On the evening of December 24, 1900,—one of those dark nights in the Philippines when the air seems so dense that you can almost take hold of it with your hands—when the heavy clouds blanket the earth so closely that the terrible thunders seem to shake the earth in its orbit, with the deep-toned diapason of their melody—when the lightening bugs flutter from twig to twig, revealing their lanterned wings—when the human heart beats with a conscious thump in anticipation of something awful—when those who are out alone whistle to give themselves courage—when the zigzag openings rent through the clouds by the vicious lightning flashes almost reveal Eternity;—Christmas Eve, that sacred occasion which we all celebrate and shall continue to celebrate till the end of time, to commemorate the birth of our Christ,—a sharp-eyed, dare-devil Filipino crept slowly out of the city of Ilagan along a foot-path toward the Americans’ camp about a mile north of that city.
When so near to the Americans that their out-posts were plainly visible during the flashes of lightning, the Filipino spy crept into a bamboo thicket not over fifty feet from an American sentry. After lying there for a half hour, waiting for the storm to come, the native grew a trifle bolder and arose to his knees. That moment the sharp eyes of the sentry caught him.
“Corporal of the Guard!” called the sentry in a loud voice.
The corporal, being suspicious that something unusual was taking place, in responding to the call took with him two armed privates.
Approaching the sentry, with light steps and in a crouching attitude, the corporal said in a heavy whisper, “What’s the matter, Jack?”
The sentry was standing with gun in hand, loaded, cocked, and with bayonet fixed. Keeping his eye centered on the exact spot where he had last seen the slowly gravitating figure before him, the guard said in an undertone that denoted grave alarm, “Do you see that thicket just to the left of that big mango tree?”
“Yes;” said the corporal in a whisper, “What’s the trouble?”
“There’s a man in there,” said the sentry. “I saw him quite plainly at first—and I think he’s got a gun in his hand. You better watch out, boys. He’s still there.”
The corporal and the two privates fixed the bayonets on their Krag-Jorgensons, filled the magazines, slipped a shell into the barrel of each rifle, cocked them, crouched close to the ground, some ten feet apart, and began to move forward, a step at a time, between the flashes of lightening. Each time it would flash, they would peer into the thicket. Each step brought them nearer.