and left. Next day we sailed to another island and it was several days before we were back and I could go ashore to see my patient. I found him sitting in front of the shack, with his wives around him, looking hale and hearty. He was demanding, and getting, all the attention a man wants when he is convalescing.
Evidently he was a man of importance to the sultan, because His Highness sent me a number of pearls and a hatful of silver dollars.
At that time one of the most disastrous cholera epidemics that ever swept the Philippines was raging. The surgeon general of the United States Army reported 128,000 cases in Luzon, with 81,500 deaths among the Filipinos. The natives had no idea of sanitation, the water supply of Manila and other towns was primitive, and their superstitions led them to hide the dead. I inspected the old fort in Cavite daily with the captain of the yard, and we would constantly find bodies hidden in corners of the wall and behind heaps of rubbish. Of course we watched our men carefully, provided distilled water, never drank out of a glass in a public place, above all, never ate fresh fruit. It became a ritual always to burn the tip of a cigar before placing it in your mouth, and to burn the top of a soda-water bottle before drinking. The epidemic gradually spread southward among the islands, and I followed. At that time we had a small coaling station and a hospital on the island of Basilan, south of Zamboanga toward British Borneo. The island was garrisoned by 150 United States Marines. As in most of the Coral Sea islands, there was a fairly large Chinese population. The Chinese were the merchants. They maintained small stores where they sold fruits, nuts, mats, tobacco, et cetera.
I became quite chummy with one of them. On my afternoon strolls away from the hospital I would stop at his shop, buy a cigar and smoke it there with him while we talked. He had the wisdom, the shrewdness in appraising character, and the inimitable sense of humor that distinguish the Chinese among all the peoples of the Orient, and I valued his friendship. One night I was called by one
