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Cabs, carts, quilez and carromattas even the street cars were instantly seized by the soldiery scattered all over town, and utilized to take them tearing back to join their regiments. In five minutes the business streets down town were deserted. Chinese cowered within their crowded huts.
I had employed a native servant who said he knew how to cook, and I was taking him up to Capiz with an eye to future comfort. Romoldo went out and got a carabao cart, heaping it with my trunks, deck chair, and boxes. I followed in a quilez, and we rattled down to the wharf in good time.
Sergeant Hal briefly related the adventure that he and Noll had had with Vicente Tomba on the Escolta, and their subsequent meeting with Tomba and Draney on the south side of the Pasig. Hal also repeated what they had overheard Tomba saying to Draney. Hal then described the flight of the pair in the quilez. "Yet Draney declares that he never heard of Tomba," said the captain musingly.
"This little man has just been telling me how much he loves American soldados, and he proposed to get a quilez and take me over into the city for the time of my life." "From what happened this afternoon I'm a little shaky on Señor Tomba," Hal continued. "You never saw me before!" cried Tomba, wheeling about on Hal. "Liar! Thief!" Hal's reply was prompt, sufficient, military.
Then, without answering Hal's remark, the Filipino clutched at the white man's arm, shoving him out into the rain. The native followed. Just then a cochero with an empty quilez drove up. With instant presence of mind Vicente Tomba, as the dandy had called himself, held up his hand. It was all done in an instant, and native and white friend were driving away through the gusts of rain.
But a fearfully vivid flash of tropical lightning caused Sergeant Hal Overton to step further back into the little shed and close his eyes for an instant. Right after the flash came a prolonged, heavy roll of thunder that made the earth shake. "Cochero, para!" shouted Noll right after that, and a fareless quilez stopped near the door of the shed. "No, señor."
"No quilez around here for hire," said Hal, after looking up and down the Escolta. "Let's walk across the bridge over the Pasig. We'll be more likely to find an idle cochero on the other side of the river." As they started the sky was darkening, and the lightning beginning to flash, for this was in early July, at the height of the rainy season.
But he looked away from her to the Luneta and the villa-like Bay View Hotel, white and stately, at the lip of the bay. That was his goal, for he had promised Marjorie Locke he would be in Manila the day before, and he was now a day late. The customs boarding officer took him ashore with his bags and graciously allowed him to depart in a quilez, after holding his baggage for examination.
You do not know, but I do, for I have watched thousands of your Americano soldiers here. Now, I have money too much! It is my whim to see that the soldados enjoy themselves. I have begged many a soldier to honor me by letting me purchase him a little pleasure. Come, I will show you now! Wait! I will send for a carriage not a quilez, but a victoria.
In the quilez I laughed at myself for allowing a prying old man like Meeker to upset my temper, and, as I rode back to the hotel, put the both of them out of my mind; but promised myself that I would take my revenge on the old pest in some way aboard the steamer. My bag was packed again, and I was ready for tiffin and then an afternoon nap, to be called in time to catch the steamer.
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