"'I am sorry,' said my teniente, 'but a monkey ate it. And it would be unlawful to help you to commit suicide, anyway. Fermin, tell Raymundo to buckle on his revolver and be ready to escort Don Isidro down to—San Pablo.'
"'Dispensa, mi teniente,' I said. 'Does one ask a Macabebe to kill his officer, and call him a traitor, for nothing?'
"My teniente looked at me, and laughed. 'Get your own revolver then, Fermin,' he said.
"When I came back, Don Isidro's cigarette was very short. They both stood up, and my teniente said: 'Adios, Don Isidro. An easy journey to you in Fermin's friendly company, and a welcome in—San Pablo. Remember me particularly to your pariente, Don Augusto. I need not tell you, Fermin, that you must be very careful that he does not escape.'
"'I will be very careful, mi teniente,' I said, and we went away, and my teniente never knew that I made Don Isidro carry along a spade I saw in the guard-room. One does not call a Macabebe a traitor for nothing.... There is no more wood, and it gets late and cold. Shall we sleep, or will you hear the rest of my story while our fire dies?
"Bueno. I will not be long. Some of this story got out, not much, for only I and my teniente knew it all, but it frightened the other Americans, and they said my teniente was crazy. Sangre de Diós! He was not crazy then, but only one of God's own little devils. He was crazy afterwards, perhaps, but they made him so. Listen while I tell you what they did to him.
"There is a little place very far back in the hills, Santo Spirito they call it, where the frailes used to go for a retreat. There is nothing there, just a big convent of stone where no one lives, and a few little dirty houses, and the mountains behind, and the jungle all around, and the only people are lazy Bisayanos who do no work and are half drunk with opium. And they sent my teniente there to eat his heart!
"Oh, he was brave! He was very brave, but there was nothing to do. That's why they sent us there; they knew we could do no harm. The mountain was empty, and there was no one in the jungle, and the people of Santo Spirito were too lazy to be bad. But he was brave; he made work. We drilled long every day, and we made a parade-ground of the plaza in front of the convent, with culverts of concrete at the corners to carry off the water in the rainy season. That took many hours. But always there was the evening coming, when my teniente had to sit in the big sola, with the rats and the lizards squealing above him, and drink and drink and drink, and wait for the time when he could sleep.
"Hoy, that drinking! It frightened me, and I spoke to him about it. I could always speak to him, until the very end. He laughed at me. 'Give me something else to do, then,' he said. 'Shall I go and say a mass in the chapel?'
"So he would sit and drink aguardiente for hours, and look at his boots. Sometimes he would be like himself for a little while, and then he would go for a ride, or shoot some bottles from my hand. But not for long. One day his hand was not steady, and he shot too close—Aí, mi teniente! He just dropped the revolver on the ground and said, 'That's the end of it at last, Fermin,' and he walked back to the convent, and his shoulders were like the shoulders of an old man.