Page:James Hopper--Caybigan.djvu/284

268 Suay, señor, to Suay? José-Maria! do you not see the baguio coming? Soon it will be upon you, the trees will bend, the coconuts will fall, and you will die!"

The typhoon of the Philippines is not to be disdained. A picture formed in my mind of falling trees, rent bridges, melted roads. I stopped, hesitating, looked up at the blue sky above, listened to the regular breath of the wind. "Nonsense!" I said, and just then a sudden gust screeched overhead; the coconuts bent in half circles, snapped back, bent again with weird elasticity. Before my mind could fairly seize them, before the impression of them could be more than hazy and faint as those of a dream, these manifestations ceased. The wind fell dead, the trees came back to equilibrium. A heavy torpor descended upon the land.

"I'll come in, Marietta," I decided, "and you'll tell me more of the Negritos in the hills."

She did not answer, but waited for me at the head of the bamboo ladder—a weird, dried-up mummy of a woman, with teeth corroded by the betel-nut, and eyes that flashed hard beneath the heavy, yellow folds of the lids—an old witch, fit for broomstick rides and the nightmares of children. Inside, I sat down upon the bench by the window while she squatted upon the bamboo-strip floor, a big cheroot tied up