But just then came another flash out of the gloom, so near that we were startled, a shrill whistle, and the rescuing party was at hand. Very hurriedly the passengers were transferred to the _Burnside, Jr._, and the _Hilda_ was towed to a safe anchorage, where she was left for the night.
The ride back to the ship was a long one, and we struck a tide-rip half-way there, which drenched us all to the skin and tossed the staunch little craft back and forth, as if she had been a chip on the water. But at eleven o'clock we climbed aboard the _Burnside_, after having given the Powers-that-Be and our many friends a fright which made them threaten us with the brig if it ever happened again.
Fortunately for us, our first rocket had been seen from the ship, else the launch might have been too late to rescue us, and what we had taken for a gleam from the search-light was in fact a Coston signal, our distance from the _Burnside_ not enabling us to distinguish its red and blue lights, the white alone carrying that far.
A good dinner, finished long after midnight, so rested us that, being young and foolish, we went ashore with our host of the afternoon, merely for a farewell glimpse of Bongao, retiring at ever so little o'clock in the morning, and not very long before the engines began to puff and pant, preparatory to our trip northward.
Then followed a month of cable repairing, which took us again to Zamboanga, Iligan, and Cagayan. A little stretch was also laid connecting Oslob, Cebu, with the Dumaguete land line, and later a cable laid nearly two years before on the southeast coast of Luzon was thoroughly overhauled and put into shape. This cable connected Pasacao and Guinayangan, or Pass-a-cow and Grin-again-then, as we always dubbed the towns.
It was on our way to Pasacao from Iligan that we had our last glimpse of old Mount Malindang, or, as the sailors called it, Mount Never Pass, because it was so seldom off our horizon. All day the sea had been oily smooth, and fish jumped out of the water continually, the sea-gulls swooping down upon them and carrying them off in their talons. The sailors had been holy-stoning the decks and painting every bit of available woodwork white, preparatory to our entrance into Manila Bay, and the cable machinery for the nonce was still, the native employees lounging about the lower decks, playing monte or strumming their guitars in idle joy.