Part 7 (1/2)
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 a.s.sumed a j.a.panese 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 s.h.i.+ne, 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 ba.s.s 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 phosph.o.r.escent lines in front of the _kiosko_. Far out on the horizon lights of fis.h.i.+ng-boats would glimmer, and the dusky sh.o.r.es 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 G.o.ddess 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 n.o.ble 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 embarra.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed into history as being the most brilliant function of its kind that ever had been witnessed at the post.
The winter pa.s.sed 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 was.h.i.+ng on the rounded stones, and carabaos dreamed in the shade of the bamboo. The cable used to steady the bridge connected with the sh.o.r.e, 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 anch.o.r.ed 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 j.a.pan 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 j.a.panese 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 ma.s.ses 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 bra.s.s 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-gra.s.s, 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 ma.s.s 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 s.h.i.+pwreck in a comic opera, so easily the vessel grounded; and at noon the next day we were invited out on s.h.i.+pboard for a farewell luncheon. The boat was listed dangerously to port, and, as the waves rolled in, kept b.u.mping 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 amids.h.i.+ps, finally, she twisted like some tortured creature of the deep. The masts and smokestacks branched off at divergent angles, giving the s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+pwrecked mariners to care for,--the bluff captain, one of nature's n.o.blemen, 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-sh.e.l.ls; of the Pitcairn islanders, who formerly wore clothes of papyrus, but now dressed in the latest English fas.h.i.+on, trading the native fruits and melons for the merchandise of pa.s.sing s.h.i.+ps.