The Great White Tribe in Filipinia Part 6

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 pa.s.s by the poor _nipa_ shacks, you hear the murmur of the evening prayer p.r.o.nounced 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 st.u.r.dy 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 a.s.sa.s.sins, 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 j.a.panese 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 sh.o.r.e, 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, a.s.sisted by the st.u.r.dy corporals and miscellaneous natives, we pushed out. A rus.h.i.+ng comber swept the boat and nearly swamped it. But we bore up till about a hundred yards from sh.o.r.e, 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 sh.o.r.e 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 s.h.i.+rt, 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 pa.s.s 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 th.o.r.n.y 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 pa.s.sed 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-gla.s.s. 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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 b.u.mping 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 doc.u.ment 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 c.o.c.k-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 "h.e.l.lo, 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 c.o.c.kle. 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 s.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sumed 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 talc.u.m 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 carca.s.s 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 munic.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sed. 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 o the commanding officer, a veritable O'Dowd, and little Flora, daughter of O'Dowd, who rode around town in a pony cart, were leaders of society for the subpost.

Then you could take a stool in front of Paradies's general store, and almost at any time engage the local teacher in an argument. You would expect, of course, that he would wander from his topic till you found yourself discussing something entirely foreign to the subject, but so long as he was talking, everything was satisfactory. There were the two Greek traders who had "poisoned the wells" out Lobuc way,--so people said. And I must not forget "Jac-cook," whose grandfather, according to his own report, had been a cannibal, a king of cannibals, and eaten a roast baby every morning for his breakfast. Jack was a soldier of fortune if there ever was one. He could give you a recipe for making _poi_ from ripe bananas and the milk of cocoanuts, or for distilling whisky from fermented oranges,--both of which formulas I have unfortunately lost. He recommended an exclusive diet of raw fish, and in his youth he had had many a hard battle with the shark and octopus. His one regret was that there were no sharks in the Oroquieta Bay, that, diving under, he could rip with a sharp knife. "To catch the devil-fish," he used to say, "you whirl them rapidly around your arm until they get all tangled up and supine-like." And once, like Ursus, in "Quo Vadis," he had taken a young bull by the horns and broken its neck.

All members of good standing in the colony received their invitations to the birthday party. Old Vivan, the ex-horse-doctor of the _Insurrectos_, went out early in the morning to cut palms. The floor was waxed and the walls banked with green. The first to arrive was "Fres...o...b..ll," 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 Laoc.o.o.n, so she now made for "Fres...o...b..ll."

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-fas.h.i.+oned 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."