For very
helplessness I laughed aloud. I screamed with laughter, and the folk
gathered to see me almost in hysterics. They soon began to smile, then
to laugh, and seeing the effect, I laughed still louder, and soon had
the whole village with tears of laughter making furrows down their
unwashed faces, laughing as a pack of hyenas. At last a kind old woman
gave way to my boy's persuasions, beckoning us to follow her into a
house. Here we found a young girl of about nine summers in charge. It
was all rare fun. There was nothing to eat, and so the men went one here
and another there buying supplies for the night. Another cleared out
the room, and made it a little habitable. The bull-dog coolie cooked the
rice, Shanks boiled eggs and cut up the pork into small slices, another
fed the pony, and then we fed ourselves.
In the evening a wood fire was kindled in the corner near my bed, and we
all sat round on the mud floor--stools there were none--to tell yarns.
My confederates were out for a spree. We smoked and drank tea and
yarned. Suddenly a stick would be thrust over my shoulder to the fire:
it was merely a man's pipe going to the fire for a light. Chinese never
use matches; it is a waste when there are so many fires about.
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