“The other reason,” the officer went on, “is that I want a man of whose muscle and endurance as a runner, and whose skill as a boatman, I have had some proof.”
In spite of the difference in rank, and the seriousness of the situation, which the officer knew and the man guessed, the two men looked at each other and smiled. For one was a Harvard man, and the other had come from Yale.
“The gunboat Utica is to leave Ilo Ilo at midnight, tonight. It is of the very greatest importance that this dispatch,” handing him the letter, “be delivered to the American general at Ilo Ilo before the vessel gets under way. I entrust it to you, to see that it is delivered.
“You ought to have no trouble in getting there in ample season,” the captain continued, spreading out a map so that the other man could see it. “I cannot spare any men for an escort for you, because my force is already far too small for what we have to do. Instead of following back the road we took in coming here—which would be impassable for any one but a man on foot, even if I had a horse for you, which I have not—I think you can make better time by another route.
“Six miles from here,” pointing to the map, “you will reach the same river which we crossed at a point farther up the stream. Get a boat there and go down the river some fifteen or twenty miles, until you come to a native village built at the head of steep falls in the stream. I am told that until you reach there the river is navigable, and that the current is so swift much of the way that you can make rapid progress. At that village you will have to leave your boat, but from that place you will find a clearly marked path to Ilo Ilo.
“The quicker you start, the better; and, as I have told you, I trust it to you to see that the general has the dispatch before the Utica leaves port.”
It was ten o’clock in the forenoon when the sergeant had been sent for to come to headquarters. Half an hour later he had started, the letter tightly wrapped in a bit of rubber blanket before he had placed it inside his jacket, for he had already had enough experience with the native boats to know how unstable they would be in the current of a rapid river.
The five miles from Pasi to the river were easily made, in spite of the fact that it was midday, for there was a good path, which, for nearly all the distance, was shaded by lofty trees. When he reached the river the sergeant bought from a man whom he found there a native “banca,” for three dollars, a sum of money which would make a native rich. In this boat he started on his voyage down the river.
A native “banca” is a “dug-out,” a canoe hollowed out from the trunk of a tree. It is propelled and guided by a short, broad-bladed paddle, and is as unstable as the lightest racing shell, although not any where nearly so easy to send through the water.
It was unfortunate for the sergeant that he did not know—what he could not, since the map did not show it—that the place where the path touched the river first was on the upper side of a huge “ox-bow” bend. If he had kept on by land, a third of a mile’s walk farther through the swamp would have brought him to the river again, at a point to reach which by water, following the river’s windings, he would have to paddle three or four miles.