p there. He is a doctor, so am
I, and I've just got back from leave. I went up-country to relieve
Jordan, but the work is nearly over, and I found him played out. He has
hardly had his clothes off for weeks. The difficulty is to persuade
these people to get out of their infected houses into a camp until the
place is made sanitary and the plague stayed. He was single-handed at
first, now there are two other men up there, so I can be spared to take
him down to the coast. He'll get over it; oh yes, he's got the turn now,
though he was nearly gone once or twice, but he'll never be the same man
again. He is invalided home for a bit, and the voyage will pull him up,
but even as he is he's sore at leaving it. He wants to finish his job."

"Then when you've left him at Calcutta you'll go back to the infected
district?"

"Yes, of course, why not? It's all in the day's work, and you know we've
actually had only thirty deaths in a month since the beggars were got
out into camp, and they were dying at the rate of hundreds a week
before. Grand, isn't it?" His face lights up with enthusiasm.

India is full of such men; they don't play for safety, they take their
lives in their hands at a moment's notice, and go blithely to grapple
with death.

[Illustration: BURMESE VILLAGE.]

CHAPTER XXI

THE GOLDEN PAGODA

It is hot and still, we have passed across a place of broken tangled
undergrowth and come out into a rather untidy courtyard, where some
sneaking yellow pariah dogs barked at us until I cut at them with my
stick, when they ran away and barked again from a safe distance. There
seems to be no one else here but ourselves. A great tree covered with
glorious magenta flowers stands on one side. It is our old friend the
bougainvillea, but here it grows into a great tree instead of a creeper.
It is backed up by the dark foliage of many mango trees. In front of us
is a large house which seems to rise in many storeys, and the roof of
each storey is carved and decorated, so that it shows up like lacework
against the sky. The house stands on legs, so that the under part is
quite open, and a broad flight of wooden steps leads up to a verandah on
the first floor. Stop to examine the carving on the balustrade. It is
wonderful! Figures of tigers, dragons, peacocks, monkeys, and elephants
are all set among foliage and cut out very deeply.

When we arrived in Burma yesterday we came up the river Irrawaddy, which
at its mouth is c