g for us
more directly. A little later, in answer to another signal, we lighted
the paper remaining, and in reply to still another, some waste soaked
in oil did duty as a light. By this time the launch was near enough
for us to distinguish its whistle, to which of course we could not
reply, having no steam. Meanwhile the tide was very low. "Nine feet,"
announced some one, sounding, and the coral grated harshly under our
keel. A moment more and the launch might be too late.

But just then came another flash out of the gloom, so near that we were
startled, a shrill whistle, and the rescuing party was at hand. Very
hurriedly the passengers were transferred to the _Burnside, Jr._,
and the _Hilda_ was towed to a safe anchorage, where she was left
for the night.

The ride back to the ship was a long one, and we struck a tide-rip
half-way there, which drenched us all to the skin and tossed the
staunch little craft back and forth, as if she had been a chip on
the water. But at eleven o'clock we climbed aboard the _Burnside_,
after having given the Powers-that-Be and our many friends a fright
which made them threaten us with the brig if it ever happened again.

Fortunately for us, our first rocket had been seen from the ship,
else the launch might have been too late to rescue us, and what we had
taken for a gleam from the search-light was in fact a Coston signal,
our distance from the _Burnside_ not enabling us to distinguish its
red and blue lights, the white alone carrying that far.

A good dinner, finished long after midnight, so rested us that, being
young and foolish, we went ashore with our host of the afternoon,
merely for a farewell glimpse of Bongao, retiring at ever so little
o'clock in the morning, and not very long before the engines began
to puff and pant, preparatory to our trip northward.

Then followed a month of cable repairing, which took us again to
Zamboanga, Iligan, and Cagayan. A little stretch was also laid
connecting Oslob, Cebu, with the Dumaguete land line, and later a
cable laid nearly two years before on the southeast coast of Luzon
was thoroughly overhauled and put into shape. This cable connected
Pasacao and Guinayangan, or Pass-a-cow and Grin-again-then, as we
always dubbed the towns.

It was on our way to Pasacao from Iligan that we had our last glimpse
of old Mount Malindang, or, as the sailors called it, Mount Never
Pass, because it was so seldom off our horizon. All day the sea had
been