Last night we passed the narrow straits leading out of Shanghai harbor directly south. Two lighthouses blinked through the dusk of evening, the one to the north in short sharp notes, like a musician of the sea singing coasts, rapidly beating time. The light to the south seemed to count four in blinks and then hold its last count like a note of music. In between the two lighthouses vague, dim, mist-belted mountains of the China coast loomed through the dusk.
This morning and all day long we have been sailing past the huge outlines of mountainous Formosa, that rich island off the coast of China, between Shanghai and Manila. It looks like some fairly island with its coves and caves, into which pours the purple sea, visible through the faint mists of morning and noontime. Its precipitous sides shoot down to the sea in great bare cliffs, save where, here and there, a beautiful bay runs in from the southern sea to kiss the green lips of the land.
But now the sun is setting. I am watching it from my stateroom window.
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And now it is the rainy season in the Philippines.
It doesn't rain in Luzon; it opens up clouds, and oceans suddenly drop to the land. Lakes and rivers form overnight. Bridges wash out, fields are inundated, houses by thousands are swept away, and railroad tracks twisted and played with, as if they were grappled by gigantic fists.
Men will tell you of the great Typhoon that suddenly dropped out of the mountains at Baguio, sliced off a few sections of the mountains, rushed down through the great gorge, and left in its trail the iron ruins of eight or ten bridges, put in by American engineers, founded on solid granite; but swept away like playthings of wood, in an hour.
One night we were driving from Baguio to Manila.
A storm dropped suddenly out of the nowhere. We had no side curtains on, and in just three minutes we were soaked to the skin, and dripping streams of water. The artesian wells along the way were but dribbling springs compared with us.
The storm came out of a clear, star-lit sky. Storms come that way in the Philippines. Only a few minutes before I had been looking up at the Southern Cross admiring its beauty. I looked again and there was no Southern Cross. A few great drops of rain fell and then came the deluge.