A barkentine, loaded with molave timber and carrying native passengers, had been driven ashore at the port that day, and the One Lung had gone to the rescue and taken off the passengers.  Fortunately the little craft did not have to brave the full force of the sea, as the arms of the bay broke the fury.  But even in the bay Captain R——­ said the waves were frightful, and he thanked his stars that they had gotten back alive.

While we were still talking of the storm, there came a shout from the tribunal next door, and the noise and rattle of the four-horse escort wagon starting down to Libas.  That could mean but one thing—­States mail, the which, as we had seen none of it for six weeks, was particularly welcome.  But we wondered what boat had come in in such a storm, and, the unexpected always happening, were not wholly unprepared to learn that that disreputable old tub the General Blanco had made harbor safe and sound.  It took till nearly midnight to get the mail up and distributed, but we stayed up for it.  There were actually eight sacks of mail for our little colony, and we went over to the tribunal and watched the mail sacks opened, and seized on our share with avidity, while we alternately blessed and despised the skipper of the Blanco for getting caught out in the tempest.

This was not the last feat the Blanco was destined to achieve during my stay in Capiz.  She had a habit of dropping into port in weather that it seemed no boat could live in.  Once she came in about two P.M. in a tremendous sea, bringing a single American passenger—­a girl of twenty-one, a Baptist missionary.  As the Blanco had no cabins, the captain was forced to lock his native passengers in the engine room, where no doubt they contributed much to the enjoyment of the engineer and his aids.  He had the deck chair of this girl carried up on his bridge and lashed, and she was lashed to the chair.  There they two rode out the storm.  The captain said that from eleven o’clock till two, when he made the shelter of Batan Bay, he expected his boat to be swamped any instant, and he expressed his unqualified admiration for the way in which this girl faced her possible doom.  He concluded with a favorite Filipino ejaculation, “Abao las Americanas,” which in this case may be freely translated as “What women the Americans are!”

The Blanco is still skipping defiantly over the high seas between Iloilo and Capiz, though after all her hairbreadth escapes she came near ending herself in a typical way.  She started out one night from Capiz for Iloilo, a heavenly calm night, bright moonlight, and a sea smooth as a floor.  Two or three miles from the port, a large island called Olatayan lies off the coast—­a single mountain rising out of the sea.  Everybody on the Blanco, including the watch and the steersman, thought it a good night for sleep, and left the General to steer her own course.  The General made straight for