SENSITIVE PLANTS AND PEARL PIMPS
J
UST as I was
beginning to reap the reward of my pictorial advertising campaign,
Gekira, the pirate, broke loose again. He had been resting for a while
in some cave or some inaccessible rock-eyrie overlooking the Mindoro
Sea. But now he was getting short of rice, or perhaps he had tired of
his latest wife. He began his old tricks once more, chasing fishing
vintas or praus laden with trade goods, seizing what he could use and
burning the rest. He even played the deuce with small American craft.
These
exploits put the islands into a state of ferment. The Samals were
frightened out of their wits and the Moro mothers would threaten their
naughty brats with tales of his ferocity. And the English in Northern
Borneo, as well as the American Army and Navy, realized they would have
to get Gekira before there could be safety again in those waters.
It
is said that a million rounds of ammunition were used in this man-hunt.
No pearling lugger dared go out to the grounds: the oysters rejoiced,
but the women of the coast mourned for their men. I mourned for the
pearls which did not come my way, and often pondered in the night what
Leon, the pearl-doctor, had said—that two legs were better than one in
this part of the world.
But
everything comes to an end, and Gekira, having slighted his paramour, a
wisp of a nut-brown maid taken on one of his expeditions, was betrayed
by her to the American soldiers. Several launches were dispatched to take
him. Troops surrounded his rock and he was ordered to surrender. But
Gekira, game to the last, withdrew with his men into a cave whose mouth
was washed by the sea, and there made his last stand. They tried words
on him, and smoke, and musket-fire,
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