ed wonders into a box for safe-keeping,
but before the passing of another day they had lost their beauty, and,
moreover, smelled up to very heaven, and had to be thrown overboard.

But at last the Signal Corps completed its work on the
Pasacao-Guinayangan cable, the final splice was made, and the bight
dropped overboard, whereupon we were off for Manila, stopping _en
route_ at Pasacao to ascertain if all were well with the line. This was
on Good Friday, and the officers who went ashore said that natives,
dressed to represent the Twelve Apostles, roamed the streets and at
given intervals flagellated one poor chap who had been elected to
represent Judas for the time being. The native padre assisted in the
semi-religious function, and all seemed more interested in it as a
diversion than impressed by its devotional significance.

The rest of the day we sailed over absolutely peaceful water, with
scarcely a ripple on its crystal surface, swinging in and out of the
myriad wooded islands, peninsulas, and capes that make the southern
part of Luzon so ragged and uneven on the map, and thence into the
China Sea, where we floated, sky above and sky below, for hours,
anchoring off Manila on the following forenoon, just in time to spend
Easter Sunday, April 7th, at the capital.

And so ended our cable trip and those pleasant days in the far South
Seas. The huge tanks on the forward deck of the _Burnside_ yawned
hungrily for the five hundred knots of cable now lying in those
distant waters, linking together the strange lands we had seen _en
route_, and as we stood for the last time looking down into those
empty tanks, tar-stained and reeking with moisture, I was strongly
reminded of Mr. Kipling's "Song of the Cable:"

"The wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from
afar-- Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where blind
white sea-snakes are. There is no sound, no echo of sound,
in the deserts of the deep, On the great, gray, level plains
of ooze, where the shell-burred cables creep. Here in the
womb of the world--here on the tie-ribs of earth-- Words,
and the words of men, flicker and flutter and beat."

THE END.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Woman's Journey through the
Philippines, by Florence Kimball Russel

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WOMAN'S JOURNEY ***

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