Her fellow travelers had taken measures of defense by keeping up among themselves a lively conversation on any topic whatsoever.  At that moment the windings and turnings of the river led them to talk about straightening the channel and, as a matter of course, about the port works.  Ben-Zayb, the journalist with the countenance of a friar, was disputing with a young friar who in turn had the countenance of an artilleryman.  Both were shouting, gesticulating, waving their arms, spreading out their hands, stamping their feet, talking of levels, fish-corrals, the San Mateo River, [2] of cascos, of Indians, and so on, to the great satisfaction of their listeners and the undisguised disgust of an elderly Franciscan, remarkably thin and withered, and a handsome Dominican about whose lips flitted constantly a scornful smile.

The thin Franciscan, understanding the Dominican’s smile, decided to intervene and stop the argument.  He was undoubtedly respected, for with a wave of his hand he cut short the speech of both at the moment when the friar-artilleryman was talking about experience and the journalist-friar about scientists.

“Scientists, Ben-Zayb—­do you know what they are?” asked the Franciscan in a hollow voice, scarcely stirring in his seat and making only a faint gesture with his skinny hand.  “Here you have in the province a bridge, constructed by a brother of ours, which was not completed because the scientists, relying on their theories, condemned it as weak and scarcely safe—­yet look, it is the bridge that has withstood all the floods and earthquakes!” [3]

“That’s it, punales, that very thing, that was exactly what I was going to say!” exclaimed the friar-artilleryman, thumping his fists down on the arms of his bamboo chair.  “That’s it, that bridge and the scientists!  That was just what I was going to mention, Padre Salvi—­punales!”

Ben-Zayb remained silent, half smiling, either out of respect or because he really did not know what to reply, and yet his was the only thinking head in the Philippines!  Padre Irene nodded his approval as he rubbed his long nose.

Padre Salvi, the thin and withered cleric, appeared to be satisfied with such submissiveness and went on in the midst of the silence:  “But this does not mean that you may not be as near right as Padre Camorra” (the friar-artilleryman).  “The trouble is in the lake—­”

“The fact is there isn’t a single decent lake in this country,” interrupted Dona Victorina, highly indignant, and getting ready for a return to the assault upon the citadel.

The besieged gazed at one another in terror, but with the promptitude of a general, the jeweler Simoun rushed in to the rescue.  “The remedy is very simple,” he said in a strange accent, a mixture of English and South American.  “And I really don’t understand why it hasn’t occurred to somebody.”