The men were set to work immediately landing the commissary stores. They stripped their shoes and socks off, rolled up their trousers to the knee, and waded through the shallow water, carrying the bales and boxes on their shoulders to the shore. The road up to the town was lined with _nipa_ houses, shaded with banana-trees and bonga palms. This was the road that was almost impassable during the rainy season. As the ambulance rolled heavily along, scores of half-naked babies, shaped like peanuts, shouted after you a "Hello, baby!" and the pigs, with snouts like coal-scuttles, scattered on either side the thoroughfare. This was the famous "Bolo alley," down which, only a few months before, the _Insurrecto_ army had come shouting, "_A la! á la!_" firing as they ran. You passed the market-place, an open hall filled with the native stalls, where soldiers loafed around, chatting with the Visayan girls--for a freemasonry exists between the Filipino and the soldier--dickering with one for a few dhobie cigarettes, sold "jawbone," to be paid for when the pay-boat comes. The troops were quartered in old Spanish buildings, where the sliding windows of the upper floors disclosed the lanes of white mosquito-bar. Back in the courtyard, where the cook was busily preparing mess, a mangy and round-shouldered monkey from the bamboo fence was looking on approvingly. The cook was not in a good humor. All that the mess had had for three weeks was the regulation beans and bacon, without a taste of fresh meat or fresh vegetables. Things were as bad, however, at the officers' mess, where the rule was that the first complaint should sentence its author to conduct the mess himself until relieved in a like manner. As might be imagined, such a system naturally discouraged an improvement of affairs. Exasperated, finally, beyond his limit, Lieutenant Breck came out with--"If this isn't the rottenest apology of an old mess"--saving himself by quickly adding, "But I like it; O, I like it; nobody can tell how much I like this mess!" There was an officer's club in a frame building near the headquarters. Here, in the afternoon, the clan would gather for a round of "whisky poker" for the drinks. There was a strapping young Kentuckian whose ancestors had all been army men. "The profession of arms," said he, "is the noblest profession in the world. And that is the profession that we follow." It was a rather sad sight, though, a few weeks later, after his wife, a little Southern girl, had gone back to the "States," to see this giant soldier playing cards and drinking whisky with the teamsters, bar-keeps, and camp-followers, threatening to shoot the man who tried to interfere, and finally being taken down in irons for a court-martial.