Mateo, my Filipino servant, was helping me sort over specimens one day
under the thatched roof of a shed which I had hired to use for such
work while I was on the island of Culion, when I was startled to see
him suddenly drop the bird skin he had been working on, and fall upon
his knees, bending his body forward, his face turned toward the road,
until his forehead touched the floor.
At first I thought he must be having some new kind of a fit, peculiar
to the Philippine Islands, until I happened to glance up the road
toward the town, from which my house was a little distance removed,
and saw coming toward us a most remarkable procession.
Four native soldiers walked in front, two carrying long spears, and
two carrying antiquated seven-foot muskets, relics of a former era in
fire arms. After the soldiers came four Visayan slaves, bearing on
their shoulders a sort of platform covered with rugs and cushions,
on which a woman reclined. On one side of the litter walked another
slave, holding a huge umbrella so as to keep the sun's rays off the
woman's face. Two more soldiers walked behind.
Mateo might have been a statue, or a dead man, for all the attention
he paid to my questions until after the procession had passed the
house. Then, resuming a perpendicular position once more, he said,
"That was the Sultana Ahmeya, the Sultana."
Then he went on to explain that there were thirteen other sultanas, of
assorted colors, who helped make home happy for the Sultan of Culion,
who after all, well supplied as he might at first seem to be, was only
a sort of fourth-class sovereign, so far as sultanas are concerned,
since his fellow monarch on a neighboring larger island, the Sultan
of Sulu, is said to have four hundred wives.
Ahmeya, though, Mateo went on to inform me, was the only one of
the fourteen who really counted. She was neither the oldest nor the
youngest of the wives of the reigning ruler, but she had developed
a mind of her own which had made her supreme in the palace, and
besides, she was the only one of his wives who had borne a son to
the monarch. For her own talents, and as the mother of the heir,
the people did her willing homage.
When I saw the royal cavalcade go past my door I had no idea I would
ever have a chance to become more intimately acquainted with Her
Majesty, but only a little while after that circumstances made it
possible for me to see more of the royal family than had probably
been the privilege of any other white man. How little thought I had,
when the acquaintance began, of the strange experiences it would
eventually lead to!
At that time, in the course of collecting natural history
specimens, most of my time for three years was spent in the island
of Culion. Having a large stock of drugs, for use in my work, and
quite a lot of medicines, I had doctored Mateo and two or three
other fellows who had worked for me, when they had been ill, with
the result that I found I had come to have a reputation for medical
skill which sometimes was inconvenient. I had no idea how widely my
fame had spread, though, until one morning Mateo came into my room
and woke me, and with a face which expressed a good deal of anxiety,
informed me that I was sent for to come to the palace.
I confess I felt some concern myself, and should have felt more if I
had had as much experience then as I had later, for one never knows
what those three-quarters savage potentates may take it into their
heads to do.
When I found that I was sent for because the Sultan was ill,--ill unto
death, the messenger had made Mateo believe,--and I was expected to
doctor him, I did not feel much more comfortable, for I much doubted if
my knowledge of diseases, and my assortment of medicines, were equal
to coping with a serious case. If the Sultan died I would probably
be beheaded, either for not keeping him alive, or for killing him.
It was a great relief, then, when I reached the palace, and just
before I entered the room where the sick monarch was, to hear him
swearing vigorously, in a combination of the native and Spanish
languages which was as picturesque as it was expressive.
I found the man suffering from an acute attack of neuralgia, although
he did not know what was the matter with him. He had not been able
to sleep for three days and nights, and the pain, all the way up and
down one side of his face had been so intense that he thought he was
going to die, and almost hoped that he was. His head was tied up in a
lot of cloths, not over clean, in which a dozen native doctor's charms
had been folded, until the bundle was as big as four heads ought to be.
As soon as I found out what was the matter I felt relieved, for I
reckoned I could manage an attack of swelled head all right. I had
doctored the natives enough, already, to find out that they had no
respect for remedies which they could not feel, and so, going back
to the house, I brought from there some extra strong liniment, some
tincture of red pepper and a few powerful morphine pills.
I gave my patient one of the pills the first thing, administering
it in a glass of water with enough of the cayenne added to it so
that the mixture brought tears to his eyes, and then removing the
layers of cloth from his head, and gathering in as I did so, for my
collection of curiosities, the various charms which I uncovered, I
gave his head a vigorous shampooing with the liniment, taking pains to
see that the liquor occasionally ran down into the Sultan's eyes. He
squirmed a good deal, but I kept on until I thought it must be about
time for the morphine to begin to take effect. I kept him on morphine
and red pepper for three days, but when I let up on him he was cured,
and my reputation was made.
It would have been too great a nuisance to have been endured, had it
not been that so high a degree of royal favor enabled me to pursue
my work with a degree of success which otherwise I could never have
hoped for.
After that I used to see a good deal of the palace life. Although
nominally Mohammedans in religion, the inhabitants of these more
distant islands have little more than the name of the faith, and follow
out few of its injunctions. As a result I was accorded a freedom about
the palace which would have been impossible in such an establishment
in almost any other country.
One day the Sultan had invited me to dine with him. After the meal,
while we were smoking, reclining in some cocoanut fibre hammocks
swung in the shade of the palace court yard, I saw a man servant lead
a dog through the square, and down a narrow passage way through the
rear of the palace.
"Would you like to see the 'Green Devil' eat?" my host asked.
I have translated the native words he used by the term "green devil,"
because that represents the idea of the original better than any
other words I know of, I had not the slightest conception as to who
or what the individual referred to might be; but I said at once that
I would be very glad indeed to see him eat.
My host swung out of the hammock,--he was a superbly strong and
vigorous man, now that he was in health again,--and led the way
through the passage. Following him I found myself in another court
yard, larger than the first, and with more trees in it. Beneath one
of these trees, in a stout cage of bamboo, was the biggest python
I ever saw. He must have been fully twenty-five feet long. The cage
was large enough to give the snake a chance to move about in it, and
when we came in sight he was rolling from one end to the other with
head erect, eyes glistening, and the light shimmering on his glossy
scales in a way which made it easy to see why he had been given his
name. I learned later that he had not been fed for a month, and that
he would not be fed again until another month had passed. Like all
of his kind he would touch none but live food.
The wretched dog, who seemed to guess the fate in store for him,
hung back in the rope tied about his neck, and crouched flat to the
ground, too frightened even to whine.
The servant unlocked a door in the side of the cage and thrust the
poor beast in. I am not ashamed to say that I turned my head away. It
was only a dog, but it might have been a human being, so far as the
reptile, or the half-savage man at my side, would have cared.
When I looked again, the dog was only a crushed mass of bones and
flesh, about which the snake was still winding and tightening coil
after coil.
"We need not wait," the Sultan said. "It will be an hour before he
will swallow the food. You can come out again."
I did as he suggested. It was a wonder to me, as it is to every one,
how a snake's throat can be distended enough to swallow whole an object
so large as this dog, but in some way the reptile had accomplished the
feat. The meal over, the huge creature had coiled down as still almost
as if dead. He would lie in that way, now, they told me, for days.
It was while I stood watching the snake that Ahmeya came through
the square, leading her boy by the hand. The apartments of the royal
wives were built around this inner yard. This was the first time I
had seen the heir to the throne. He was a handsome boy, and looked
like his mother. Ahmeya was tall, for a native woman, and carried
herself with a dignity which showed that she felt the honor of her
position. Mateo had told me that she had a decided will of her own,
and, so the palace gossips said, ruled the establishment, and her
associate sultanas, with an unbending hand.
It was not very long after I had seen the green devil eat that
Mateo told me there had been another wedding at the palace. Mateo
was an indefatigable news-gatherer, and an incorrigible gossip. As
the society papers would have expressed it, this wedding had been "a
very quiet affair." The Sultan had happened to see a Visayan girl of
uncommon beauty, on one of the smaller islands, one day, had bought
her of her father for two water buffalos, and had installed her at
the palace as wife number fifteen.
For the time being the new-comer was said to be the royal favorite,
a condition of affairs which caused the other fourteen wives as little
concern as their objections, if they had expressed any, would probably
have caused their royal husband. So far as Ahmeya was concerned,
she never minded a little thing like that, but included the last
arrival in the same indifferent toleration which she had extended to
her predecessors.
I saw the new wife only once.--I mean,--yes I mean that.--I saw her as
the king's wife only once. She was a handsome woman, with a certain
insolent disdain of those about her which indicated that she knew
her own charms, and perhaps counted too much on their being permanent.
That summer my work took me away from the island. I went to Manila,
and eventually to America. When I finally returned to Culion a year
had passed.
I had engaged Mateo, before I left, to look out for such property
as I left behind, and had retained my old house. I found him waiting
for me, and with everything in good order. That is one good thing to
be said about the natives. An imagined wrong or insult may rankle in
their minds for months, until they have a chance to stab you in the
back. They will lie to you at times with the most unblushing nerve,
often when the truth would have served their ends so much better that
it seems as if they must have been doing mendacious gymnastics simply
to keep themselves in practice; but they will hardly ever steal. If
they do, it will be sometime when you are looking squarely at them,
carrying a thing off from under your very nose with a cleverness
which they seem to think, and you can hardly help feel yourself,
makes them deserve praise instead of blame. I have repeatedly left
much valuable property with them, as I did in this case with Mateo,
and have come back to find every article just as I had left it.
Mateo was glad to see me. "Oh Senor," he began, before my clothes were
fairly changed, and while he was settling my things in my bed room,
"there is so much to tell you."
I knew he would be bursting with news of what had happened during my
absence. "Such goings on," he continued, folding my travelling clothes
into a tin trunk, where the white ants could not get at them. "You
never heard the likes of it."
I am translating very freely, for I have noticed that the thoughts
expressed by the Philippine gossip are very similar to those of his
fellow in America, or Europe, or anywhere else, no matter how much
the words may differ.
"The new Sultana, the handsome Visayan girl, has given birth to a son,
and has so bewitched the Sultan by her good looks and craftiness
that he has decreed her son, and not Ahmeya's, to be the heir to
the throne. She rules the palace now, and when her servants bear her
through the streets the people bow down to her." He added, with a look
behind him to see that no one overheard, "Because they dare not do
otherwise. In their hearts they love Ahmeya, and hate this vain woman."
"How does Ahmeya take it?" I asked.
"Hardly, people think, although she makes no cry. She goes not through
the streets of the town, now, but stays shut in her own rooms, with
her women and the boy."
A furious beating against the bamboo walls of my sleeping room,
and wild cries from some one on the ground outside, awoke me one
morning when I had been back in Culion less than a week. The house
in which I slept, like most of the native houses in the Philippines,
was built on posts, several feet above the ground, for the sake of
coolness and as a protection against snakes and such vermin.
It was very early, not yet sunrise. A servant of the Sultan's, gray
with fright, was pounding on the walls of the house with a long spear
to wake me, begging me, when I opened the lattice, to come to the
palace at once.
I thought the monarch must have had some terrible attack, and
wondered what it could be, but while we were hurrying up the street
the messenger managed to make me understand that the Sultan was not
at the palace at all, but gone the day before on board the royal
proa for a state visit to a neighboring island from which he exacted
yearly tribute. Later I learned that he had tried to have the Visayan
woman go with him, but that she had wilfully refused to go. What
was the matter at the palace the ruler being gone, I could not make
out. When I asked this of the man who had come for me, he fell into
such a palsy of fear that he could say nothing. When I came to know,
later, that he was the night guard at the palace, and remembered what
he must have seen, I did not wonder.
At the palace no one was astir. The man had come straight for me,
stopping to rouse no one else. I had saved the Sultan's life. At
least he thought so. Might I not do even more?
My guide took me straight through the first court yard, and down
the narrow passage into the inner yard, around which were built
the apartments of the woman. Ahmeya, I knew, lived in the rooms at
one end of the square. The man led me towards the opposite end of
the enclosure. Beside an open door he stood aside for me to enter,
saying, as he did so, "Senor, help us."
The sun had risen, now, and shining full upon a lattice in the upper
wall, flooded the room with a soft clear light.
The body of the Visayan woman, or rather what had been a body, lay
on the floor in the center of the room, a shapeless mass of crushed
bones and flesh. An enormous python lay coiled in one corner. His
mottled skin glistened in the morning light, but he did not move,
and his eyes were tight shut, as were those of the "green devil"
after I had seen him feed.
I looked backward, across the court yard. The door of the big bamboo
cage beneath the trees was open. I turned to the room again and looked
once more. I knew now why the night guard's face was ash-colored,
and why he could not speak.
For the child of the Visayan woman I could not see.
"OUR LADY OF PILAR"
"How very singular! What do you suppose they are doing?"
"I'm sure I don't know. The American mind is unequal to grappling
with the problem of what the natives are doing out here, most of the
time. They seem to be praying. Or are they having a thanksgiving?"
"I don't know. All women, too!"
The young American woman and the officer who was her escort halted
their horses to watch better the group of people of whom they had been
speaking. The officer was a lieutenant of the American forces stationed
in Zamboanga, the oldest and most important city in Mindanao, the
headquarters of the United States military district in the Philippines
known as the Department of Mindanao and Jolo. The young woman was
the daughter of one of the older officers of the department, just
come to Zamboanga the day before, and in this morning's ride having
her first chance to see the strange old city to which her father had
been transferred from Manila a few weeks before.
In the course of this ride the young people had reached Fort Pilar, at
one end of the town, a weather-beaten old fortification built years and
years before by the Spaniards as a protection against their implacable
foes, the Moros, who waged continual warfare against them from the
southern islands of the archipelago. Circling the stone walls of the
fort the riders had come upon a group of as many as fifty Visayan
women kneeling on the ground, their faces turned devoutly toward a
stone tablet let into the walls.
An American soldier was doing sentry duty not far away. "Wait here,
Miss Allenthorne," Lieutenant Chickering said, "and I'll find out
from that man over there what they are doing. He's been here long
enough so that probably he knows by this time." The officer cantered
his pony over to the sentry's station. The American girl, left to
herself, slipped down from her pony, and hooking the bridle rein into
her elbow, walked a little nearer to the women. They did not seem to
mind her in the least, and one of them--a handsome young woman near
her--when she looked up and saw that the stranger was an American,
smiled, and said something in a language which Miss Allenthorne did
not understand; but from the expression on her face the American felt
sure that what the woman said was meant as a welcome.
Something which this Visayan woman did a moment later excited Miss
Allenthorne's curiosity to a still higher pitch. The native woman drew
a small photograph from the folds of her "camisa," and kissed it. Then
she put it down on the ground between herself and the wall, and turned
to the tablet above it a face lighted with a radiance which any woman
seeing would have known could have come from love alone. When she had
finished, and had risen to her feet, she saw that the young American
"senorita" was still watching her.
The two woman had been born with the earth between them, and with
centuries of difference in traditions and training. Neither could
understand the words which the other spoke, but when their eyes met
there went from the heart of each to the heart of the other a message
which did not require words to make itself understood.
With a beautiful grace of manner and expression, the Visayan went
to the other woman, and again speaking as if she thought her words
could be understood, held out the picture which she had kissed,
for the stranger to look at.
The photograph was that of a young American officer, in a lieutenant's
uniform.
Grace Allenthorne and her mother had lived in Manila for several
months. As the daughter of one of the oldest and most highly respected
officers in the service, and as a beautiful and attractive young woman,
she had naturally been popular in the life of the military element
of Manila's society. If she had herself been asked to describe the
situation in Manila, Grace would have said that she liked no one
officer better than another. They had all been "so nice" to her. With
the exception of two of their number, however, the officers with whom
she had ridden and talked and danced, would have said, if they had
expressed their opinion of the matter, that they were all out of it
except Lieutenant Chickering and Lieutenant Day; and some of them,
among themselves, possibly may have made quiet bets as to which one
of these two men would win in the end.
Then there came one of those official wavings of red tape in the air,
which army officers' families learn to dread as signals of approaching
trouble, and Colonel Allenthorne was transferred from Luzon to
Mindanao; and among the troops sent with him were the companies of
the rival lieutenants.
When the General sent back word that Zamboanga was a quiet city, with a
fair climate and comfortable quarters, his wife and daughter followed
him. If either of the young officers flattered himself that Grace was
coming on his account, and that he was going to be made aware of her
preference for himself on her arrival in Mindanao, he was disappointed.
Lieutenant Chickering was on duty when Miss Allenthorne arrived,
and she devoted two hours that evening to hearing Lieutenant Day
describe the city as he had found it. The next morning Lieutenant
Day was on duty, and she went to ride with Lieutenant Chickering,
possibly to learn if the information she had been favoured with the
night before had been correct.
Lieutenant Chickering cantered back from the sentry's post. Finding
his companion dismounted, he jumped down from his own pony and came
to join her. The native woman had gone her way toward the city before
he returned, smiling a good-bye to Miss Allenthorne when she found
that her words were not understood, and hiding the photograph in her
bosom as she turned to go.
"I've found out all about it, Miss Allenthorne," the Lieutenant
exclaimed.
"There is a story which it seems the natives believe, that years ago
there was once, where we now stand, a river which ran down past the
fort and emptied into the sea. To give access to this river there
was then a gate in the wall of the fort, directly opposite where we
are now. Over the gate was a marble statue of a saint, who was called
'Our Lady of Pilar.'
"One night a soldier who was on sentry duty at the gate saw a white
figure pass out before him. He challenged it, and when he got no answer
challenged again and again. When the third summons brought no response,
he aimed his gun at the figure and fired.
"In the morning this sentry was found at his post, stone dead, and the
statue of the saint was gone. What was still more strange, the river
which had always flowed past the gate had dried up in the night, and
has never been seen since. After a time they built up the gate into
a solid part of the wall, as you see it now; because as there was
then no river here, there was no need of the gate. This had hardly
been done when the tablet which we see there now made its appearance
miraculously. All these strange manifestations attracted so much
attention to the place that this shrine was set up here, and now for
years it has been a favourite place for devout worshippers--especially
women--to come to pray and to give thanks for blessings which they
have received.
"It's interesting, isn't it?"
"Very," assented Miss Allenthorne, when the officer had finished;
and then she added, almost immediately, "Don't you think it's getting
very warm? Wouldn't we better ride back now?"
"Just as you say," the officer answered. Then he helped her to mount,
mounted his own horse, and they rode home.
That evening Miss Allenthorne was invisible. When Lieutenant Day
called, her mother explained that the young woman had a headache,
possibly from riding too far in the sun that morning.
Alone in her room the young woman heard the officer's inquiry and
her mother's excuses, for the bamboo walls of a Philippine house let
conversation be heard from one end of the house to the other. Crushing
in both hands the handkerchief which she had been dipping into iced
water to bind about her forehead, she flung it impatiently from her,
thinking bitterly to herself as she did so how foolish it was to bind
up one's head when it was really one's heart that was aching.
For alone in her darkened room that afternoon, the young woman had
acknowledged to herself--what perhaps up to that time had been almost
as much of a problem to her as to other people--which one of the young
officers she really cared for. She knew now that the love of Lieutenant
Day meant everything to her, and the love of the other man nothing.
And it was Lieutenant Day's picture which she had seen the Visayan
woman kiss.
One day General Allenthorne sat on the verandah of his house with
an American acquaintance, the agent of a business firm, who had been
sent to the Philippine Islands to see what opportunities there might
be for trade there.
Some women walked along the street below the house, carrying heavy
water jars poised on their heads.
"Queer country, isn't it?" said the visitor.
"Yes," said the General. "A body never knows what may happen to
him. Probably those women we see down there are slaves. Seeing them
made me think of a funny thing I heard of today, which happened to
one of my men a little while ago.
"A young officer hired a native man for a servant. One day the fellow
came to the Lieutenant in a great state of mind, begging the officer
to help him. It seemed he had a sweetheart who was a Visayan slave
girl owned by a Moro. The man who owned the girl was going to leave
the city and take all his property, including this slave girl, with
him. Pedro--that was the officer's boy--wanted 'the great American
Senor' to say she should not go. Some of the natives seem to have
the most wonderful confidence in the power of the Americans to do
anything and everything.
"The officer told his boy he had no power to prevent the man's moving
and taking his property with him; but he happened to ask how much
the girl was worth. How much do you think the fellow said? Fifteen
dollars! And he went on to explain that this was an unusually high
price, he knew, but that this girl was young and handsome and clever
at work. Of course he thought so, for he was in love with her.
"Well, I suppose the Lieutenant was flush, or felt generous, or perhaps
something had happened to put him in an unusually serene frame of
mind. He handed over fifteen dollars, and told Pedro to go and buy
the girl and marry her; which he did, and has been the happiest man
alive ever since. He is really grateful, too, and there isn't another
officer in the service that is waited on as Lieutenant Day is. The
funniest part of it all is, though, that he just found out a day or
two ago, that in his gratitude Pedro had stolen one of his master's
photographs to give to the Visayan girl he had married, so that she
could see what their benefactor looked like, and she has been going out
with it every day to an altar, or shrine, or something of that sort in
the wall of an old fort here, where the native women go to worship,
to pray to the saint there to shower all kinds of blessings on the
American Senor who brought all this happiness to her and her husband.
"The boys have guyed Day so much about it, since they found it out,
that he swears he will discharge the man, and have him hauled up for
stealing the picture into the bargain. If he does, the woman will be
likely to think that there is something the matter with the saint,
I reckon, or that her prayers havn't found favour."
For once the wicker walls of a bamboo house had a merit all their
own. At least that was what a certain young woman thought, when she
could not help hearing this conversation in the room in which she
had shut herself for the afternoon.
That night at dinner Miss Grace Allenthorne, was so radiant that even
her father noticed it.
"What have you been doing, Grace?" he said. "What's the reason you
feel so well, tonight? I havn't seen you look so fine for a month."
"Oh, nothing, father," said the girl. "I don't know of any special
reason. I think that you just imagine it."
Which was, of course, a very wrong thing for her to say; for she knew
perfectly well what the reason was.
While they were still at table a messenger came post haste for General
Allenthorne, with word that he was wanted at once at headquarters. He
was absent nearly all night.
In the morning it was known that an outpost in the northern part of
the island had been surprised and almost captured. The enemy was still
in force about the place and threatening it. A loyal native had crept
through the lines to bring word and ask for help. A relief force had
been made up and sent at once. Lieutenant Day was among those who
volunteered to go, and had gone.
Ten days of horrible anxiety followed. Then word came that the
relief party had reached the post in time. The forces surrounding
the place had been scattered, and the post was safe. There had been
a sharp fight, though, and among those who had been badly wounded
was Lieutenant Day.
Of course he got well. No man could help it, with four such nurses
as Mrs. Allenthorne and Mrs. Allenthorne's daughter Grace, and Pedro
and Pedro's Visayan wife Anita.
Just what Grace told her mother, which led that worthy person to
become responsible for the young officer's recovery, no one ever
knew except the two women themselves, but in addition to being a
motherly-hearted woman, Mrs. Allenthorne was a soldier's daughter as
well as a soldier's wife, so perhaps it was not necessary to explain
so many things to her as it would have been to some people.
Nobody ever knew--or at least never told--what explanation the young
woman made to the Lieutenant, when he came back to consciousness
and found her helping to care for him. Perhaps she did not
explain. Possibly the explanations made themselves, or else none
were needed.
At any rate, the young man got well, and since then he has been
known to say--although this was in the strictest confidence to a very
particular person--that he should always regard the Visayan woman's
prayers before "Our Lady of Pilar" with the profoundest gratitude,
because the greatest blessing of his whole life had come to him
through this woman's praying for him outside the walls of the old fort.