Banzai! | Page 3

every coolie is

becoming a positive mania. No, I can't agree with you there," added
Webster, who seemed to regret the passionate outburst into which his
temperament had betrayed him.
"Really not?" asked Harryman, turning in his comfortable wicker chair
toward Webster and looking at him half encouragingly with twinkling
eyes.
Such discussions were not at all unusual in the Club at Manila, for they
presented the only antidote to the leaden, soul-killing tedium of the dull
monotony of garrison duty. Since the new insurrection on Mindanao
and in the whole southern portion of the archipelago, the question as to
the actual causes of the uprising, or rather the secret authors thereof,
continually gave rise to heated discussions. And when both parties, of
which one ascribed everything to Japanese intrigue and the other found
an explanation in elementary causes, began to liven up, the debate was
apt to wax pretty warm. If these discussions did nothing else, they at
least produced a sort of mental excitement after the heat of the day
which wore out body and mind alike, not even cooling down toward
evening.
The Chinese boy, passing quickly and quietly between the chairs,
removed the traces of the Webster thunderbolt and placed fresh bottles
of soda water on the table, whereupon the officers carefully prepared
new drinks.
"He's a spy, too, I suppose?" asked Webster of Harryman, pointing with
his thumb over his shoulder at the disappearing boy.
"Of course. Did you ever imagine him to be anything else?"
Webster shrugged his shoulders. A dull silence ensued, during which
they tried to recover the lost threads of their thoughts in the drowsy
twilight. Harryman irritably chewed the ends of his mustache. The
smoke from two dozen shag pipes settled like streaks of mist in the
sultry air of the tropical night, which came in at the open windows.
Lazily and with long pauses, conversation was kept up at the separate
tables. The silence was only broken by the creaking of the wicker

chairs and the gurgling and splashing of the soda water, when one of
the officers, after having put it off as long as possible, at last found
sufficient energy to refill his glass. Motionless as seals on the sandhills
in the heat of midday, the officers lolled in their chairs, waiting for the
moment when they could turn in with some show of decency.
"It's awful!" groaned Colonel McCabe. "This damned hole is enough to
make one childish. I shall go crazy soon." And then he cracked his
standing joke of the evening: "My daily morning prayer is: 'Let it soon
be evening, O God; the morrow will come of itself.'" The jest was
greeted with a dutiful grunt of approval from the occupants of the
various chairs.
Lieutenant Parrington, officer in command of the little gunboat
Mindoro, which had been captured from the Spaniards some years ago
and since the departure of the cruiser squadron for Mindanao been put
in commission as substitute guardship in the harbor of Manila, entered
the room and dropped into a chair near Harryman; whereupon the
Chinese boy, almost inaudible in his broad felt shoes, suddenly
appeared beside him and set down the bottle with the pain expeller of
the tropics before him.
"Any cable news, Parrington?" asked Colonel McCabe from the other
table.
"Not a word," yawned Parrington; "everything is still smashed. We
might just as well be sitting under the receiver of an air pump."
Harryman noticed that the boy stared at Parrington for a moment as if
startled; but he instantly resumed his Mongolian expression of absolute
innocence, and with his customary grin slipped sinuously through the
door.
Harryman experienced an unpleasant feeling of momentary discomfort,
but, not being able to locate his ideas clearly, he irritably gave up the
attempt to arrive at a solution of this instinctive sensation, mumbling to
himself: "This tropical hell is enough to set one crazy."

"No news of the fleet, either?" began Colonel McCabe again.
"Positively nothing, either by wire or wireless. It seems as though the
rest of the world had sunk into a bottomless pit. Not a single word has
reached us from the outer world for six days."
"Do you believe in the seaquake?" struck in Harryman mockingly.
"Why not?" returned the colonel.
Harryman jumped up, walked over to the window with long strides,
threw out the end of his cigarette and lighted a new one. In the bright
light of the flaming match one could see the commander's features
twitching ironically; he was on the warpath again.
"All the same, it's a queer state of affairs. Our home cable snaps
between Guam and here, the Hong-Kong cable won't work, and even
our island wire has been put out of commission; it must have been a
pretty violent catastrophe--" came