“He was considered a ‘good’ Moro, and we were therefore interested in several incidents which gave us some insight into his real character. After satisfying himself that we could use our rifles with effect, he made us a rather startling business proposition as follows: ‘You gentlemen seem to shoot quite well with the rifle.’ ‘Yes, we have had some experience.’ ‘You say that you wish to get samples of the clothing and arms of my people for your collection?’ ‘Yes, we hope to do so.’ ‘Papa’ (the Moros’ name for their governor-general) ‘told you if you met armed Moros outside the town to order them to lay down their weapons and retire?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Papa does not understand my people as I do. They are all bad. When we meet them, do not ask them to lay down their arms, for they will come back and get them, and probably attack us; just shoot as many of them as you can. You can take their weapons and clothing, while I will cut off their heads, shave their eyebrows, show them to papa, and claim reward for killing Juramentados.’ Toolawee never really forgave us for refusing to enter into partnership with him on this very liberal basis.
“Just before our final departure from Sulu, he presented himself before me and remarked, ‘Señor, I want to buy your rifle.’ ‘But, Toolawee,’ I replied, ‘you do damage enough with the one you have; what do you want of mine?’ ‘My rifle is good enough to kill people with, but I want yours for another purpose,’ my good Moro made answer. Pressed for details, he confided to me that he had heard ‘papa’ was soon going back to Spain, and, after the governor left, he should be ‘afuera’ i.e. offshore, waiting for victims. He explained that he never fired at the people in a canoe, but shot holes in the boat itself, so that it would fill with water. The bamboo outriggers, with which all Philippine boats are provided, would serve to keep it from actually sinking, and the occupants, being up to their chins in water, could easily be despatched with the barong, thus economizing ammunition; and he added, ‘My rifle makes but a small hole in one side of a canoe, senor, while yours would make a much larger one, and the ball would go clear through.’ Toolawee was nothing if not practical.”
While in Bongao, a Moro dance was given in our honour at the house of the governor’s interpreter, a German, who at the time was away on a business trip. His wife, a plump and jolly matron of Moro descent, did the honours, and smiled her good-natured, indiscriminating smile on one and all, shaking each cordially by the hand and indicating where we should sit by many motions of her fat, brown wrists and many shrugs of her still fatter shoulders. Unlike other Moro women, our hostess’s hair was neatly arranged, her teeth were beautifully white, and her costume, which consisted of a nondescript skirt and loose dressing sacque, much affected by Spanish women throughout the islands, was daintily clean.
The other occupants of the big room were Moro—unadulterated Moro—fifty or sixty of them, all in gala dress, the women squatted on the floor, the men leaning against the side of the house, and all staring with unabashed interest in our direction, while we stared back at them quite as interested.
Every man there was armed with at least a barong stuck into his broad sash, and many of them boasted a kris and campilan as well, while the brilliant colours of their costumes, and the still more gaudy sarongs of the women, made them resemble a gathering of strange tropic birds, our European apparel looking singularly dull and sober beside their scarlets, greens, and purples. Over this strange scene flickered the dim light of cocoanut-oil lamps, and outside a shower beat softly against the trees, and the moon looked down at us whitely from a cloudy sky.
Presently a weird noise broke in upon our conversation. The orchestra had begun to play. Now, Moro music is strangely unrhythmical to European ears, consisting as it does of a monotonous reiteration of sound, even a supposed change of air being almost imperceptible to one unaccustomed to the barbarous lack of tone. The Moro piano is a wooden frame, shaped like the runners of a child’s sled, on which are balanced small kettle-drums by means of cords and sticks. These more nearly resemble pots for the kitchen range than musical instruments, but each is roughly tuned, forming the eight notes of the scale. Women, crouching on the ground before this instrument, beat out of it a wailing sound with shaped sticks, while on larger kettle-drums, hung by ropes from a wooden railing at one side, two men accompanied the “piano,” an old woman in the background drumming out an independent air of her own on an empty tin pan.
Meanwhile the dancing had begun, or rather the posturing of the body, for the feet and legs are used but little in the Moro dances, which consist principally of moving the body and arms rhythmically and to music, the wrists always leading gracefully.
Among the women this attitudinizing was very pretty, the bangles tinkling on their round arms, while the sarong half-revealed, half-concealed the curves of their figures. Most of them danced with their heads turned away, but whenever the evolutions of their measured step brought them face to face with us, they would hold up the sarong so that it concealed all but the eyes, evidently a survival of the yashmak, for Moro women do not hide their faces at all times from the gaze of men, as do the women of India.
When the men danced it was far less graceful, and at times bordered on the grotesque. They contorted and twisted themselves out of all semblance to the human body; they made their abdominal muscles rise and fall with the music; they seemed at times to put the body out of joint, and then reset it properly with jerks and jumps and sudden fierce movements; they twitched, and twisted, and twirled, hardly moving their feet from the floor.