The General Blanco was not of a size to make her conspicuous, and I reflected that, if there had been another stage to the journey and a proportional shrinkage in the vessel, it surely would have had to be accomplished in a scow.  Although by no means palatial, the Buford was a fair-sized, ocean-going steamer.  The Francisco Reyes was a dirty old tub with pretensions to the contrary; and the General Blanco—­well, metaphorically speaking, the General Blanco was a coal scuttle.  She was a supercilious-looking craft, sitting at a rakish angle, her engines being aft.  She had a freeboard of six or seven feet, and possessed neither cabin nor staterooms, the space between the superstructure and the rail being about three feet wide.  You could stay there, or, if you did not incommode the engineer, you could go inside and sit on a coal pile.  There was a bridge approached by a rickety stair, and I judged that my deck chair would fill it completely, leaving about six inches for the captain’s promenade.  Behind the superstructure there was a sort of after-deck, nearly four feet of it.  When my trunks and boxes had been piled up there, with the deck chair balancing precariously atop, and with Romoldo reclining luxuriously in it, his distraught pompadour was about on a level with the top of the smokestack.

I really didn’t see any room aboard for me, and sat down on a hemp bale to consider.  Shortly after, the Division Superintendent arrived, accompanied by several young men.  He looked blank, and they whistled.  Then he went on board to talk with the captain, while his assembled charges continued to ornament the hemp bales.  Filipinos of all ages and sizes gathered round to stare and to comment.

At last the Division Superintendent came back with the information that the Blanco would tow up a lorcha which was lying a little distance down the river, and that we should find her a roomier and cooler means of transportation than the steamer.  “Lorcha” is the name given to the local sailing vessels.  Our lorcha was about sixty feet long, and, according to one of the teachers who had once seen Lake Michigan, was “schooner rigged.”  There was a deck house aft, which was converted into a stateroom for me.  There were two bunks in it, each of which I declined to patronize.  Instead I had my steamer chair brought over, and found there was plenty of room for it.  There were little sliding windows, which with the open door afforded fairly decent ventilation.  But the helm was just behind the deck house, and the helmsman either sat or stood on the roof, so that all night his responses to the steersman on the Blanco interfered with my sleep.  Then, too, they kept their spare lanterns and their cocoanut oil and some coils of rope in there.  At intervals soft-footed natives came in, and I was never certain whether it was to slay me or to get some of their stores.  Once a figure blocked out the starlight at one of the windows, and I heard a rustling and shuffling on the shelf where my food tins were piled.  So I said, “Sigue!  Vamos!” and the figure disappeared.