A Woman's Impression of the Philippines. Mary H. Fee
out, and, in a very ecstasy of selfish misery, I discarded my garments and burrowed into the warmth of my bed. Never had blankets seemed more comfortable, for, between the wind and the seasickness, I was chilled through and through.
I fell asleep through sheer exhaustion, and wakened some time after in darkness. The waves were hissing and slapping at the porthole; the second steward was cursing expertly in the linen closet, which happened to be opposite our stateroom; and somewhere people in good health were consuming viands, for cooking odors and the rattle of dishes came to us. A door in the corridor opened, and the sound of a cornet was wafted back from the forward deck. Somebody was playing “The Holy City.” Steps went by. A voice with an English accent said, “By Jove, you can’t get away from that tune,” and, in one of those instants of stillness which fall in the midst of confusion, I heard a gurgling moan.
I snapped on the light and turned—at what cost only the seasick can appreciate—to behold Miss R—— sitting on the floor with her back to the wall. She was still shrouded in her golf cape and hood, and contemplated her boots—which were on her feet, sticking straight out before her—as if they were a source of mental as well as bodily inconvenience. At intervals she rolled her head and gave utterance to that shuddering moan.
Wretched as I was, I could not help gasping, “Are you enjoying your sea trip?” and she replied sepulchraily, “It isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.” We could say no more. That time we groaned in unison.
She must have gathered strength of mind and body in the night, however, for she was in her berth next morning when the stewardess came in to know what we wanted for breakfast. We did not want anything, as we quickly made reply. The wind went down that day; the next day was warm and clear, with a sea like sapphire, and we dragged ourselves to the deck. Recovery set in quickly enough then, so that we began to “think scornful” of seasickness. Fortunately the good ship Buford ploughed her way across the Pacific without meeting another swell, and our pride was not humbled again. We ate quite sparingly for a meal or two, and had fits of abstraction, gazing at the ceiling when extra-odorous dishes were placed in front of us. The Radcliffe girls said that they had passed a strenuous night, engaged in wild manœuvres to obtain possession of the monkey wrench and feloniously to secrete the same. Their collegiate training had included instruction on the hygienic virtues of fresh air, which made no allowance for a sea trip; and their views as to the practical application of these principles came sadly into conflict with the ideas of their bedroom steward. There were frantic searchings for a monkey wrench all that night, while the article lay snugly bestowed between the mattresses of a maiden who looked as if she might be thinking of the angels. Also their porthole was open in defiance of orders, and much water came into their stateroom. But they did not care, for it brought fresh air with it.
The first two or three days of the voyage were spent in taking stock of our fellow passengers and in finding our friends. We were about seventy-five cabin passengers in all—a small family, it is true. The ship was coaled through to Manila, the first stop being Guam. So we made acquaintance here and there, settling ourselves for no paltry five or six days’ run, but for a whole month at sea. We all came on deck and took our fourteen laps—or less—around the promenade deck before breakfast. The first two or three nights, with a sort of congregational impulse, we drifted forward under the promenade awnings, and sang to the accompaniment of the cornetist on the troop deck. The soldiers sang too, and many an American negro melody, together with “On the Road to Mandalay” and other modern favorites, floated melodiously into the starlit silence of the Pacific. Our huge windsail flapped or bellied as the breeze fell or rose; the waves thumped familiarly against the sides; the masthead lantern burned clear as a star; and the real stars swung up and down as the bowsprit curtsied to each wave. In the intervals between songs a hush would fall upon us, and the sea noises were like effects in a theatre.
In a few days, however, our shyness and strangeness wore off. We no longer sang with the soldiers, but segregated ourselves into congenial groups; and under the electric lights the promenade deck looked, for all the world, like the piazza of a summer hotel.
From San Francisco to Honolulu
We Change Our Course and Arrive at Honolulu—The City Viewed from the Sea—Its Mixed Population—We Are Detained Ten Days For Engine Repairs.
When we were a week out from San Francisco and were eight hundred or a thousand miles north of the Hawaiian Islands, the Buford stopped one evening just at sunset, and for at least twenty minutes slopped about in the gentle swell. There is a curious sense of dulness when the engines cease droning and throbbing; and the passengers, who had just come up from dinner, were affected by the unusual silence. We hung over the rail, talking in subdued tones and noting the beauty of the sunset.
Behind us the sea lay purple and dark, with the same sad, sweet loneliness that a prairie has in the dusk; but between us and the sun it resembled a molten mass, heaving with sinister power. Our bowsprit pointed straight at the fiery ball hanging on the sky rim, above which a pyramidal heaping of clouds aped the forms of temples set on rocky heights. And from that fantastic mingling of gold and pink and yellow the sky melted into azure streaked with pearl, and faded at the zenith into what was no color but night—the infinity of space unlighted.
When the engines started up, the gorgeous picture swung around until it stood on what is technically called the starboard beam, whereupon one of the engineers called my attention to the fact that we had changed our course. Since we were then headed due south, he added, we must be bound for Honolulu.
Everybody was pleased, though there was some little anxiety to know the cause of this disregard of orders and of our turning a thousand miles out of our course. In an ordinary merchant ship doubtless somebody would have been found with the temerity to ask the captain or some other officer what was the matter, but nobody was fool enough to do that on an army transport. The “ranking” officer aboard was rather intimate with the quartermaster captain, and we hoped something might be found out through him; but if the quartermaster made any confidences to the officer, that worthy kept them to himself. We women went to bed with visions of fire in the hold, or of “tail shafts” ready to break and race. The night passed tranquilly, however, and the next morning there was no perceptible anxiety about the officers. As the Buford’s record runs were about two hundred and sixty miles a day, the remembrance that something was wrong had almost faded before Honolulu was in sight.
We arrived at Honolulu during the night, and, the steward afterwards said, spent the second half of it “prancing” up and down outside the bar, waiting for the dawn. A suspicion that the staid Buford could prance anywhere would have brought me out of bed. I did rise once on my elbow in response to an excited whisper from the upper berth, in time to see a dazzle of electric lights swing into view through the porthole and vanish as the vessel dipped.
I dressed in time to catch the last of the sunrise, but when I went on deck, found that nearly half the passengers had been more enterprising than I. We were at anchor in the outer harbor, and Honolulu lay before us in all the enchantment of a first tropical vision. A mountain of pinky-brown volcanic soil—they call it Diamond Head—ran out into the sea on the right, and, between it and another hill which looks like an extinct crater and is called the Punch Bowl, a beach curved inward in a shining line of surf and sand. Back of this line lay some two or three miles of foreshore, covered with palm-trees and glossy tropical vegetation, from which peeped out the roofs and towers of the residence portion of the city. There were mountains behind the town, jagged sierra-like peaks with clefts and gorges between. They were terraced half-way up the sides and were covered with the light green of crops and the deeper green of forests. Tatters of mist draped them here and there, while clouds lowered in half a dozen spots, and we could see the smoky lines of as many showers in brisk operation.
On our left the shipping lay clustered about the wharfs, sending its tracery of masts into the clear sky; and all around glowed the beauty of a shallow harbor, coral-fringed. From the sapphire of the water in our immediate vicinity, the sea ranged to azure and apple