to be pretty well rebuilt, and repainted. At the
time of all these happenings I was in Iloilo, whither I had gone for
treatment of an abscess of the middle ear, and as I depended on the
_Blanco_ for getting back, felt personally injured by her antics. I
went several times to the office of her agents, one of the big English
trading firms, to inquire how the wreck was getting along, and what
the prospect was for a return to Capiz before Christmas. The man at
the desk did not look characteristically English, and on my first
appearance I addressed him tentatively in Spanish. He answered in that
language, and we continued to use it. On one of the later visits this
gentleman was not visible, but in his place a red-headed, freckled
youth, with the map of Scotland outlined on his rugged countenance,
presided over the collection of inkstands and ledgers. Naturally, I
accosted him in English, whereupon the shape of my former interlocutor
rose up from behind a screen and remarked, "By Jove, I thought you
were Spanish, don't you know? and have been talking to you all this
time in Spanish. What a sell!"

Failing the _Blanco_, I took passage for Capiz on the _Fritz_, a craft
one or two degrees smaller and rustier than the old _General_. Of
all the weird experiences I ever had, that twenty-four hours was the
weirdest. They cleared out a sort of pantry or lazaretto just back
of the deck engine-house for me to use as a stateroom, and I slept on
the pantry shelf. Some kind of steam pipes must have passed under it,
for it grew so hot that several times I had to vacate and get down on
the floor. Then we met a little wind as we rounded the north coast,
and I was sick. A family of Filipino aristocrats came on board
at Estancia, and the ladies elected to share my retreat. They had
several servants and one or two babies and other necessaries of life,
and they left me only a corner of the pantry shelf, against which I
propped my weary and seasick frame. We made Capiz just at dusk, and
never was a wanderer more eager to see home. There on the bank were
two of my friends, who said they were invited out to dinner and were
to bring me if I arrived in time. So we went to that cheery American
home with its spotless linen, its silver and china. For six weeks I
had been living on Spanish "chow," and the contrast made me serenely
happy. It was almost worth enduring--the six weeks of chow and the
_Fritz_, I mean--to enjoy the change.

But to return to