The guinimo is probably the smallest creature with a vertebra known to the world of science—a small fish—and it strikes one as amusing when the people count them out so jealously. But all their marketing is done on retail lines. Potatoes, eggs, and fruit sell for so much apiece. A single fish will be chopped up so as to go around among the customers, while the measures used in selling rice and salt are so small that you can not take them seriously. The transaction reminds you of your childhood days when you were playing "keep store" with a nickel's worth of candy on the ironing-board.

At Easter-time, or during the celebration of the "Santa Cruz," an enterprising family will get up a singing bee. Perhaps a wheezy organ will be brought to light, and the musician then officiates behind the instrument. His bare feet work the pedals vigorously, and his body sways in rhythm with the strains. As the performance is continuous, arriving or departing guests do not disturb the ceremony. There seems to be a special song for this occasion, the words of which must be repeated over and over as the music falls and rises in a dismal wail. Refreshments of Holland gin and tuba keep the party going until long after midnight.

As you walk down the long dusty street at evening, you will be half suffocated by the smoke and the rank odor of the burning cocoanut-husks over which the supper is being cooked. Then you remember how the broiling beefsteak used to smell "back home," and even dream about grandmother's kitchen on a baking day. And as you pass by the poor nipa shacks, you hear the murmur of the evening prayer pronounced by those within. It is a prayer from those who have but little and desire no more.



Chapter XII.

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 senorita 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 pina 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, senor" 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 Senor 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 personae 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 oL 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 Laocooen, 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 Jose 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 Jose! 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 senorita 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 senorita 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 AEneas 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 senoritas, 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."



Chapter XIII.

In Camp and Barracks with the Officers and Soldiers of the Philippines.

Bugle-calls, loud, strident bugle-calls, leaping in unison from the brass throats of bugles; tawny soldiers lining up for guard-mount before the officer of the day, as spick and span as a toy soldier; troopers in blue shirts, with their mess-kits in their hands, running across the street for rations; men in khaki everywhere, raising a racket on pay-day, fraternizing with the Filipinos when off duty; poker games in the barracks, with the army cot and blanket for a table; taps, and the measured tread of sentries, and anon a startled challenge, "Halt! Who's there?"—such were the days in Cagayan in 1901.

The blue sea, stretching out into the hazy distance, sparkled around the little nipa-covered dock where commissary stores and sacks of rice were piled. The native women, squatting on the ground, were selling mangoes and bananas to the boys. "Cagayan Mag," who vended the hot bottled beer for "jawbone," digging her toes into the dust, was entertaining the surrounding crowd with her coarse witticisms. The corporal of the guard, reclining in an easy steamer-chair, under his tent extension, was perusing the news columns from the States, by this time three months old. A sunburnt soldier, with his Krag upon his shoulder, paced the dock, wearily doing the last hour of his guard.

"Do you-all like hawg-jowl and black-eyed peas?" drawled "Tennessee Bill," shifting his bony form to a more comfortable position on the rice-sack.

"Reckon I ort ter; I wuz bo'n in Geo'gy," said his comrade, as he rolled a rice-straw paper cigarette.

After an interval of several minutes the same conversation was repeated. Suddenly a sharp toot sent the echoes scudding back and forth among the hills. A moment later the small transport, with the usual blur of khaki in her bows, came swinging around the promontory.

"Pshaw! I thought it wuz the pay boat comin'" grumbled Bill.

Then, as the Trenton pulled up to the dock, signs of activity began to animate that place. The guard, with leveled bayonet, began to shoo the "Gugus" off the landing. Down the hot road, invested in a cloud of dust, an ambulance was coming, drawn by a team of army mules and bringing the lieutenant quartermaster and his sergeants.

"Why, hello!" said Bill; "if here ain't little Wantz a-comin'. Got his discharge an' gone married a babay."

The soldiers crowded around the ex-hospital corps man, who, still in his khaki suit, was standing on the shore with a sad-looking Filipino girl in tow. Her feet were bare and dusty, and she wore a turkey-red skirt caught up on one side, and a gauze camisa with a pina yoke, and the stiff, flaring sleeves. Her head was bare, and her black hair was combed uncompromisingly back on her head. Her worldly goods were done up in a straw mat and a soiled bandana handkerchief, and were deposited before her on the ground.

"This is the gal," said Wantz; "old Justice de Laguna's daughter, and the same what uster sell beer to the Twenty-eighth over at Tagaloan. She ain't no beauty, but she's a good steady trotter; ain't you, Dell?" The girl looked stupid and embarrassed, and did not reply.

A "rooky," who had joined the company, stood on the dock disconsolately. His blanket roll and locker had been put off the boat. This was his first appearance in the provinces. He was a stranger in a strange land, a fish out of water, and a raw recruit.

The men were set to work immediately landing the commissary stores. They stripped their shoes and socks off, rolled up their trousers to the knee, and waded through the shallow water, carrying the bales and boxes on their shoulders to the shore.

The road up to the town was lined with nipa houses, shaded with banana-trees and bonga palms. This was the road that was almost impassable during the rainy season. As the ambulance rolled heavily along, scores of half-naked babies, shaped like peanuts, shouted after you a "Hello, baby!" and the pigs, with snouts like coal-scuttles, scattered on either side the thoroughfare. This was the famous "Bolo alley," down which, only a few months before, the Insurrecto army had come shouting, "A la! a la!" firing as they ran.

You passed the market-place, an open hall filled with the native stalls, where soldiers loafed around, chatting with the Visayan girls—for a freemasonry exists between the Filipino and the soldier—dickering with one for a few dhobie cigarettes, sold "jawbone," to be paid for when the pay-boat comes.

The troops were quartered in old Spanish buildings, where the sliding windows of the upper floors disclosed the lanes of white mosquito-bar. Back in the courtyard, where the cook was busily preparing mess, a mangy and round-shouldered monkey from the bamboo fence was looking on approvingly. The cook was not in a good humor. All that the mess had had for three weeks was the regulation beans and bacon, without a taste of fresh meat or fresh vegetables.

Things were as bad, however, at the officers' mess, where the rule was that the first complaint should sentence its author to conduct the mess himself until relieved in a like manner. As might be imagined, such a system naturally discouraged an improvement of affairs. Exasperated, finally, beyond his limit, Lieutenant Breck came out with—"If this isn't the rottenest apology of an old mess"—saving himself by quickly adding, "But I like it; O, I like it; nobody can tell how much I like this mess!"

There was an officer's club in a frame building near the headquarters. Here, in the afternoon, the clan would gather for a round of "whisky poker" for the drinks. There was a strapping young Kentuckian whose ancestors had all been army men. "The profession of arms," said he, "is the noblest profession in the world. And that is the profession that we follow." It was a rather sad sight, though, a few weeks later, after his wife, a little Southern girl, had gone back to the "States," to see this giant soldier playing cards and drinking whisky with the teamsters, bar-keeps, and camp-followers, threatening to shoot the man who tried to interfere, and finally being taken down in irons for a court-martial.

The only one of all his friends who did not fall away from him was one, a little, catlike cavalry lieutenant, booted and spurred, and always dressed in khaki riding-breeches, never saying much, but generally considered the most popular young officer in all the service. And there was one other faithful one, but not an officer. The "striker," who had followed him in many a hard hike, and had learned to admire his courage and to consider him infallible, tried for the sake of the young Southern girl, to keep his master from the wretched drink.

The post of Cagayan that winter was a busy one. On Sunday mornings the stern-visaged officers would go the round of all the barracks on inspection duty. There was still a remnant of the Insurrecto army operating in the hills, and an attack upon the town was threatened nightly. Once a month, when pay-day came around, a reign of terror, which began with early afternoon, lasted until almost a company of miscellaneous marauders could have been recruited from the guard-house. A dozen saloons and poker games were running the night long, and in those days little money was deposited in the paymaster's bank.

A number of detachments had been left in different towns around the bay in charge of second lieutenants or first sergeants. Here, while the discipline was more relaxed, the pandemonium of pay-day was avoided. But the two best poker-players in the company corraling all the money, either would proceed to narrow the financial distribution further, or would shake hands and agree to make deposits on the next disbursing-day. Some of the men on their discharge would have a thousand dollars, or enough to set them up in business in the States.

These "outfits" differ greatly in their character. Some are composed of sociable, kind-hearted fellows, while others may contain a large percentage of professional "bad men" and rowdies. Each company will have its own traditions and a reputation which is guarded jealously. There was the "fighting Twenty-eighth," the regiment invincible. The soldiers grow attached to their outfit. On their discharge, which they have eagerly looked forward to, after a day or two of Frisco, when the money has been spent to the last dollar of the "finals," more than one chop-fallen soldier, looking up the first recruiting sergeant, will "take on" again.

The "company fund" is a great institution, and an "outfit" with a good fund is considered prosperous. This money goes for extras at the table, for baseball equipments, or for company mascots. The sergeant-major usually has charge of this disbursement, and the soldiers, though they grumble at his orders, can not help respecting him. The sergeant-major has been seasoned in the service. He is a ripe old fellow, and a warrior to the core. The company cook is also an important personage. It was the old cook at Balingasag—I think that he had served for twenty years—who fed me in the convent courtyard on camotes, egg-plant, and a chicken which he had stolen from a native. According to his theory, a soldier was a licensed robber, and the chicken should be classed as forage—not as plunder. He was a favorite among the officers, who used to get him started on his favorite grievance,—the condemnation by a board of survey of a certain army mule. "I liked that mule," he used to say. "He was the best mule that the service ever had."

The nightly "argument," or "chewing the rag," is a favorite pastime in an isolated camp. Sitting around upon the army cots or chests, the soldiers will discuss some unimportant topic until "taps" sounds.

I will admit that "Company M" was a disreputable lot. They never dressed up; frequently they went without their footgear; and they drank much tuba with the natives. They took delight in teaching the small boys profanity, and they would shock the Filipinos by omitting bathing-suits when in the surf. They used to frighten the poor "niggers" half to death by trying to break through their houses on a dark night. Yet I believe that every Filipino was the soldier's friend, and I am sure I noticed not a few heart-broken senoritas gathered at the shore when they departed. For my own part, I have always found the soldier generous, respectful, and polite.

There was a great wag in the company, who, in some former walk of life, had figured as a circus clown. He also claimed to have been upon the stage in vaudeville. He had enlisted in the regimental band, but, through some change, had come to be bugler of M Company. He owned a mandolin, called the "potato bug"—a name suggested by the inlaid bowl. He had brought back to life a cracked guitar, which he had strung with copper wire obtained by "jawbone" at the Chino store. It was an inspiration when he sang to the guitar accompaniment, "Ma Filipino Babe," or in a rich and melancholy voice, with the professional innuendo, "just to jolly the game along," a song entitled "Little Rosewood Casket."

It is a sorry company that doesn't number in its roll a poet. Company M had a good poet. Local customs and the local atmosphere appealed to him, and he has thus recorded his impression of the Philippines:

"There once was a Philippine hombre; Ate guinimos, rice, and legombre; His pants they were wide, And his shirt hung outside; But this, you must know, is costombre.

He lived in a nipa balay That served as a stable and sty. He slept on a mat With the dog and the cat, And the rest of the family near by.

He once owned a bueno manoc, With a haughty and valorous look, Who lost him amain And mil pesos tambien, And now he plays monte for luck.

This poem was received so favorably that the following effort of the realistic school escaped:

"In this land of dhobie dreams, Happy, smiling Philippines, Where the bolo man is hiking all day long, Where the natives steal and lie, And Americanos die, The soldier sings his evening song.

Social wants are small and few; All the ladies smoke and chew, And do other things they ought to know are wrong. Presidentes cut no ice, For they live on fish and rice, And the soldier sings his evening song."

There is another stanza, but the song about the "Brown Tagalog Girl" demands attention:

"I've a babay, in a balay, Down in the province of Rizal. She's nice and neat, dainty and sweet; She's ma little brown Tagalog gal."

The army officers and their families still form the aristocracy of the Philippines. While army life is not all like Camp Wallace and the gay Luneta, in the larger posts throughout the provinces, both the officers and soldiers are housed very comfortably. The clubhouse down at Zamboanga has a pavilion running out over the water, where the ladies sit at night, or where refreshments are served after the concert by the band. Although their ways are not the ways of the civilian; although to them the possibilities of Jones's promotion from the bottom of the list seems of a paramount importance, you will not find anywhere so loyal and hospitable a class of people as the army officers. Whatever little jealousies they entertain among themselves are overshadowed by the fact that "he" or "she" is of the "service." And the soldiers, rough as they are, and slovenly compared to the red-coated soldiers of Great Britain, or the gray-coated troopers of the German army, are beyond doubt the finest fighting men in all the world.



Chapter XIV.

Padre Pedro, Recoleto Priest.—The Routine of a Friar in the Philippines.

It might have been the dawn of the first day in Eden. I was awakened by the music of the birds and sunlight streaming through the convent window. Heavily the broad leaves of abaca drooped with the morning dew. Only the roofs of a few nipa houses could be seen. The tolo-trees, like Japanese pagodas, stretched their horizontal arms against the sky. The mountains were as fresh and green as though a storm had swept them and cleared off again. They now seemed magnified in the transparent air.

All in the silence of the morning I went down to where the tropical river glided between primeval banks and under the thick-plated overhanging foliage. The water was as placid as a sheet of glass. A spirit of mystery seemed brooding near. As yet the sun's rays had not penetrated through the canopy of leaves. A lonely fisherman sat on the bank above, lost in his dreams. Down by the ford a native woman came to draw water in a bamboo tube. I half expected her to place a lighted taper on a tiny float, and send it spinning down the stream, as is the custom of the maidens on the sacred river Ganges. In the silence of the morning, in the heart of nature, thousands of miles away from telegraphs and railroads, where the brilliant-feathered birds dipped lightly into the unruffled stream, the place seemed like a sanctuary, a holy of holies, pure, immaculate, and undefiled.

The padre had arisen at six. At his command the sacristans ascended the bell-tower and proceeded to arouse the town. The padre moved about his dark, bare room. Rare Latin books were scattered around the floor. His richly embroidered vestments hung on a long line. The room was cluttered with the lumber of old crucifixes, broken images of saints, and gilded floats, considerably battered, with the candlesticks awry. The floor and the walls were bare. There was a large box of provisions in the corner, filled with imported sausages done up in tinfoil, bottles of sugar, tightly sealed to keep the ants from getting in, small cakes of Spanish chocolate, bottles of of olives and of rich communion wine. Donning his white robe, he went out to the ante-room, where, on the table spread with a white napkin, stood a cup of chocolate and a package of La Hebra cigarettes.

There was a scamper of bare feet as the whole force of dirty house-boys, sacristans, and cooks rushed in to kneel and kiss the padre's hand and to receive his blessing. When he had finished the thick chocolate, one of the boys brought in a glass of water, fresh and sparkling from a near-by mountain stream. Then Padre Pedro lighted his cigarette, and read in private for a little while before the morning mass began. Along the narrow pathway (for there were no streets) a string of women in black veils was slowly coming to the church. Stopping before the door, they bowed and made the sign of the cross. Then they went in and knelt down on the hard tiles. The padre's full voice, rising and falling with the chant, flooded the gloomy interior, where pencils of sunlight slanted through the apertures of the unfinished wall, and fell upon the drowsy wilderness outside.

Returning from the mass, the padre refreshed himself with a small glass of gin-and-water, as his custom was; nor could the appeal of any one persuade him to take more than a single glass or to take that at an earlier or later hour. The ancient maestra had arrived—a wrinkled old body in a black dress and black carpet-slippers—and she knelt down to touch the padre's outstretched hand with her thin, withered lips. The little children, who were waiting for their classes to be called, all followed her example, and before long, the monotonous drone of the recitations left no doubt that school had actually begun. Benches had filled up, and the dusky feet were swinging under them as the small backs bent over knotty problems on the slates.

The padre, passing among the pupils, made the necessary erasures and corrections, and occasionally gave unasked to some recalcitrant a smart snap on the head. The morning session ended by the pupils lining up in a half circle around the battered figure of a saint—the altar decorated with red paper flowers, or colored grasses in a number of empty beer-bottles—and, while the padre played the wheezy harmonium, singing their repertoire of sacred songs. Then, as the children departed with the "Buenos dias, senor," visitors, who had been waiting on the stairway with their presents of eggs, chickens, and bananas, were received.

"Thees man," the padre explained to me, as a grotesque old fellow humbled himself before us, "leeves in one house near from ze shore. He has presented me with some goud rope to tie my horses with (buen piece, hombre), and he says that there are no more fishes in ze sea."

"See, they have brought so many breads and fruits! They know well that eet ees my fast-day, and that my custom ees to eat no meat. I can eat fish or cheecken, but not fish and cheecken; eet ees difficult here to find enough food to sustain ze life on days of fast."

"Thees girl," he said, "loves me too much. She is my orphan, she and her two brothers. I have bought one house for them near from ze church, and, for the girl, one sewing-machine. Their mother had been stealed [robbed] of everything, and she had died a month ago. Ze cheeldren now have nobody but me."

She was a bright young girl, well-dressed and plump, although, when Padre Pedro had received her, she was wasted by the fever, and near starved to death. But this was only one of his many charities. He used to loan out money to the people, knowing well that they would never be able to return it. He had cured the sick, and had distributed quinine among families that could not have secured it otherwise. He went to visit his parishioners, although they had no means of entertaining him. Most of them even had no chairs for him to sit on when he came, and they would stand around in such embarrassed silence that the padre could not have derived much pleasure from their company.

At the padre's "aver, bata!" after the last visitor has gone, the house-boys run in with the noon meal. The padre had a good cook, who understood the art of fixing the provisions in the Spanish style. I was surprised at the resources of the parish; for a meal of ten or fifteen courses was the usual thing. A phalanx of barefooted waiters stood in line to take the plates when we had finished the respective courses, broth, mutton stew, and chicken, and bananas for dessert. The padre, I am sorry to say, ate with his knife, and was inclined to gobble. Two yellow dogs and a lean cat stood by to gulp the morsels that were thrown them from the table. When the dinner was completed, a large tumbler of water and a toothpick were brought on. After a smoke the padre took his customary nap, retiring to the low, cane-bottomed bed, where he intrenched himself behind mosquito-bars.

The convent was a rambling building, with adobe walls. It was raised up on pillars as long as telegraph poles, and the ground floor was divided into various apartments. There was the "calaboos," where Padre Pedro's chickens were encouraged to "put" eggs. There were the stables for the padre's ponies, and a large bamboo stockade for pigs and chickens. The little friar took a lively interest in this corral, and he would feed his stock with his own hand from the convent window. "Ze leetle goat," he said, "eet ees my mind to send to Father Cipriano for a geeft." The sucking pig was being saved for Easter-time, when it should be well roasted on a spit, with a banana in its mouth. There were just sixty-seven chickens, and the padre used to count them every day and notice their peculiarities.

During the afternoon the padre's time was taken up by various religious duties, and the school was left in charge of the old maestra. There would be a funeral service at the church, or a baptism, or confession. Some days he would be called away to other barrios to hear a last confession; but the distance or the weather never daunted him, and he would tuck his gown well up, and, followed by a sacristan, ride merrily away. On his return a cup of pasty chocolate would await him. Padre Pedro used to make a certain egg-fizz which was a refreshing drink of a long afternoon. The eggs were lashed into a froth by means of a bamboo brush twisted or rolled between the palms. The beauty of this beverage was that you could drain the cup, and, like the miracle of loaves and fishes, stir the batter up again, and have another drink of the same quality. "When Padre Cipriano comes here," said the friar, "eet ees very gay. Ah! Cipriano, he can make the foam come up three times. He knows well how to make thees drink."

When he would take his ebony cane and go out walking about sunset, followed by his yellow dog, the village people, young and old, would tumble over each other in their eagerness to kiss the father's hand. He would mischievously tweak the noses of the little ones, or pat the tiny girls upon the head. The friend of the lowly, he had somehow incensed the upper ten. But he had shown his nerve one Sunday morning when he had talked down one of these braggadocios who had leveled a revolver at him in the church.

The little padre was as brave as he was "game." He was a fearless rider, and there were few afternoons when we were not astride the ponies, leaping the streams and ditches in the rice-pads, swimming the fords, and racing along the beach, and it was always the little priest that set the pace. One evening he received a message from the father superior of that vicinity, old Padre Jose, living ten or fifteen miles up the road in an unpacified community. The notice was imperative, and only said to "come immediately, and as soon as possible."

Padre Jose was eighty years old, and he had been in Mindanao nearly all his life. He spoke Visayan better than the natives, and he understood the Filipinos just as though each one of them had been his child. He had been all around the island and among the pagan tribes who saw their spirits in the trees and streams. He had been back to Spain just once, and he had frozen his fingers over there. As I remember him, he was a dear, grandmotherly old fellow, in a long black gown, who bustled around so for us (we had stopped there on a certain expedition), cooking the eggs himself, and cutting the tough bologna, holding the glass of moscatel so lovingly up to the light before he offered it, that I almost expected him to bring forth crullers, tea, and elderberry pie. His convent was at that time occupied by the municipal authorities; and so he lived in a small nipa house with his two dogs, his Latin library, and the sacristans who at night slept scattered about the floor. The local conditions were unsettled at this time. The garrison at Surigao had been attacked by the so-called ladrones. Night messages were flying to and fro. Padre Jose's summons seemed a harbinger of trouble. But, in spite of the fact that Padre Pedro had been sick for several days, he obeyed the command of his superior like any soldier, and at midnight saddled the ponies, tucked a revolver under his gown, and started at a gallop down the road. When he arrived at Father Jose's house, nothing serious was found to be the matter. Only the dear old soul was lonesome and had wanted company.

Often at evening we would sit on the veranda till the evening star appeared—"the star that the shepherds know well; the precurser of the moon"—and then the angelus would ring, and Padre Pedro would stand up and doff his cap, and, after a moment spent in silent prayer, "That is good-night,'" he used to say, and then we would go in for dinner. Dinner was served at eight o'clock, and was as formal an affair as the noon meal. The evening would be spent at study, for the padre was a scholar of no mean ability. He had translated some of Stockton's stories into the Visayan language. Speaking of Stockton, Padre Pedro said that he "knew well the spirit of your countrymen." His work was frequently disturbed by the muchachos running in with sums that they had finished on their slates; but the padre never showed the least impatience at these interruptions.

Sometimes the "musickers" would come, and, crowding around the little organ, practice the chants for some fiesta day. The principal "musicker" was a grotesque old fellow, with enormous feet, and glasses rimmed with tortoise-shell. He looked so wise when he was poring over the manuscript in the dim candle-light that he reminded one of an intelligent gorilla. One of his assistants, meanwhile, would be making artificial flowers, which were to decorate the battered floats to be used in the festival procession on the morrow, carried aloft upon the shoulders of the men, sparkling with lighted tapers, while the bells up in the tower would jangle furiously. Or there would be a conference with his secretary in regard to the town records, which that functionary kept in the big book.

One night the padre was called out to attend one who, as was explained to me, was bitten by a "fool" dog. On entering the poorly-lighted shack, we found, surrounded by a gaping crowd, the victim foaming at the mouth. He had indeed been bitten by a "fool" dog, and he died a few hours afterwards, as we could do but little to relieve his suffering.

We spent the remainder of the evening looking over the long mass for Easter Sunday. And the padre said naively, "Will it not be necessary that I take one beer when I have reached this place, and then I can continue with the mass?" He looked back fondly to the days when he had sung his part in the antiphony in the magnificent cathedral at Manila.

The town was always at the friar's service. And no wonder! Had he not sent all the way to Manila for a Christmas box of goodies for the schoolboys,—figs, and raisins, and preserves? I caught him gloating over them one evening—when he gave his famous supper of roast kid and frosted cake for his American guests from the army post—and he had offered us a taste of these almost forgotten luxuries. How he anticipated the delight he had in store for all the boys! Then in the time of cholera, when the disease invaded even the convent, although a young man, Padre Pedro never left his post.

The only time I ever knew him to complain was when the people came in hundreds to confession. The confession-box was too hot, and the breath of the penitents offensive. "Eet ees a work of charity," he said; "they pay me nothing—nothing." The priest was only human when he feigned the toothache in order to secure a transfer to Cebu. The little station in the wilderness was too monotonous. He packed his effects in secret, fearing that the people would discover his intention and detain him. The father superior had granted him a leave of absence. His suspicions had not been aroused. When he had reached Cebu the freile would be under different authority, and it was even possible that he be stationed in Manila or returned to Spain. He had not seen his parents for ten years, but his education had prepared him for a life of sacrifice. For the first time he felt neglected and forgotten. On arriving at the trading port, he learned that his parishioners had found him out. They sent a delegation to entreat him to remain. The little padre's heart was touched. "They love me too much," he said, "and they have nobody but me."

My friend the padre might have been an exception to the general rule. He was a "Friar in the Philippines," a member of a much-maligned religious order. Still I have met a number of their priests and bishops, and have found them charming and delightful men. They are such hospitable entertainers that they have been frequently imposed upon by traveling Americans, who take the convents for hotels, regardless of the public sentiment. It was the friars of San Augustin who, in 1565, subdued and pacified the Cebuanos when the arms of Spain availed but little. It was the Freile Pedro de San Augustin, the "fighting padre," who, in 1639, defeated the lake Moros. And, in 1754, a Spanish freile, Father Ducos, commanding the fleet of Iligan, defeated the armada of the Moro pirates, killing about a thousand of these buccaneers.

Of course there have been friars good and bad. But "Father Peter," though he might have had good cause to dislike the Americans, had always expressed the greatest admiration for them. They were "political" (diplomatic) men. His mastering the English language was a compliment to us such as few Spaniards have seen fit to pay. He might have been narrow in religious matters, but, above all, he was conscientious. While he could bathe his hands or face in the Aloran River, he could not go in. His education was a Spartan one, and narrowing in its influences. All the society that he had ever had was that of a hundred students with the same ideals and inclinations as his own. The reputation of the friars in the Philippines has been depreciated by the conduct of the native priests. There was a padre named Pastor, an arrant coward, and wholly ignorant and superstitious. Sly old fox, he used to bet his last cent on the cock-fights, hiding up in the back window of Don Julian's. Once, on a drunken spree, he let a layman wear his gown and rosary. The natives, showing more respect for the sacred vestments than the priest had shown, went out to kiss the hand of him who wore the robe. The work of the friars can be more appreciated by comparing the civilization of the Christian natives with the state of the barbarians and pagans. Whatever its defects may be, instead of the head-hunters and the idol-worshipers, the Filipino who has come within the influence of Spanish priests, though often lavish and improvident, is neat, polite, and sociable. But the friars can do better still. If they would use their influence to abolish the cock-fights Sunday afternoon, and try to co-operate more with the civil government in the matter of public education, they would find that there is plenty of work to be done yet. But some of the accusations against the friars are unfair. Extortion is a favorite charge against them; but it must be kept in mind that there are no pew-rents or voluntary contributions, and that Spain has now withdrawn the financial support that she once gave. The Church must be maintained through fees derived from weddings, funerals, and christenings. And if the Filipino, in his passion for display and splendor, orders a too expensive funeral, he has only himself, and not the priest, to blame. Indeed, the friars can derive but little benefit from a rich treasury, because, when absent from their parishes, they are allowed to have no money of their own. All of the funds remaining after the expenses of the Church are paid must be sent to the general treasury. The padre in his convent has the use of the Church money for his personal needs and charities, but nevertheless he is expected to make large returns each year. Perhaps, then, after all, the friars—Padre Pedro, anyway—are not so black as they are painted.



Chapter XV.

General Rufino in the Moro Country.



Introduction.

The story of Rufino's expedition to the Moro country in the summer of 1901 reads like a chapter from Anabasis. It has to do with Capitan Isidro's curious experiences as a hostage in the home of Datto Amay Bancurong, at Lake Lanao. It deals with the last chapter in the history of two American deserters, Morgan and Miller, of the Fortieth United States volunteers, who, under General Rufino, served as officers—soldiers of fortune in a lost campaign—and who, as a last tribute of the treachery and faithlessness of those they served, received their death-blows at the hands of Filipinos who had caught them off their guard.

The information published by Rufino shortly after his surrender has been valuable to the officers of our own army who are now exploring the mysterious interior of Mindanao. Capitan Isidro's intimacy with the Moros during the long period of his captivity should render his interpretation of the character, the life, and customs of this savage tribe authoritative. General Rufino, being one of the last Insurrectos to surrender, has not been as yet rewarded by the Government. This fact will be of consequence in case of any further outbreak on the northern coast of Mindanao. General Rufino lingers still about the scene of his exploit, and may be met with almost any time in Oroquieta, or, still better, in the sullen and revengeful village of Palilan, near the border of the Moro territory.



Rufino's Narrative.

We left Mount Liberdad on June 1, 1901, with eighteen officers, and privates to the number of four hundred and forty-two. Our destination was the town of Uato, on the shore of Lake Lanao, where, in obedience to our instructions from the Filipino junta at Hong Kong, we were to arrange a conference with the leading dattos in regard to an alliance of the Filipino and the Moro forces to conduct a joint campaign against the American army of invasion.

Among our officers were two deserters from I company of the Fortieth United States volunteers, Morgan and Miller, who were mere adventurers, and who desired to clear the country and embark for Africa. Morgan was supposed to have been wanted for some criminal offense in the United States. He claimed to have deserted as a consequence of punishments received by him which he considered to be undeserved. His comrade Miller followed him; but I have heard that Morgan took it hard because his friend had followed such a questionable lead. An understanding had been previously arranged between our officers and Morgan, so that when the latter left the lines at Oroquieta we received him and his comrade at Aloran, six miles north.

Our first stop was to be at Lintogout, a station on the river by the same name, that flows into the long estuary that divides our country from the Moro territory. As you can see, our march was very rough. The mountain chain, of which Mount Liberdad, Mount Rico, and Mount Esperenza are the most important peaks, is very wild and hazardous. A few miles from the coast the country breaks into ravines and hills. There are no villages; no depots for supplies. The trails are almost imperceptible, and can be followed only by the most experienced Montesco guides. Back in the mountains there are many natural strongholds, which are practically inaccessible. The mountain wall, with its Plutonic canyons and precipitous descents, wrapped in a chilly fog, continually towered above us on the west.

To add to our embarrassments, we were harassed by a detachment of United States troops that had been pursuing us. Their plan was to close in upon us in two sections, from the front and rear. Near Lintogout we came to an engagement with Lieutenant Patterson's command. My army was by this time seriously crippled. We had lost one hundred and forty men the previous day by desertion. The deserting men, however, did not take their arms. Lieutenant Patterson's command must have been quite exhausted, for they camped at night on a plateau along the precipice, where an attack by us would have been inadvisable. The troops were new and untried; the experience for them was something they had not anticipated. Yet they kept at it stubbornly, slinging their carbines on their backs, and climbing up hand over hand in places where they had lost the trail. Their guides were evidently somewhat of a puzzle to them, as the Montese idea of distance is indefinite. "When I have finished this cigar we will be there," they say; and "poco distancia" with them means often many miles.

We were not inconvenienced much by the engagement. Our American lieutenants superintended the construction of intrenchments, back of which we lay, and fired a volley at the enemy. At their advance our army scattered, and a number of our soldiers, taking inexcusable advantage of the opportunity, deserted. On the next day we set out, reduced in numbers to two hundred and fifty-two. None of our men were killed or wounded in the fight.

We then proceeded overland to Lake Lanao, the journey occupying sixteen days, during which time the army had no rice, but had to exist entirely on the native fruits. Our tardiness in reaching Lake Lanao was caused by two attacks by Moros, June 15th. In order to avoid this enemy we made a detour, coming dangerously near the coast at Tucuran. At Tucuran three men deserted. Thence our march led inland to Bacayan, following the south shore of the lake. Before we reached Bacayan we were met (June 29th and 30th) by Dattos Casiang and Pindalonan, with their combined forces. Our side lost two killed, three wounded (who were taken captive); and the Moros, thirteen killed, three wounded. Arriving at Bacayan July 1st, we waited there twelve days.

Then we set out along the south shore to Uato on the lake, which place we reached without engagement on the nineteenth of July. We stopped at Uato ten days, there borrowing $500 "Mex" from Datto Bancurong. We were obliged to leave Captain Isidro Rillas with the datto for security. The very money that we now were borrowing the Moros had received from us for their protection during our campaign, and for their promising not to molest us all the time that we were in their territory. Having loaned us money, they now sold us rice, in which negotiation, just as in the former one, they took advantage of our helplessness. The deal, however, was a necessary one, because the army had been for a long time without funds or rations. Leaving Uato we proceeded to Liangan, on the north coast, opposite Tudela (on the Jolo Sea). We left the Moro country on the recommendation of the two American deserters, who had been dissatisfied for some time at the turn affairs were taking.