On February 3d we left Cebu for Liloan, island of Cebu, where a cable put in eleven months before needed repairing. After a two hours’ run we anchored off our destination, which proved to be a most deserted little hole, rich in vegetation only. There were but a few men, commanded by a non-commissioned officer at Liloan, and as our stay there was to be very brief, only the Signal Corps detachment went ashore. By one o’clock the defective splice in the trench had been cut out, a new one made, and the office overhauled, after which, as the tests showed the cable working satisfactorily at its Cebu end, but unsatisfactorily at the other, we sailed for Ormoc, Leyte, arriving there about seven o’clock that evening.
On the following morning the Signal Corps men went ashore in a small boat, and while some of the party rehabilitated the office, others underran the cable, cut in near the shore end, and after finding communication satisfactory with Cebu and Liloan, located the fault, the ship’s volt-meter indicating when the small boat underrunning the cable came to the break. It proved to be a defective factory joint, which was cut out and repaired, so that by three o’clock communication was established between Cebu and Liloan.
Ormoc did not prove interesting enough for a trip ashore in the hot sun, so my only recollection of the place is a white tribunal and a great preponderance of green foliage, toned down by the dull gray-brown of nipa buildings and the dull gray-blue of sky and sea.
Then, too, it will always bring to mind the sad experience of a very delightful officer we met there. At the time of our visit he was en route to Northern Leyte, a hostile part of the island where several hundred insurgents were strongly entrenched. With him were fifty soldiers, all of them eager for a scrap, while the young fellow himself was “insatiable of glory.” We were everyone of us enthused by his prospects, the officers perhaps a bit envious of the stirring times ahead for him, the women fearful of the outcome with such tremendous odds in favour of the well entrenched Filipinos.
On a subsequent visit to Cebu we heard the last deplorable chapter of his little story, the beginning of which had so interested us, for while there had been no loss of life in his command, the whole expedition had been a complete failure. It seems he was vanquished, disarmed, and routed by the enemy at every turn, notwithstanding the fact that he had studied strategy so that his plans of employing and combining his resources would have filled any general officer with admiration. Nor did his overthrow have the merit of dignity. It was irresistibly droll, and no one laughed more heartily at the preposterous ending of the expedition than did the victim himself.
For according to his own story at every town and village in the enemy’s country, he and his brave followers, all of them thirsting for gore, were met by a brass band, and, accompanied by the leading citizens of the place, were marched down the principal street with great pomp and ceremony to where a fiesta in honour of the great American captain was in progress. There the people, in gala-attire, clapped their hands and called “Viva, viva,” at their discomfited enemy, and later in the day a great banquet would be given, at which the leading citizens threw oral bouquets at their disgusted prisoner, while the soldiers walked disconsolately around the little village they had expected to conquer. Had fate not willed it otherwise the captain might have rendered such distinguished service as would have merited at least recognition from Congress, perhaps a medal of honour, or even the star of a brigadier; while now all he can expect from a grateful country is some slight acknowledgment of his undoubted heroism in partaking of the food at the natives banquets, surely an intrepid performance!
After an eight hours’ run from Ormoc we reached Cebu, remaining there just long enough to put ashore some iron poles for the construction of a cross-country line to Oslob, Cebu, where it was intended to land the cable from Dumaguete; then sailed for Misamis, where we completed the ill-fated Lintogup line, finding that the break in the cable was caused by the Disgrace’s propeller on that memorable trip in January.
The day was wet, and raw, and gray, and we could see the beach strewn with trees and timber, the thatched roof of a bamboo house, and all the aftermath of a terrible storm that had swept over the islands five days before, and of which we, in the safe shelter of Cebu’s harbour, were ignorant. It was here we were told by cable that the line from Iligan to Cagayan had not been working since the storm had torn up the wharf and beach at the former place a week before, so the next morning we sailed for Iligan again, feeling as blue as the day itself.
Arriving off our destination some three hours later, a party, shivering in the misty rain, was sent ashore to ascertain the trouble. After careful tests it was found to have been caused by a submarine landslide which had crushed a part of the cable, laid by necessity on a steep hill under water.
So for a whole day we grappled there near Iligan, “fishing for bights,” as the punster on board called it, and surely even Izaak Walton’s piscatorial patience would have been tried on this fishing trip. Once after having successfully hooked the cable, it broke as we were drawing it in, and only one end came on board. It was the shore end, and through it we spoke Iligan, finding the cable satisfactory in that direction. So we buoyed the shore end and continued our fishing with the heavy tackle. For hours we unsuccessfully lowered the massive grapnel iron, where our charts indicated the cable should be, but without success until late in the afternoon, when the strain on the dynamometer indicated another “bight.”