So our lad joined the army, and for the next two days, from early morning until late at night, he was about as busy as a boy well could be—helping the captain pack, writing his letters, running hither and thither with orders, and doing whatever was given him to do, with a cheerful promptness that won for him the good-will of all hands.
At the end of that time he found himself in company with a number of officers occupying the rear car of a long troop-train on which was loaded Battery Z—men, horses, guns, and all—headed southward, up the broad Willamette Valley, and starting on their thirty-six-hour run towards the city of the Golden Gate. On the following day they skirted for hours the base of grand old Shasta, one of the mightiest and most beautiful of American mountains. Then they ran down the exquisite valley of the Sacramento, which they first saw as a brook and at last crossed as a mighty river pouring a turbid flood into San Pablo Bay. A little later came San Francisco, with the bustle and anxious excitement of debarking, marching through the city, and re-embarking, this time on the great, white transport that was to bear them away in the track of the setting sun, across seven thousand miles of Pacific waters.
In all this time Rob, while fully intending to write to Hatton concerning his adventures and change of plans, had not found a minute when it seemed possible to do so. Not until the Logan, with her crowded passenger-list, including civil officials, military officers, troops, government school-teachers and other employés, and her vast miscellaneous cargo of live-stock, guns, ammunition, machinery, and stores of every description, had got so far out to sea that the Farallones were only a blur on the horizon behind her did it occur to him that he had neglected his last opportunity for sending back a message until he should reach the distant Hawaiian Islands. Then he sat down and wrote a long letter that he was able to mail eight days later at Honolulu, but which did not reach Hatton until a full month from the date of his departure. In the mean time Mr. Hinckley had cabled to China that Rob would sail by the Oriental from Tacoma on a certain date, and when finally he learned of his nephew's changed plans, it did not seem worth while to cable again, as the lad was already due to arrive at Hong-Kong, and so could tell his own story.
Rob enjoyed every minute of his twenty-four hours' stay in beautiful Honolulu. He was enchanted by its wealth of strange flowers, its tropical foliage, and by the many new fruits that he now tasted for the first time. He drove out to the Pali, the frightful mountain precipice, five miles back from the city, over which, in the old savage days, King Kamehameha I. drove to their deaths an army of his enemies. He experimented with surf-riding on a slender board at Waikiki beach, ate poi, which he didn't like, and enjoyed poha jam. He wanted to climb Diamond Head and to visit the great sugar plantations of Ewa and Waialua; also he would dearly have loved to sail to the island of Hawaii, one hundred and fifty miles away, and gaze upon the mighty volcanoes of Kilauea and Mauna Loa; but there was not time, and all these had to be left for another visit.
The next chance for going ashore came two weeks later, when the Logan stopped for a few hours at the lonely but lovely island of Guam, destined a few years later to become a most important way-station of the American Pacific cable. After Guam came five days more of uneventful sailing, and then Manila Bay, with Corregidor Island standing sentry at its entrance.
"I wonder what Corregidor means?" asked Rob of Captain Astley, as they stood together gazing at this outpost, from which the first warning gun had been fired when Dewey's fleet slipped through the gray of dawn into Manila Bay.
"Some one told me," replied the army man, "that in olden times every Spanish city was governed by a regidor, assisted by councilmen, one from each division, or ward, called corregidors. So if we were to Americanize the name we would call it 'Alderman Island.'"
"Or 'City Father Island,'" laughed Rob.
It was intensely interesting to sail up that broad, mountain-bordered expanse of water, and recall the stirring events of May-day, 1898, when Dewey and his men did the same thing, only with the terrible difference that at any moment they were liable to run into a deadly nest of torpedoes. As they approached the head of the bay they saw Cavité on the right; then the shipping anchored in the roadstead; and then Manila itself lying on both sides of the sluggish Pasig, the old walled city on the right and the more modern town on the left as they faced them.
At Manila, Rob sorrowfully parted with the comrade whom he first had met in far-away Montana, and who ever since had been at once dear friend, guide, instructor, and pupil; for a steamer, on which he promptly engaged passage, left for Hong-Kong the day after the Logan's arrival.