A "HIKE."
We were lounging lazily in our hammocks at Jimamaylan one evening in
April. Supper was just ended, and the soldiers in the post were
collected in groups here and there spinning yarns to pass away the
time, when a Filipino clad only in a loin cloth came down the street
at a steadily swinging run and stopped in front of the sentry. He
brought the announcement that a band of ladrones had just burned a
sugar mill and were advancing to sack a barrio about fifteen miles
away.
The invitation of the commanding officer to go on a "hike" was eagerly
accepted, and, in ten minutes after the message was given, the troops
were on the march followed by two adventurous pedagogues.
Darkness was just closing in as we left the town, but a resplendent
tropic moon soon made the night almost as brilliant as the day. The
trail we followed led over rough and rocky country. Sometimes for a
distance of a mile or more we passed over barren wastes of volcanic
slag poured out in anger by some peak whose convulsions have long
since ceased. Again we would descend into a tropical jungle from the
dense foliage of which the ladrones could have leaped at any moment,
had they known of our coming, and annihilated our little band. We
forded rapid streams with the water at our breasts, and halted only
once in that rapid march of fifteen miles.
About a quarter of a mile from the town we met a man who was standing
guard against a surprise by the ladrones. Nothing could well have been
much more grotesque and nothing could much better illustrate the
absolutely primitive condition of the Filipinos in the interior of the
islands than the appearance of this guard. A pair of knee pants, a
conical grass hat, and a hemp shirt formed his entire apparel. A long
flat wooden shield, a bolo, and a long bamboo spear with a sharp,
flat, iron point, completed his equipment for battle.
Here stood the first and the twentieth centuries side by side. The
Filipino who had advanced only a stage beyond the condition of
primitive man with his knife, spear, and wooden shield, stood side by
side with the American soldier, a representative of modern life with
his magazine rifle, his canteen, his knapsack,--with every article of
his clothing made to give him the highest possible efficiency as the
unit of a military organization.
A few yards farther on we met another guard equipped similarly to the
first. Upon reaching the town, news had just been received that a
detachment of troops from another post had intercepted the ladrones
and fought a skirmish with them. The ladrones had escaped and we set
out in pursuit of them on a chase wilder than a Quixotic dream. We
wound our way into the mountains behind the town, inquiring at every
grass hut we passed whether the band of ladrones had passed that way,
but only once was even a trace of them found. Then it was learned that
at a certain place they had separated into groups of three or four and
gone glimmering through the dream of things that were. This place was
in a secluded nook of the mountains where in years gone by some
adventurous Spaniard had erected a primitive water mill to grind his
sugar-cane. We had now marched about twenty miles and the feet of the
pedagogues were a mass of blisters. They had reached the point where
that form of military maneuvering called "hiking" ceased to possess
any alluring charms. So a native was persuaded to come out of his lone
mountain hut and hitch up his carabao and cart. He was then made to
get on the carabao's back, while the aforesaid pedagogues lay down on
the sugar-cane pulp that had been put into the body of the cart, and
the driver was instructed to start for the post we had left hours
before, and not to stop until he got there. Being uncertain but that
some of the ladrones would learn of our having left the body of troops
and would try the metal of our steel, we at first agreed that neither
of us should go to sleep, but it was later decided that probably the
driver had no greater desire to cross the Styx than his passengers had
and that in case of danger he would awaken us, so both took a revolver
in each hand, stretched out supinely and went to sleep.
Such a sleep! The rough jolting of the cart over an almost impassable
road was never enough to break the spell of slumber. When we awoke the
blazing tropic sun was past the midday mark of morning, shining full
into our unprotected and well-nigh blistered faces.
A pack of dogs were heralding our approach to a little village at the
foot of the mountains where ponies were procured to take us back to
the post.
HAMMOND'S PRINTING WORKS, ROANOKE, VA.
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Transcriber's Notes:
Spelling left as in original.
The title for Chapter 2 "MANILA" was omitted in the original.