El Filibusterismo (English Version)

On the Upper Deck

DISCLAIMER! 


I should have said this a long time ago, but my idea was to publish it here so that I could read and access it on any of my devices. I didn't think that any other person would find this, but anyways, I didn't translate this to English! I do not deserve any of the votes or reads or anything, I merely copied it into this website so that it would be easier to read than in the other website (Gutenburg.com). Too be honest, I had to get the English version from Gutenburg.com BECAUSE I'm not as fluent in Tagalog. So too those who've needed and used this, enjoy the story and God bless! :)

P.S. external link attached so that you can see the real source of where this comes from! :)

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10676/10676-h/10676-h.htm

Copy Paste as well:

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Reign of Greed, by Jose RizalThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and withalmost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away orre-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License includedwith this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.netTitle: The Reign of Greed Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo'Author: Jose RizalTranslator: Charles DerbyshireRelease Date: October 10, 2005 [EBook #10676]Language: EnglishCharacter set encoding: ISO-8859-1*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REIGN OF GREED ***Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the distributed proofreaders team

---REAL START---SORRY FOR TALKING TOO MUCH---

Sic itur ad astra.

One morning in December the steamer Tabo was laboriously ascending the tortuous course of the Pasig, carrying a large crowd of passengers toward the province of La Laguna. She was a heavily built steamer, almost round, like the tabú from which she derived her name, quite dirty in spite of her pretensions to whiteness, majestic and grave from her leisurely motion. Altogether, she was held in great affection in that region, perhaps from her Tagalog name, or from the fact that she bore the characteristic impress of things in the country, representing something like a triumph over progress, a steamer that was not a steamer at all, an organism, stolid, imperfect yet unimpeachable, which, when it wished to pose as being rankly progressive, proudly contented itself with putting on a fresh coat of paint. Indeed, the happy steamer was genuinely Filipino! If a person were only reasonably considerate, she might even have been taken for the Ship of State, constructed, as she had been, under the inspection of Reverendos and Ilustrísimos....

Bathed in the sunlight of a morning that made the waters of the river sparkle and the breezes rustle in the bending bamboo on its banks, there she goes with her white silhouette throwing out great clouds of smoke—the Ship of State, so the joke runs, also has the vice of smoking! The whistle shrieks at every moment, hoarse and commanding like a tyrant who would rule by shouting, so that no one on [2]board can hear his own thoughts. She menaces everything she meets: now she looks as though she would grind to bits the salambaw, insecure fishing apparatus which in their movements resemble skeletons of giants saluting an antediluvian tortoise; now she speeds straight toward the clumps of bamboo or against the amphibian structures, karihan, or wayside lunch-stands, which, amid gumamelas and other flowers, look like indecisive bathers who with their feet already in the water cannot bring themselves to make the final plunge; at times, following a sort of channel marked out in the river by tree-trunks, she moves along with a satisfied air, except when a sudden shock disturbs the passengers and throws them off their balance, all the result of a collision with a sand-bar which no one dreamed was there.