So the Americans chased the insurrectos—that is, the troops of the late Provisional Government—and the ladrones, and the head-hunters who were Felizardo’s northern neighbours, gathered in the stragglers on both sides, each doing in accordance with his customs; but the mountains were left alone. Then, as all the world knows, or ought to know, just as the army had the insurrectos nicely in hand, and was about to capture, and hang comfortably, the worst offenders, the exigencies of party politics in the United States led to the institution of Civil Government throughout the Islands. The army was withdrawn; the members of the late Provisional Government were absolved of their murders and their rapes, and their other abominations, and made governors of provinces, and commissioners, and even judges; and from these the Civil Government first learned of Felizardo and his wicked ways, how he had flogged, and even hanged, pure Filipino patriots; and Mr Commissioner Furber, the head of the new department of Constabulary and Trade—a rather infelicitous, or invidious, combination—decided that Felizardo, the Enemy of the People, must be rooted out and destroyed; for Mr Commissioner Furber, like Mr Collector Sharler of the Customs, who had a native wife, was a firm believer in that great and glorious and democratic doctrine, which declared that the Filipino was the white man’s Little Brown Brother, whilst, obviously, this same Felizardo, whom the ex-generals declared to be a common ladrone, had no fraternal feelings at all. So the doom of Felizardo was signed and sealed, and the only thing remaining to be done was the carrying out of the sentence—a small matter surely when the latter had been pronounced by a Commissioner of great power. It is at this point that Captain Basil Hayle of the Philippines Constabulary, late Sergeant Hayle of the Garrison Artillery, U.S.A., comes into the story; for he was the man deputed to carry out the dread fiat of Mr Commissioner Furber, which led to his going up into the mountains and learning the Law of the Bolo.
Basil Hayle took his discharge from the Army in Manila at the earliest possible opportunity. He was a little tired of garrison gunnery as practised in the Islands, and was anxious to join one of the new corps of native troops then being formed. The chance came quickly. The Civil Government, desirous of proving to the Army how beautifully it could manage without professional assistance, raised a force of its own, the Philippines Constabulary, the rank and file of which was composed of any stray natives who felt sufficiently energetic to enlist, whilst the officers consisted mainly of discharged private soldiers. The equipping of the Constabulary gave the politicians in the Government offices the chance of their lives. The rifles were Springfield carbines, manufactured in the early ‘seventies; most of the ammunition would not fire; whilst the clothing and boots were of the very worst quality imaginable, purchased at the very best prices.
It is one thing to raise officers for such a corps, quite another thing to keep them. Basil Hayle, however, was amongst those who remained, and, as a result, he quickly found himself promoted captain of a company of some sixty surly, ragged little men, natives of Manila and its immediate neighbourhood, who could neither drill nor shoot, whose objects in life were to smoke cigarettes, play monte, and, whenever the chance occurred, slip away to a cock-fight, from which they generally returned penniless and incoherent.
Basil did his best with them. He contrived to be sent to an out-station, in the hopes of getting them in hand; but the sole result was that five joined a local band of ladrones, taking their carbines and their friends’ money with them, whilst five more returned hurriedly, and without leave, to Manila, to lay their grievances before a fellow-countryman, an ex-colonel of the Army of Liberty, who was now chief secretary to Mr Commissioner Furber. Meanwhile, Captain Hayle’s subaltern, a youth from Boston, had married a native woman, a proceeding which aroused all Basil’s bitterest Southern prejudices. The incident moved him to speech, and he spoke with so much emphasis, and so much effect, that from that time onwards he was short of an officer. Then, to crown it all, a runner came in with peremptory orders from the Commissioner for him to bring his company back to Manila and explain his arbitrary proceedings.
This time, there was no one to whom he could speak emphatically, save the messenger, who knew no English, whilst, so far, his own knowledge of Spanish expletives was limited; consequently, he had to keep it all for the Commissioner, who, having regarded him hitherto as a silent, docile man, even if he were a Southerner—Furber himself came from Boston—was distinctly surprised and pained, as Basil had intended he should be. Still, in the end, they parted, if not good friends, at least with a temporary understanding. So many useful officers had resigned recently that the Commissioner dare not let another go; moreover, he had just been made fully acquainted with the evil deeds of Felizardo, that enemy of Progress and the Sovereign People; and Basil Hayle seemed a very suitable man to go and rout out the nest of brigands in the mountains.
Hayle accepted the commission joyfully, knowing nothing of Felizardo, of whom he now heard for the first time. He was in the service purely for the sake of excitement and experience, and this task of clearing those mountains, which he had so often admired, of a gang of brigands and murderers seemed to promise him both. That same night, after dinner, he went to the Orpheum, the music-hall of Manila, and, meeting Clancy of the Manila Star in the entrance, was taken into the Press box, whence you can obtain the finest view of those young ladies who are imported at vast expense, and apparently with only part of their wardrobes, from Australia and the China Coast to elevate and amuse the public of Manila.
Clancy had known the Philippines in the Spanish days, and Basil turned to him for information.
“Ever heard of a ladrone called Felizardo?” he asked,
“No”—Clancy had a passion for correct expressions—“but I have heard of an old man called Felizardo, who for the last five-and-twenty years has been recognised by the Spaniards as the chief of that range of mountains over there. He was an outlaw, certainly, but a regular ladrone, never. The Spaniards were too wise to worry him, and he left them alone. Why, what’s the matter with him now? Has he been hanging any more patriots?”
“No, only I’ve got to go out and catch him, and break up his band.” There was a note of defiance in Hayle’s voice. He was young, after all, a bare eight-and-twenty, and he did not like even the possibility of ridicule.