Read Anting-Anting Stories, and Other Strange Tales of the Filipinos Page 5

  MRS. HANNAH SMITH, NURSE

  The red eye of the lighthouse on Corregidor Island blazed outthrough the darkness as a Pacific steamer felt her way cautiouslyinto Manila harbour.

  Although it was nearly midnight, a woman--one of the passengers onthe steamer--was still on deck, and standing well up toward the bowof the boat was peering into the darkness before her as if she couldnot wait to see the strange new land to which she was coming. Surelyit would be a strange land to her, who, until a few weeks beforehad scarcely in all her life been outside of the New England town inwhich she had been born.

  People who had seen her on the steamer had wondered sometimes thata woman of her age--for she was not young--should have chosen togo to the Philippine Islands as a nurse, as she told them she wasgoing. Sometimes, at first, they smiled at some of her questions,but any who happened to be ill on the voyage, or in trouble, forgotto do that, for in the touch of her hand and in her words there wasshown a skill and a nobleness of nature which won respect.