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On meeting their company, Connell reported the situation ahead, to his superior officer; orders were given for the men to bivouac for the night in a small village close at hand. That evening Bansemer was discovered leaning against the corner of a nipa shack some distance from his comrades, smoking silently while they talked and made merry behind him.
Doña Victorina showed her verbosity by criticising the customs of the provinces, the nipa houses, the bamboo bridges, without forgetting to tell the curate about her friendship with the Commander of the Army, the Alcalde so and so, Judge so and so of the Supreme Court, and with the governor of the province, all persons of categoría, who had much consideration for her.
He gave little heed to Ermita, the phenix of nipa that had rearisen from its ashes under the form of blue and white houses with red-painted roofs of corrugated iron.
Between Thaine and the bridge was a stretch of dusty road, flanked on one side by nipa huts. On the other side were scattered dwellings, tall shrubbery, and low-lying rice fields, beyond which lay the jungle. Before the young sentinel the road made a sharp bend, cutting off the view and giving no hint to the enemy around this bend of how strong a force might be filling the road toward the bridge.
After some miles of this cheerless scenery, and at a point where the fresh water begins to mingle with the salt, the handsome and useful nipa palm, with leaves twenty to thirty feet in length, which supply the native with the material for the walls and roof of his house, the wrapper for his cigarette, the sugar for his breakfast table, the salt for his daily needs and the strong drink to gladden his heart on his feast days, becomes intermixed with the mangrove and finally takes its place a pleasing change, but still monotonous, as it is so dense that, itself growing in the water, it quite shuts out all view of the bank and surrounding country.
In many of these rifts between the trees nipa houses were tucked away, adding to the charm of the landscape, and the multifarious shades of green to be found on these hillsides were further diversified by shrub-like trees with a faint red tinge like furze, and by still others with a silvery sheen to their leaves.
The nipa wine is laid at six and one-half reals the jar, indistinctly; prices which, although extremely low, are still considered advantageous by the Filipinos themselves, more particularly when it is besides understood, that, from the circumstance of their being growers of this article, they are exempted from military service, as well as several other taxes and public charges.
Above it are occasional horizontal poles, forming a skeleton to which the walls of nipa palm are fastened. In some houses two or three of the foundation poles extend above the floor to such a height that they are used as the supports for the ridge pole. In others true king posts rest on the beams, which in turn are supported by the corner poles.
It was, I believe, the tenth of June. I stayed up late that night, working, and noticed that the gusts were increasing. Just at midnight I laid down my pen and started to go to bed, when there came a blast that shook the house like an earthquake and made me decide to wait a while. For the next three hours the storm raged in a very orgy of gladness. It slapped over nipa shacks with a single roar.
The parochial priest of San Diego corresponded to the Pope in the Vatican; the alferez of the Civil Guard to the King of Italy in the Quirinal, but both in the same proportion as the sauali or native wood and the nipa cock-pits corresponded to the monuments of marble and coliseums. And in San Diego, as in Rome, there was continual trouble.
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