Page:James Hopper--Caybigan.djvu/307

Rh The affair of her assignment continued to be much of a lark during the two weeks spent in Bacolod awaiting transportation. It was still a lark when the launch came and her trunk, in the loading, fell into the surf and the hombres in charge of it kept dry by the simple expedient of standing upon it. And the long, hard trip in the launch, laden to the gunwales with supplies for a military post still further than her own town, also was a lark, although at sunset the sky drew down in a black vault beneath which the little steamer seemed very small and very lone, and a wind arose which sent her plunging beneath tons of swirling water, and later, when the sea had calmed, the Tagal pilot got lost in the blinding downpour of rain and ran her gently into a perpendicular wall from which they backed with a poignant feeling that it was only the superstructure backing thus away, that the bottom was still on the rock—a feeling which proved baseless, but which kept them tense the night long, speaking in whispers and treading the deck a-tiptoe. The world was still joyous when they crashed through a fish-corral and her chair, caught by one of the poles, whisked her instantaneously from bow to stern. But when they anchored beyond the edge of a long reef, and the sun rose glaringly upon the shore, it must be admitted that her heroic little heart sank a bit. On the other side of