They showed a considerable ingenuity in making cannon out of any materials at hand. They would take a steel boiler-tube, a stay tube for choice, say about three inches bore and a quarter of an inch thick. Plugging up one end and drilling a touch-hole, they would drive this tube into a hole bored in a log of hard wood turned on the outside to a taper, then they drove eight or nine wrought-iron rings over the wood. They drilled through the wood to suit the touch-hole and the gun was ready.
They fitted no trunnions, but mounted this rude cannon upon a solid block of wood.
In other cases they made some wire guns by lapping steel boiler-tubes with telegraph-wire.
Towards the end of the campaign of Lachambre’s division against the rebels, some modern field-pieces of eight centimètres were captured from them, but it is not clear where these came from.
To supplement their scanty stock of rifles, they made some hand-guns of gas-tube. These were fired by applying a match or lighted cigar to the touch-hole, and would seem to be very clumsy weapons. But I may say that when on a visit to the estate of Palpa, in Peru, I saw a Chinaman who was in charge of the poultry corral, kill a hawk hovering, with a similar gun.
The Spanish Military and Naval Authorities now took the revolt very seriously, and on the 8th November the squadron comprising the Castilla, Reina Cristina, and other vessels, and the guns of the forts at Cavite and Puerto Vaga, opened upon the rebel position at Cavite, Viejo, Noveleta, Binancáyan, and other places within range, and kept it up for hours. The next morning the firing was resumed at daylight, supplemented by the guns from launches and boats well inshore. Troops were landed under the protection of the squadron, and advanced against the entrenchments of Binancáyan. They delivered three frontal attacks with great gallantry, reaching the parapet each time, but were beaten back, leaving many dead upon the ground. No flanking attack was possible here for the parapet extended for many miles each way.
A simultaneous attack was made upon Noveleta by a column of 3000 Spanish and native infantry under Colonel Fermin Diaz Mattoni.
This force started from Cavite and marched through Dalahican and along the road to Noveleta. This road is a raised causeway running through a mangrove swamp, having deep mud on each side impassable for troops. This is at least a mile of swamp, and the troops advanced along the causeway and crossed a bridge which spanned a muddy creek.
No enemy was in sight, and the town was not far off. Suddenly the head of the column fell into a most cunningly devised pitfall. The road had been dug out, the pit covered with wattle, and the surface restored to its original appearance. The bottom of the pit was set with pointed bamboo stakes which inflicted serious wounds upon those that fell upon them.
At the moment of confusion the rebels opened a withering fire from concealed positions amongst the mangroves upon the column standing in the open.