As they moved to the table the Governor exchanged a glance of delighted approval with the Major over the nice amend.
The steady breeze off the Straits that blew across the veranda where they sat at dinner roused the sea into a little confusion of beach sounds. They ate leisurely, talking of the strange things of Sululand, talked as men do who find surpassing interest in the little and the big things of their work; and Terry listened as they deliberately drew him within their circle.
It was a dinner deserving of the time given up to it. Following a vegetable soup the Moro bore in a great lapu-lapu, fresh from the Straits: if you have never tasted the flaky substance of a lapu-lapu,—don't! For once you do, you will be forever impatient of the quality of all other fish. Roast duck followed, with sweet corn, camotes, tart roselle sauce, a papaya salad, an ice, and pili nuts; all perfectly prepared, and flawlessly served by the expressionless Moro boy who moved noiselessly about the snowy table.
"I want to brag a little, Governor," Wade said as he and the Major lighted cigars over a second cup of black coffee. "Everything we ate to-night—with the exception of such things as salt and pepper and cream,—was the product of this farm. You will be able to report at the end of the year that we are eighty per cent self-supporting."
Pressed by the Governor, Wade explained to Terry his system of handling the six hundred Moro inmates. He stopped midway in a graphic account of three prisoners whom he had sent out with instructions to fetch in a runaway convict dead or alive.
"I didn't ask you down here to talk you to death!" he apologized.
"But what happened?" insisted the Major. "Did the three skip too?"
Wade glared at him. "Skip? My trusties? I guess not! They came in last night after dark, after being gone in the interior for three weeks, carrying a gunnysack. I was sitting out here, so they came right up and without a word emptied the sack on the veranda floor. They had stayed out till they got him—his head rolled out of the sack and landed right under where you're sitting, Major. Then the three walked over to the prison gate and reported in."
A moment later the Major moved his chair.
The Governor had been quietly studying Terry. "How did the Philippines first impress you?" he asked. "About as you anticipated?"