The Flight of “Father Time.”
A Case of Mistaken Identity.
Captain C. was what soldiers call a “fussy” officer. He was constantly prying into matters that concerned him but little, and wasted his energies in performing duties usually within the province of a corporal. In fact, he would march a “set of fours” to dinner. In a fight, however, his soul enlarged, and he was ever to be found at the front directing his men, and doing much to atone for sins committed during less exciting moments. Always in the van, his long, gray whiskers gently flowing in the breezes, his sword drawn and pointing toward the enemy, suggested to the men the pictures they had seen in almanacs of “Father Time”; and when speaking of him among themselves, he had no other name.
In August, 1899, his company was at Angeles, in Luzon, and was entrenching on the outskirts, for the pesky little “niggers” were constantly threatening and frequently attacking the place.
The Quartermaster Department hired a lot of Macebebes, who had offered their services, to do the harder part of the work of trench-digging, for the men were exhausted by an arduous and exacting campaign.
One bright morning about two hundred of these laborers were put to work a short distance to the front of the trenches under construction, to cut away a dense growth of cane, and open up a field of fire toward the enemy. The faithful fellows jumped into the work with a vim seldom seen in that country, slashing to the right and left with bolos, machetes, knives, hoes, scythes, and a variety of other edged implements, felling the large cane stalks with great rapidity.
“Father Time’s” company was just in rear of them, with rifle and belt, ready to protect them from the insurgents, who hated a Macebebe even worse than a despised Americano.
The usual activity in the cane-field was soon discovered by the festive little rebels, who promptly proceeded to pour volleys into the place where the cane was so mysteriously disappearing. The unarmed Macebebes stood their ground for a moment, but when the Mauser bullets came whistling uncomfortably close, and one of them had been slightly hit, they could stand it no longer, but, with an unearthly yell of fright, they broke for the rear like a herd of stampeded cattle. A regular race of mad men.