Chinese proprietor
evidently suspected the purpose of his visit, however, for he was
unable to gain admittance. So that night, wearing the huge straw
sun-hat and flapping garments of blue cotton of a coolie, he tried
again. This time in response to his knock the heavy door swung open.
Within all was black and silent as the tomb. The lintel was low and
Jennings was compelled to stoop in order to enter. As he cautiously set
foot across the threshold there was a sudden swish of steel in the
darkness and the blade of a _barong_ whistled past his face, slicing
off the front of his hat and missing his head by the width of an
eyelash. As he sprang back the door slammed in his face and he heard
the bolts shot home, followed by the sound of a weapon clattering on
the floor and the patter of naked feet. Realizing that the men he was
after were making their escape by another exit, Jennings hurled
himself against the door, an automatic in either hand. It gave way
before his assault and he was precipitated headlong into the inky
blackness of the room. Taking no chances this time, he raked it with a
stream of lead from end to end. Then, there being no further sound, he
swept the place with a beam from his electric torch. Stretched on the
floor were three dead Chinamen and beside them was enough opium to have
drugged everyone on the island. That little episode, as Jennings
remarked dryly, put quite a crimp in the opium traffic in Jolo.

* * * * *

Cockfighting, which is as popular throughout the Philippines as
baseball is in the United States, finds its most enthusiastic devotees
among the Moros, every community in the Sulu islands having its cockpit
and its fighting birds, on whose prowess the natives gamble with
reckless abandon. Gambling is, indeed, the _raison d'etre_ of
cockfighting in Moroland, for, as the birds are armed with four-inch
spurs of razor sharpness, and as one or both birds are usually killed
within a few minutes after they are tossed into the pit, very little
sport attaches to the contest. The villagers are inordinately proud of
their local fighting-cocks, boasting of their prowess as a Bostonian
boasts of the Braves or a New Yorker of the Giants, and are always
ready to back them to the limit of their means.

Some years ago, according to a story that was told me in the
islands--for the truth of which I do not vouch--an American destroyer
dropped anchor off Cebu, the second larges