It was the last time that these friends were to walk together. It was the last time in many a day when Manila would be in gala. At midnight the greasy calm that lay on the sea was broken by a breeze which ruffled the water and made a pleasant stir in the trees ashore. It eased the sultriness of the night and brought rest to many who had been tossing on their beds, excited doubtless by the shows and dissipations of the last few hours. Presently the sleepers were roused again, for the wind was rising steadily; the trees were writhing and wringing their branches in what was surely going to be a gale. The lightning was near. A growl of thunder could be heard. The clock boomed the hour of two. Out of an intense dark leaped a bolt of green fire, and the air was filled with baying and cannonade. Almost at the moment the earth began to rock. The city awoke. The rocking increased. Roofs began to fall, walls to bulge, masonry to split and sway.
“The earthquake! The earthquake!” screamed a thousand voices, and with cries and lamenting the people hurried into the streets and fell on their knees or their faces, unable to stand on the waving, trembling ground. It was an hour of terror. All lights were blown out by the storm or extinguished in the fall of houses, save one or two of baleful meaning that flickered above roofs which had caught fire. The sea could be heard advancing toward the land with tremendous roaring, driving up the channel of the Pasig and overspreading its banks on either side, while far below, and most dreadful of all, the fall could be heard of pieces of the earth’s crust into pits of fire and the vast rumble and groan of a world. Houses crumbled, people were pressed to death and maimed in the blackness, streets cracked asunder, trees were uprooted, chaos was come again.
In the morning the survivors looked upon a scene of ruin worse than any wrought by the pirates. The sanctity of the cathedral had not saved it. Of its imposing walls hardly anything remained. A heap of masonry marked its place. Every public building was destroyed. Wretches hurt to the death were pinned under fallen stones and timbers, and many, willing enough to relieve them, were too dazed and agonized by their own pains and misfortunes to pull their wits together. Spain had enjoyed her triumphs. Now her calamities had begun.
On the night before the catastrophe, Alonzo Cuyapit, a rich Indian of Dilao, a suburb of the city, and his friend, the chaplain of the San Francisco Convent, were at prayers together before a statue of St. Francis, that was the Indian’s dearest pride. He had shrined it fittingly in his home, with flowers and candles about it, and adored it daily. The statue was of life-size, the work of an adept carver; was brilliantly painted and gemmed, and had about the neck a rosary from which hung a cross of polished gold. So many miracles of healing had been performed by this figure that its renown had gone through all Luzon.
While Cuyapit and the chaplain were on their knees a tremor shook the floor. Slight earthquakes of this kind were not unusual. Though the walls of the house rattled, the statue remained fixed and still. Another jar was felt in the ground, and raising their hands to the saint, the petitioners begged him fervently to intercede against a dangerous shock. Presently they lifted their eyes, and were struck dumb with amazement, for the statue had unclasped its hands, the one pointing toward Manila, as if in warning; the other holding the golden cross toward heaven, as if in an appeal for mercy. A halo, so bright as to dazzle the beholders, played about the head, the lips moved, and from the upturned eyes tears trickled down the cheeks. Cuyapit and the priest arose and tried to stanch these tears, but the cloth they used was soon as wet as if they had just taken it from the river. Then the statue raised its arms high over its head, as in a last appeal for mercy to the world, while the tears gushed in such a stream that they made a continuous fall to the floor. A look of horror wrung the face, as if the prayer had been refused; and, extending its hands in benediction, the saint toppled from his pedestal and was broken into fragments.
When these occurrences had been told by Cuyapit in the Church of San Francisco, under an oath before the Virgin, the pieces were carried in reverential procession to Manila, and the miracle of San Francisco of the Tears is accepted there as history.
Suppressing Magic in Manila
Crowds of all kinds are easily swayed, but it is said that nowhere is it so easy to rouse a panic or a revolution as in Manila. Several times during the earlier months of the American occupation vague fears spread through the city, people ran to their homes or locked themselves in their shops in terror, lights were put out, armed guards were posted; then, after a few hours, everybody asked everybody else what the matter had been, and nobody knew.
In 1820 a strange scene was enacted in the Philippine capital. People assembled in groups at evening and whispered mysteriously. Gowned friars moved from group to group, but whether encouraging or expostulating it was impossible for one to say, unless he understood Spanish or Tagalog. The captain of an American ship that was taking on its load of hemp reported to a neighbor captain, who sailed under the cross of St. George, that there had been a violation of the government order against the importing of Protestant Bibles and pocket-pistols,—two things taboo in the country at that time. This, however, may have been the Yankee captain’s joke. As the night deepened torches were seen flitting hither and thither, the crowds thickened, the whispers and hushed talk increased by degrees to a widespread, menacing growl, then arose to a roar. Now drums were heard in the barracks, and the light, quick tread of marching feet could be distinguished through the babble of voices. The mob was slowly wedging itself into one of the streets before an inn, and just at the doors of that hostelry the noise was loudest and most threatening.