The coastguard steamer on the Puerta Princesa run, on which the Collingwoods had elected to go as far as Cuyo where their own launch would pick them up, drove a clean white furrow, and, as Collingwood had predicted, passed Corregidor at noon. She went out through the Boca Chica with Corregidor on the left; and Mrs. Collingwood, who was resting in her steamer chair, smiled languidly as he glanced back at the island. “Corregidor over the stern,” she murmured as if repeating some well-worn quotation, and then went on, “Have your experiences here led you into contact with a type of man who has but one iterated and reiterated wish,—he is, by the way, usually a major in the United States army,—which wish is ‘to see Corregidor over the stern’? I do not know how many times my tongue has burned to suggest that the wisher take a coasting steamer and see it.”
“Oh, the army’s sore on the Philippines,” remarked Collingwood.
She eyed him reflectively. “And you, who have been in it, seem to be ‘sore’ on the army.”
“That’s right,” he exclaimed heartily, “Any man who has once served his country as a high private and has gotten out is ‘agin the Government’ for the rest of his life. I came over on the troop deck of a transport, and I swore I’d go home on a liner or leave my bones here.”
“Which seems likelier to be attained?” she asked, smiling idly.
“Which do you think yourself? You’ve linked your fortunes with mine. Why?” he added fixing her with a sudden intensity of glance insistent for reply.
His wife crimsoned and looked across the glinting sea.
“I thought you answered that question to your satisfaction last night,” she murmured.
“No; I tried to answer it for you. It was you that needed convincing. Here is a case of temperament,” he went on, half jocose, half serious. “So long as you hesitated and I had my side to urge, any old reason would do for me. I would clutch at a straw and hold on to it as if it were a cable. But now everything is settled and final, I want to understand. I want you to make yourself clear to me.”
“But, my dear Martin! The idea is out of the question. Why, for a month you have professed to be able to make me clear to myself.”