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Updated: May 13, 2025
The recent storm had probably delayed his envoys, and he must wait the Sabah's monthly visit, which would come the next day. At the door of his hut Kali Pandapatan was helped from the royal beast's back and up the steep ladder entrance into the cool dusk of the interior where industrious women squatted at their several tasks. "I miss the child's lively chatter," Aioi was saying sadly.
The Dyaks saw it coming, and in their puny efforts to escape, looked like ants before an elephant. The five streams, flowing through the delta of the Cotabato River, seemed to draw the vicious waterspout toward them, and on it went, directly in the wake of the doomed Dyaks. Tensely the Sabah's passengers followed the course of the spout.
Nothing could slip past the boat on that sea of glass in the bright moonlight. He remembered the schools of sharks he had seen in the Sabah's wake and shuddered; but even that was better than being doomed to die here. He pillowed his head on his arms and leaned against the trunk; his hand closed over a piece of dry bamboo.
That shrill whistle! It was surely the Sabah's, and as Piang came to a small clearing, he caught a glimpse of the harbor. A cry broke from him. The Sabah was sailing away. Before he could fully realize the calamity, that other sound, ominous and terrible, came again from the barrio. A low rumbling, punctuated with shrieks and screams, came nearer, nearer.
Finally as if discouraged and strained beyond its endurance, it gave up. With shrieks and cries the Dyaks watched it. Tons and tons of water burst from the cloud, striking the sea with a hiss that sent the spray high in the air. "Waterspout!" yelled the captain and ordered the Sabah's engines stopped.
The island toward which the Sabah was making her way seemed blacker and denser than its more frivolous neighbors. Two staccato whistles warned the islanders of the Sabah's approach, and the beach was soon the scene of lively commotion. The engines stopped, and the gunboat slid along easily. A boat was lowered.
The little gunboat Sabah was bobbing at her moorings, and Piang joined the crowd that was gazing in wonder at the strange craft. A shrill whistle, signifying the Sabah's intention of immediate departure, so terrified the Moros that some took to their heels while others sought the safety of tall lamp-posts.
Straight up the river it marched, rooting up trees, tearing down banks, and gradually vanished in the distance, leaving wreckage and disaster in its path. Silenced by the terrible spectacle, the Americans seemed to huddle closer together for protection, or comfort. But two figures stood out alone on the Sabah's deck.
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