I revelled in the noise and crowds as only one can after a week at sea.
While I was on the way from Saigon the Russian armies might have been
beaten or the Japanese fleet destroyed. There might be orders sending me
anywhere, but I hoped that I would leave Manila for the Strait of Malacca
to meet the Baltic fleet. What I feared most was the end of the war, for
a war-correspondent without a war is deprived of his profession. I was
young and ambitious, then, and seeking a journalistic reputation at the
cable's mouth.

It happened that I had allowed myself to heed the glib tongue of a
hotel-runner before I left the rice-steamer, and he had commandeered my
bag and taken it to the Oriente Hotel, of which I knew nothing except
that it was in the walled city and across the river from the cable
office. To recapture the bag and my clean linen I would have to take an
instrument of torture known as a _carromatta_ and drive across the Bridge
of Spain.

I could cross the river in a small boat with a Filipino pirate, and go on
a hunt for a conveyance on the other side; but thought it better to risk
being shaken to death than drowned in the dirty Pasig, so I hailed a
_cochero_. The villain demanded a double rate, and, while we were
haggling, a bus of the Oriente drew in sight and I caught it as it was
spinning up Calle San Fernando.

When I crawled into the bus I wished that I had struck a bargain with the
thief of a _cochero_, for I found myself in a seat beside the whining
missionary. He prayed for his bones over the rough places, and for his
life, when the driver took a corner recklessly, and made us all very
weary with his eternal complaining. That was not the worst of it--he
tried to strike up an acquaintance with me.