An Englishwoman in the Philippines

by Mrs. Campbell Dauncey

We went a last trip to Nagaba on Sunday, but only for the day, and were lucky in having very fine weather and delightfully cool, only 80°, with a lovely breeze blowing, and the sky a little overcast.

We roused ourselves up after lunch, and two friends came to the house to join the party, and we sent the “boy” for two quilezes. When we went down, I stepped into the first one; there was Tuyay lying in it already! How she knows when we are going out is simply marvellous.

We drove to the Muelle Loney, at the farther end of which paraos are moored for hire, and chose a nice big boat, the Valentino, with an upper deck of split bamboo, a rabbit-hutch cabin of nipa matting, and a crew of eight men, and set sail for Nagaba.

The sun came out soon after we started, so we lay half in and half out of the cabin and the shade it cast. It was a “three-man breeze,” so some of the crew ran out on the outriggers and others hauled ropes, while three ruffians sat on the deck, which was 3 feet wide, by-the-bye, and spread out a piece of blue paper, which they held down with their bare brown toes. We could not think what they were going to do, when, to our astonishment, one of them produced a pack of greasy cards and pieces of money and began the three-card trick! They did their best to get us interested in the game, the chief little old brown swindler losing to his confederates all in the best Derby style. We looked on with deep interest, but showed no signs of wishing to take part in the gamble, except for C—— to ask casually if they knew he was in the Secret Police, which made them look quite serious for a few minutes. This remark about Secret Police was no empty jest, for it is an Institution of the Free and Enlightened U.S.A., worthy of Russia or the Dark Ages. Well, after this disquieting joke about the Secret Police, the three-card trick seemed to lose its flavour, and the gamblers shifted billet again, to our intense amusement, crawling along the outriggers, and past the “cabin,” and on to the tiny space of after-deck, where the steersman sat huddled up with his legs round the tiller. Here they spread the blue paper out again, one of the confederates lying airily across the stern entrance, betting excitedly, with an occasional squint into the cabin to see if anyone was inclined to slip aft on the sly. But we never even looked round, so they soon abandoned that tactic and climbed on to the “cabin” roof, where they crouched like monkeys, chattering, and now and then a great flat brown face hung over the edge and looked down in on us; but we got rather tired of them, so C—— leaned out and hit one of them, and they gave that up too.

All this time we were skimming through the water, going at a tremendous pace, the boat leaning over first to one side and then to the other, with the white foam spurting up from the brilliant green sea, the half-naked brown sailors running out on the long poles of the outriggers, and the big sails filled out tight. It was most exhilarating.

We went straight across, a little wide of Nagaba, and then made a wide tack, which enabled the boat to go quite close to the beach, as the tide was high, and we came up right opposite the village. One of the boatmen carried me ashore, and the moment Tuyay saw me leave the ship, she flung herself into the water and swam after me in a sort of tragic despair that made us all laugh very much.

Then other brawny little natives took C—— and our two friends astride on their shoulders and set us all down on the dry sand, and we walked up through the little village of huts, all amongst the babies and dogs and pigs. There were several new swamps to be seen, and everything was even greener than when we were last there, which was before the S.-W. Monsoon had really set in. I noticed, too, that the bushes had flowered, as our friends had predicted, and one of them was a beautiful, scentless yellow blossom, a little like a snapdragon.

We had meant to go for a real walk, but the sun was too hot, as it was not more than four o’clock, so we wandered along to “our” house, through the fields and village. It was delightful to feel the fresh country air, and to smell the earth and plants after the streets of Iloilo, and we actually felt hungry, and began to ask each other what was to be done about food. Nothing was to be had at any house in the village, as we all knew by experience, but by luck we came upon a sort of open nipa shed, where a little Filipino woman was standing behind a wooden tray containing ears of maize, little heaps of rice, and betel-nut, which was by way of being a shop. From her, and a youth who cropped up from nowhere and conducted the bargaining, we bought what the Americans call corn-pone, which is whole ears of young maize roasted. We munched the corn, which was very sweet and tender, and uncommonly filling—after about half a “pone” one could hardly breathe.

A little further on we regretted our haste in satiating ourselves with maize, as we saw a big open shed, with two steps up to it, and all sorts of glasses and dishes glittering on a table spread with a white cloth, evidently a sort of Fiesta restaurant. We cheered up at this, and hurried along with talk of fizzing drinks, but when we came nearer, and out of the full glare of the sunlight, we got a horrible shock on finding it to be the Aglipay church!