The territory beyond BanpÁwa was more savage than any we had yet seen. Everywhere the climbing and creeping plant life was so thick and interwoven that our feet could not reach the ground. Often, when we tried to plunge through a thicket, we were caught as if in a net. It was impossible to get through, and we crawled out with torn garments and bleeding hands and faces to fight our way around the spot. We were now in the very heart of the mountains. Range after range appeared, covered with unbroken jungle. From the top of every mountain there spread out before us an endless forest of teak and bamboo matted together with the wildest undergrowth. Mountains that were just blue wreaths in the morning climbed higher and higher into the sky—and beyond them were more mountains, all covered with a mass of waving tree-tops. Every valley was choked with vegetation.

Often, while climbing, we lost our footing and went plunging headlong through thorn-bristling thickets. There were no level spaces. No sooner had we reached the bottom of a narrow valley than we found ourselves at the base of another higher mountain, which we climbed hand over hand as a sailor climbs a rope. In our ears sounded the continual hum of insects; now and then a snake squirmed off through the bushes; more than once we heard the roar of some beast. Monkeys swarmed in the thick network of branches overhead, and fled screaming away, as we came near, into the dark depths of the forest.

At every mud-hole we halted to drink; for within us burned a thirst such as no man knows who has not suffered it in the jungle. Chocolate-colored water we drank, water alive with squirming animal life, in pools out of which wriggled brilliant green snakes. Often I rose to my feet to find a blood-sucker clinging to my lower lip.

As the day grew, a raging hunger fell upon us. In a sharp valley we came upon a tree on the trunk of which hung a dozen or more jack-fruits within easy reach. We grasped one and tried to pull it down. The short, tough stem was as stout as a manila rope, and knife we had none. We wrapped our arms around the fruit and tugged with the strength of despair; we might as well have tried to pull up a ship’s anchor by hand. We chopped at the stem with sharp stones; we hunted up great rocks and attempted to split the fruit open on the tree, screaming with rage and bruising our fingers. Streams of perspiration raced down our sun-scorched skins; our hunger and thirst grew maddening; and still nothing came of it. When we finally gave up and plunged on, our violent attack on the fruit had hardly scratched its stony rind.

Weary and half starved, matted with mud from crown to toe, and bleeding from countless cuts and scratches, we were still struggling with the entangling vegetation well on in the afternoon, when James, who was ahead of me, uttered a shriek of victory.

“A path! A path!” he cried. “And a telegraph wire!”

Certain that hunger and the sun had turned his brain, I tore my way through the thicket that separated us. He was not mad. A path there was, narrow and steep: and overhead a sagging telegraph wire, running from tree to tree.

After following it for about a half-hour we came to a little plain crossed by a swift stream, in which swam a covey of snow-white ducks. On the western bank stood a weather-beaten bungalow. Above it the telegraph wire disappeared. We drank from the river until we were thirsty no more, and then mounted the narrow steps and shouted to attract attention. There was no answer. We pushed open the door and entered. The room was about eight feet square and entirely unfurnished. In one corner hung an unpainted telephone instrument. It was home-made and very crude. A spider had spun his web across the mouth of the receiver, and there were no signs that anyone had ever lived in the hut.

“There is nothing worth while here,” said James. “Let’s swim the creek.”

On the opposite bank was a bamboo rest house, the floor of which was raised some feet above the damp ground. Back of it, among the trees, stood a cluster of seven huts. We went to all of them, trying to buy food, but returned to the rest house with nothing but the information that the village was called KathÁi YwÁ. Nine freight-carriers had arrived. Among them were several we had seen the evening before. They had, perhaps, some secret hatred against white men; for they not only refused to sell us rice, but scowled and snarled when we drew near them. The day was not yet done. We should have pushed on had not James fallen victim to a burning jungle fever.

While there was plenty of water at hand, our hunger became unbearable. For a time we kept ourselves cheerful by thinking that perhaps the next carrier who wandered into the place would be more friendly. But each new arrival was more stupid and surly than the others. The sun touched the western tree-tops. James lay on his back, red-eyed with fever. Eat we must, if we were to have strength to go on in the morning. I made the round of the huts a second time, hoping to bully the inhabitants into selling me food. The people rose in a mass and swarmed upon me. The men carried long, overgrown knives; the women, clubs. I returned hastily to the rest house.

The sight of the telephone wire awakened within me the senseless notion that I might call for help from some neighboring village. I left my shoes and trousers in charge of the Australian, and dashed through the stream and into the government bungalow. At the first call I “got” someone. Who or where he was I could not guess. I bawled into the receiver English, French, German, and all the Hindustanee I could think of. When I paused for breath the unknown subscriber had “rung off.” I jangled the bell and shook and pounded the instrument for five minutes. A glassy-eyed lizard ran out along the wire and stared down upon me. His mate in the grassy roof above screeched mockingly. Then another voice sounded faintly in my ear.

“Hello!” I shouted. “Who’s this? We want to eat. D’you speak English? Do sahib hai, KathÁi YwÁ. Send us some—”

A flood of meaningless jabber interrupted me. I had rung up a Burman; but he was no babu.

“English!” I shrieked. “Anyone there that speaks English? We’re sahibs! Hello! Hello, I say! Hello—”

No answer. Central had cut me off again. I rang the bell until my arm was lame, and listened breathlessly. All was still. I dropped the receiver and tumbled out of the hut, determined to throttle one of the freight-carriers. In the middle of the stream I slipped on a stone and fell on my knees, the water up to my arm-pits. The startled ducks ran away before me. I snatched up a club, and ran after them through the village and back to the creek again. The inhabitants ran screaming behind me. I threw the weapon at the nearest fowl. It was only a joint of bamboo, and fell short. The ducks took to the water. I plunged in after them, and once more fell sprawling.

Before I could scramble to my feet, a shout sounded near at hand. I looked up to see the squad of soldiers breaking out of the jungle. They halted before the government bungalow, and watched me with deep-set grins as I came toward them. The sergeant, understanding the motions I made, offered us places around the common rice heap. I returned to the rest house for my garments. The villagers were driving their panting ducks homeward. The Australian struggled to his feet and waded the stream once more, joining the soldiers on the veranda of the government bungalow. Their porters brought huge wet leaves to protect the floor, and built a fire within. Half an hour later the troopers rose to their feet, shouting, “Kin-kow! Kin-kow!” (“Eat!”) We followed them into the smoke-choked building. In a civilized land I would not have tasted such fare as was spread out on that banana leaf in the center of the floor, to win a wager. At that moment it seemed food fit for a king.

We slept with the soldiers in the telephone bungalow. James’s fever burned itself out, and he awoke with the dawn, ready to push on. For the first few miles we followed a path below the telephone wire. In stumbling over the uneven ground my shoe-laces broke again and again. Well on in the morning I halted to replace them with stout vines. The Australian went on ahead. Before I had overtaken him the path divided into two paths, and the wire disappeared in the forest between the two trails. I hallooed to my companion; but the rain was coming down in torrents, and the voice does not carry far in the jungle. I struck into one of the paths; but in less than an hour it faded and was lost. I found myself alone in a trackless wilderness.

Here was a misfortune indeed. The Australian had carried off the compass; our money was in my bundle. What chance was there of finding each other again in hundreds of miles of untraveled wilds?

I set a course by the sun, and for three hours fought my way up the wall-like face of a mountain. To crash and roll down the opposite slope took me less than a third of that time. In the valley, tucked away under soaring teak trees, was a lonely little hut. A black-toothed woman in a short skirt squatted in the shade under the cabin, pounding rice in a hollowed log. The jungle was humming its sleepy tune. I climbed to the veranda and lay down, certain that I had seen the last of James, the Australian. Under the hut sounded the thump, thump, thump of the pestle.

But it was not by loafing in the shade that I should beat my way through to civilization. I soon rose to my feet and arranged the things in my bundle again. If I could only hire a guide. Hark! The sound of a human voice came faintly to my ear. No doubt the owner of the hut was returning from a morning hunting trip. I listened attentively. Then off to the right in the jungle rang out a familiar song:

It was the Australian’s favorite ballad. I shouted at the top of my lungs, and, springing to the ground, with one leap crashed into the jungle. A thicket caught me in its tough grasp. I tore savagely at the entangling branches. The voice of the Australian rang out once more:

He was farther away now. I snatched myself loose and plunged on after him, leaving a sleeve of my jacket in the thicket.

“Hello, James! Hello!” I bellowed.

He was singing so loudly that the sound of his own voice filled his ears. I opened my mouth to shout again, and fell through a bush into a clearly marked path. Above it sagged the telephone wire, and just in sight through the overhanging branches plodded the Australian.

“Goodness, but you’re slow,” he laughed, when I had overtaken him.

“When’d you find the path?” I demanded.

“Haven’t lost it,” he answered. “Why? Did you?”

“Haven’t seen it for five hours,” I replied.

“Great dingoes!” he gasped. “Thought you were close behind, or I’d have felt mighty little like singing.”

We had no difficulty in keeping to the path for the rest of the day, and passed several freight-carriers traveling westward. With never a hut on the way, we went hungry. Yet, had we but known it, there was food all about us. What a helpless being is civilized man without the tools of civilization.

Faint from hunger, we had halted at the edge of a mountain stream well on in the afternoon, when we were overtaken by the little brown soldiers. They had packed away their uniforms and wore only loin-cloths and caps.

“Kin-kow? Kin-kow?” (“Are you hungry?”) asked the sergeant, placing his hand on his stomach.

We nodded sadly. He chuckled to himself, and waved his arms about him as if to say there was food all about us. We shrugged our shoulders unbelievingly. He laughed gleefully, and turned to say something to his men. Two of the soldiers picked up clubs, and, returning along the path to a half-rotten log, began to move back and forth on both sides of it, striking it sharp blows here and there. They came back with a half-dozen lizards—those great, green reptiles that sing their she-kak! all night long in the grassy roofs of the Indian bungalows.

Meanwhile two others of the company were kneeling at the edge of a mud-hole. From time to time they plunged their bare arms into it, drawing out frogs and dropping them, still alive, into a hollow bamboo stick. The sergeant took his long, heavy knife, or dah, and cut down a small tree at the edge of the jungle. One servant dug some reddish-brown roots on the bank of the stream, while the other started a fire by rubbing two sticks together.

In a few minutes all were gathered beside us. The lizards were skinned, cut up with lumps of red curry in an iron pot, and set to boiling. A servant drew out the frogs, one by one, struck them on the head with a stick, and tossed them to his companion. The latter rolled them up inside mud balls and threw them into the fire. The sergeant split open his tree, pulled out a soft spongy stuff from the center of it, cut it into slices, toasted them on the point of his dah, and tossed them on to a large leaf spread out at our feet. The reddish roots were beaten to a pulp on a rock and sprinkled over the toasted slices. Rice was boiled.

The soldiers, grinning at one another, began saying, “Kin-kow? Kin-kow?” and the meal began. Before it was finished we thought better of both the jungle and its people. Taken from their shell of mud, the frogs were found to be baked in round balls and tasted like fried fish. The toasted pith from the tree tasted like pickled beets. Best of all was the lizard curry. James and I ate more than our share, and we told each other that we wished the pair sent to pound the old tree-trunk had remained longer at their task.

We went on with the soldiers, halting after dark at the bank of the largest stream we had yet faced. There was no village here, but the government had built a rest house for soldiers on the bank. In this we spent the night with the troopers, after eating a frog-and-lizard supper.

Beyond there were not so many mountains and the path was well marked; but the river beside which we had left the soldiers was deep and swift, and wound back and forth, crossing our route again and again. In the first few morning hours we swam it no less than fourteen times. It was the ninth crossing that gave us the most trouble. Reaching the narrow, sandy bank a bit before my companion, I pulled off my clothes, tied the bundle to my head, and plunged in. James began to disrobe as I reached the other shore. Without removing his ragged shirt or his helmet, he fastened on his bundle as I had done, and struck out.

Being an excellent swimmer, he glided along easily, with long, swift strokes. Unfortunately, he did not take care to keep his head pointed up-stream. The powerful current caught him suddenly and dragged him under. He righted himself quickly, but in that short struggle lost both his bundle and his helmet. He tried to save them, but caught only his helmet. His bundle raced down-stream. I sprang to my feet and dashed along the sandy shore after it. But the stream was far swifter than I. The tangled undergrowth brought me to a sudden halt, and the Australian’s possessions were swallowed up in the jungle.

I returned to find him sitting unhappily on the bank.

With the bundle had gone his shoes, trousers, jacket, the odds and ends he had picked up on his travels, his military and citizenship papers, and the pocket compass; in short, everything he owned except a helmet and a tattered shirt.

But James was not a man to be long discouraged by little things. He tied the shirt about his loins and we went on. As he had nothing to carry, he marched more easily and crossed the streams with far less difficulty than I. But in less than an hour his shoulders, back, and legs were painted a fiery red by the unmerciful sun; and the stones and jagged brambles tore and bruised his feet until he left a blood-stain at every step.

We were again overtaken by the soldiers about noonday, and halted for another jungle meal. Off once more, we pushed ahead, but found it wise to wait for the troopers to lead the way; for the route was beset by unexpected pitfalls—as once when, in fighting our way along the bank of the river, we crashed headlong through the bushes into a dry, stony bed of a branch river fifteen feet below. This accident left little of my clothing, and made the Australian look worse than before.

So we waited for the soldiers, and followed them along a wider path. The higher mountain ranges fell away; but the foot-hills were very steep, and the slopes were often bare and covered with deep mud. At the top of such a hill we overtook a troop of horsemen returning from some village off to the southwest. Burdened with huge packsaddles, the horses began the dangerous downward climb unwillingly. Suddenly three of them lost their footing, sat down on their haunches, and rolled over and over, their packs flying in every direction. James laughed loudly and slapped me on the back. The blow made me lose my balance. My feet shot from under me, and slipping, sliding, rolling, clutching in vain for something to hold to, I pitched down the five-hundred-yard slope and splashed head-first into a muddy stream at the bottom several seconds before the horses got there.

Another mile left me bare-footed and nearly as naked as my companion. Now and again we overtook a band of freight-carriers; one a young Buddhist priest in tattered yellow, attended by two servants. We had seen him somewhere a day or two before, and remembered him not only by his dress, but on account of the bold and impudent expression of his face. He joined our party without being invited, and tramped along with us, puffing at a long saybully, and chattering loudly and continuously. The soldiers roared with laughter at everything he said, and winked at us as if they thought we could understand his remarks. We were more sorry than ever that we did not understand the Siamese tongue.

James was complaining that he could not go on another yard, when we came most unexpectedly to the edge of the jungle. Before us stretched a vast rice-field, deeply flooded. The soldiers led the way along the tops of the ridges toward a thick wood two miles away. At least a hundred curs began howling as we drew near, and as many chattering brown people swarmed about us when we stopped to rest in a large, deeply shaded village at the edge of a river fully a mile wide. It could be no other than the Menam—the “great river” of Siam. Along the low eastern bank stretched a real city with white two-story buildings, before which were anchored large native boats. It was Rehang. The soldiers told us so with shouts of joy, and ran away to put on their uniforms.

We threw off what was left of our garments, and plunged into the stream to wash off the blood and grime of the jungle. When we had finished, the soldiers were gone. We asked the villagers to set us across the river. They refused. We pushed out one of a dozen dugout logs drawn up along the shore, and the village swarmed down upon us in a great landslide of men, women, children, and yellow curs. Catching up two paddles, we beat them off. In two minutes we were alone.

We pushed the dugout into the stream, and were climbing in when two ugly, wrinkled brown women ran down the bank and offered to ferry us across. They pointed the craft up-stream and fell to paddling. They were expert water dogs, and crossed the swift stream without accident, landing us at a crazy wooden wharf in the center of the town.

On nearer sight Rehang was disappointing. The white two-story buildings were poor, rickety things. The roads between were not much better paved than the jungle paths, and deeper in mud. There was no health department, it seemed, for here and there a dead dog or cat had been tossed out to be trampled underfoot. There were great crowds of people, but the passing throng was merely a larger gathering of those same strange “wild men” of the jungle villages. The fear of being arrested for having no clothes soon left us. James in national costume attracted much less attention than I in the remnants of jacket and trousers.

We were glad, however, to be in even this tumble-down city on the bank of the Menam; at least, it was a market town. James dashed into the first store with a whoop of delight, and startled the keeper out of his wits by demanding a whole three cents’ worth of cigarettes. He splashed on through the muddy streets, blowing great clouds of smoke through his nostrils, and forgetting for a time even the smarting of his torn and sun-scorched skin.

Half the merchants of the town were Chinamen. We stopped at a shop kept by three wearers of the pig-tail, and, seating ourselves before a bench, called for food. One of the keepers, moving as if he disliked having us there, set canned meat before us, and after a long time brought us as a can-opener, a hatchet with a blade considerably wider than the largest can.

When we rose to go, the Chinese demanded ten tecals. The market price of the stuff we had eaten was certainly not worth one. I gave them two. Three screams split the air, and half a dozen Chinamen bounded into the shop and danced wildly about us. One caught up the hatchet and swung it high above his head. James snatched it from him, kicked him across the room, and threw the weapon among the heaped-up wares. We fought our way to the street. The keeper nearest us gave one loud bellow that was answered from every side. Chinamen stumbled out through every open doorway, out of every hole in the surrounding shop walls; they sprang up from under the buildings, dropped from the low roofs, swarmed out of the alleyways, for all the world like rats, screaming, yelping, snarling, clawing the air as they ran, their pig-tails streaming behind them. In the twinkling of an eye the mob at our heels had increased to a hundred or more. We refused to disgrace ourselves by running. The crazed yellow men scratched us savagely with their overgrown finger-nails, caught at our legs, spattered us with mud. Not one of them used his fists. When we turned upon them they bounded away as if from a squad of cavalry, and we could get even only by catching a flying pig-tail in either hand, to send a pair of yellow-skinned rascals sprawling in the mud. They came back at us after every stand before we had taken a dozen steps. Our backs were a network of finger-nail scratches. We cast our eyes about us for some weapon, and found two muddy sticks. Before we could use them the Chinamen turned and fled, still screaming at the top of their lungs.

Not far beyond, we turned in at the largest building in the town—the Rehang barracks for soldiers. Among the half hundred little brown soldiers lounging about the porch were our comrades of the few days past. It was plain that they had told our story. The recruits gathered about us, laughing and asking questions in the deaf-and-dumb language. How had we liked lizard curry? What had turned our dainty skins so blood-red? What ignorant and helpless creatures were white men, were they not?

Suddenly, while they were chattering, I thought I heard someone say that there was a white man on the floor above. We sprang toward the stairway at the end of the porch. The soldiers shrieked in alarm and snatched at my rags. We must not go up; it was strictly against barrack rules. A guardsman on duty at the foot of the stairs held his musket out before him and feebly shouted a command. James caught him by the shoulder and sent him spinning along the veranda. We dashed up the steps. Two doors stood partly open. James sprang to one, while I pushed open the other.

“Hello!” I shouted. “Where’s the white—”

A roar of delight from my companion sent me hurrying after him. He was dancing gleefully just inside the second door, and shaking a white man fiercely by the hand—an astonished white man in khaki uniform with officer’s stripes. I reminded the Australian of his costume, and he became quiet. The European invited us inside, and sent a servant for tea, biscuits, and cigars. Our host was commander of the soldiers—a Dane who spoke English well. That we had been wandering through the jungle he could see all too plainly without our telling him; but that we had come overland from Burma was a tale he could not believe until the sergeant had been called in to prove that what we said was true. Forgetting his military duties, the commander asked us wondering questions until dusk fell, and then ordered three of his soldiers to find us a place to spend the night.

On the veranda the soldiers spread a pair of army blankets. We were for turning in at once. They would not hear of it. For a half-hour they trotted back and forth between our bungalow and that of the commander, carrying steaming dishes. The table they had set up was groaning under its load before the sergeant signed to us to begin. There were broiled fish, a mutton roast, a great steak, a spitted fowl, and fruits and vegetables of many kinds.

We spent the night on the veranda. We did not sleep there. Our sun-scorched skins would not permit it. Even had they burned less fiercely, we could not have slept. One would have fancied the place a gigantic hen-yard during the hours of darkness. After every shower the unveiled moon was greeted with a din of crowing that was awful. In the moments of quiet between, we tossed about wide awake on our hard couch, listening to the musical tinkling of pagoda bells.

When dawn came the Dane sent for us. We hurried to his bungalow and joined him at breakfast. He had gathered together two pairs of shoes and four khaki uniforms. They were from his own tailor in Bangkok, still very useful, though fitting us a bit too tightly and chafing our blistered skins. Rolling up our extra garments and swinging them over our shoulders, we bade our host farewell.