The China Sea has an evil reputation. On its shores one hears much about the typhoon season and the changing monsoons, and bad sailors would, no doubt, like to have their sailing dates determined by the Weather Bureau; but this is not always possible.
The Kasuga Maru, on which we made the voyage from Yokohama to Manila, lay in Hongkong Harbour while one of the great mid-August storms tore up from the south and set skippers and seamen agog with fears of dreadful conditions we would have to meet on the trip across to Manila. In the China Sea there are cross-currents which make for bad going at the best of times, and when they are piled up by a typhoon into great, warring waves the result is likely to be extraordinary.
My husband cabled me to take a larger vessel, a United States army transport which left Hongkong about the same time we did, but I was comfortably located with my family on the little Kasuga Maru; the transfer of baggage was a troublesome task; and I figured that as long as the Kasuga Maru had been afloat in south seas for a good many years, she might be trusted to keep afloat for a few days longer.
We caught the calm between two storms. The sea had been beaten down by torrential rains; and while great, smooth waves rose under us and sent us rolling in a sickening zigzag all the way across, there was in them no threat of destruction, and I really began to feel that the China Sea had been maligned.
A feeling of intense curiosity got me out of my stateroom bright and early on the morning of our arrival in Manila.
To the northward lay a stretch of unbroken, mountain-
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