I know you will be sorry to hear that the last of our dear little mongeese is dead—killed by the dogs next door a week ago. We heard squeaking and barking and scuffling in the alley-way one evening, and rushed to the windows, but it was all dark below, and we could see nothing. So C—— and Sotero went down with a lamp, but there was nothing to be seen, and when we sent in to ask the old Tagalo dressmaker about it, they all swore they had heard nothing. So we hoped it was only a rat; but we waited in vain for our poor little pet to come back, and she never appeared again.
I could not bear the sight of the empty cage, and made the boys take it away after a day or two, and now I find it stands on the Azotea, with Sotero’s rooster sitting solemnly on a perch that has been fixed across the middle. This is the same cock, by-the-bye, that travelled back with us from Nagaba, and when C—— asks the boy about it, he always says it is “going to fight for fifteen pesos” on some Sunday—which never comes. The cock is as tame with Sotero as a dog, and allows itself to be combed and stroked the way one sees all the Filipinos do to their fighting-cocks.
A Village Cock-Fight.
In the native huts the fighting-cock is a very precious and sacred person, enthroned on a special perch at one end of the living-room. The night before he fights, this warrior is watched with the greatest care to see which point of the compass he faces, as on that omen hang many events, for if the creature faces the east he is bound to win, but if he is turned towards the west you may as well not take him to the battle at all. A little hope is left, however, for when the cocks all crow before the dawn, he who makes the first scrawk is bound to win, and you can put your last peseta on him.
The poor beasts are taken to the ring, where spurs of curved steel are fastened to the back of their heels, which makes the fight pretty short and decisive, and may be indirectly merciful if it helps towards a swift death. The making of the blades is a fine art, and they are carefully carried about in a small box with a little stone on which to sharpen them. When one sees a Filipino on the way to a cock-fight, with his bird sitting on his arm, there is generally another native walking beside him, carrying this little black box containing the spurs and the little whet-stone.
There is as much roguery and “doping” amongst these cock-fighters as there is about horse-racing amongst “civilised” men, and some of the dodges are really very ingenious, such, for instance, as taking tiny pills of opium or other poison under the finger nail and dropping them in front of your opponent’s bird when it is pecking about before the contest begins.
Before the fight the interested parties are allowed to test the roosters, like looking at a horse in the paddock, only they enjoy advantages which I believe are not to be indulged in a paddock at a race-meeting, for they may form their opinion of a bird by picking the animal up and feeling its muscles, looking at its thighs and examining its feet, of all of which points the Filipino is a wonderful judge, being able to graduate his large bets on the feeling of a muscle with great certainty. All the same, this is the occasion, if he is so minded and the other man is not quick enough, to injure the animal by means of a sharp pin point hidden in the palm of the hand or between the fingers.
I notice that the fighting-cocks here don’t have their breasts pulled bare of feathers like those poor birds we saw in that old man’s house below the walls of the Alhambra. Do you remember how bald and horrible they looked? And how the old villain who kept them told us he pulled the feathers out and rubbed in spirits to keep the skin hard? They don’t seem to do that here, for I have never seen a bare-breasted cock, and never met anyone who has heard of such a custom.