A Woman's Journey through the Philippines Part 10

Then followed a month of cable repairing, which took us again to Zamboanga, Iligan, and Cagayan. A little stretch was also laid connecting Oslob, Cebu, with the Dumaguete land line, and later a cable laid nearly two years before on the southeast coast of Luzon was thoroughly overhauled and put into shape. This cable connected Pasacao and Guinayangan, or Pa.s.s-a-cow and Grin-again-then, as we always dubbed the towns.

It was on our way to Pasacao from Iligan that we had our last glimpse of old Mount Malindang, or, as the sailors called it, Mount Never Pa.s.s, because it was so seldom off our horizon. All day the sea had been oily smooth, and fish jumped out of the water continually, the sea-gulls swooping down upon them and carrying them off in their talons. The sailors had been holy-stoning the decks and painting every bit of available woodwork white, preparatory to our entrance into Manila Bay, and the cable machinery for the nonce was still, the native employees lounging about the lower decks, playing monte or strumming their guitars in idle joy.

At sunset we all went aft to see Malindang for the last time. To the southeast it stood stolidly against the flushed sky, a white cloud about it, reminding one of some old Indian chief wrapped in his blanket, pa.s.sively watching the departure of the pale-faces who had invaded his mighty solitude. To the north were Negros, Cebu, and Siquijor; to the south Mindanao; and even far-distant Camaguin to the east, with a faint wisp of smoke from its volcano. Then night came upon us suddenly and blotted out Mount Never Pa.s.s--perhaps forever.

After our experiences in the far south, we found Oslob, Pasacao, and Guinayangan strangely uninteresting, although at the beginning of our cable trip I have no doubt we should have enjoyed them hugely. There were the same curious natives who dogged our every footstep; the same nipa shacks surrounded by palms and bamboos in the same dazzling sunshine, of which no words or symbols or formulas could give one an idea. There were the inevitable churches with decorations of faded artificial flowers and much tarnished tinsel, the same wooden images with large eyes and simpering little mouths, the same glaring chromos of the Virgin and her angels.

In Oslob the church was further decorated by brown velvet portieres being painted at each side of the long windows, an obvious advantage in the event of house-cleaning, while the wooden pillars were also stained to resemble marble. At the time of our visit women knelt on the bare floor at their prayers, all wearing stiffly starched white linen veils, which did not entirely conceal their fleshly interest in ourselves, the while they told their rosaries with busy fingers.

Guinayangan had a wooden belfry to one side of its church, the bells therein being made of metal arms captured from the Moros many years before. We also noticed, on entering the church, a palanquin shaped affair at one side of the door. This, we were told, was used by the priest in processions, when altar boys dressed in scarlet and white robes carry him thus enthroned, two other boys walking ahead of the procession and two behind, all bearing candles in candelabra taller than themselves, and all dressed in scarlet and white like the bearers of the palanquin. It was used as well for a confessional, and to carry the priest to and from visits of extreme unction.

Guinayangan also boasts a shipyard, which is nothing more than a rough shed, the implements being most primitive in construction. Without even ways, not to mention the absence of means, it is said that large sailing ships are made there, two of them being in the harbour at the time of our visit.

For several days we hovered in the vicinity of Guinayangan and Pasacao, cutting and splicing, splicing and cutting, while we idle ones of the quarter-deck unanimously decided that this lower corner of Luzon Island comprised the prettiest landscapes we had seen on the trip, consisting for the main part of wonderful mountains covered with a luxurious tropical growth of trees and shrubbery, these perpendicular forests springing out of the water with scarcely any intervention of beach between their green sides and the sparkling sea beneath them.

In places the mountains were bare of trees, suggesting forest fires in the past, but in the distant past, as the patches of ground were covered with gra.s.s, the exact tender shade in which the young Spring clothes herself at home. In many of these rifts between the trees nipa houses were tucked away, adding to the charm of the landscape, and the multifarious shades of green to be found on these hillsides were further diversified by shrub-like trees with a faint red tinge like furze, and by still others with a silvery sheen to their leaves.

It was while paying this long-laid line into the tanks, when looking for faults, that wonderful sea growths were brought up on the cable, especially in comparatively shallow water, revealing varieties of submarine life undreamed of in our philosophy. There was white coral, and coral in shades of pink, and red, and violet; there were sea-cuc.u.mbers and jellyfish; shrimp of tiny proportions and scarlet in colouring; barnacles of every description; curious sh.e.l.ls of fairy-like proportions; seaweeds and gra.s.ses and moss of exquisite delicacy, making the cable look in places as if it were a rope of tiny many coloured blossoms. The small girl of the _Burnside_ was enchanted with the pretty playthings sent her by the mermaids, and gathered the gaily tinted wonders into a box for safe-keeping, but before the pa.s.sing of another day they had lost their beauty, and, moreover, smelled up to very heaven, and had to be thrown overboard.

But at last the Signal Corps completed its work on the Pasacao-Guinayangan cable, the final splice was made, and the bight dropped overboard, whereupon we were off for Manila, stopping _en route_ at Pasacao to ascertain if all were well with the line. This was on Good Friday, and the officers who went ash.o.r.e said that natives, dressed to represent the Twelve Apostles, roamed the streets and at given intervals flagellated one poor chap who had been elected to represent Judas for the time being. The native padre a.s.sisted in the semi-religious function, and all seemed more interested in it as a diversion than impressed by its devotional significance.

The rest of the day we sailed over absolutely peaceful water, with scarcely a ripple on its crystal surface, swinging in and out of the myriad wooded islands, peninsulas, and capes that make the southern part of Luzon so ragged and uneven on the map, and thence into the China Sea, where we floated, sky above and sky below, for hours, anchoring off Manila on the following forenoon, just in time to spend Easter Sunday, April 7th, at the capital.

And so ended our cable trip and those pleasant days in the far South Seas. The huge tanks on the forward deck of the _Burnside_ yawned hungrily for the five hundred knots of cable now lying in those distant waters, linking together the strange lands we had seen _en route_, and as we stood for the last time looking down into those empty tanks, tar-stained and reeking with moisture, I was strongly reminded of Mr. Kipling's "Song of the Cable:"

"The wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from afar-- Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where blind white sea-snakes are. There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep, On the great, gray, level plains of ooze, where the sh.e.l.l-burred cables creep. Here in the womb of the world--here on the tie-ribs of earth-- Words, and the words of men, flicker and flutter and beat."

THE END.