of the Filipino trenches and their outposts.

We started just as the sky began to turn a deep red in the east,
and the "chuck me" chameleon, the harbinger of the early dawn,
began his morning challenge. Our progress was very cautiously made
through the cane-fields, banana groves, and bamboo jungles, halting
and investigating the slightest noise, the rustling of a leaf or the
breaking of a twig not escaping our attention. First, I would take the
advance and then the Sergeant. When we passed through cane-fields we
found the plowed grounds but little less than marshes, for the rainy
season had just begun with torrential showers. Our bodies were soon
soaked to the skin, for the leaves of the cane and banana stalks were
burdened with water. The cane was a trifle higher than our heads,
and the wide-spreading leaves of the banana hid the sky from view.

After wading and splashing along toward the Filipino lines for about
1400 yards, we suddenly and very unexpectedly came upon a well-traveled
road, fringed with bamboo on either side, with quite a stretch of open
ground beyond, in which was lying at the farther edge, the trenches
of our enemies, which seemed to be at the time swarming with dusky
soldiers preparing their morning meal.

Believing ourselves not have been observed, we withdraw a short
distance from the bamboo fringe into a banana grove, a position
that afforded us concealment as well as an opportunity to make
observations of the position of the trenches and location of the
outposts of the rebels.

I was busy making copious notes and my maps, while the Sergeant, with
my field-glasses, was making most wonderful discoveries of masked
batteries and gas-pipe cannon, when, all of a sudden, a cavalcade of
insurgent officers, followed closely by a large body of foot soldiers,
appeared down the road to our left, where there was a slight curve,
not more than 200 yards away.

What were we to do? At that short distance from our open-eared and
alert rebellious fellow-citizens, we could not beat a precipitate
retreat, or an orderly one, without disclosing our presence; and that
fact once known to this body of armed men meant almost certain death,
or worse, to be taken prisoners by this half-savage band. We held
a hasty council of war in whispered tones, and decided to hold our
ground till the danger passed.

It was but a moment till the little steeds and their haughty riders
were directly in front of us, not fifty paces aw