Leaves from a Note-book.
I.
Skim Organizes the Constabulary.
The soldiers had gone, bag and baggage, dog, parrot, and monkey,
blanket-roll and cook. I stood by the deserted convent under
the lime-tree, watching the little transport disappear beyond
the promontory. The house that formerly had been headquarters
seemed abandoned. There was the list of calls still pasted on the
door. Reveille, guard-mount, mess-call, taps,--the village would
seem strange without these bugle-notes. The sturdy sentry who had
paced his beat was gone. When would I ever see again my old friend
the ex-circus clown, and hear him tinkle the "potato-bug" and sing
"Ma Filipino Babe?" Walking along the lonely shore, now lashed by
breakers, I looked out on the blue wilderness beyond. It was with
feelings such as Robinson Crusoe must have had that I went back then
to the empty house.
Ramon, convinced that something would break loose, now that the troops
were gone, had left for Cagayan. His wife, Maria, slept at night
with a big bolo underneath her pillow. There was a "bad" town only a
few miles away--a village settled by Tagalog convicts, who had been
conspicuous in the revolt a few years previous. The people feared
these neighbors, the assassins, and they double-barred their doors
at night. I was awakened as the clock struck twelve by unfamiliar
noises,--nothing but the lizard croaking in the bonga-tree. Again,
at one, I started up. It was the rats, and from the rattling sound
above I judged that the house-snake was pursuing them. At early
morning came the chorus of the chanticleers. Through the transparent
Japanese blinds I could see the huge green mountains shouldering the
overhanging clouds. Ah! the mysterious, silent mountains, with their
wonderful, deep shadows! The work of man seemed insignificant beside
them, and Balingasag the lonesomest place in all the world.
One morning the sharp whistle of the launch aroused the
town. Proceeding to the shore, I saw a boat put out from the
_Victoria_, sculled by a native deck-hand. As the sun had not
yet risen, all the sea was gray, and sea and sky blended into one
vast planetary sphere. Two natives carrying the ample form of the
constabulary captain staggered through the surf. Behind them came the
captain's life-long partner and lieutenant, a slight man, with cold,
steely eyes, dressed in gray crash uniform, with riding leggings. They
had been through one campaign together as rough riders; for the captain
had once been "sheriff of Gallup County," in the great Southwest.
The house no longer seemed deserted with this company, and as they
had brought supplies for two months--which included bread!--we made
an early attack upon these commissaries. Since the troops had left
I had been existing on canned salmon and sardines. Now there were
cheese, guava, artichokes, mushrooms, ham, bacon, blackberry-jam,
and fruits. The captain, natural detective that he was, caught one of
the _muchachos_ stealing a bottle of cherries, which he had thrown out
the window during the unpacking, with the purpose of securing it next
day. On being accused, he made a vigorous protest of his innocence,
but after a few minutes he returned triumphantly with the intelligence
that he had "found" that which was lost.
A heavy rain and the tail-end of a monsoon kept my two guests
prisoners for a week. The _presidente_ of the town had issued
a _bandilla_ that all able-bodied men were wanted to enlist in
the constabulary. Accordingly came awkward natives to the house,
where the interpreter examined them; for all the Spanish that the
genial captain knew--and he had lived already two years in the
Philippines--was "bueno," "malo," "saca este," and "sabe that?" The
candidates were measured, and, if not found wanting, were turned
over to the native tailor to be fitted with new uniforms. Some of
the applicants confessed that they had once been Insurrectos; but
so much the better,--they knew how to fight. They said that they
were not afraid of Moros--though I think that they would rather
have encountered tigers--and when finally dressed, a few days later,
they appeared upon the streets self-conscious, objects of adoration
in the eyes of all the local belles.
The time came when the mists dissolved upon the mountains, and
the little clouds scudded along overhead as though to get in from
the rain. The sun had struggled out for a few minutes, and the wind
abated. But the sea had not forgotten recent injuries, and all night we
could hear the booming of the surf. The launch, drowned in a nebula
of spray, dashed by, and sought an anchorage in safer waters. So
it was decided that we go to Cagayan in a big _banca_. But it was a
most unwieldly craft to launch. We got the arms and ammunition safe
aboard, and then, assisted by the sturdy corporals and miscellaneous
natives, we pushed out. A rushing comber swept the boat and nearly
swamped it. But we bore up till about a hundred yards from shore,
when a gigantic breaker bearing down upon the _banca_--which had
been deflected so as to present a broadside--filled her completely,
and she went down in the swirling spume. Up to our necks in surf,
we labored for an hour, together with the population of the fishing
village, finally to save the wretched boat and most of the constabulary
ordnance.
But, alas for the lieutenant! He had lost one of his riding-leggings,
and for half a day he paced the shore in search of it. He offered
rewards to any native who should rescue it. Lacking a saving sense
of humor, he bemoaned his fate, and when he did give up the search,
he discontinued it reluctantly. And two years afterwards, when I
next met him, he inquired if I had seen his legging washed up on the
beach. "Some native must be sporting around in it," he said. "It set
me back five dollars, Mex."
It was a sleepy day at Cagayan. The tropical river flowed in silence
through the jungle like a serpent. In _Capitan_ A-Bey's house opposite,
a _señorita_ droned the _Stepanie Gavotte_ on the piano. _Capitan_
A-Bey's pigs rooted industriously in the compound. The teacher who
had hiked in from El Salvador, unconscious that his canvas leggings
were transposed, was engaged in a deep game of solitaire.
Upon the settee in the new constabulary residence, his long legs
doubled up ridiculously, still in khaki breeches and blue flannel
army shirt, lay "Skim," with a week's growth of beard upon his face,
sleeping after a night-ride over country roads. After an hour or two
of rest he would again be in the saddle for two days.
Late in the afternoon we started on constabulary ponies for
Balingasag--a ride of thirty miles through quagmires, over swollen
streams and mountain trails. Our ponies were the unaccepted present
from a quack who thus had tried to buy his way out of the calaboose,
where he was "doing time" for trying to pass himself off as a prophet.
The first few miles of the journey led through the cloistered archways
of bamboo. We crossed the Kauffman River, swimming the horses down
stream. Then the muddy roads began. The constant rains had long
ago reduced them to a state of paste, and although some attempt had
been made to stiffen them with a filling of dried cocoanut-husks,
the sucking sound made by the ponies' hoofs was but a prelude to
our final floundering in the mud. There was a narrow ridge on one
side near a thorny hedge, and, balancing ourselves on this, we
made slow progress, meanwhile tearing our clothes to shreds. Skim
had considerable difficulty with his long legs, for he could have
touched the ground on either side, but he could use them to advantage,
when it came to wading through the slosh ourselves, and dragging the
tired ponies after us. At night we "came to anchor" in a village,
where we purchased a canned dinner in a Spanish store. The natives
gathered around us as we sat, all splashed with mud, on wicker chairs
in front of the provincial _almacen_. Skim talked with the Spaniard,
alternating every word with "_estie_," while the Don kept swallowing
his eyes and gesturing appropriately. Skim was convinced that his
Castilian was fine art.
We slept in a deserted schoolhouse, lizards and mosquitoes being our
bed-fellows. Skim, the rough cowboy that he was, pillowed his head
upon the horse's flank, and kept his boots on. At the break of day,
restless as ever, he was off again. Crossing the Jimenez River in a
native ferry while the horses swam, we passed through tiny villages
that had not seen a white man for a year. Our journey now lay through
the woods, and Skim, dismounting, stalked along the narrow trail
as though he had been shod in seven-league boots. I heard a pistol
shot ring out, and, coming up, found Skim in mortal combat with an
ape. Then one more plunge into a river, and another stream spanned
by a bamboo pole, which we negotiated like funambulists, dragging
the steeds below us by their halters,--then Balingasag.
In town the big _vaquero_ was a schoolboy on a holiday. He was a
perfect panther for prowling around the streets at night, and in
the market-place, where we now missed the scattering of khaki, he
became acquainted with the natives, and drank _tuba_ with them. He
came back with reports about the resources of the town. There was an
Indian merchant stranded at Ramon's, who had a lot of watches for
sale cheap. He purchased some lace curtains at the _Chino_ store,
and yellow _piña_ cloth for a mosquito bar, and with this stuff he had
transformed his bed into a perfect bower. It was almost a contradiction
that this wild fellow, who was more accustomed to his boots and spurs
at night than to pajamas, should have taken so much pains to make his
sleeping-quarters dainty. Streamers of baby-ribbon fell in graceful
lines about the curtains, while the gauze mosquito-bar was decorated
with the medals he had won for bravery.
A photograph of his divorced wife occupied the place of honor near
the looking-glass. In reminiscent moods Skim used to tell how Chita,
of old Mexico, had left him after stabbing him three times with the
jeweled knife that he had given her. "I didn't interfere with her,"
he said, "but told her, when she pricked me with the little knife,
it was my heart that she was jabbing at." Skim also told me of
his expedition into "Dead Man's Gulch," "Death Valley," and the
suddenly-abandoned mining-camps among the hills of California. And
he had met the daughter of a millionaire in Frisco, and had seen her
home. "And when I saw the big shack looming up there in the woods,"
he said, "I thought sure that I'd struck the wrong farmhouse."
Skim rented a small place surrounded by a hedge of bonga palms, and
here he entertained the village royally. He was a favorite among the
girls, and lavished gifts upon them, mostly the latest illustrated
magazines that belonged to me. He ruled his awkward soldiers with
an iron hand, and they were more afraid of him that of the Evil
One. Of course, they could not understand his Spanish, and would
often answer, "_Si, señor_" when they had not the least idea of what
the orders were. Then they would come to grief for disobedience,
or receive Skim's favorite reprimand of "Blooming idiot! _No sabe_
your own language?" When his cook displeased him, he (the cook) would
generally come bumping down the stairs. The voice of Skim was as the
roaring lion in a storm. Desertions were many in those strenuous days;
for the constabulary guards were not the heroes of the hour.
Always insisting on strict discipline, Skim, on the day we made our
trial hike, marshaled his forces in a rigid line, and, after roll-call,
marched them off in order to the hills. The soldiers took about three
steps to his one, and, trying to keep up with him through the dense
hemp-fields, they broke ranks and ran. We followed a mountain stream
to its headwaters, scrambling over bowlders, wading waist-deep in the
ice-cold stream, and by the time we broke the underbrush and pushed up
hill, big Skim had literally hiked the soldiers off their feet. They
were unspeakably relieved when we sat down at noon in the cool shade,
upon the brink of a deep, crystal pool, and ate our luncheon. Skim,
insisting that the canned quail--which retained its gamy flavor--was
beyond redemption, turned it over to the soldiers to their great
delight.
In spite of his severity, Skim had a soft heart, and when all dressed
in white and gold, he would go up to visit Señor Roa and his daughters;
while the girls would play duets on the piano, Skim, with a little
chocolate baby under either arm, would sing in an insinuating voice
one of his good old cowboy songs, regardless of the fact that he was
not in tune with his accompaniment. He always appeared on Sundays
cleanly shaven and immaculate in white, and when the girls went
by his house to church, their dusky arms glowing among the gauze,
appealed to him and made him sad.
No one could ever contradict Skim, though he couldn't even write
his own name legibly. His monthly reports were actually works of
art. "Seenyor Inspekter of constabulery," he would write, "i hav the
honner to indite the following report. i hav bin having trubel with the
moros. They was too boats of them and they had a canon in the bow. i
faired three shots and too of them fell down but they al paddeled aeway
so fast i coodnt catch them." And again: "On wensday the first instant
i went on a hike of seven miles. i captured three ladrones four bolos,
one old gun and too durks." Then after practicing his signature for
half an hour on margins of books or any kind of paper he could find,
he used to sign his document with a tremendous flourish.
I rather miss the rock thrown at my blinds at 4 o'clock A. M. A little
catlike sergeant, a _mestizo_, is in charge of the constabulary,
and the men are glad. No longer does the huge six-footer, with his
army Colt's, stalk through the village streets. The other day I got a
note from Skim: "i dont think i ain't never going to come back there
eny moar," he wrote above the most successful signature that I had
ever seen. A few months later Skim was badly crippled in a fight with
robbers. He was sent to Manila to the civil hospital. On his discharge
he was promoted, and he now wears three bars on his shoulder-straps. He
has been shot three times since then, and he has written, "If i dont
get kilt no more, i dont think that i wont come back."
To-day the constabulary is well organized. They have distinguished
themselves time and again in battle-line. They have put down the
lingering sparks of the rebellion. They look smart in their brand-new
uniforms and russet boots. But it was only a year or two ago that
Skim had crowded their uncivilized feet into the clumsy army shoe, and
knocked them around like puppets in a Noah's ark. Skim, if you ever get
hold of these few pages written in your honor, here's my compliments
and my best wishes for another bar upon your shoulder-straps, and--yes,
here's hoping that you "won't get killed no more."
II.
Last Days at Oroquieta.
I had been visiting the teachers at El Salvador, who occupied a Spanish
convent, with a broad veranda looking out upon the blue sea and a grove
of palms. It was a country of bare hills, which reminded one somewhat
of Colorado. _Nipa_ jungles bristled at the mouths of rivers, and the
valleys were verdant with dense mango copses. We made our first stop
on the way from Cagayan on Sunday morning at a village situated in
a prairie, where a drove of native ponies had been tethered near the
_nipa_ church. The roads were alive with people who had been attending
services or who were on the way to the next cock-fight. Falling in
with a loquacious native, who supplied us with a store of mangoes,
we rode on, and reached Tag-nipa or El Salvador late in the afternoon.
One of the teachers, "Teddy," might have actually stepped from out the
pages of Kate Greenaway. He had a large, broad forehead, and a long,
straight nose. He conducted a school of miserable little girls, and in
the evening, like a village preacher, he would make his pastoral calls
with a "Hello, girlie!" for each child he met. When he was pleased at
anything, he used to clap his hands, exclaiming, "Goodie!" "Teddy"
envied me "my baccalaureate enthusiasm," and, encouraged evidently
by this quality, he would read Chaucer in a sing-song voice, or,
when this recreation failed, would make up limericks to a guitar
accompaniment. His partner was the one who wore the transposed
leggings, and who walked as though continually following a plow.
Leaving for Oroquieta, in a Moro sailboat stocked with Chinese pigs and
commissaries that belonged to one called "Jac-cook" by the natives,
or "The Great White Father"--a New Zealander who could have posed as
an Apollo or a Hercules--the sailors whistled for wind, and finally
succeeded in obtaining it. The moon rose early over the dark waters,
and the boat, behaving admirably, rode the huge waves like a cockle. We
had nearly gone to pieces on a coral reef that night if "Jac-cook,"
suddenly aroused by the unusual sound of breakers, had not lowered
sail in time to save the ship from running on the sharp rock half a
mile from land. The sailors, perfectly incompetent, and panic-stricken
at the course the boat was taking, blundered frightfully as the New
Zealander assumed command.
No doubt the best mess in the town at that time was the one conducted
by the members of the hospital detachment. "Shorty," who did the
cooking, was a local druggist in his way; that is, he sold the natives
talcum powder, which they bought at quinine rates. The acting steward,
whom all the Filipinos called "Francisco," though his name was Louis,
was a butcher, and a doctor too. Catching the Spaniard's goat out
late at night, he knocked it in the head. The carcass was then taken
into the dissecting-room, where it was skinned and dressed for the
fresh-meat supply. He had acquired a local reputation as a _medico_,
to the disgust of the real army doctor, who, for a long time, could
not imagine why his medicines had disappeared so fast. Then there was
"Red," who had the art of laziness down fine, and who could usually
be found playing _monte_ with the natives. With the money he had won
at _monte_ games and chicken-fights, he intended to set up a drugstore
in America.
In a downpour of rain I left one morning for Aloran, down the coast
and up the winding river. Prisoners furnished by the _presidente_
manned the _banca_. They were guarded by a barefooted municipal
policeman, who, on falling presently to sleep, would probably have
lost his Mauser overboard had not one of the convicts rescued it and
courteously returned it to him. It was a wet and lonesome pull up the
Aloran River, walled in on both sides by _nipa_ jungles, and forever
winding in and out. After an hour or so, while I was wondering what
we were coming to, we met a raft poled down the stream with "Red"
and a young Austrian constabulary officer aboard.
Finding a little teacup of a house, I moved in, and, before an
interested throng of natives, started to unpack my trunks and boxes
with a sense of genuine relief; for I had had four months of traveling
and living out of steamer-trunks. But I returned to Oroquieta all in
good time for the doctor's birthday and the annual Oroquieta ball. I
found the doctor wandering about Aloran late one afternoon; for he had
been attending a sick Chinaman. We started back together through the
night, and, in the darkness, voices greeted us, or snarled a "_Buenas
noches_" at us as we passed. Bridges that carabaos had fallen through
were crossed successfully, and we arrived at Oroquieta during the
band concert.
The foreign colony at Oroquieta was more interesting than the
_personæ dramatis_ of the "Canterbury Tales." Where to begin I do not
know. But, anyway, there was my old friend the constabulary captain,
"Foxy Grandpa," as we called him then, because when he was not engaged
in telling how he had arrested somebody in Arizona, he was playing
practical jokes or doing tricks with cards and handkerchiefs. And
then there was the "Arizona Babe," a blonde of the Southwestern type,
affianced to the commissary sergeant. The wife o£ the commanding
officer, a veritable O'Dowd, and little Flora, daughter of O'Dowd,
who rode around town in a pony cart, were leaders of society for
the subpost.
Then you could take a stool in front of Paradies's general store,
and almost at any time engage the local teacher in an argument. You
would expect, of course, that he would wander from his topic till you
found yourself discussing something entirely foreign to the subject,
but so long as he was talking, everything was satisfactory. There were
the two Greek traders who had "poisoned the wells" out Lobuc way,--so
people said. And I must not forget "Jac-cook," whose grandfather,
according to his own report, had been a cannibal, a king of cannibals,
and eaten a roast baby every morning for his breakfast. Jack was a
soldier of fortune if there ever was one. He could give you a recipe
for making _poi_ from ripe bananas and the milk of cocoanuts, or for
distilling whisky from fermented oranges,--both of which formulas I
have unfortunately lost. He recommended an exclusive diet of raw fish,
and in his youth he had had many a hard battle with the shark and
octopus. His one regret was that there were no sharks in the Oroquieta
Bay, that, diving under, he could rip with a sharp knife. "To catch
the devil-fish," he used to say, "you whirl them rapidly around
your arm until they get all tangled up and supine-like." And once,
like Ursus, in "Quo Vadis," he had taken a young bull by the horns
and broken its neck.
All members of good standing in the colony received their invitations
to the birthday party. Old Vivan, the ex-horse-doctor of the
_Insurrectos_, went out early in the morning to cut palms. The floor
was waxed and the walls banked with green. The first to arrive was
"Fresno Bill," the Cottobato trader, in a borrowed white suit and a
pair of soiled shoes. Then came the bronzed Norwegian captain of the
_Delapaon_, hearty and hale from twenty years of deep-sea sailing
from the Java coast to Heligoland. Came Paradies, the little German
trader, in his finest blacks, and chose a seat off in one corner
of the room. Then "Foxy Grandpa" and the "Arizona Babe" arrived,
and the old maid from Zamboanga, who, when expression failed her,
would usurp the conversation with a "blab, blab, blab!" And as the
serpent made for old Laocoön, so she now made for "Fresno Bill."
Half an hour more and the party was in full swing. Native musicians,
stationed on the landing, furnished the music, and Vivan, the
Filipino Chesterfield, with sweeping bows to every one, was serving
the refreshments. Padre Pastor, in his black gown, with his face all
wreathed in smiles, was trying to explain to the schoolteacher's
wife that "stars were the forget-me-nots of heaven." The young
commissary sergeant had secured an alcove for the "Arizona babe,"
and "Foxy grandpa," taking a nip of something when his good wife's
back was turned, was telling his best anecdote of the southwest,
"Ichabod Crane," the big-boned Kansan--who had got the better of
us all that afternoon in argument--swinging his arms, and with his
head thrown back, was trying to herd the people into an old-fashioned
reel. Grabbing the little daughter of the regiment together with the
French constabulary officer--they loved each other like two cats--he
shouted, "Salamander, there! Why don't you salamander?" Entering
into the fun more than the rest, the genial army doctor "kept the
ball a-rolling."
For the doctor was a southerner, as many of the army people are. In his
dual function of physician-soldier, he could boast that he had killed
more men, had more deaths to his credit, than his fellow officers. He
was undoubtedly the best leech in the world. When off duty he assumed
a Japanese kimono, which became him like the robes of Nero. Placing his
sandaled feet upon the window-sill, he used to read the _Army and Navy
Journal_ by the hour. Although he had a taste for other literature,
his studies were considerably hampered by a tendency to fall asleep
after the first few paragraphs. He spent about four weeks on "Majorie
Daw." When he was happy--and he generally was happy--he would sing
that favorite song of his, "O, Ca'line." It went:
"O, Ca'line! O, Ca'line!
Can't you dance da pea-vine?
O, my Jemima, O-hi-o."
But he could never explain satisfactorily what the "pea-vine"
was. His "Ring around and shake a leg, ma lady," was a triumph in
the lyric line.
We used to walk to Lobuc every afternoon to purchase eggs. The
doctor's "_Duna ba icao itlong dinhi?_" always amused the natives,
who, when they had any eggs, took pleasure in producing them. It was
with difficulty that I taught him to say "_itlog_" (egg) instead of
"eclogue," which he had been using heretofore. He made one error,
though, which never could be rectified,--he always called a Chinaman
a "hen chick," much to the disgust of the offended Oriental, whose
denomination was expressed in the Visayan by the word "_inchic_."
I pause before attempting a description of the Oroquieta ball, and,
like the poets, pray to some kind muse to guide my pen. To-night
I feel again the same thrill that I felt the night of the grand
Oroquieta ball. The memories of Oroquieta music seem as though they
might express themselves in words:
"The stars so brightly shine,
But ah, those stars of thine!
Are none like yours, _Bonita_,
Beyond the ocean brine."
And then I seem to see the big captain--"Foxy grandpa"--beating the
bass drum like that extraordinary man that Mark Twain tells about,
"who hadn't a tooth in his whole head." I can remember how Don Julian,
the crusty Spaniard, animated with the spirit of old Capulet, stood on
the chair and shouted, "_Viva los Americanos!_"--and the palm-grove,
like a room of many pillars, lighted by Chinese lanterns.
It was a time of magic moonlight, when the sea broke on the sands in
phosphorescent lines in front of the _kiosko_. Far out on the horizon
lights of fishing-boats would glimmer, and the dusky shores of Siquijor
or the volcanic isle of Camaguin loomed in the distance. Here there
were little cities as completely isolated though they were parts
of another planet, where the "other" people worked and played, and
promenaded to the strumming of guitars. And in the background rose
the triple range of mountains, cold, mysterious, and blue in the
transfiguring moonlight.
The little army girl, like some fair goddess of the night, monopolized
the masculine attention at the ball. When she appeared upon the floor,
all others, as by mutual consent, retired, and left the field to her
alone. The "Pearls of Lobuc," who refused to come until a carriage was
sent after them, appeared in delicate gauze dresses, creamy stockings,
and white slippers. And "The Princess of the Philippines," Diega, with
her saucy pompadour, forgot that it was time to drop your hand at the
conclusion of the dance. Our noble Ichabod was there in a tight-fitting
suit of black and narrow trousers, fervently discussing with the
French constabulary man whether a frock was a Prince Albert. Paradies
capered mincingly to the quick music of the waltz, and the old maid,
unable to restrain herself, kept begging the doctor--who did not
know how to dance--only to try a two-step with her, please. And
the poor doctor, in his agony, had sweated out another clean white
uniform. I had almost forgotten Maraquita and the _zapatillas_
with the pearl rosettes. She was a little queen in pink-and-white,
and ere the night was over she had given me her "_sing sing_" (ring)
and fan, and told me that I could "ask papa" if I wanted to. The next
day she was just as pretty in light-blue and green, and with her hair
unbound. She poked her toes into a pair of gold-embroidered sandals,
and seemed very much embarrassed at my presence. This was explained
when, later in the day, her uncle asked me for Miss Maraquita's ring.
Although the cook and the _muchachos_ ate the greater part of the
refreshments, and a heart or two was broken incidentally, the Oroquieta
ball passed into history as being the most brilliant function of its
kind that ever had been witnessed at the post.
The winter passed with an occasional plunge in the cool river,
and the surf-bath every morning before breakfast. In the evening we
would ride to Lobuc, racing the ponies back to town in a white cloud
of dust. Dinner was always served for any number, for we frequently
had visitors,--field officers on hunting leave, commercial drummers
from Cebu, the circuit judge, the captain of the _Delapaon_. The
doctor had been threatening for some time, now, to give Vivan a
necessary whipping, which he did one morning to that Chesterfield's
astonishment. Calling the servant "_Usted_," or "Your honor," he
applied the strap, and old Vivan was shaking so with laughter that
he hardly felt the blows. But after that, he tumbled over himself
with eagerness to fill our orders. We had found the coolest places in
the town,--the beach at Lobuc, under a wide-spreading tree, and the
thatched bridge where the wind swept up and down the river, where
the women beat their washing on the rounded stones, and carabaos
dreamed in the shade of the bamboo. The cable used to steady the
bridge connected with the shore, the doctor explained to the old maid,
was the Manila cable over which the messages were sent.
The clamor of bells one morning reminded us that the _fiesta_ week was
on, and old Vivan came running in excitedly with the intelligence that
seven _bancas_ were already anchored at the river's mouth, and there
were twenty more in sight. Then he went breathlessly around the town to
circulate the news. We rode about in Flora's pony cart, and sometimes
went to visit "Foxy Grandpa," wife, and "Arizona Babe." "Old Tom,"
the convict on parole for murder, waited on the table, serving the
pies that Mrs. G. had taught the cook to make, and the canned peaches
with evaporated cream. Then, on adjourning to the parlor, with its
pillars and white walls, the "Babe" would play "Old Kentucky Home"
on the piano till the china shepherdesses danced with the vibrations,
and the genial captain, growing reminiscent, would recall the story
of the man he had arrested in old Mexico, or even condescend to do a
new trick with a handkerchief. There was a curious picture from Japan
in a gilt frame that had the place of honor over the piano. It was
painted on a plaque of china, robin's-egg blue, inlaid with bits of
pearl,--which represented boats or something on the Inland Sea, while
figures of men and small boys, enthusiastically waving Japanese flags,
all cut out of paper, had been pasted on. There was an arched bridge
over the blue water, and a sampan sculled by a boatman in a brown
_kimono_. There was a house with paper windows and a thatched roof.
... _Chino_ José died, and was given a military funeral. The bier was
covered with the Stars and Stripes. A company of native scouts was
detailed as an escort, and the local band led the procession to the
church. Old "Ichabod," with a long face, and in a dress suit, with a
purple four-in-hand tie, followed among the candle-bearers with long
strides. The tapers burning in the nave resembled a small bonfire,
and exhaustive masses finally resulted, so I judge, in getting the
old heathen's spirit out of purgatory. Good old _Chino_ José! He had
left his widow fifty thousand "Mex," of which the priest received
his share; also the doctor, for the hypodermic injections of the past
three months.
Then came the wedding of Bazon, whose bride, for her rebellious love,
had recently been driven from her mother's home. Bazon, touched by
this act of loyalty, cut his engagement with another girl and made
the preparations for the wedding feast. I met the little Maraquita at
Bazon's reception, and conversed with her through an interpreter. "The
_señorita_ says," so the interpreter informed me, "she appreciates your
conversation very much, and thinks you play the piano very well. She
has a new piano in her house that came from Paris. In a little while
the _señorita_ will depart for Spain, where she intends to study in
a convent for a year." Ah, Maraquita! She had had an _Insurrecto_
general for a suitor, and had turned him down. And she had jilted
Joe, the French constabulary officer, and had rejected a neighboring
merchant's offer for her hand of fifty carabaos. I have to-day a
small reminder of her dainty needlework--a family of Visayan dolls
which she had dressed according to the native mode.
One day the undertaker's boat dropped in with a detachment of the
burial corps aboard. The bodies of the soldiers that had slept for so
long in the convent garden were removed, and taken in brass caskets
back across the sea....
We started out one morning on constabulary ponies, brilliantly
caparisoned in scarlet blankets and new saddles. "Ichabod," the
Kansas _maestro_, had proposed to guide us to Misamis over the
mountain trail. It was not long, however, before one spoke of
trails in the past tense. The last place that was on the map--a
town of questionable loyalty, that we had gladly left late in the
afternoon--now seemed, as we remembered it, in contrast with the
wilderness, a small metropolis. The Kansan still insisted that he was
not lost. "Do you know where we are?" I asked. "Wa-al," he replied,
"those mountains ought to be 'way over on the other side of us,
and the flat side of the moon ought to be turned the other way." We
wandered for ten hours through prairies of tall buffalo-grass, at
last discovering a trail that led down to the sea. The ponies were as
stiff as though they had been made of wood instead of flesh and blood.
We had Thanksgiving dinner at the doctor's. Old Tom did the cooking,
and Vivan, all smiles, waited upon the guests. Stuffed chicken and
roast sucking pig, and a young kid that the _muchachos_ had tortured
to death that morning, sawing its throat with a dull knife, were
the main courses. Padre Pastor, who had held a special mass that
morning for Americans, "returned thanks," rolling his eyes, and
saying something about the flowers not being plentiful or fragrant,
but the stars, exceptional in brilliance, compensating for the floral
scantiness. The doctor sang "O, Ca'line," and the captain did tricks
with the napkins. Everybody voted this Thanksgiving a success.
The weary days that followed at Aloran were relieved late in December
by a visit from the doctor, and a new constabulary officer named
Johnson, [1] who had ridden out on muddy roads, through swimming
rice-pads, across swollen rivers. When the store of commissaries was
exhausted, we rode back, and Johnson came to grief by falling through
an open bridge into a rice-swamp, so that all that we could see of
him was a square inch of his poor horse's nose. We pulled him out,
and named the place "Johnson's Despair."
Our Christmas Eve was an eventful one. The transport _Trenton_ went to
pieces on our coral reef. We were expecting company, and when the boat
pulled in, we went down to the beach to tell them where the landing
was. "We thought that you were trying to tell us we were on a rock,"
the little cavalry lieutenant, who had been at work all night upon the
pumps, said, when we saw him in the morning. It was like a shipwreck
in a comic opera, so easily the vessel grounded; and at noon the next
day we were invited out on shipboard for a farewell luncheon. The
boat was listed dangerously to port, and, as the waves rolled in,
kept bumping heavily upon the coral floor. The hull under the engines
was staved in, and, as the tide increased, the vessel twisted as
though flexible. Broken amidships, finally, she twisted like some
tortured creature of the deep. The masts and smokestacks branched
off at divergent angles, giving the ship a rather drunken aspect. At
high tide the masts and deck-house were swept off; the bow went, and
the boat collapsed and bent. By evening nothing was left except the
bowsprit rocking defiantly among the breakers, a broken skeleton, the
keel and ribs, and the big boiler tumbling and squirting in the surf.
There were three shipwrecked mariners to care for,--the bluff captain,
one of nature's noblemen, who had spent his life before the mast and
on the bridge, and who had been tossed upon many a strange and hostile
coast. He had a deep scar on his head, received when he was shanghaied
twenty years before. He told strange stories of barbaric women dressed
in sea-shells; of the Pitcairn islanders, who formerly wore clothes
of papyrus, but now dressed in the latest English fashion, trading
the native fruits and melons for the merchandise of passing ships.
Then there was Mac, the chief, a stunted, sandy little man, covered
with freckles, and tattooed with various marine designs. He loved
his engine better than himself, and in his sorrow at its break-up,
he was driven to the bottle, and when last seen--after asking "ever'
one" to take a drink--was wandering off, his arms around two Filipino
sailors. Coming to life a few days later, "Mac ain't sayin' much,"
he said, "but Mac, 'e knows." Yielding to our persuasion, he wrote
down a song "what 'e 'ad learned once at a sailors' boardin' 'ouse
in Frisco." It was called "The Lodger," and he rendered it thus,
in a deep-sea voice:
"The other night I chanced to meet a charmer of a girl,
An', nothin' else to do, I saw 'er 'ome;
We 'ad a little bottle of the very finest brand,
An' drank each other's 'ealth in crystal foam.
I lent the dear a sover'ign; she thanked me for the same
An' laid 'er golden 'ead upon me breast;
But soon I finds myself thrown out the passage like shot,--
A six-foot man confronts me, an' 'e says:
Chorus--
I'm sorry to disturb you, but the lodger 'as come," etc.
The feature of the song, however, was Mac's leer, which, in a public
hall, would have brought down the house, and which I feel unable
to describe.
The mate, aroused by the example of the chief, rendered a "Tops'l
halliard shanty," "Blow, Bullies, Blow." It was almost as though a
character had stepped from _Pinafore_, when the athletic, gallant
little mate, giving a hitch to his trousers, thus began: "Strike up
a light there, Bullies; who's the last man sober?"
Song.
"O, a Yankee ship came down the river--
Blow, Bullies, blow!
Her sails were silk and her yards were silver--
Blow, my Bully boys, blow!
Now, who do you think was the cap'n of 'er?
Blow, Bullies, blow!
Old Black Ben, the down-east bucko--
Blow, my Bully boys, How!"
"'Ere is a shanty what the packeteers sings when, with 'full an'
plenty,' we are 'omeward bound. It is a 'windlass shanty,' an' we
sings it to the music of the winch. The order comes 'hup anchors,'
and the A one packeteer starts hup:
"'We're hom'ard bound; we're bound away;
Good-bye, fare y' well.
We're home'ard bound; we leave to-day;
Hooray, my boys! we're home'ard bound.
We're home'ard bound from Liverpool town;
Hooray, my boys, hooray!
A bully ship and a bully crew;
Good-bye, fare y' well.
A bucko mate an' a skipper too;
Hooray, my boys, we're home'ard bound!'"
For the old maid this was the time the ages had been waiting for. What
anxious nights she spent upon her pillow or before the looking-glass;
what former triumphs she reviewed; and what plans for the conquest
she had made, shall still remain unwritten history. When she was
ready to appear, we used to hear her nervous call, "Doctor! Can
I come over?" Poor old maid! She couldn't even wait till she was
asked. How patiently she stirred the hot tomato soy the captain made;
O yes! She could be useful and domestic. How tenderly she leaned upon
the arm of the captain's chair, caressing the scar upon his head
"where he was shanghaied!" Then, like Othello, he would entertain
her with his story about the ladies in the sea-shell clothes, or of
the time when he had "weathered the Horn" in a "sou'wester." She was
flurried and excited all the week. The climax came after the captain
left for Iligan. The old maid learned somehow that he was going to
Manila on a transport which would pass by Oroquieta but a few miles
out. Sending a telegram to the chief quartermaster whom she called a
"dear," she said that if the ship would stop to let her on, she could
go out to meet it in a _banca_. Though the schoolmaster and his wife
had also requested transportation on the same boat, the old maid,
evidently thinking that "three made a crowd," wired to her friend
the quartermaster not to take them on.
We met the old maid almost in hysterics on the road to Lobuc. "O, for
the love of God!" she cried, "get me a boat, and get my trunk down
to the shore. I have about ten minutes left to catch that ship." It
was old Ichabod who rowed her out in the canoe--the old maid, with
the sun now broken out behind the clouds, her striped parasol, and a
small steamer trunk. It was a mad race for old Ichabod, and they were
pretty well drenched when the old maid climbed aboard the transport,
breathless but triumphant. I have since learned that Dido won her
wandering Æneas in Manila, and that the captain finally has found his
"bucko mate."
It was old Ichabod's delight to teach a class of sorry-looking
_señoritas_, with their dusty toes stuck into carpet slippers, and
their hair combed back severely on their heads. The afternoons he
spent in visiting his flock; we could descry him from afar, chin in
the air, arms swinging, hiking along with five-foot strides. If he
could "doctor up" the natives he was satisfied. He knew them all by
name down to the smallest girl, and he applied his healing lotions
with the greatest sense of duty, much to the amusement of the regular
M.D. But Ichabod was qualified, for he had once confided to me that
at one time he had learned the names of all the bones in the left hand!
The colony showed signs of breaking up. The native scouts had gone,
leaving their weeping "_hindais_" on the shore. "Major O'Dowd,"
his wife, and Flora had also departed to a station _sin Americanos_
up in the interior. At this, the doctor, for the first time in his
life, broke into song, after the style and meter of immortal Omar:
"Hiram, indeed is gone; his little Rose
Vamosed to Lintogoup with all her clothes;
But still the Pearls are with us down the line,
And many a _hindai_ to the _tubig_ goes."
"Tubig," he said, "did not mean 'water.' It was more poetical,
expressing the idea of fountain, watering-place, or spa."
It was my last day at Aloran. In the morning I ascended a near
elevation, and looked down upon the sleepy valley spread below. There
was the river winding in and out; there was the convent, like
a doll-house in a field of green. Vivan had gone on with the
trunks and boxes packed upon a carabao. The ponies were waiting
in the compound. Valedictories were quickly said; but there was
little Peter with his silken cheeks, the brightest little fellow
I have ever known. It seemed a shame to leave him there in darkest
Mindanao. Turning the horses into the Aloran River at the ford we
struck the high road near the _barrio_ of Feliz. Galloping on, past
"Columbine" bridge, "Skeleton" bridge, "Johnson's Despair," and Fenis,
we arrived at Oroquieta in good time.
But what a change from the old place as we had known it! Hiram,
indeed was gone. The doctor had set out for pastures new. The "Arizona
Babe" and "Foxy Grandpa" had departed for fresh fields. Like one who,
falling asleep in a theater, awakes to find the curtain down and the
spectators gone, so I now looked about the vacant town. The actors
had departed, and "the play was played out."