On the Irrawaddy: A Story of the First Burmese War

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 quantity of berries. Some water was poured over them, in an earthenware pot, and placed over the fire and, in half an hour, a thick scum of oil gathered on the surface. Meinik skimmed it off, as fast as it formed and, as it cooled, it solidified into a tenacious mass, 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 superstitions about it, too. At any rate, it will be a good thing to pile a great quantity 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."

The Burmese talked among themselves, and one of the men finally agreed to stay with the boys. An hour was spent in gathering a pile of brushwood and logs, and the man said that he and the two boys would gather plenty more, during the day. They were, at four o'clock, to take the horses down to the river, a mile distant, and let them drink their fill. They had brought with them a large bag of grain–which had been carried by the men–a quantity of plantains, and some fowls. Therefore, the party that were to remain would be well provided.

Moreover, in collecting the wood a score of snakes had been killed. Some of these and a chicken had been cooking while they were at work and, as soon as this was eaten, they started for the town. When they came within a mile of it, Stanley entered a plantation of fruit trees, and Meinik and the four men went on.

They returned, in two hours, with the news that a party of ten men had arrived in the town, on the previous day, with two prisoners. One, a coloured man, had been able to walk. The other, a white man, had been carried in on a litter. They had both been lodged in the jail.

By this time, the conduct of the English towards the natives, at Rangoon and the territory they occupied, had had one good effect. Signally as they had been defeated by them, the Burmese had lost their individual hatred of the strangers. They knew that their wounded and prisoners always received kind treatment at their hands and, although the court of Ava remained as arrogant and bigoted as ever, the people in lower Burma had learned to respect their invaders, and the few prisoners they had taken received much better treatment than those who had been captured at the commencement of the war.

As soon as it was dusk, Stanley went with Meinik into the town. It was a place of considerable size, with buildings at least equal to those at Prome. Toungoo had formed part of the kingdom of Pegu, before it had been subdued by the Burmese. The peculiar and characteristic facial outline of the latter was, here, much less strongly marked and, in many cases, entirely absent; so Stanley felt that, even in daylight, he would pass without attracting any attention.

The prison was surrounded by a strong and high bamboo fence, and in the space inclosed by this were eight or ten dwellings of the usual wooden construction. A dozen armed men were seated by a fire in the yard, and two sentries were carelessly leaning against the gate.

"There should be no difficulty in getting in there with two rope ladders–one to climb up with, and one to drop on the other side," Stanley said. "You may be sure that most of the guard go to sleep, at night. The first thing to ascertain is which house the prisoners are kept in and, in the second place, how my cousin is going on. We can do nothing until he is able to walk for a short distance.

"Let us move round to the other side of the inclosure. It may be that a sentry is posted at their door."

On getting to the other side, and looking through the crevices between the bamboos, they could make out two figures squatted by the door of one of the houses; and had no doubt that this was the one in which Harry Brooke was confined.

"Now, Meinik, the first thing is for you to go and buy a rope. When the place gets quite quiet, we will make a loop and throw it over the top of the palisade, behind that hut; then I will climb up and let myself down, inside, and then crawl up to the hut and see what is going on there. If my cousin is alone, I will endeavour to speak to him; but of course there may be a guard inside, as well as at the door. If he is very ill, there will probably be a light."

"Let me go, master!"

"No, Meinik, I would rather go myself. I shall be able to judge how he is, if I can catch a sight of him."

Chapter 13: Preparing A Rescue

Stanley remained where he was until Meinik returned, in half an hour, with the rope. Stanley made a loop at one end; and then knotted it, at distances of about a foot apart, to enable him to climb it more easily. Then they waited until the guard fire burnt down low, and most of the men went off into a hut a few yards distant, three only remaining talking before the fire. Then Stanley moved round to the other side of the palisade and, choosing a spot immediately behind the hut where the sentries were posted, threw up the rope. It needed many attempts before the loop caught at the top of one of the bamboos. As soon as it did so, he climbed up.

He found that the position was an exceedingly unpleasant one. The bamboos were all so cut that each of them terminated in three spikes, and so impossible was it to cross this that he had to slip down the rope again. On telling Meinik what was the matter, the latter at once took off his garment and folded it up into a roll, two feet long.

"If you lay that on the top, master, you will be able to cross."

This time Stanley had little difficulty. On reaching the top, he laid the roll on the bamboo spikes; and was able to raise himself on to it and sit there, while he pulled up the rope and dropped it on the inside. Descending, he at once began to crawl towards the hut. As he had seen before climbing, a light was burning within, and the window was at the back of the house. This was but some twenty yards from the palisade and, when he reached it, he stood up and cautiously looked in.

The Indian trooper was seated in a chair, asleep, without his tunic. One arm was bandaged, and a blood-stained cloth was wrapped round his head. On a bamboo pallet, with a dark rug thrown over it, was another figure. The lamp on the wall gave too feeble a light for Stanley to be able to make out whether the figure lying there was Harry, but he had no doubt that it was so.

In a low tone he said, in Hindustani, "Wake up, man!"

The soldier moved a little. Stanley repeated the words in a somewhat louder tone, and the trooper sprang to his feet, and looked round in a bewildered way.

"Come to the window," Stanley said. "It is I, your officer."

The man's glance turned to the window but, surprised at seeing a Burmese peasant–as he supposed–instead of the officer, he stood hesitating.

"Come on," Stanley said. "I am Lieutenant Brooke."

The soldier recognized the voice, drew himself up, made the military salute, and then stepped to the window.

"I have come," Stanley said, "to try and rescue Lieutenant Brooke, and yourself. I have some friends without. How is he?"

"He is very ill, sir. He is badly wounded, and is unconscious. Sometimes he lies for hours without moving; sometimes he talks to himself but, as I cannot understand the language, I know not what he says; but sometimes he certainly calls upon you. He uses your name often.

"I do what I can for him, but it is very little. I bathe his forehead with water, and pour it between his lips. Of course he can eat nothing, but I keep the water my rice is boiled in and, when it is cool, give it him to drink. There is some strength in it."

"Then nothing can be done, at present," Stanley said. "Tomorrow night I will bring some fruit. You can squeeze the juice of some limes into a little water, and give it to him. There is nothing better for fever. As soon as he is well enough for us to get him through the palisades, we will have a litter ready for him, and carry him off; but nothing can be done until then.

"How are you treated?"

"They give me plenty of rice, sahib, and I am at liberty to go out into the courtyard in the daytime and, now that I know that you are near, I shall have no fear. I have been expecting that they would send me to Ava where, no doubt, they would kill me; but I have thought most that, if they were to send me away from here, and there was no one to look after the sahib, he would surely die."

At this moment Stanley felt a hand roughly placed on his shoulder. Turning round, he struck out with all his strength, full in a man's face, and he fell like a log.

"If they ask you who was here," he said hastily to the trooper, "say that you know not who it was. A Burmese came and spoke to you, but of course you thought that he was one of the guard."

Then he ran to the rope, climbed up and, as he got over, pulled it up and threw it down to Meinik–as he thought that there might be some difficulty in shaking it off from the bamboo–then he dropped to the ground, bringing down the pad with him.

"Did you kill him, master?" Meinik asked, as they hurried away. "I was watching the window, and saw you talking to someone inside; then I saw a man suddenly come into the light and put his hand upon you, and saw you turn round, and he fell without a sound being heard."

"There is no fear of his being killed, Meinik. I simply hit him hard; and he went down, I have no doubt, stunned. It is unfortunate but, though they may set extra guards for a time, I think they will not believe the man's story; or at any rate, will suppose that it was only one of the guard who, not being able to sleep, wandered round there and looked into the hut from behind. The worst of it is that I am afraid that there is no chance of my being able to take my cousin some limes and other fruit, tomorrow night, as I said I would. He is very ill, and quite unconscious."

"That is very bad, master. I will try and take him in some fruit, tomorrow. If they won't let me in, I will watch outside the gates and, when one of the guard comes out, will take him aside; and I have no doubt that, for a small bribe, he will carry in the fruit and give it to the trooper. I wonder that they put them into that hut with the window at the back."

"I don't suppose they would have done so, if my cousin had not been so ill that it was evident that he could not, for some time, attempt to escape."

They joined the villagers outside the town and, telling them that there was nothing to do that night, returned to the temple. They found the man and the two boys, sitting by a great fire, but shivering with terror.

"What is the matter?" Stanley asked.

"The spirits have been making all sorts of noises outside, and there are other noises at the end of the cave, close to the horses."