Typhoons and Earthquakes
How Typhoons Assert Themselves--Our First Typhoon--Six Weeks' Mail
Brought by the _General Blanco_--Her Narrow Escape From Wreck:--A
Weird Journey on a Still Smaller Steamer--Another Typhoon--Rescue of
Captain B---- --Havoc Wrought by the Typhoon.
In the month of November two more American women teachers arrived at
Capiz, one of whom joined me, and our society was still more increased
by two army officers' wives, and the wives of the provincial Treasurer
and the Supervisor. This made nine women in all, and we began to give
dinners and card parties, and assume quite metropolitan airs.
Miss C---- and I, from our central positions on the plaza, saw and
heard most of what was going on, and we heartily concurred in the
gossip of the day that there was always something doing in Capiz. About
the middle of the month there was a lively earthquake that shook up
our old house most viciously; and just before Thanksgiving we met
our first typhoon.
Typhoons have various ways of asserting themselves, but there is one
predominating form of which this particular typhoon happens to be
an example. The beginning of all things is usually a casual remark
dropped by a caller that the first typhoon signal is up. Then the
weather thickens, and a fine drizzling rain sets in. It stops by and
by, and you have no sort of opinion of typhoons. Then the rain begins
again with a steady downpour, which makes you wonder if there will be
any left for next year. Again it stops, almost leads you to think it
intends to clear. Then a little vagrant sigh of wind wafts back the
deluge. A few minutes later nature sighs again with more tears. Each
gust is stronger than the one before it, and at the end of eight or
ten hours the blasts are terrific, and the rain is driven like spikes
before them. It may keep this up twelve hours or fifty-six. It may
increase to an absolute hurricane, levelling all before it with great
loss of life, or it may content itself with an exhibition of what it
could do if it really desired.
At the end of the first day of our typhoon I went to bed wondering
how long the ant-eaten supports of our house could hold out against
the violent wrenchings and shakings it was getting. I had poor rest,
for the howling of the wind, the noise of boards torn loose, and
the clatter of wrenched galvanized iron roofing made sleep almost
impossible. When I went out into the kitchen next morning, my
heart sank into my boots. The nipa roof had been torn away piece by
piece. The whole place was soaked, the stove was rusted, and rivulets
were running outside and inside of the pipe. Romoldo clucked his glee
in this devastation, and opined that the outlook for breakfast was
poor. It was certainly no poorer than breakfast when it came.
I dressed myself for the weather and went to school in a mackintosh
and rubber boots. The costume seemed to afford no small excitement to
the Filipinos who beheld. They had hitherto considered mackintoshes and
rubber boots as the exclusive property of men. Had I appeared in a pair
of pantaloons, I should not have created more sensation. Nobody came
to school, of course, but I had to go through the form of reporting
there twice anyway. We lunched on gingersnaps and water, and had a
dinner composed chiefly of tinned things.
After dinner, to our immense surprise, we had callers in spite of the
storm. Lieutenant and Mrs. C---- came over to ask us to Thanksgiving
dinner, and a couple of men from the officers' mess dropped in. One
of these, Captain R----, was in command of the launch kept at Capiz by
the military Government. She was about sixty feet long, and having been
built at Shanghai, rejoiced in a Chinese name--the _Yuen Hung_. But as
something was the matter with her engines, which coughed and wheezed
most disgracefully, the flippant Americans had rechristened her the
_One Lung_, much to the chagrin of her skipper.
A barkentine, loaded with molave timber and carrying native passengers,
had been driven ashore at the port that day, and the _One Lung_
had gone to the rescue and taken off the passengers. Fortunately the
little craft did not have to brave the full force of the sea, as the
arms of the bay broke the fury. But even in the bay Captain R----
said the waves were frightful, and he thanked his stars that they
had gotten back alive.
While we were still talking of the storm, there came a shout from
the tribunal next door, and the noise and rattle of the four-horse
escort wagon starting down to Libas. That could mean but one
thing--States mail, the which, as we had seen none of it for six
weeks, was particularly welcome. But we wondered what boat had come
in in such a storm, and, the unexpected always happening, were not
wholly unprepared to learn that that disreputable old tub the _General
Blanco_ had made harbor safe and sound. It took till nearly midnight
to get the mail up and distributed, but we stayed up for it. There
were actually eight sacks of mail for our little colony, and we went
over to the tribunal and watched the mail sacks opened, and seized
on our share with avidity, while we alternately blessed and despised
the skipper of the _Blanco_ for getting caught out in the tempest.
This was not the last feat the _Blanco_ was destined to achieve during
my stay in Capiz. She had a habit of dropping into port in weather that
it seemed no boat could live in. Once she came in about two P.M. in
a tremendous sea, bringing a single American passenger--a girl of
twenty-one, a Baptist missionary. As the _Blanco_ had no cabins, the
captain was forced to lock his native passengers in the engine room,
where no doubt they contributed much to the enjoyment of the engineer
and his aids. He had the deck chair of this girl carried up on his
bridge and lashed, and she was lashed to the chair. There they two
rode out the storm. The captain said that from eleven o'clock till
two, when he made the shelter of Batan Bay, he expected his boat to
be swamped any instant, and he expressed his unqualified admiration
for the way in which this girl faced her possible doom. He concluded
with a favorite Filipino ejaculation, "Abao las Americanas," which in
this case may be freely translated as "What women the Americans are!"
The _Blanco_ is still skipping defiantly over the high seas between
Iloilo and Capiz, though after all her hairbreadth escapes she came
near ending herself in a typical way. She started out one night from
Capiz for Iloilo, a heavenly calm night, bright moonlight, and a sea
smooth as a floor. Two or three miles from the port, a large island
called Olatayan lies off the coast--a single mountain rising out
of the sea. Everybody on the _Blanco_, including the watch and the
steersman, thought it a good night for sleep, and left the _General_
to steer her own course. The _General_ made straight for Olatayan,
and ran her nose up on the beach. She stayed there two weeks, and was
beaten up by bad weather, and assistance had to be sent to get her
off. Then she had to be pretty well rebuilt, and repainted. At the
time of all these happenings I was in Iloilo, whither I had gone for
treatment of an abscess of the middle ear, and as I depended on the
_Blanco_ for getting back, felt personally injured by her antics. I
went several times to the office of her agents, one of the big English
trading firms, to inquire how the wreck was getting along, and what
the prospect was for a return to Capiz before Christmas. The man at
the desk did not look characteristically English, and on my first
appearance I addressed him tentatively in Spanish. He answered in that
language, and we continued to use it. On one of the later visits this
gentleman was not visible, but in his place a red-headed, freckled
youth, with the map of Scotland outlined on his rugged countenance,
presided over the collection of inkstands and ledgers. Naturally, I
accosted him in English, whereupon the shape of my former interlocutor
rose up from behind a screen and remarked, "By Jove, I thought you
were Spanish, don't you know? and have been talking to you all this
time in Spanish. What a sell!"
Failing the _Blanco_, I took passage for Capiz on the _Fritz_, a craft
one or two degrees smaller and rustier than the old _General_. Of
all the weird experiences I ever had, that twenty-four hours was the
weirdest. They cleared out a sort of pantry or lazaretto just back
of the deck engine-house for me to use as a stateroom, and I slept on
the pantry shelf. Some kind of steam pipes must have passed under it,
for it grew so hot that several times I had to vacate and get down on
the floor. Then we met a little wind as we rounded the north coast,
and I was sick. A family of Filipino aristocrats came on board
at Estancia, and the ladies elected to share my retreat. They had
several servants and one or two babies and other necessaries of life,
and they left me only a corner of the pantry shelf, against which I
propped my weary and seasick frame. We made Capiz just at dusk, and
never was a wanderer more eager to see home. There on the bank were
two of my friends, who said they were invited out to dinner and were
to bring me if I arrived in time. So we went to that cheery American
home with its spotless linen, its silver and china. For six weeks I
had been living on Spanish "chow," and the contrast made me serenely
happy. It was almost worth enduring--the six weeks of chow and the
_Fritz_, I mean--to enjoy the change.
But to return to typhoons. We had several more that year, and I began
to feel that typhoons were terribly exaggerated in books. But in 1903
we had an object lesson that I do not care to repeat. We went through
all the usual preliminaries of typhoon signals, drizzle and gust. It
was, I believe, the tenth of June. I stayed up late that night,
working, and noticed that the gusts were increasing. Just at midnight
I laid down my pen and started to go to bed, when there came a blast
that shook the house like an earthquake and made me decide to wait
a while. For the next three hours the storm raged in a very orgy of
gladness. It slapped over nipa shacks with a single roar. It ripped
up iron roofing and sent it hurtling about the air. The nipa of my
roof was torn off bit by bit, and the rain came in torrents. I used
my mackintosh to cover up the books, and put a heavy woollen blanket
over the piano. Then I held an umbrella over the lamp to keep the rain
from breaking the chimney, and sat huddling my pet monkey, which was
crazed with fear. The houses on either side were taller than mine,
and for this little hollow it seemed as if all the iron roofing of
the town had steered a direct course. The pieces came down, borne by
the shrieking wind, and landed with rattle and bang. My house swayed
at every gust. It seemed that the cross-beams in the roof moved at
least a foot each way. The little lanterns that burn in front of
the houses were blown out by the wind, and when I peered out there
was nothing but the inky darkness, the howling of the wind, the
thrashing of the cocoanut trees, and the thud of falling nuts. From
my side window I could see the native family next door to me all on
their knees in front of an image of the Virgin, and once, in a lull,
caught the sound of their prayers.
The storm reached its greatest violence by half past one and subsided
by about three, at which time I went to bed and slept till morning. In
spite of my fear I could not help laughing at my two Filipino girl
servants. They slept undisturbed through the earlier gusts, but
when the roof went and the water came in, they awoke--disgusted. The
oldest one said, "Mucho aguacero" (a heavy shower) and cast about for
a dry spot. She didn't find any at first, but she finally concluded
that the corner where my bed stood was highest; lifting the valence,
they disappeared.
Next morning Capiz presented a pitiful sight. Many of the great almond
trees on the plaza were uprooted and the others dismembered. The
little nipa houses were flat on the ground or drunkenly sprawling
at every slant and angle. Even the best houses had suffered. The
constabulary cuartel was absolutely wrecked. The Supervisor's kitchen
was gone, and his wife mourned for her dishes, which were scattered
up and down the length of the street. The home of the scout officer
was jruined. He and his wife had taken shelter under a stone wall,
and been drenched for three or four hours. The young mangoes had
been strewn on the ground, and there was no hope of that crop. Many
of the cocoanut trees were broken off, and where this was not the
case, the nuts had been whipped off. The banana trees were entirely
destroyed. Altogether it was a sorry sight, and we all got out and
walked about and viewed the ruins, just as we do for a cyclone at home.
The storm had an aftermath in the rescue of an Englishman, Captain
B----, a pearl fisher. He was anchored under the lee of a small
island in the sea between Panay and Masbate. He was in a small
lorcha, or sailing vessel, with no barometer, his glass having been
left on a lorcha of larger tonnage, which was at another point. The
heavy wind caught them without warning almost, and its impact soon
pressed the lorcha over. Captain B---- found himself struggling in
the water--able to swim, but drowning, as he expressed it, with the
spindrift which was hurtling into his face. He kept one arm going,
and partially protected his face with the other. Then in the inky dark
he touched a human body. It was the leg of one of his crew, four of
whom were clinging to one of the lorcha's boats. It kept turning over
and over, and they had to go with it each time. Captain B---- hung
to the prow, so his circuit was not so wide as that of the others,
but his body--arms, legs, and chest--was literally ploughed by the
rough usage. Once he let go and lost the prow as it came up, and the
fright of this was enough to strengthen his hold. They were in the
water clinging to this all the rest of the night, the next day, and
the next night. One man died of exhaustion, and one went mad and let
go. On the second morning they succeeded in bailing it out by means
of an undershirt, which Captain B---- had been wearing, and which,
though torn to ribbons across the front, was whole in the back. They
remained in the boat all day, beaten on by the tropical sun, having
been thirty hours in the water without food or drink.
Captain B---- said they were all a little mad. They saw the _Sam
Shui_--the boat of the commanding officer of the Visayas--in the
distance, but were too low to be sighted by her. They wore their finger
ends down, tearing a plank off the side to use for an oar. Meanwhile
the current carried them down closer to the Panay coast, and on the
third day they were close enough to fall in with one of the big fishing
_paraos._ This carried them into Panay, a town five or six miles east
of Capiz. Captain B---- had just strength to write a line or two and
sign his name. This was brought down to Capiz, and the constabulary
officer on duty there went out immediately with a launch and brought
him in. He was in the military hospital a long time. His attending
physician said that between salt water and sun he had been literally
flayed, and the flesh torn into ribbons and gouged by the impact of
the boat.
The storm did frightful havoc all through the Visayas, and many lives
were lost and vessels wrecked. The _Blanco_ as usual made harbor all
right, but another little Capiz boat, the _Josefina_, went ashore, and
her captain and several others were lost. The adventurous _One Lung_
was at Iloilo, and it was reported that she started out of the river
without consulting her pilot, creating thereby general consternation
among her sister craft.
We accustomed ourselves at last to typhoons and earthquakes, and,
on the whole, decided that they were less fearful than tornadoes at
home. Meanwhile we rather luxuriated in the sensations of romance
inspired by living in a town surrounded by a hostile population and
protected by soldiery. It was very, very new, and we made the best
of it.