s. But I dressed and ate and still
they came not. So I poked my head out of the window into the sad
radiance of a setting moon.

It was a town sleeping peacefully, and yet with every hint of warlike
preparation that scattered itself along the river. In front of the
officers' quarters a sentry clanked up and down the pavement. From
the military jail came a sound of voices and the creaking of benches,
as the guard turned on the hard bamboo seats, mingled also with a
steady tramp. More sentries could be seen across the river, where the
troop barracks loomed up and almost hid the hills which gloomed over
the town. The bridge was in shadow, but now and then a tall figure,
gun on shoulder, emerged at its farthest end into a pale little dash
of moonlight. The lanterns which the Filipinos hang out ol their
front windows in lieu of street lamps burned spectrally, because they
were clogged with lamp black. And the brooding and hush of night were
disturbed only by the rhythmic footfalls, or by the occasional slap
of a wave against the bridge rests, or by a long shrill police whistle
which told that the municipal police were awake and complying with the
regulation to blow their whistles at stated intervals for the purpose
of testifying to the same. It was all full of charm and suggestion,
singularly like and singularly unlike an American village under the
same conditions of light and temperature.

The moon sank so low that the mists caught it and turned its sheen
into a surly red. Presently a sentry challenged up by the jail, and
then the glint of white clothing grew distinct. I unhooked the lunch
basket and prowled my way out of the house, seeking to disturb nobody
and feeling quite adventurous.

Our baroto with six native oarsmen was waiting at the stone stairway
in the shadow of the bridge, and as the tide was beginning to turn we
lost no time in bestowing ourselves and our provisions. The middle
of the baroto, for a distance of about six feet, was floored and
canopied. Mr. L---- took the far corner, his wife pushed herself
and a couple of pillows up against him; then I braced myself and my
pillows against her; and the unfortunate lieutenant fell heir to the
fate of an obliging young gentleman and was stowed away at the end,
supported (or incommoded) by the lunch baskets and an unsympathetic
soap-box filled with water bottles. The men unslung their revolvers,
and we disposed ourselves so as to secure a proper equilibrium to