craved
for. These were unforgettable nights. The stars would be so very near
and friendly. The sea would be a duplicate sky with a host of reflected
slowly swaying lights, between which darts of phosphorescent life would
flicker. Zebra fish would come and go in shoals to have a peep at the
curious fire-dance of a myriad nameless water-things that had no
permanent form. Across the bay the two sentinel islands lay deep in
shadowy slumber. Not even the passing russet sails of an endless
string of fishing praus could stir them. To my right, silhouetted in
the pale moonlight, were the Samal houses of Bus-Bus, the fisherman's
village, built on bamboo and mangrove piles.
It
is late for you, people of Bus-Bus, to be astir, but the sound of your
tom-toms tells of high revelry by night. The world shall know that your
crab-pots were full to-day and that you have maimed two devil-fish.
From
San Remon behind me would come betimes on the wing of a southern breeze
the quivering twang of a lute. The air would be so still that I could
hear an American soldier whisper into a Japanese ear. To my left the
Chino pier would look like a blazing snake a mile long, and sometimes
the clatter and banging of Mah-Jong stones would blur the swish of the
waves.
But
as I sat looking at the peaceful water, beyond and above all towered
the shadow of Daho behind me—the mountain where this very evening
brown men were lying in ambush for white, and the new spirit wrestled
with the old. And while I was dreaming there, suddenly the moon would
hide behind a bank of clouds; a fine mist would descend on the water.
The curtain had been rung down. In the auditorium the heat had been
turned off. And even the ash in my briar would be cold.
Every
day for two weeks the ambulance men had been rushing the wounded to
the military hospital, and much of our time was spent in visiting the
sick and in the performance of a sadder duty. Even the few white
civilians in the citadel had a grueling time of it, and anything at all
that could raise a smile was welcomed with open arms.
