The coconut palms rose straight to heaven, bending pliably to the western breeze; their heads tapped gently against each other and a murmur of secrets sighed overhead. From the shifting shreds of sky the sun fell upon the sands in heavy gold spots. To the east, through the lithe, silver trunks, the vivid green of the rice fields flashed; to the west a tawny thread of beach banked up the rippling tide.
In the darkness of the recess a frail hut of nipa leaves and bamboo slowly shaped itself as I advanced, and suddenly a shrill voice, rasping as the violin note of the tyro, pierced the peace of the place. In the doorway, at the head of the cane ladder, old Marietta was gesticulating.
"Oh, señor," she called asthmatically; "pray come in; visit your humble servant. The house is yours, the tuba is fresh, and coconuts are in the trees."
"Not to-day, Marietta; not to-day," I called back, "I'm going on to Suay; I can't stop."
She threw her arms up in consternation. "To Suay, señor, to Suay? José-Maria! do you not see the baguio coming? Soon it will be upon you, the trees will bend, the coconuts will fall, and you will die!"
The typhoon of the Philippines is not to be disdained. A picture formed in my mind of falling trees, rent bridges, melted roads. I stopped, hesitating, looked up at the blue sky above, listened to the regular breath of the wind. "Nonsense!" I said, and just then a sudden gust screeched overhead; the coconuts bent in half circles, snapped back, bent again with weird elasticity. Before my mind could fairly seize them, before the impression of them could be more than hazy and faint as those of a dream, these manifestations ceased. The wind fell dead, the trees came back to equilibrium. A heavy torpor descended upon the land.
"I'll come in, Marietta," I decided, "and you'll tell me more of the Negritos in the hills."
She did not answer, but waited for me at the head of the bamboo ladder--a weird, dried-up mummy of a woman, with teeth corroded by the betel-nut, and eyes that flashed hard beneath the heavy, yellow folds of the lids--an old witch, fit for broomstick rides and the nightmares of children. Inside, I sat down upon the bench by the window while she squatted upon the bamboo-strip floor, a big cheroot tied up with hemp fibre in her mouth, a hollow coconut filled with tuba at her side. But she did not speak. A strange taciturnity was upon her; she sat there speechless, motionless, like some monstrous idol, her lids half-dropped over eyes that showed opaque and dead.