loads of it about. But still, as we are friends, I'll give you a louis for this."
"A
louis only?" he demanded. "Well, take the damned thing. I'm sick of it.
But I hope it will make a hole in the bottom of your ship and you'll
get drowned for paying me such a measly price."
Precisely
this "gem" I remembered now as I walked back to my rooms. I dug it out
from the bottom of my trunk and had a look at it. It was a pretty
thing. I laid it on a thick layer of snowy cotton wool in a handsome
box and set out again.
The
Sultan's palace lay outside the citadel. I had to pass through the
guard-house arch where an American lieutenant and his men kept watch.
Here I was stopped. Said the officer:
"I'm sorry, but you can't go out. There must be two of you and you must be armed. These are the standing orders."
"What
do you mean?" I asked. "I have no bodyguard and I never carry firearms.
I have a gun at the hotel, but I shouldn't know which side the bullets
go in and where they come out."
The
officer laughed. Being good-natured, he spoke to two armed soldiers who
were just then going through the gate to buy fish for their wives in
Tulay market. They stood to attention while he ordered: "Accompany
this man to the Sultan's house." Then turning to me he said, "Remember,
the American Army can't be held responsible if a lime-juicer walks
back through this gate with his bean tucked under his armpit."
The
road to the palace took me past the Tulay marketplace. Here were
gathered together a large crowd of buyers and sellers: Moros from the
hills, some mounted on shaggy ponies, others on carabaos (mud
buffaloes) with baskets of rattan slung from their saddle-horns
containing the goods brought to market—copra, almacica, gutta percha,
abacca, camotes, tapioca, plantains, vanilla pods; and the poorer
hill-folk who trooped in in close single file, balancing heavily laden
bamboo poles on their wealed shoulders and with their wives trotting
contentedly behind them. Well might a woman
