Back in the camp everyone was astir. Quick! I must run and say goodbye to Jan and Bloem, and then there were haversack rations to collect and we’d be due directly on parade. We moved off in batches and on time, and as we left Kamburi Camp and climbed for the last time into cattle trucks, dawn was just breaking. Mashusta was there without his sword helping the party off, and we suddenly felt awfully sorry for him. The train jerked off, giving a long series of crazy whistlings. Kamburi Camp and all it had stood for in the last six months faded from our lives.

CHAPTER 20

WE arrived in Bangkok just before dusk, having had a good journey as far as Nakom Paton, where the huge P.O.W. hospital and a very famous warm-brown stone Pagoda lay. We waited on the line there for a new train, and Henry and I were offered betel by a most frightful old hag wearing blue overalls, an enormous Chinese straw hat and with an almost black-red mouth from her chewing, above which jutted out at right angles two ancient, pure black teeth. Next to Bangkok station was a bombed out Buddhist temple which we immediately walked around; it looked very lovely and peaceful in the half light in spite of its derelictness, but while we were there we heard voices shouting for us, and trucks had arrived to take us to the ferry.

While we waited our turn it became quite dark, and once again we looked up at a glorious tropical night, perfectly starlit, and across the river the lights of the city of Bangkok were twinkling at us. There were a lot of mosquitoes about. The ferry functioned smoothly and quickly, and on the other side further trucks met us and we were whirled away amid cheering children, along dark roads flanked by enormous Rain Trees, and with canals and little Venetian style wooden bridges bordering the roads and acting as the front steps to countless houses.