The two thousand and one hundred miles from California to Honolulu seemed at first to cover a vast space of the journey from our Pacific coast to the Philippines, but appeared to diminish in importance as we proceeded and were taught by the persistent trade winds that blew our way, as if forever to waft us over the awful ocean whose perpetual beauty and placidity were to allure us to an amazing abyss, from which it was but imaginative to presume that we, in the hands of infinite forces, should ever be of the travelers that return.  Similar fancies beset, as all the boys remember—­the crews of the caravels that carried Columbus and his fortunes.  There were the splendors of tropical skies to beguile us; the sea as serene as the sky to enchant us!  What mighty magic was this that put a spell upon an American army, seeking beyond the old outlines of our history and dreams, to guide us on unfamiliar paths?  What was this awakening in the soft mornings, to the thrilling notes of the bugle?  The clouds were not as those we knew in other climes and years.  We saw no penciling of smoke on the edges of the crystal fields touched up with dainty ripples too exquisite to be waves—­that which is a delight for a moment and passes but to come again, in forms too delicate to stay for a second, save in those pictures that in the universe fill the mind with memories that arc like starlight.  The glancing tribes of flying fish became events.  We followed the twentieth parallel of longitude north of the equator, right on, straight as an arrow’s flight is the long run of the ship—­her vapor and the bubbles that break from the waters vanishing, so that we were as trackless when we had passed one breadth after another of the globe, as the lonesome canoes of the Indians on the Great Lakes.

CHAPTER IV

Interview with General Aguinaldo.

The Insurgent Leader’s Surroundings and Personal Appearance—­His Reserves and Ways of Talking—­The Fierce Animosity of the Filipinos Toward Spanish Priests—­A Probability of Many Martyrs in the Isle of Luzon.

Practically all persons in the more civilized—­and that is to say the easily accessible—­portions of the Philippine Islands, with perhaps the exception of those leading insurgents who would like to enjoy the opportunities the Spaniards have had for the gratification of greed and the indulgence of a policy of revenge, would be glad to see the Americans remain in Manila, and also in as large a territory as they could command.

Spaniards of intelligence are aware that they have little that is desirable to anticipate in case the country is restored to them along with their Mausers and other firearms, great and small, according to the terms of capitulation.  They get their guns whether we go and leave them or we stay and they go.  It is obvious that the insurgents have become to the Spaniards a source of anxiety attended with terrors.  The fact that they allowed themselves to be besieged in Manila by an equal number of Filipinos is conclusive that their reign is over, and they are not passionately in favor of their own restoration.  Their era of cruel and corrupt government is at an end, even if we shall permit them to make the experiment.  Their assumed anxiety to stay, is false pretense.  They will be hurt if they do not go home.