An Unpleasant Vacation
The Inspector’s Nightly Bonfires—Our Vacation in Manila and in Quarantine—After Our Return to Capiz Cholera Breaks Out—Record of Our Experiences During the Epidemic.
School closed in March, and Miss C—— and I decided to spend our vacation in Manila. We were to leave Capiz on the small army transport Indianapolis and go to Iloilo, thence by the Compania Maritima’s boat to Manila.
The Indianapolis was carrying an inspector around the island, which gave us a four days’ trip to Iloilo. The sea was perfectly smooth and the nights brilliant moonlight. We ran from town to town wherever a military detachment was stationed, and the inspector went ashore and inspected. This rite usually culminated in a huge bonfire on the beach, in which old stoves, chairs, harnesses, bath towels, and typewriters were indiscriminately heaped. I remarked once with civilian density that this seemed a most extravagant custom. If the army did not want these things longer, why not let them fall into the hands of others who could patch them up and make use of them? The captain of the transport explained to me that all condemned articles must be irretrievably destroyed to prevent fraud in subsequent quartermasters’ accounts. For example, if a quartermaster has a condemned stove which is not destroyed, he can sell a perfectly new stove, and on the next visit of the inspector present again the condemned article to be recondemned, and continue to follow this practice till he has robbed the Government of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Of course it was plain enough after the explanation, and I wondered at my stupidity.
Our four days’ trip around the island was uneventful save for the nightly bonfires of the inspector. Once at San Joaquin a fine military band came down to the beach and played for an hour in the silver moonlight. I enjoyed immensely the music, the bonfire (which was burning enthusiastically), the wonderful light, the tranquil expanse of the China Sea, and the delicate spire of the village church, rising in the ethereal distance from glinting palm fronds. Nothing is more beautiful than the glisten of moonlight on palms.
Arrived at Iloilo, I was taken ill almost immediately with the prevailing tropical evil, dysentery, presumably the result of drinking spring water on the gold hunt. At the same time there came down the report that cholera was epidemic in Manila. Nevertheless, when I was able to travel, to Manila I went, and there loathed myself, for it was blistering hot. I was staying at a hotel in the Walled City, and the great yellow placards announcing cholera were to be found on houses of almost all streets in the vicinity. But when I was ready to leave, the full evil of a cholera epidemic made itself apparent. There was no getting out of Manila without putting in five days’ quarantine in the bay.
We went aboard on the twenty-seventh of May. The steamer pulled out into the bay and dropped anchor. We were paying five pesos a day subsistence during this detention, and yet we were supplied with no ice and no fresh meat. We consumed the inevitable goat, chicken, and garbanzos, the cheese, bananas, and guava jelly, and the same lukewarm coffee and lady-fingers for breakfast. Owing to the heat, and the lack of fans, the staterooms were practically impossible, and everybody slept on deck either on a steamer chair or on an army cot. The men took one side of the deck, and the women the other. By day we yawned, slept, read, perspired, and looked longingly out at Manila dozing in the heat haze. There were several Englishmen aboard, and they were supplied with a spirit kettle, a package of tea, some tins of biscuits, and an apparently inexhaustible supply of Cadbury’s sweets, which they dispensed generously every afternoon. They had also a ping-pong outfit, and played.
Every day the doctor’s launch came out to see that none of us had escaped or developed cholera, and it brought us mail. Decoration Day was heralded by the big guns from Fort Santiago and the fleet at Cavite, and as I recalled all the other Decoration Days of my memory, the unnaturalness of a Decoration Day in the Philippines became more and more apparent.
Our quarantine was up on Sunday morning, but at the eleventh hour it was noised about that we should not leave, because a lorcha which we had to tow had failed to get her clearance papers. Our spirits descended into abysmal infinity. We felt that we could not endure another twenty-four hours of inaction.