on one side, and a gauze _camisa_ with a _pina_ yoke,
and the stiff, flaring sleeves. Her head was bare, and her black hair
was combed uncompromisingly back on her head. Her worldly goods were
done up in a straw mat and a soiled bandana handkerchief, and were
deposited before her on the ground.

"This is the gal," said Wantz; "old Justice de Laguna's daughter,
and the same what uster sell beer to the Twenty-eighth over at
Tagaloan. She ain't no beauty, but she's a good steady trotter; ain't
you, Dell?" The girl looked stupid and embarrassed, and did not reply.

A "rooky," who had joined the company, stood on the dock
disconsolately. His blanket roll and locker had been put off the
boat. This was his first appearance in the provinces. He was a stranger
in a strange land, a fish out of water, and a raw recruit.

The men were set to work immediately landing the commissary
stores. They stripped their shoes and socks off, rolled up their
trousers to the knee, and waded through the shallow water, carrying
the bales and boxes on their shoulders to the shore.

The road up to the town was lined with _nipa_ houses, shaded with
banana-trees and bonga palms. This was the road that was almost
impassable during the rainy season. As the ambulance rolled heavily
along, scores of half-naked babies, shaped like peanuts, shouted after
you a "Hello, baby!" and the pigs, with snouts like coal-scuttles,
scattered on either side the thoroughfare. This was the famous "Bolo
alley," down which, only a few months before, the _Insurrecto_ army
had come shouting, "_A la! a la!_" firing as they ran.

You passed the market-place, an open hall filled with the native
stalls, where soldiers loafed around, chatting with the Visayan
girls--for a freemasonry exists between the Filipino and the
soldier--dickering with one for a few dhobie cigarettes, sold
"jawbone," to be paid for when the pay-boat comes.

The troops were quartered in old Spanish buildings, where the
sliding windows of the upper floors disclosed the lanes of white
mosquito-bar. Back in the courtyard, where the cook was busily
preparing mess, a mangy and round-shouldered monkey from the bamboo
fence was looking on approvingly. The cook was not in a good humor. All
that the mess had had for three weeks was the regulation beans and
bacon, without a taste of fresh meat or fresh vegetables.

Things were as bad, however, at the officers' mess, where the rule was
that the first complaint