There was a sudden bellow, the two great heads came together with a thud like a pile-driver, and the fight was on
The spectators were kept at a distance by Móró horsemen under the Panglima]
"That," announced the Governor, "concludes the morning performance. This afternoon we will present for your approval a programme consisting of pony races, a carabao fight, a shark-fishing expedition, and, if time permits, a visit to the pearl-fisheries to see the divers at work. This evening we will call on the Princess Fatimah, the daughter of the Sultan, and tomorrow I have arranged to take you to Tapul Island to shoot wild carabao. After that----"
"After that," I interrupted, "we go away from here. If we stayed on in this quiet little island of yours much longer, we shouldn't have any film left for the other places."
We sailed at sunset out of Jolo and all through the breathless tropic night the _Negros_ forged ahead at half-speed, her sharp prow cleaving the still bosom of the Sulu Sea as silently as a gondola stealing down the Canale Grande. So oppressive was the night that sleep was out of the question, and I leaned upon the rail of the bridge, the hot land breeze, laden with the mysterious odors of the tropics, beating softly in my face, and listlessly watched the phosphorescent ostrich feathers curling from our bows. Behind me, in the darkened chart-room, the Filipino quartermaster gently swung the wheel from time to time in response to the direction of the needle on the illuminated compass-dial. So lifeless was the sea that our foremast barely swayed against the stars. The smoke from our funnel trailed across the purple canopy of the sky as though smeared with an inky brush.
How long I stood there, lost in reverie, I have no idea: hours no doubt. I must have fallen into a doze, for I was awakened by the brisk, incisive strokes of the ship's bell, echoed, a moment later, by eight fainter strokes coming from the deck below. Then the soft patter of bare feet which meant the changing of the watch. Though the velvety darkness into which we were steadily ploughing had not perceptibly decreased, it was now cut sharply across, from right to left, by what looked like a tightly stretched wire of glowing silver. Even as I looked this slender fissure of illumination widened, almost imperceptibly at first, then faster, faster, until at one burst came the dawn. The sombre hangings of the night were swept aside by an invisible hand as are drawn back the curtains at a window. As you have seen from a hill the winking lights of a city disappear at daybreak, so, one by one, the stars went out. Masses of angry clouds reared themselves in ominous, fantastic forms against a sullen sky. The hot land breeze changed to a cold wind which made me shiver. Suddenly the mounting rampart of clouds, which seemed about to burst in a tempest, was pierced by a hundred flaming lances coming from beyond the horizon's rim. Before their onslaught the threatening cloud-wall crumbled, faded, and abruptly dropped away to reveal the sun advancing in all that brazen effrontery which it assumes in those lawless latitudes along the Line. Now the sky was become a huge inverted bowl of flawless azure porcelain, the surface of the Sulu Sea sparkled as though strewn with a million diamonds, and, not a league off our bows, rose the jungle-clothed shores of Borneo.