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t piece--"muy, muy chiquitin" (very, very small). She said that the Tagalogs called the dacolds "Christinas" after the mother of the Queen-mother. But the difference between a stable and a fluctuating medium meant nothing to her, and probably many of her countrymen have almost forgotten that there was ever any other than Conant in the land. CHAPTER XIII Typhoons and Earthquakes How Typhoons Assert Themselves--Our First Typhoon--Six Weeks' Mail Brought by the _General Blanco_--Her Narrow Escape From Wreck:--A Weird Journey on a Still Smaller Steamer--Another Typhoon--Rescue of Captain B---- --Havoc Wrought by the Typhoon. In the month of November two more American women teachers arrived at Capiz, one of whom joined me, and our society was still more increased by two army officers' wives, and the wives of the provincial Treasurer and the Supervisor. This made nine women in all, and we began to give dinners and card parties, and assume quite metropolitan airs. Miss C---- and I, from our central positions on the plaza, saw and heard most of what was going on, and we heartily concurred in the gossip of the day that there was always something doing in Capiz. About the middle of the month there was a lively earthquake that shook up our old house most viciously; and just before Thanksgiving we met our first typhoon. Typhoons have various ways of asserting themselves, but there is one predominating form of which this particular typhoon happens to be an example. The beginning of all things is usually a casual remark dropped by a caller that the first typhoon signal is up. Then the weather thickens, and a fine drizzling rain sets in. It stops by and by, and you have no sort of opinion of typhoons. Then the rain begins again with a steady downpour, which makes you wonder if there will be any left for next year. Again it stops, almost leads you to think it intends to clear. Then a little vagrant sigh of wind wafts back the deluge. A few minutes later nature sighs again with more tears. Each gust is stronger than the one before it, and at the end of eight or ten hours the blasts are terrific, and the rain is driven like spikes before them. It may keep this up twelve hours or fifty-six. It may increase to an absolute hurricane, levelling all before it with great loss of life, or it may content itself with an exhibition of what it could do if it really desired. At the end of the first day of our typhoon I went t
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