hauled, after which,
as the tests showed the cable working satisfactorily at its Cebu
end, but unsatisfactorily at the other, we sailed for Ormoc, Leyte,
arriving there about seven o'clock that evening.

On the following morning the Signal Corps men went ashore in a small
boat, and while some of the party rehabilitated the office, others
underran the cable, cut in near the shore end, and after finding
communication satisfactory with Cebu and Liloan, located the fault,
the ship's volt-meter indicating when the small boat underrunning the
cable came to the break. It proved to be a defective factory joint,
which was cut out and repaired, so that by three o'clock communication
was established between Cebu and Liloan.

Ormoc did not prove interesting enough for a trip ashore in the
hot sun, so my only recollection of the place is a white _tribunal_
and a great preponderance of green foliage, toned down by the dull
gray-brown of nipa buildings and the dull gray-blue of sky and sea.

Then, too, it will always bring to mind the sad experience of a very
delightful officer we met there. At the time of our visit he was
_en route_ to Northern Leyte, a hostile part of the island where
several hundred insurgents were strongly entrenched. With him were
fifty soldiers, all of them eager for a scrap, while the young fellow
himself was "insatiable of glory." We were everyone of us enthused by
his prospects, the officers perhaps a bit envious of the stirring times
ahead for him, the women fearful of the outcome with such tremendous
odds in favour of the well entrenched Filipinos.

On a subsequent visit to Cebu we heard the last deplorable chapter
of his little story, the beginning of which had so interested us,
for while there had been no loss of life in his command, the whole
expedition had been a complete failure. It seems he was vanquished,
disarmed, and routed by the enemy at every turn, notwithstanding the
fact that he had studied strategy so that his plans of employing and
combining his resources would have filled any general officer with
admiration. Nor did his overthrow have the merit of dignity. It
was irresistibly droll, and no one laughed more heartily at the
preposterous ending of the expedition than did the victim himself.

For according to his own story at every town and village in the enemy's
country, he and his brave followers, all of them thirsting for gore,
were met by a brass band, and, accompanied by the leading c