atives were arrested and brought to town and then it was found that
this loyal (?) Presidente, whom the commanding general had had the
utmost confidence in was at the head of a number of Filipino companies
which scoured the country to capture small parties of our soldiers. As
the investigations were pressed it came out that the bodies of their
victims had been torn to pieces and buried in quicklime that there
might be no traces left of their treachery. It was several weeks
before the full facts were obtained and before the mutilated remains
of our soldiers were found and brought back and buried.
The volunteer regiments suffered most from these brutal cowards,
directed and urged on by the "very best men" in civil and "sacred"
office. These are facts from the lips of U. S. officers, men who do
not lie. Very often the troops were called out to capture these bloody
bands, but it was hard to locate them or bring them to a stand. The
natives knew so many circuitous ways of running to cover and they
had so many friends to aid them that it was almost impossible to
follow them. Whenever they were captured they were so surprised,
so humiliated, so innocent, meek and subdued, that it would never
occur to an honest man that they could know how to handle a bolo
or a gun. But experience taught that the most guileless in looks
were the worst desperadoes of all. My first sight of a squad of
these captives is a thing not to be forgotten. They were a scrubby
lot of hardly human things, stunted, gnarled pigmies, with no hats
or shoes, and scarcely a rag of clothing. Their cruel knives, the
deadly bolos, were the only things they could be stripped of. I looked
down upon them from my window in astonishment. "It is not possible,"
I exclaimed, "that these miserable creatures are samples of what is
called the Filipino army." "Yes," an officer replied, "these are the
fellows that never fight; that only stab in the back and mutilate
the dying and dead." My eyes turned to the guard, our own soldiers,
fine, manly fellows, who fairly represented the personnel of our own
splendid army. It made me indignant that one of them should suffer
at the hands of such vermin or rather at the hands of the religious
manipulators who stood in safety behind their ignorant degraded slaves.
SHIPWRECK.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.
The climate seemed beyond physical endurance, although the thermometer
ranged no higher than from ninety to one hundred ten, bu
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