eaf of a forest tree for
patriotism. So long as he got the money, white men and brown men were
all alike to him, American soldiers and Filipino insurgents.

So the native, going into the forest, a little way back from the river,
looked until he found a tree the roots of which growing out from well
up the trunk had made a sort of great wooden drum. Taking a stout
stick of hard wood which had been leaned against the tree,--he had been
there before,--he struck the hollow tree three heavy blows, the sound
of which went echoing off through the forest. Then the man listened.

Not long; for from far, very far away, there came an answer, one blow,
and then, after a moment's pause, two more. The drum beats which
followed, and the pauses for the faint replies, were like listening
to a giant's telegraph.

The soldier, paddling steadily out around the river's winding course,
heard the noise and wondered curiously what it was. The natives who
heard it said, "The trees are talking," meaning that some one was
making them talk. To the "tulisane" the sounds meant that he was
bringing his partner to help him, just as at night the far-off,
long-drawn cry of a panther calls the creature's mate to share
the prey.

Sergeant Johnson, still paddling, after he would have said that with
the help of the current he had put four good miles of the river behind
him, saw a tiny ripple in the water ahead of the boat, but in a stream
so rapid thought nothing of it.

An instant later a cocoanut fibre rope, stretched taut across the
river and just below the surface of the water, had turned his skittish
boat bottom upward. The "tulisane," you see, had seen the sergeant's
revolver, and thought wisest to attack him wet.

Drenched, blowing for breath, before he knew what had happened, the
soldier found himself dragged to the bank, disarmed, robbed, his hands
bound behind him, and his feet hobbled. He could speak Spanish and
so could the "tulisanes." Words told him that his captors, only two
in number, meant him to march, hobbled as he was, along a path which
they pointed out; but it took several sharp pricks from a "campilan"
which one of them carried, to make him start. For the path led away
from the river, away from Pasi, from Ilo Ilo and the Utica, which he
would have given his life itself rather than fail to reach in time.

Only a little way back from the river the path began to leave the low
land, mounting up to the hills among which the "tulisan