“I really don’t know,” replied the lieutenant-colonel: “his face shows him to be a Tagalo. Certain it is that he didn’t come from Isabella province in which we are now campaigning. I wouldn’t be surprised if Aguinaldo were near here and if he had sent this young dare-devil to cut down our sentry, so as to make an attack upon us tonight during the storm.”
Toward morning the storm subsided. At day-break a comparatively shallow grave was hastily dug near the edge of a little bamboo thicket on a slightly elevated piece of ground. As the flickering rays of the tropical sun began to shoot above the pale, ashen-gray hue of the eastern horizon, the prisoner was led to the foot of his prospective tomb. The firing squad took its place in line.
The guns had been carefully loaded in advance for their deadly work; all but one contained blank cartridges. As usual, after loading, the guns were intermixed, so that no man might know which one contained the deadly bullet.
“Ready!” commanded the sergeant who had charge of the squad,—the corporal having taken his usual place in line with his men.
“Click,” went the hammers of the rifles in unison, as they were brought to a full cock.
“Aim!” came the next command in a firmer tone. The soldiers brought their rifles to their shoulders. Every barrel was pointed at the chest of the prisoner, who now for the first time, began to tremble and turn a sickly yellow.
“Fire!” commanded the sergeant.
“Bang!” went the united roar of the guns; and as the light powder smoke cleared away and the echoes reverberated through the woods of northern Luzon, the firing squad stepped forward to view their heroic dead.
A private jumped into the grave and turned the corpse over onto its back.
That night Frank W. Pugh, of the regular army, a member of this unfortunate firing squad, who died later at Fort Worth, Texas, of fever contracted in the Philippines, sitting in his little dog-tent, meditating, wrote in his diary, which is now preserved in the archives at Washington with other relics of the war, the following appropriate poem: