nd the others dismembered. The
little nipa houses were flat on the ground or drunkenly sprawling
at every slant and angle. Even the best houses had suffered. The
constabulary cuartel was absolutely wrecked. The Supervisor's kitchen
was gone, and his wife mourned for her dishes, which were scattered
up and down the length of the street. The home of the scout officer
was jruined. He and his wife had taken shelter under a stone wall,
and been drenched for three or four hours. The young mangoes had
been strewn on the ground, and there was no hope of that crop. Many
of the cocoanut trees were broken off, and where this was not the
case, the nuts had been whipped off. The banana trees were entirely
destroyed. Altogether it was a sorry sight, and we all got out and
walked about and viewed the ruins, just as we do for a cyclone at home.

The storm had an aftermath in the rescue of an Englishman, Captain
B----, a pearl fisher. He was anchored under the lee of a small
island in the sea between Panay and Masbate. He was in a small
lorcha, or sailing vessel, with no barometer, his glass having been
left on a lorcha of larger tonnage, which was at another point. The
heavy wind caught them without warning almost, and its impact soon
pressed the lorcha over. Captain B---- found himself struggling in
the water--able to swim, but drowning, as he expressed it, with the
spindrift which was hurtling into his face. He kept one arm going,
and partially protected his face with the other. Then in the inky dark
he touched a human body. It was the leg of one of his crew, four of
whom were clinging to one of the lorcha's boats. It kept turning over
and over, and they had to go with it each time. Captain B---- hung
to the prow, so his circuit was not so wide as that of the others,
but his body--arms, legs, and chest--was literally ploughed by the
rough usage. Once he let go and lost the prow as it came up, and the
fright of this was enough to strengthen his hold. They were in the
water clinging to this all the rest of the night, the next day, and
the next night. One man died of exhaustion, and one went mad and let
go. On the second morning they succeeded in bailing it out by means
of an undershirt, which Captain B---- had been wearing, and which,
though torn to ribbons across the front, was whole in the back. They
remained in the boat all day, beaten on by the tropical sun, having
been thirty hours in the water without food or drink.

Captain B-