A Womans Impression of the Philippines | Page 5

sea lay purple and dark, with the same sad, sweet
loneliness that a prairie has in the dusk; but between us and the sun it
resembled a molten mass, heaving with sinister power. Our bowsprit
pointed straight at the fiery ball hanging on the sky rim, above which a
pyramidal heaping of clouds aped the forms of temples set on rocky
heights. And from that fantastic mingling of gold and pink and yellow
the sky melted into azure streaked with pearl, and faded at the zenith
into what was no color but night--the infinity of space unlighted.
When the engines started up, the gorgeous picture swung around until it
stood on what is technically called the starboard beam, whereupon one
of the engineers called my attention to the fact that we had changed our
course. Since we were then headed due south, he added, we must be
bound for Honolulu.
Everybody was pleased, though there was some little anxiety to know
the cause of this disregard of orders and of our turning a thousand miles
out of our course. In an ordinary merchant ship doubtless somebody
would have been found with the temerity to ask the captain or some
other officer what was the matter, but nobody was fool enough to do
that on an army transport. The "ranking" officer aboard was rather
intimate with the quartermaster captain, and we hoped something might
be found out through him; but if the quartermaster made any
confidences to the officer, that worthy kept them to himself. We
women went to bed with visions of fire in the hold, or of "tail shafts"

ready to break and race. The night passed tranquilly, however, and the
next morning there was no perceptible anxiety about the officers. As
the _Buford's_ record runs were about two hundred and sixty miles a
day, the remembrance that something was wrong had almost faded
before Honolulu was in sight.
We arrived at Honolulu during the night, and, the steward afterwards
said, spent the second half of it "prancing" up and down outside the bar,
waiting for the dawn. A suspicion that the staid Buford could prance
anywhere would have brought me out of bed. I did rise once on my
elbow in response to an excited whisper from the upper berth, in time
to see a dazzle of electric lights swing into view through the porthole
and vanish as the vessel dipped.
I dressed in time to catch the last of the sunrise, but when I went on
deck, found that nearly half the passengers had been more enterprising
than I. We were at anchor in the outer harbor, and Honolulu lay before
us in all the enchantment of a first tropical vision. A mountain of
pinky-brown volcanic soil--they call it Diamond Head--ran out into the
sea on the right, and, between it and another hill which looks like an
extinct crater and is called the Punch Bowl, a beach curved inward in a
shining line of surf and sand. Back of this line lay some two or three
miles of foreshore, covered with palm-trees and glossy tropical
vegetation, from which peeped out the roofs and towers of the
residence portion of the city. There were mountains behind the town,
jagged sierra-like peaks with clefts and gorges between. They were
terraced half-way up the sides and were covered with the light green of
crops and the deeper green of forests. Tatters of mist draped them here
and there, while clouds lowered in half a dozen spots, and we could see
the smoky lines of as many showers in brisk operation.
On our left the shipping lay clustered about the wharfs, sending its
tracery of masts into the clear sky; and all around glowed the beauty of
a shallow harbor, coral-fringed. From the sapphire of the water in our
immediate vicinity, the sea ranged to azure and apple green, touched by
a ray of sunlight into a flashing mirror here, heaping into snow wreaths
of surf there; and against this play of color loomed the swart bulk of the

Pacific Mail steamer Coptic, flying her quarantine flag.
We watched the doctor's launch go out to her, saw the flag fall and the
belch of smoke as she started shoreward, while the launch came on to
us. In a little while we too were creeping toward the docks. Naked
Kanaka boys swam out to dive for pennies. The buildings on the shore
took shape. The crowd on the dock shaped itself into a body of
normal-looking beings, interspersed with ladies in kimonos who were
carrying babies on their backs (the Japanese population of Honolulu is
very large), and with other dark-skinned ladies in Mother Hubbards
decorated with flower wreaths. There were also numerous gentlemen of
a Comanche-like physiognomy, who wore ordinary dress, but