A Womans Journey through the Philippines | Page 6

Others, emulating the laughing people on the big boat, put
their pieces of ice into their mouths, but not for long at a time, as the
intense cold made their teeth ache; while still others piously crossed
themselves and refused to have aught to do with so manifest an

invention of the Evil One.
Meanwhile, despite the fact of its being Christmas, the Signal Corps
officers, men, and natives were hard at work establishing an office in
the town, digging a trench for the shore end of the cable, and setting up
the cable hut, packed in sections for convenience in transportation.
Thirty Dumaguete natives were employed at twenty-five cents a day to
help dig the trench and put up the hut, and they seemed very willing in
their work and thought the remuneration princely.
So heavy was the surf in the early morning that the officers and soldiers
going ashore had to be carried from the rowboats to the beach on the
backs of natives, but it fortunately calmed down enough before we
women went over in the afternoon to allow of our entering Dumaguete
in a more conventional manner.
Being a fiesta, the town was full of natives from the provinces, all
smartly dressed and all beaming with good-natured curiosity at the
advent of two and a half American women,--the only Americanas most
of them had ever seen,--and quite an escort gathered around us as,
accompanied by the officers of the post and those from the ship not
otherwise engaged, we walked down the dusty streets toward the
cockpits, where in honour of the day there was to be a contest of
unusual interest. At every corner came new recruits to swell the ranks
of our followers. "Merry Christmas," cried everyone in Spanish or
Visayan, and "Merry Christmas" we responded, though June skies
bending down toward tropical palms and soft winds just rustling the
tops of tall bamboos, so that they cast flickering fern-like shadows over
thatched nipa roofs, but ill suggested Christmas to an American mind.
The cockpit reached, we found it to be a rudely built circular shack of
nipa, fairly crowded with natives in gala attire, and a sprinkling of
khaki-clad soldiers from the post. Native policemen, in uniforms that
strongly reminded one of the insurrecto insignia, showed us to our
seats, and a few moments after our arrival two fine cocks, matched as
nearly as possible in strength and weight, were brought into the ring by
their respective owners, while the onlookers discussed the birds'
relative points. The two cocks, still held by their masters, were then

allowed to peck at each other's combs until fully angered, when they
were put into the ring a short distance apart, and while each owner held
the tail feathers of his bird, the cocks made futile efforts to reach each
other, giving vent the while to derisive crowing.
The audience, after watching this performance a moment or two, began
making their bets, both individually and through the agency of the
"farmer," who, standing in the centre of the ring, cried out chaffingly in
Visayan to faint-hearted gamesters. Then circles were drawn on the
earthen floor of the pit, and the money put up on each cock deposited in
one or the other of these rings. At the end of the fight some one
appointed cried out the name of the victorious bird, and the winners
swarmed down into the pit where they collected their money and the
original stakes. There is never any cheating at such affairs, a sort of
bolo morality existing among the natives, and all is as methodical and
well-behaved as the proverbial Sabbath school.
It was the first cock-fight most of us cable-ship people had ever seen,
and it was hard to understand the wild enthusiasm of the natives when,
after unsheathing the steel gaffs on the roosters' legs, the birds were
allowed to make their preliminary dash at one another. For a moment
they walked around the ring with an excessively polite air, each
keeping a wary lookout on his antagonist, but frigidly impersonal and
courteous. One might almost fancy them shaking hands before the
combat should begin, so ceremonious was their attitude. Then there
would come a simultaneous onslaught of feathered fury. Again and
again they flew at one another, while the volatile audience called out
excitedly in Spanish, "The black wins--No, the speckled one's ahead.
Holy Virgin, give strength to the black!" In a very few moments one
cock is either dead, or perhaps turned coward before the cruel gaff of
his opponent, and victor and vanquished leave the arena to new
combatants, while the clink of coin changing hands is heard throughout
the cockpit.
The first few fights we thought rather tame, and I, personally, had to
assure myself over and