Indian trains are
rather different from our trains. Each carriage has two broad seats
running lengthways, which pull out for sleeping berths, and two other
berths that let down from the roof. I found I had to share a carriage
with two other females, and an upper berth fell to my share.
The bearer arranged my bed, and Boggley took a glance round, asked if
I were all right, and departed to his own place. Isn't it a queer idea
to carry one's bedding about with one? Pillows, blankets, and a quilt,
all done up in a canvas hold-all, accompany people wherever they
travel--in trains, hotels, even when staying with friends.
Well, there was I shut up for the night with two strange women, mother
and daughter evidently, American certainly; and the horror of an upper
berth staring me in the face! It is quite an experience to sleep in
the upper berth of an Indian train. To begin with, it takes an acrobat
of no mean order to reach it at all, and once you are in your nose
almost touches the roof of the carriage. As I climbed to my lofty
perch one of the American ladies remarked, "I guess, child, you ain't
going to have the time of your life up there to-night." And I hadn't.
Every time the train gave a jolt--which it did every few seconds--I
clung wildly to the straps to keep myself from descending suddenly and
violently to the floor; and in less than an hour every bone in my body
was crying out against the inhuman hardness of my couch. In spite
of everything, I fell asleep, and awoke feeling colder than I ever
remember feeling before.
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