Terry: A Tale of the Hill PeopleThomson, Charles Goff
General
Terry: A Tale of the Hill People
Thomson, Charles Goff
Love stories; Philippines -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
Terry rode into Dalag at noon and found the doctor even redder and
hotter than usual. The perspiration glistened on his hands and wrists,
dripped from his fat face and neck, and his once-starched clothes hung
limp from his rolypoly frame. Worn with loss of sleep and fruitless
efforts to bring the frightened Bogobos to reason, he welcomed Terry
weariedly to the little hut that had been sat aside for his use.
Terry took command, so quietly that the doctor did not realize it. A
few brief questions elicited the measures the doctor wished put into
effect, simple curative methods and preventive precautions.
Understanding, Terry started out, but was recalled by the doctor.
"Lieutenant, did you bring your mosquito net?" At Terry's affirmative
nod he continued: "It's a good thing you did--the village is swarming
with nightflyers, and every one of them is loaded to the hilt with
plasmodiae!"
The village, a mere scattering of crudest huts along the river front,
seemed deserted, but from nearly every hut came the low wailings of
the sick and the frightened. Noting that the lamentations had ceased a
few minutes after Terry went out, the doctor stepped to the door and
watched his progress from shack to shack, saw how the picturesque
little savages grouped about him. They knew him and listened to him
confidently, so that the parboiled doctor was as much disgusted as
pleased with the ease with which Terry secured the cooperation for
which he had begged and stormed in vain.
Under his direction they cut down all of the plant life whose upturned
leaves or fronds held stagnant, mosquito-breeding water, climbed tall
palms to brush out the rain water accumulated in the concave
depressions where frond joins trunk, even twisted off the cuplike
scarlet blossoms from hibiscus shrubs. They carried green brush to a
series of smudges he lit to cordon the village against the vicious
singing horde of germ carriers. Best of all, they ceased their
incantations over the sick, unwound the tight cords they had knotted
around the abdomens of the stricken to prevent the fever from "going
further down," opened the grass windows that gasping lungs might
obtain decent air, and swallowed the doctor's hitherto neglected
medicines.
There were no chickens in the village, no eggs. The doctor bemoaned
the lack of nourishment for his sick. So Terry summoned four of the
ablest hunters and disappeared into the woods for an hour, returning
with a young buck speared through the lungs and shot mercifully
through the head. In an hour a big pot was boiling in the middle of
the street that throughout the night the sufferers might receive hot
soup made up of venison, yams, eggplant and rice, all that the village
afforded.
Doctor Merchant, watching the transformation, marveled at the method
of persuasion. There was no attempt at exercise of authority, no
raising of voice, no gestures, only patient explanation, an assumption
of mutual friendliness, a sincere and ample sympathy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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