It was a town sleeping peacefully, and yet with every hint of warlike preparation that scattered itself along the river.  In front of the officers’ quarters a sentry clanked up and down the pavement.  From the military jail came a sound of voices and the creaking of benches, as the guard turned on the hard bamboo seats, mingled also with a steady tramp.  More sentries could be seen across the river, where the troop barracks loomed up and almost hid the hills which gloomed over the town.  The bridge was in shadow, but now and then a tall figure, gun on shoulder, emerged at its farthest end into a pale little dash of moonlight.  The lanterns which the Filipinos hang out ol their front windows in lieu of street lamps burned spectrally, because they were clogged with lamp black.  And the brooding and hush of night were disturbed only by the rhythmic footfalls, or by the occasional slap of a wave against the bridge rests, or by a long shrill police whistle which told that the municipal police were awake and complying with the regulation to blow their whistles at stated intervals for the purpose of testifying to the same.  It was all full of charm and suggestion, singularly like and singularly unlike an American village under the same conditions of light and temperature.

The moon sank so low that the mists caught it and turned its sheen into a surly red.  Presently a sentry challenged up by the jail, and then the glint of white clothing grew distinct.  I unhooked the lunch basket and prowled my way out of the house, seeking to disturb nobody and feeling quite adventurous.

Our baroto with six native oarsmen was waiting at the stone stairway in the shadow of the bridge, and as the tide was beginning to turn we lost no time in bestowing ourselves and our provisions.  The middle of the baroto, for a distance of about six feet, was floored and canopied.  Mr. L——­ took the far corner, his wife pushed herself and a couple of pillows up against him; then I braced myself and my pillows against her; and the unfortunate lieutenant fell heir to the fate of an obliging young gentleman and was stowed away at the end, supported (or incommoded) by the lunch baskets and an unsympathetic soap-box filled with water bottles.  The men unslung their revolvers, and we disposed ourselves so as to secure a proper equilibrium to our tippy craft, and were off.

We slipped down the river, aided by the tide, and in a few minutes were far away from the last house, the last gleam of light, and the least sound of human life.  Save for the soft dip of oars, not a sound broke the night.  Yet it was not silence so much as the sense of deep respiration, as if the earth slept and sent up an invocation to the watching heavens.  The banks were thickly weeded at the water’s edge with nipa, and behind that were knolls of bamboo with here and there a gnarled and tortured tree shape silhouetted against the faint sky.  Occasionally we came to a convention of fireflies in that tree which they so much affect, the name of which is unknown to me, but which in size and outline resembles a wild cherry.  Millions of them starred its branches, and in the surrounding gloom it winked and sparkled like a fairy Christmas tree.