are killed. But, now that the villagers have been forced to go to the war against their will; and have been plundered, and many killed, by Burmese soldiers, they are quite ready to take sides with you. Three of them have had wives or children killed, today; and that makes them full of fight."

"Well, you had better tell them to cook, at once, food for two or three days. At four o'clock they are to start, through the forest, to the road you spoke of. We will set out at the same time, on horseback; but we shall have to make a detour, so they will be on the road before we are. Tell them when they get there to stop, until we come up."

"Yes, master. It is a good thing that I rode your second horse, yesterday, instead of Mr. Brooke's animal."

"Yes, he is worth a good deal more than the other, Meinik, and I should certainly have been sorry to lose him."

"One of the men who is going with us says that he knows of the ruins of an old temple, eight or nine miles this side of Toungoo; and that this would be a good place for us to leave our horses. It is very, very old; one of those built by the people who lived in the land before we came to it, and the Burmans do not like to go near it; so that there would be no fear of our being disturbed, there. Even these men do not much like going there; but I told them that no evil spirits would come, where white men were."

"It is rather far off, Meinik; but as you say the country is cultivated, for some distance round the town, we shall certainly have to leave our horses some six or seven miles away; and two or three miles will not make much difference. We can put on our disguises there.

"You had better take a couple of boys to look after the horses, while we are away."

"They would not sleep there, at night," Meinik said, doubtfully. "I don't think the men would, either, if you were not there."

"That would not matter, Meinik, if as you say, there is no fear of anyone else going there."

"Certainly, no one else will go there at night, master."

"At any rate, if you can get two boys to go, we may as well take them. They might go there in the day, and feed and water the horses; and sleep some distance away, at night."

Meinik found two boys, sixteen years old, who said that they would go with them and, at the hour agreed on, Stanley and Meinik started on horseback. They descended the hill to the plain at its foot and, turning to the right, rode for some ten or twelve miles; when they struck into the road and, following this at an easy pace they came, in the course of another hour, upon the party of villagers sitting by the roadside.

The sun was just rising, and they travelled for three hours without meeting anyone; then they drew off into the wood, at a point where a small stream crossed the road and, after eating a meal, and giving a good feed to the horses, lay down to sleep till the heat of the day abated--the natives, who were all armed with spears and swords, keeping watch by turns.

At four o'clock they started again and, at ten, approached the spot where, in the depth of the wood, lay the temple. The man who knew its position declared, however, that he could not find it, at night. Stanley had no doubt that he was really afraid to go there but, as he did not wish to press them against their will, he said carelessly that it made no difference if they halted there, or close by the road, and a fire being speedily lit, they bivouacked round it.

Meinik had procured the necessary dyes from a village, and Stanley was again stained, and covered with tattoo marks, as before.

"What am I to do about your hair, master?" he asked. "It will never do for you to go, like this."

Stanley had not thought of this point and, for a time, was completely at a loss. His own hair was now short, and could not possibly be turned up.

"The only thing that I can see," he said, after a long pause, "is for you and the men each to cut off a lock of hair from the top of your heads, where it will not show. The six locks would be ample; but I don't see how you are to fasten it, below the turban."

"There are berries we can get wax from," Meinik said. "We boil them in water, and the wax floats at the top. With that, master, we could fasten the hair in among yours, so that it would look all right."

The men had all laughed at the proposal, but willingly consented to part with a portion of their hair. Meinik therefore proceeded to stain Stanley's close crop black and, the first thing in the morning, the boys went out, soon returning with a quant.i.ty of berries. Some water was poured over them, in an earthenware pot, and placed over the fire and, in half an hour, a thick sc.u.m of oil gathered on the surface. Meinik skimmed it off, as fast as it formed and, as it cooled, it solidified into a tenacious ma.s.s, somewhat resembling cobblers' wax. The six locks of hair had already been cut off, and the ends were smeared with the wax, and worked in among Stanley's own hair; then a little of the hot wax was rubbed in, and the men all declared that no one would notice anything peculiar in his appearance. The long tresses were curled round, at the top of the head, and a ring of muslin tied round. The Burmans were immensely amused at the transformation that had been wrought in Stanley's appearance; and followed him through the wood, to the temple, without any signs of nervousness.

The ruins were extensive. A considerable portion of the building had been hewn out of the face of a precipitous rock, in the manner of some Hindoo temples; and it was evident that it had been the work of a people more closely allied to the Indian race than to the Tartar or Chinese people, from whom the Burmese sprung. Uncouth figures were sculptured on the walls. At these the Burmese looked with some awe but, as Stanley laughed and joked over them, they soon recovered their usual demeanour.

"I am a great deal more afraid of tigers than of ghosts," Stanley said; "a deserted place like this is just the sort of spot they would be likely to be in. At any rate, if these caves do not go any further into the hill--and there are no signs of their doing so--it may be hoped that the tigers have their superst.i.tions about it, too. At any rate, it will be a good thing to pile a great quant.i.ty of firewood at the entrance; and I think one of you had better stay here, with the boys. They and the horses would be a great deal safer here, with a fire burning; than they would be in the woods, where a tiger might pounce upon them, at any moment. As to this folly about spirits, it is only old women's chatter."