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Updated: June 6, 2025
In a few moments several praus and bancas were poled out to the ship by a motley array of half-clad Moros, big, brown, lithe fellows, each with a turban or fez topping off his black hair, and all armed with a goodly array of sharp knives.
On approaching Manilla from the bay in one of the bancas or canoes having a cover as a protection against the sun which generally go off to all ships after their anchor has been let go, and the port-captain's boat has boarded the new arrival, the spires, towers of churches, and lofty red-tiled roofs of houses or convents are all that can be seen over the walls, so that the first impressions of a stranger are not in general very vivid or interesting.
For long hours later there came launches, bancas, and cascoes from fleet and shore. The debarkation of the cavalry began in the afternoon. They had left their horses at the Presidio, six thousand miles away, and were troopers only in name.
The merely well-to-do people content themselves with a galvanized iron tank, which may store from two to six hundred gallons, which is seldom enough to last out the dry season. In this case they buy water from the mountaineers, who fill their tinajas, or twenty-gallon earthenware jars, with water from mountain springs, and bring them to the nearest towns in bancas.
Very excited were their comments, those in the far bancas scrambling over the intervening boats to see with their own eyes the miracle of hard water so cold that it was hot.
Alternately with these were roses, pinks and baskets of fruits such as pineapples, kasuys, bananas, guayabas and lanzones. Ibarra had brought his carpets, blankets and rugs and arranged comfortable seats for the ladies. The poles and paddles used to propel the bancas had also been ornamented.
Still afar, they could see these were the same rough bancas such as they had seen after the battle bancas in one of which they two had escaped up-river! "Boats! The Horde again!" Even as he shouted a tiny, black, misshapen little figure ran crouching out onto the sand. Another followed and a third, and now a dozen showed there, very distinct and hideous, upon the white crescent.
Scarce waiting to hear their gruesome story, the commanding officer and most of his company put off in bancas for Balambing, the unwounded man accompanying them for the purpose of identification.
He came from the Pintados in a stout caracoa, manned by some good arquebusiers, while others manned some bancas that sailed in the shelter of the caracoa. They approached the parian and Dilao by the river, and harassed the enemy quartered there on that and the two following days, so that they were compelled to abandon those positions.
The two large bancas, which had been secured to transport the picnic party to the fishing grounds, were fastened together and picturesquely adorned with wreaths and garlands of flowers and a large number of vari-colored candles. Paper lanterns hung from the improvised covering of the bancas.
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