Chapter 23

(Scene: Everyone sitting and watching Maria sing and another girl playing the harp.)

Albino: *blows carabao horn*

Aunt Isabel: “Are you trying to deafen us, you heretic?”

Albino: “Madam, I once heard of a poor trumpeter on the banks of the Rhine who, by playing on his trumpet, won in marriage a rich and noble maiden.”

Ibarra: “That’s right, the trumpeter of Sackingen!”

Albino: “Do you hear that? Now I want to see if I can’t have the same luck.” (He blows his horn again, nearer the girls this time, and the girls silence him by pinching him and beating him with their slippers)

Albino: “My, oh my! What a distance there is between the Philippines and the banks of the Rhine! O tempora! O mores! Some are given honors and others sanbenitos!”

 Sinang: (whispering)“Happy girl! I, too, would sing if I could!”

Sinang: “I shouldn’t get tired fishing there with a pole and line.”

Albino: “It must be full, for it has been over five days now since it was visited.”

Albino: “You don’t understand your business, Now you’ll see! Andeng, get the pot ready!” (gets the net and throws it in to sea, stil no fish) (everyone laughs at albino)

Maria Clara: “Don’t make so much noise that the fish can hear and so not let themselves be caught. This net must be torn.”

Leon: “Give it to me, Are you sure that it hasn’t been visited for five days?”

Albino: “Very sure! The last time was on the eve of All Saints.”

Leon: “Well then, either the lake is enchanted or I’ll draw up something.”

Leon: (drops the pole into the water) (murmurs) “A cayman!”

Everyone: “A cayman! What did you say?”

Leon: “I say that we’re caught a cayman,Don’t you hear that sound? That’s not sand, but a tough hide, the back of a cayman. Don’t you see how the posts shake? He’s pushing against them even though he is all rolled up. Wait, he’s a big one, his body is almost a foot or more across.”

One girl: “What shall we do?”

One girl: “Catch him!”

Iday: “Heavens! And who’ll catch him?”

Sinang: “We ought to tie him to our banka and drag him along in triumph, The idea of his eating the fish that we were going to eat!”

Maria Clara: “I have never yet seen a live cayman”
(The boatman gets down to kill crocodile)

Crisostomo: “Take this knife!”

Aunt Isabel: “Jesús, María, y José! We’re going to have an accident!”

Old boatman: “Don’t be uneasy, ladies, for if there is any one in the province who can do it, he’s the man.”

Maria Clara: “What’s his name?” they asked.

Old boatman: “We call him ‘The Pilot’ and he’s the best I’ve ever seen, only he doesn’t like the business.”

(Elias fights with the crocodile and stuggles. Ibarra helps him and fights the crocdile with him. They kill the crocodile)

Elias: “I owe my life to you,”

Ibarra: “You are too daring. Don’t tempt fate again.”

Maria Clara: “If you had not come up again—”

Ibarra: “If I had not come up and you had followed me in the bottom of the lake, I should still have been with my family!”

Victora: “All because we didn’t hear mass,”

Ibarra: “But what accident has befallen us, ladies? The cayman seems to have been the only unlucky one.”

Albino: “All of which proves, that in all its sinful life this unfortunate reptile has never attended mass—at least, I’ve never seen him among the many other caymans that frequent the church.”

Andeng: "Now lets eat."