ez
Canal and the Mediterranean, to Paris. Our route to San Francisco,
by way of Hongkong, Nagasaki, Sunanaski, Kobe and the Yokohama light,
was 6,905 knots, about seven thousand seven hundred statute miles,
and gave us glimpses of the Asia shore, the west coast of Formosa
and the great ports of Hongkong and Nagasaki. The first thing on
the Sea of China, in the month of September, is whether we shall
find ourselves in the wild embrace of a typhoon. It was the season
for those terrible tempests and when we left Manila the information
that one was about due was not spared us. We heard later on that the
transport ahead of us four days, the Zealandia, was twenty-eight hours
in a cyclone and much damaged--wrung and hammered and shocked until
she had to put into Nagasaki for extensive repairs. The rainfall was
so heavy during the storm that one could not see a hundred yards from
the ship, and she was wrung in so furious a style in a giddy waltz,
that the Captain was for a time in grave doubt whether she would not
founder. The rule is when one is in the grasp of the oriental whirl
to run through it, judging from the way of the wind, the shortest
way out. There is a comparatively quiet spot in the center, and if
the beset navigator can find the correct line of flight, no matter
which way as relates to the line of his journey, he does well to take
it. Often in this sea, as in this case, there were uncertainties as to
directions. The rain narrowed observation like a dense fog, and there
was danger of running upon some of the islands and snags of rocks. The
battered vessel pulled through a cripple, with her boats shattered,
her deck cracked across by a roller, and her crew were happy to find
a quiet place to be put in order. "To be or not to be" an American
instead of a Spanish or Asiatic city was the parting thought as the
China left Manila Bay, and the dark rocks of Corrigedor faded behind
us, and the rugged rocks that confront the stormy sea loomed on our
right, and the violet peaks of volcanic mountains bounded our eastern
horizon. The last view we had of the historic bay, a big German warship
was close to the sentinel rock, that the Spaniards thought they had
fortified, until Dewey came and saw and conquered, swifter than Caesar,
and the Germans, venturing some target practice, by permission of
Dewey, who relaxes no vigilance of authority. Hongkong is 628 miles
from Manila, and the waters so often stirred in monstrous wrath,
w