LETTER XXVIII.
A LITTLE EARTHQUAKE, AND AN OPERA COMPANY UNDER DIFFICULTIES
Iloilo, May 15, 1905.
We had a slight earthquake here on Wednesday morning, the 11th. It was my first experience of that form of excitement, and I am sure I don’t want another. The queer thing that everyone here tells me, and they have plenty of experience to go by, is that people do not usually think much of their first earthquake, but instead of becoming accustomed to them, they become more alarmed, and get to be horribly frightened at the mere suggestion of the earth’s surface shifting about.
This one took place at about half-past four in the morning, and at first I thought it was a burglar or someone moving about the room, and was just going to call to C—— when he cried out: “Wake up! There is an earthquake!”
I woke up pretty quickly when I heard that! The shaking continued quite a long time, and I thought it a sickening sensation, and so horribly uncanny, with all the room trembling, and the furniture rattling and moving, while outside the air was deathly still. I think that what made the stillness was that no cocks crowed, and the eternal shrilling of the crickets ceased, which made a deadness in the ears such as one feels on coming out of a factory.
C—— invited me to go out on the balcony and “see the street moving,” which I firmly refused to do. I am sorry now that I did not go on to the balcony, but at the time I felt too horribly frightened to move hand or foot.
I don’t think I like earthquakes, but I expect I shall have to accustom myself to them, for they are so common in the Philippines as to excite no remark unless some building tumbles down; and the houses, as I think I told you, are built with a view to these hysterics of old mother Earth, with all the planks and beams tied with bands of bejuco to give them room to shift a little.
But besides the earthquake, we have been in more imminent danger since I last wrote, in the shape of the final and really conclusive and farewell performance of the Italian Quartette, which took place last Saturday night. The theatre was very full, and gaily decorated with loops of green leaves and paper roses of red and yellow, mixed up with perilous paper lanterns. The electric light, which has been weak for some time, chose, on this occasion, to go out altogether—in the midst of an impassioned duet.
There was instantly great excitement, for the paper lanterns were not lighted, and the theatre was plunged in blackness of the deepest dye. Reckless scratching of matches sounded all round, and the little lights were held up for a few seconds till they burnt out, and then dropped just anywhere. One did not need to look to gather that a Filipino did this thing! It made one’s blood run cold to see them.
Of course, though the electric light was in such a precarious state, and expected to expire at any minute, there had been no provision made in case of accidents, and the remedy now was a wild rush outside to buy candles, which were soon produced and stuck in dabs of their own grease along the front of the stage and amongst the orchestra. One or two lamps came somehow from somewhere and were placed jauntily about the building, while the spare candles were secured by enterprising spirits in the audience and put about so that they shone in the eye, and no one could see anything, and little brown ladies in camisas, with huge gauze sleeves, leaned past the naked lights with admirable indifference. There was not a single accident, however, but how that was managed, and indeed how the whole matchbox theatre was not burnt to the ground and the audience roasted, is simply the eighth wonder of the world.