The star attraction was preceded by applause. The number was announced by those familiar with the exhibition as a "Moro combat," and as the assistant struck a harrowing obligato on an old oil-can, the Moros appeared with fighting _campalons_ and barbarous-looking shields. The crowd expressed its approbation in wild howls. The first two rounds were rather tame. "Afraid! Afraid!" exclaimed the crowd, but presently the combatants began to warm up to their work and to make frantic lunges at each other at the vital spot. This was the time of breathless and instinctive pressing forward from the back rows. Somebody cried out, "_Cebu!_" or "Down in front!" and then again, "_Patai!_" which means "dead." One of the warriors at this cue flopped supine on the stage, and the suppressed excitement broke. The victor, not content with mere manslaughter, plied his sword so energetically as quickly to reduce his victim to a state of hash. At this point his Satanic majesty, the curtain manager, saw fit to intervene, and with a long spear he successfully probed the limp remains, completing the assassination. I had not known until then what a young barbarian Dolores was. The last attraction of our Christmas week was a genuine Mystery play, the Virgin Mary being represented by a girl in soiled white stockings and a confirmation dress. The Christ Child was a Spanish doll in a glass case. There were the three wise men--one in a long beard and a pink mask, and the others in gold braid and knickerbockers--more like dandies than philosophers. "Joseph" was splendid, with a shepherd's crook and a sombrero. Adoration before the manger was the theme that was developed in a series of ballets danced by the children to a tambourine and castanet accompaniment. At the conclusion of the play, the little actors in their starry costumes, Joseph and the Virgin (carrying the Babe), the three philosophers, and the musicians and the army of admiring followers, filed out into the moonlight, and as the sweet music of the "Shepherds' Song" diminished gradually, they disappeared within a shadowy grove of palms. A Christmas Feast. When Señor Pedro gave his Christmas feast, he went about it in the orthodox way. That is, he began at midnight Christmas eve. The Christmas pig we were to have had, however, disappointed us--and thereby hangs a tale. Came Señor Pedro early in the morning of the twenty-fourth, and "In the mountains," Señor Pedro said, "runs a fat pig." _Usa ca babui uga dacu!_ A regular feast of a pig running at large near the macao woods on the slope beyond Mercario's hemp-fields!