The sun was just setting beyond Corregidor. The island’s long shadows seemed to extend completely across the bay to her feet. As the solar fires burned themselves out, the orange tint which they left behind against the reddened sky reminded Marie of the night before, when she and her lover had strolled along the shore of the bay about three miles farther north; and as the sun slowly nodded its evening farewell and buried its face in the pillow of night, she remembered how he, on the previous night, had called to her attention the lingering glow of its fading beams. Before her lay the Spanish fleet, it, too, casting shadows that first grew longer and longer and then dimmer and dimmer until they in turn had died away in the spectral phenomenon of night.
Marie’s thoughts turned toward home. What about her mother? She walked back to her little boat, pushed it out into the bay, and, stepping into it, sat down, took hold of the oars and started northward near the beach. Just opposite Fort Malate, she swung westward, and, passing outside of the break-water a mile from shore, she entered the Pasig river and hurried homeward. When she arrived, about nine o’clock, she found her mother on the verge of prostration; for that very day, strange to say, Marie’s father, who was a colonel in the Filipino infantry, had been killed at San Francisco del Monte, six miles north-east of Manila, in a battle with Spanish troops.
“Don’t cry, mother,” expostulated Marie, “from now on I intend to kill every foe of ours in these islands!”
Chapter II.
First Shot of A New War
Three weeks passed by. Marie had gone down town late in April to do some shopping. While she was standing in the door of the old postoffice on the Escolta, she heard the shrill voice of a Filipino lad piping out: “Papers! Papers! All about the war with the United States. Dewey’s comin’!” He had a bundle of newspapers under his right arm and was waving one in his left hand. Everybody rushed out of the bazaars and offices along the Escolta where they were transacting their business, and each one who could get near enough to the boy, eagerly bought a morning paper.
The lad’s papers were all gone but one. Marie Sampalit snatched it from his hands, and dropped into one of them a small coin. She stepped into the corridor of the post office, to escape the annoyance of the crowd, and read the large head lines: