On Summer Seas.
The foolish little steamer _Romulus_ never exactly knew when she was
going, whither away, or where. The cargo being under hatches, all
regardless of the advertised time of departure, whether the passengers
were notified or not, she would stand clumsily down stream and out
to sea. The captain, looking like a pirate in his Tam o'Shanter cap,
or the pink little mate with the suggestion of a mustache on his
upper lip, if they had been informed about sailing hour, were never
willing to divulge the secret. If you tried to argue the matter with
them or impress them with a sense of their responsibility; if you
attempted to explain the obvious advantages of starting within, say,
twenty-four hours of the stated time, they would turn wearily away,
irreprehensible, with a protesting gesture.
Not even excepting the Inland Sea, that dreamy waterway among the
grottoes, pines, and _torii_ of picturesque Japan, there is no sea
so beautiful as that around the Southern Philippines. The stately
mountains, that go sweeping by in changing shades of green or blue,
appeal directly to the imagination. Unpopulated islands--islands of
which some curious myths are told of wild white races far in the
interior; of spirits haunting mountain-side and vale; volcanoes,
in a lowering cloud of sulphurous smoke; narrows, and wave-lashed
promontories, where the ships can not cross in the night; great mounds
of foliage that tower in silence hardly a stone's throw from the ship,
like some wild feature of a dream,--such are the characteristics of
the archipelago.
The grandeur of the scenery, the tempered winds, the sense of being
alone in an untraveled wilderness, made up in part for the discomforts
of the _Romulus_. The tropical sunsets, staining the sky until the
whole west was a riot of color, fiery red and gold; the false dawn,
and the sunrise breaking the ramparts of dissolving cloud; the
moonlight on the waters, where the weird beams make a shimmering
path that leads away across the planet waste to _terra incognita_,
or to some dank sea-cave where the sirens sing,--this is a day and
a night upon the summer seas.
At night, as the black prow goes pushing through the phosphorescent
waters, porpoises of solid silver, puffing desperately, tumble about
the bows, or dive down underneath the rushing hull. The surging
waves are billows of white fire. In the electric moonlight the blue
mountains, more mysterious than ever, stand out in bold relief. What
restless tribes of savages are wandering now through the trackless
forests, sleeping in lofty trees, or in some scanty shelter amid the
tangled underbrush! The light that flickers in the distant gorge,
perchance illumines some religious orgy--some impassioned dance of
primitive and pagan men. What spirits are abroad to-night, invoked at
savage altars by the incantations of the savage priests--spirits of
trees and rivers emanating from the hidden shrines of an almighty
one! Or it may be that the light comes from an isolated leper
settlement, where the unhappy mortals spend in loneliness their
dreary lives.
On the first trip of the _Romulus_ I was assigned to a small, mildewed,
stuffy cabin, where the unsubstantial, watery roaches played at
hide-and-seek around the wash-stand and the floor. It was a splendid
night to sleep on deck; and so, protected from the stiff breeze by the
flapping canvas, on an army cot which the _muchacho_ had stretched out,
I went to sleep, my thoughts instinctively running into verse:
"The wind was just as steady, and the vessel tumbled more,
But the waves were not as boist'rous as they were the day
before."
It was the rhythm of the sea, the good ship rising on the waves,
the cats'-paws flying into gusts of spray before the driving wind.
I was awakened at four bells by the disturbance of the sailors swabbing
down the deck--an exhibition performance, as the general condition
of the ship led me to think. Breakfast was served down in the forward
cabin, where, with deep-sea appetites, we eagerly attacked a tiny cup
of chocolate, very sweet and thick, a glass of coffee thinned with
condensed milk, crackers, and ladyfingers. That was all. Some of our
fellow-passengers had been there early, as the dirty table-cloth and
dishes testified. A Filipino woman at the further end was engaged in
dressing a baby, while the provincial treasurer, in his pink pajamas,
tried to shave before the dingy looking-glass. An Indian merchant,
a Visayan belle with dirty finger-nails and ankles, and a Filipino
justice of the peace still occupied the table. Reaching a vacant
place over the piles of rolled-up sleeping mats and camphorwood
boxes--the inevitable baggage of the Filipino--I swept off the crumbs
upon the floor, and, after much persuasion, finally secured a glass
of lukewarm coffee and some broken cakes. The heavy-eyed _muchacho_,
who, with such reluctance waited on the table, had the grimiest feet
that I had ever seen.
A second meal was served at ten o'clock, for which the tables were
spread on deck. The plates were stacked up like Chinese pagodas, and
counting them, you could determine accurately the number of courses
on the bill of fare. There were about a dozen courses of fresh meat
and chicken--or the same thing cooked in different styles. Garlic
and peppers were used liberally in the cooking. Heaps of boiled rice,
olives, and sausage that defied the teeth, wrapped up in tinfoil, "took
the taste out of your mouth." Bananas, mangoes, cheese, and guava-jelly
constituted the dessert. After the last plate had been removed, the
grizzled captain at the head of the table lighted a coarse cigarette,
which, in accordance with the Spanish custom, he then passed to the
mate, so that the mate could light his cigarette. This is a more polite
way than to make an offer of a match. Coffee and cognac was brought
on after a considerable interval. Although this process was repeated
course for course at eight o'clock, during the interim you found it
was best to bribe the steward and eat an extra meal of crackers.
Our next voyage in the _Romulus_ was unpropitious from the start. We
were detained five days in quarantine in Manila Bay. There was no
breeze, and the hot sun beat down upon the boat all day. To add
to our discomforts, there was nothing much to eat. The stock of
lady-fingers soon became exhausted, and the stock of crackers, too,
showed signs of running out. As an experiment I ordered eggs for
breakfast once--but only once. The cook had evidently tried to serve
them in disguise, believing that a large amount of cold grease would
in some way modify their taste. He did not seem to have the least
respect for old age. It was the time of cholera; the boat might have
become a pesthouse any moment. But the steward assured us that the
drinking water had been neither boiled nor filtered. There was no
ice, and no more bottled soda, the remaining bottles being spoken
for by the ship's officers. At the breakfast-table two calves and
a pig, that had been taken on for fresh meat, insisted upon eating
from the plates. The sleepy-eyed _muchacho_ was by this time grimier
than ever. Even the passengers did not have any opportunity to take
a bath. One glance at the ship's bathtub was sufficient.
It was a happy moment when we finally set out for the long rambling
voyage to the southern isles. The captain went barefooted as he paced
the bridge. A stop at one place in the Camarines gave us a chance
to go ashore and buy some bread and canned fruit from the military
commissary. How the captain and the mate scowled as we supplemented
our elaborate meals with these purchases! One of the passengers, a
miner, finally exasperated at the cabin-boy, made an attack upon the
luckless fellow, when the steward, who had been wanting an excuse to
exploit his authority, came up the hatchway bristling. In his Spanish
jargon he explained that he considered it as his prerogative to punish
and abuse the luckless boy, which he did very capably at times; that
he would tolerate no interference from the passengers. But the big
miner only looked him over like a cock-of-the-walk regarding a game
bantam. Being a Californian, the miner told the steward in English
(which that officer unfortunately did not understand) that if the
service did not presently improve, the steward and cabin-boy together
would go overboard.
Stopping at Dumaguete, Oriental Negros, where we landed several
teachers, with their trunks and furniture, upon the hot sands,
most of us went ashore in surf-boats, paddled by the kind of men
that figure prominently in the school geographies. It was a chapter
from "Swiss Family Robinson,"--the white surf lashing the long
yellow beach; the rakish palm-trees bristling in the wind; a Stygian
volcano rising above a slope of tropic foliage; the natives gathering
around, all open-mouthed with curiosity. At Camaguin, where the boat
stopped at the sultry little city of Mambajo, an accident befell our
miner. When we found him, he was sleeping peacefully under a _nipa_
shade, guarded by a municipal policeman, with the ring of Filipinos
clustering around. He had been drinking native "_bino_" (wine), and it
had been too much even for him, a discharged soldier and a Californian.
It was almost a pleasant change, the transfer to the tiny launch
_Victoria_, that smelled of engine oil and Filipinos, and was commanded
by my old friend Dumalagon. The _Victoria_ at that time had a most
unpleasant habit of lying to all night, and sailing with the early
dawn. When I had found an area of deck unoccupied by feet or Filipino
babies, Chinamen or ants, I spread an army blanket out and went to
sleep in spite of the incessant drizzle which the rotten canopy seemed
not to interrupt. I was awakened in the small hours by the rattle of
the winch. These little boats make more ado in getting under way than
any ocean steamer I have ever known. Becoming conscious of a cloud of
opium-smoke escaping from the cockpit, which was occupied by several
Chinamen, I shifted to windward, stepping over the sprawling forms
of sleepers till I found another place, the only objection to which
was the proximity of numerous brown feet and the hot engine-room. The
squalling of an infant ushered in the rosy-fingered dawn.
Most of the transportation of the southern islands is accomplished by
such boats as the _Victoria_. I can remember well the nights spent
on the launch _Da-ling-ding_, an impossible, absurd craft, that
rolled from side to side in the most gentle sea. She would start out
courageously to cross the bay along the strip of Moro coast in Northern
Mindanao; but the throbbing of her engines growing weaker and weaker,
she would presently turn back faint-hearted, unable to make headway, at
the mercy of a sudden storm, and with the possibility of being swept up
on a hostile shore among bloodthirsty and unreasonable Moros. Another
time, and we were caught in a typhoon off the north coast. We thought,
of course, our little ship was stanch, until we asked the captain his
opinion. "If the engines hold out," he replied, "we may come through
all right. The engineer says that the old machine will probably blow up
now any time, and that the Filipinos have quit working and begun their
prayers." Generally a Filipino is the first to give up in a crisis;
but I have seen some that managed their canoes in a rough sea with
as much skill and coolness as an expert yachtsman could have shown. I
have to thank Madroño for the way in which he handled the small boat
that put out in a sea like glass and ran into a squall fifteen miles
out. All through the morning we had poled along over the crust of
coral bottom, where, in the transparent water, indigo fishes swam,
where purple starfish sprawled among the coral--coral of many colors
and in many forms. But as the wind came up and lashed the choppy
sea to whitecaps, as the huge waves swept along and seemed about to
knock the little _banca_ "off her feet," Madroño, standing on the
bamboo outrigger--a framework lashed together with the native cane,
the breaking of which would have immediately upset the boat--kept
her bow pointed for the shore, although a counter storm threatened
to blow us out to the deep sea.
So, after knocking around in _bancas_, picnicking with natives on the
chicken-bone and boiled rice; after a wild cruise in the _Thomas_,
where the captain and the crew, as drunk as lords, let the old rotten
vessel drift, while threatening with a gun the man that dared to meddle
with the steering gear; after a dreary six months in a provincial
town,--it seemed like coming into a new world to step aboard the clean
white transport, with electric-lights and an upholstered smoking-room.
A tourist party, mostly army officers, their wives and daughters,
"doing" the archipelago, made up the passenger list of the
transport. The officers, now they had settled satisfactorily the
question of superiority and "rank," made an agreeable company. There
was the Miss Bo Peep, in pink and white, who wore a dozen different
military pins, and would not look at any one unless he happened to
be "in the service." Like many of the army girls, she had no use
for the civilians or volunteers. Her mamma told with pride how,
at their last "at home," nobody under the rank of a major had been
present. One of the young lieutenants down at Zamboanga, when he
found she had not worn his pin, "retired to cry." But then, of course,
Bo Peep was not responsible for young lieutenants' hearts. If he had
been a captain--well, that is another thing. There was the English
sugar-planter from the Tawi-Tawi group, who never lost sight of the
ranking officer, who dressed in flannels, changed his clothes three
times a day, and who expressed his only ideas to me by virtue of a
confidential wink.
For three whole days we were a part of the fresh winds, the tossing
waves, the moon and stars. And as the ship plowed through the sea at
night, the phosphorescent surge retreated like a line of silver fire.