also a ping-pong outfit, and played.

Every day the doctor's launch came out to see that none of us had
escaped or developed cholera, and it brought us mail. Decoration
Day was heralded by the big guns from Fort Santiago and the fleet at
Cavite, and as I recalled all the other Decoration Days of my memory,
the unnaturalness of a Decoration Day in the Philippines became more
and more apparent.

Our quarantine was up on Sunday morning, but at the eleventh hour it
was noised about that we should not leave, because a lorcha which
we had to tow had failed to get her clearance papers. Our spirits
descended into abysmal infinity. We felt that we could not endure
another twenty-four hours of inaction.

The lorcha was a dismasted hull, no more, with a Filipino family and
one or two men aboard to steer. We had a Scotch engineer who might
have been the original of Kipling's McFee. I spoke to him about the
rumor as he leaned over the side staring at the lorcha, and he gave
vent to his feelings in a description of the general appearance of the
lorcha in language too technically nautical for me to transcribe. At
the end he waxed mildly profane, and threatened to "pull the dom nose
out of her" when once he got her outside of Corregidor.

The rumor proved a _canard_, however, and we lined up at eleven
o'clock, while the doctor counted us to see that we were all alive
and well. Then up anchor and away, with the breeze born of motion
cooling off the ship.

The engineer was not able to keep his dire threat about the lorcha's
nose, but it is only just to say that he tried to. We met a heavy sea
outside of Corregidor, and never have I seen anything more dizzy and
drunken and pathetic than the rolls and heaves of the lorcha.

At Iloilo we met the army transport _McClellan_, and continued our
voyage upon her to Capiz. We bade farewell to her with regret, and
consumed in an anticipatory passion of renunciation our last meal with
ice water, fresh butter, and fresh beef. The _McClellan_ took away the
troops of the Sixth Infantry and the Tenth Cavalry, and left us, in
their stead, a detachment of the Ninth Cavalry, which remained perhaps
two months, and was then stationed at Iloilo, leaving us with nothing
but a troop of native _voluntarios_, or scouts, officered by Americans,
and a small detachment of native constabulary. We had barely accustomed
ourselves to this, and ceased to predict insurrection and massacre,
when the cholera, which