Terry Part 5

The old _Francesca_, directed by a nervous and none too competent Tagalog captain, maneuvered in the six-mile tidal current which swept west through the Straits making Zamboanga a nightmare to all the native skippers who called at that port. Crab-like, she crawled obliquely to within a few hundred feet of the low-lying town, then the screw churned up a furious wake as the anxious Tagalog on the bridge swung her back into the Straits to circle in a new attempt. Carried by the tidal rush the old tub circled in a great ellipse.

Alone at the rail on the dingy promenade Terry stood enjoying his first glimpse of Mindanao. Seven months in Luzon had brought him countless tales of this uncertain southland--tales of pirates, of insolent, murderous datos defiant behind their cotta fortresses, of kris and barong wielded by fanatic Moros gone amok; of pearls as large as robins' eggs, of nuggets tossed as playthings by naked children of the forests, of mysterious tribes who inhabited the fastnesses of inaccessible hills.

He wore the service uniform of the Constabulary, the field uniform of khaki blouse and breeches, tan shoes and leggings, and stiff-brimmed cavalry Stetson. The smart uniform set his erect figure off trimly and added to the impression of alertness conveyed by his steady gray eyes.

In the two wide swings back into midstream that ensued before the steamer approached near enough land to get ropes to the little brown stevedores who waited on the dock, Terry had ample opportunity for study of the tropic panorama. The sea was dotted with Moro vintas, swiftest of all Malayan sailing craft; tide and wind borne, some scurried at tremendous pace toward the fishing grounds of the Sulu Sea, others tacked painfully into the Celebes. A Government launch, its starred and striped flag brilliant against the green sea in the morning light, left its jetty and headed south toward the dim coastline of Basilan. A score of gulls, that had followed the ship down from Sorsogon, fattening on the waste thrown overboard after each meal, circled around the ship aimlessly, uttering unpleasant cries.

The young sun mounted swiftly in a cloudless sky, hot on the trail of the cool morning breezes, white in its threat of blistering punishment of all who dared its shafts.

The hawser snubbed, the drum of the rusty winch rattled and banged on worn bearings to a tune of escaping steam, laboriously warping the smelly hull alongside the dock. Terry watched the st.u.r.dy little Moros spring into agile life as the vessel slowly neared the pier, then he turned to look over the town which was built flush with the edge of the narrow beach, extending each way from the sh.o.r.e end of the pier.

The galvanized-iron roofs of the taller buildings--church, convent, club, a few more pretentious dwellings,--were visible above the low foliage and between the tall acacias and firetrees which jagged the skyline. A heavily laden breeze identified unmistakably several long buildings as copra warehouses.

It seemed a busy town, as towns near the equator go. In the street into which the pier opened a thin stream of pedestrians pa.s.sed by in brief review before the watcher: Moros, a few Filipinos, a Chino staggering under a heavy balanced pinga, two white-clad Americans, while several rickshaws, Moro drawn, jogged by with patrons concealed under raised tops. Then a big foreign touring car turned the corner and drew up in front of the government building to deposit a middle aged American, immaculate in fresh pongee.

Terry, observing him idly from where he stood at the rail, saw a larger, uniformed American swing the corner with vigorous stride and after saluting the older man accompany him respectfully to the entrance to the big building, where they stood a moment in conversation. Terry's interest quickened as he recognized the big American as a member of his own service; he watched him approach the ship through the crowd of half-nude sweating Moros who now swarmed the dock.

Terry, hastening down the ship's ladder, met the tall officer as he reached the end of the pier.

He was a loosely knit, raw-boned man of about thirty-five, of serious but pleasant mien. As he stepped to meet Terry, Terry saw that he wore the leaves of a Major.

"Lieutenant Terry?" he asked, responding with friendly informality to Terry's stiff salute.

"Yes, sir."

"I'm Bronner. Mighty glad to know you. We've been looking for you ever since receiving a copy of the Headquarters Bulletin ordering you down here. Have a good trip?"

"Well, Major, the _Francesca_ is no Empress liner but we got along all right. I am very glad to know you, Major. Your brother and I were roommates at college--he used to tell me of your experiences with the head hunters--"

"Huh!" the Major interrupted. "Guess he stretched things some. Fine boy. Wants to come over when he graduates this June, but his mother says one son over here is enough. And she's right."

Terry liked the big irregular features. In the steady eyes he saw something that forced instant credence to the stories told of the Major's resourceful bravery under difficult situations, a bravery which had made the name of Bronner famous in a service made up of intrepid men.

"Welcome to Moroland," the Major continued. "I hope you like it down here--I think you will. If I didn't I wouldn't have requested your transfer. You are a.s.signed to the most interesting of the Moro provinces,--Davao. You go there to command a Macabebe company. Your baggage still aboard?"

"Yes, sir."

"Forget the 'sir'! Leave your stuff on board--the _Francesca_ sails at daylight to-morrow, and you go on to Davao with her. Had breakfast? I thought not. Pack a bag with what you will need for a day ash.o.r.e--put on a white uniform for to-night. My orderly will take you to my quarters where you can get a shower and some breakfast. Join me at the Service Club for lunch."

Throughout the abrupt discourse Terry had endured the frank appraisal of the shrewd black eyes. He experienced a pleasant reaction when the Major again extended his broad hand.

"Lieutenant, I said a minute ago that I was glad to know you. Let me repeat it--I mean it. Adios, till lunch time."

He pushed his way good-naturedly through the throng of Moros who were handling the bales and boxes unloaded from the roach-ridden hull and walked off the pier, disappearing into the government building. Terry boarded the vessel, warmed by the friendliness of his new chief, and by the time the orderly arrived had thrown a few things into his bag and was ready to go ash.o.r.e.

He followed the soldier down the main street, a dusty thoroughfare lined with the usual a.s.sortment of structures which adorn Philippine provincial towns: adobe, tile-roofed business houses honeycombed with little box-like shops in which the Chinese merchants displayed their wares: square wooden houses set high on stone understructures: scores of bamboo shacks stilted on crooked timbers, unkempt, wry, powdered with the dust risen since the last rains.

Though it was not yet nine o'clock, they sought the shaded side of the street with the habit which becomes instinctive near the equator, and welcomed the coolness of Bronner's low house.

The cook and the houseboy looked after him with the un.o.btrusive perfection of service found only in the East. A good breakfast cheered a stomach outraged by the greasy mess perpetrated upon native boats in the name of Spanish cookery, and a cool shower bath eliminated the stench of stale copra which had clung to his nostrils if not to his clothing. An hour before noon he left the house and strolled about the scorching town, regardless of where he went so long as he found shaded walks on which to tread.

Most Philippine towns are coast towns, and most coast towns are flat and uninteresting unless you are interested in their peoples--and you are not interested in them unless they are of a different tribe than you have known previously.

Take a couple of dusty--or muddy--streets, unroll them along some freshwater stream just above a line of palmed beach: place an immense, deserted-looking softstone church in an unkept square flanked with a few straggled acacias and a big convent in which a native priest lives in weary and squalid detachment from a world he knows nothing about: line the two streets with an a.s.sortment of rusty bamboo and mixed-material houses which impress one as never having been built but as always having stood there: sprinkle a few naked, pot-bellied, brown children staring at each other in pathetic, Malay ignorance of the manner and spirit of play: set a few brown manikins in the open windows--women who let life fly by in dull wonder of what it is all about: add a few carabaos lying in neck-deep content in mudwallows, and a score of emaciated curs which snarl at each other in habitual, gnawing hunger and which greet their masters with terrified whines: spread over it all a pall of still moist heat and a sky arched by a molten sun. Contrive all this, then imbue every object--human and creature, animate and inanimate,--with an air of hopelessness, of the futility of effort, and you will have a typical Malay town as the Americans found them.

But not so where the American has set his impious foot--impious of the dogma that you can not change the East, nor hurry it. He enjoyed the finesse of the phrase, quoted it, then jumped in to hustle the East.

The old timers,--Spaniards and Britishers for the greater part--shrugged at each other over their heavy tiffins and nine o'clock dinners; these crazy Americans would soon learn! But the crazy, enthusiastic Americans, engineers, health officers, executives, school teachers, Constabulary, labored on in the glory of service: eradicated cholera, built roads and bridges, brought six hundred thousand children into school that two score tribes might find a common tongue, fought the devastating cattle plagues, wiped out brigandage and piracy, brought order and first semblance of prosperity to eight millions of people.

Young men did it all. The old-timers suddenly found that they were living in new times, in clean, healthful towns: found that business was increasing by leaps and bounds as the natives fell in behind the young Americans with a quicker stride than Orientals had ever known.

And they are the reasons--those few thousands of smooth-faced Americans who laughingly threw themselves at the wall of immemorial sloth and apathy--why Kipling's phrase is seldom quoted east of India, and now not often there. And they are the reasons, those carefully chosen, confident young men of whom too many are buried over there, that we have so much of which to be proud in what has been done in our name for a backward, unfortunate people.

But we, you and I, do not know very much about it all: it is so far away and we are so busy with our affairs, our politics, our--

... You know ... we are just too busy to bother about those Tagalogs and headhunters who live over there where Dewey licked Cervera, and Aguinaldo was king of the Igorotes or something, and Pershing rose from a captain to a general: why, I heard one of those Filipinos make a speech about independence and he was so smart and bright--he had been sent to our congress or something and was handsome and polished and....

Yes, he doubtless was. That is why he was sent: but he bore about the same mental relation to the race he is supposed to represent as a Supreme Court Justice bears to a Georgia cracker!

Terry had thoroughly a.s.similated the atmosphere of the Luzon provinces in his seven months in the Islands, so he found a real pleasure in studying a Moro town which had been under the energizing influence of the Army for nearly two decades. He wandered slowly through the native quarter, cutting down clean cross streets lined with neat nipa huts inclosed behind latticed bamboo fences, enjoying the novelty of a community different from any he had known. Every detail of the well kept streets testified to the strictness of the standards set by the white men who governed the town. The few Moros whom he encountered on the noon-deserted streets pa.s.sed him silently and with averted eyes, wary, secretive, entirely alien. One looked him square in the eye, leaving him uncomfortable with the antipathy unveiled, the cold, everlasting contempt of the Mohammedan for the unbeliever whom he does not know.

He walked with lids half-closed against the white glare and the heat waves which danced above the tortured roads and roofs: by the hour set for his luncheon engagement he had covered the town thoroughly, including the beautiful post which had been turned over to Scouts when the Army at last finished its tedious Moro project.

He found the Major waiting him at the Club, a large, single-story building set in a grove of tall palms at the edge of the beach and cooled by the breezes from the Straits. He followed him out on the wide veranda built over the water's edge, pa.s.sing through a friendly, incurious group of young Americans who sat at little round tables in groups of three and four. Major Bronner responded to a dozen greetings as they crossed to a table set for two at the edge of the veranda. In a moment the deft tableboy had their service under way.

"Well," began the Major, "you will have a busy time of it during the rest of your stay--I wish it were to be longer. This afternoon I want you to come to the office with me--there are lots of things to talk over about your work down there. The Governor will see you about five o'clock. How do you like Zamboanga?"

"It's clean, and interesting, Major."

"'Clean and interesting!' That is a boost! Though we can't take much credit for the 'interesting'--the Moros furnish that!"

The white-smocked servants moved noiselessly about the cool veranda, serving the score of Americans with that perfect impersonal care found nowhere except among Oriental servitors: the subdued clatter of silver against dish and the tinkle of iced drinks was often drowned in outbursts of merriment from one or other of the little tables. Most of the Americans were mere youths, though two were evidently in their forties. Bronner noted Terry's study of a group of three who sat nearby, heavily tanned men evidently not quite at home in the club.

"Davao planters," he explained. "Hemp planters: you will know them.

Three good men: they're going down on your boat."

Lunch finished, coffee and cigars furnished excuse for the white-clad crowd to linger on the darkened porch: sc.r.a.ps of shop talk reached Terry's ears, a jargon of strangely twisted English and Spanish words.

Bridges, appropriations, rinderpest, lack of labor, artesian wells, cholera--such was their table talk, as such was their life.

The breeze freshened, gently stirring the potted plants which flanked each row of tables; the hot stillness of the noon gave way to the sibilant murmur of the cocoanut palms whose bases were lapped by the quickening ripples. The breaking of the withering calm was the signal for departure to office and field. The veranda cleared rapidly.

Bronner, watching the three planters, interrupted their departure.

"Lindsey--just a minute."

He took Terry to their table and introduced him.

"Lieutenant Terry, gentlemen: Mr. Lindsey, Mr. Cochran, Mr. Casey.

Lieutenant Terry goes to Davao to-morrow as Senior Inspector. You will be able to help him, till he learns his way down there--and later he may be able to help you."