We stopped, puzzled. "That isn't the village people," whispered Davis. "There are no women or children there, they are headmen and warriors, and that is some ceremony they are performing."
We crawled up within fifty yards, and then I wished I had not come, for Moriarty gripped me quickly, and pointing to two naked men bound and laid out on the ground, whispered, "Ross and Billings!"
"We're too late, Captain, they've been killed and now they are fixing to mutilate them, cut off their heads and cut out their hearts and fill their stomachs with stones."
I nodded. It was the savage's way of mutilating all our dead.
We recognized the fighting men easily. There were dozens of them, squatted in a circle, armed with bolos, borangs, and spears. But in the center stood a strange figure in a long black robe, his parted hair hanging down his back. Around him stood six men, fierce savages, with shaved heads, and half naked bodies.
"Juramentado!" I whispered. "That's a Mohammedan priest in the center and he is making Juramentado of the six—look!"
I heard both Davis and Moriarty slip the bolts of their Krags. To say Juramentado to any soldier was like crying wolf to a shepherd and his flock.
We lay still, seeing the mystic savage rite no white man ever saw before. We could hear the words of the priest which, spoken in a mixed Moro-Spanish, we easily interpreted. The six we soon learned were Moros from Mindanao and had sailed over to sacrifice themselves to our army.
It was indeed a weird rite he went through, and strange words he used:—how, if each killed his Christian before dying, it meant first heaven and an houri; and if two Christians a second heaven and two houri, up to the seventh heaven and a harem if they died within our lines with seven of our dead each to his credit.
"And now behead them," he ordered, pointing to the two American soldiers, "and anoint your bodies with their blood!"