The Law of the Bolo

by Stanley Portal Hyatt

Five minutes later, however, he began to think his confidence had not been justified; for one of the men, happening to look back, caught sight of a figure moving along the edge of the jungle, where the bush ended and the cocoa-nut grove began, and then they caught fleeting glimpses of many, though all the time there was nothing at which to shoot.

Basil did the right thing. He led his men on to the beach itself, where the boloman has to come within range of the carbines long before he reaches you, and there is always sufficient breeze to clear away the smoke.

They marched quickly, or rather they hurried along—as Basil Hayle told himself bitterly, they were the remnant of a defeated force in full retreat—and all the time they were aware that the bolomen were following just at the edge of the jungle; then, suddenly, they rounded the point by Katubig, when you come in sight of the village, and for a moment they forgot even the bolomen, for Katubig was in flames. Half the nipa and bamboo houses, including that in which the Constabulary supplies were stored, had already collapsed, whilst another five minutes would see the rest practically gutted.

Captain Hayle groaned. “Well, of all the infernal luck——” he began; then he noticed that there was not a single native in sight, not a single canoe left on the beach, and straightway he understood. Katubig was practically one of Felizardo’s villages—he was a fool not to have thought of that before—and the old chief no longer intended it to be used as a base for operations against himself.

There was practically only one course open to Basil, and he decided instantly to take it. He had no axes, no tools of any sort; consequently, there was no possibility of making anything in the way of a stockade, whilst to remain in the open with only eighteen men was to invite a further and final disaster. No, he must cover the ten or twelve miles to Igut, where there was a company of the Philippine Scouts quartered. There he would be safe, and from there he could send a report of his defeat to Manila. It was not a pleasant prospect. The Constabulary and the Scouts did not love one another overmuch, and it was humiliating to have to seek refuge with the rival force. Still, he could see no alternative. Even as he decided, he could catch glimpses of Felizardo’s bolomen in the background, dodging from bush to bush, never giving a chance for a shot, but still driving him back from Felizardo’s mountains. He glanced at the sun. It was about one o’clock—Heavens, how much seemed to have happened since sunrise!—if he went straight on, and there was no sense in going into the burning village itself, he would be at Igut by sunset, provided the path were not unusually bad.

The men heaved sighs of relief when they learned their destination. They had had enough of the mountains to last them for a day or two; it was going to pour with rain again that night; and the prospect of sleeping, or rather of trying to sleep, in the open with Felizardo’s bolomen prowling round, just outside the circle of firelight, was not an exhilarating one. Consequently, they started off for Igut very cheerfully. True, they had lost most of their comrades, and had been badly beaten by the accursed Tagalog outlaws; but, after all, what matter? They themselves were all right. They had plenty of cigarettes for the march: they could buy plenty more in Igut, in addition to spirits; whilst, doubtless, the Scouts would have money to lose at monte; moreover, next time they met Felizardo’s men, the fight would go the other way—of that they felt sure ….

Somehow, Igut seemed well-named. The word might mean anything, but the sound expressed the town itself, at least to Western ears. The place might appear picturesque, almost fascinating, to a chance visitor, who knew that he was going to leave it in a few hours; but when you had to live there, you quickly came to see it in a very different light, as Mrs Bush, the wife of Captain Bush of the Philippine Scouts, who had not been out of it for a whole year, could have told you.

From the balcony of her house at the corner of the plaza, Mrs Bush could survey the whole scene; and, as time hung very heavily on her hands, she used to spend many an hour lying back in her long bamboo chair, watching the view with languid disfavour, striving hard not to resent the fate which had led her to bury her bright young life in such a spot.

There was so little worth looking at, when you got to know it. The same tao were always asleep under the shade of the huge timber belfry in the middle of the plaza, the same hungry dogs were always nosing round for stray pieces of offal, the same shrill-voiced women wrangling with the Chinaman who kept the general store at the far corner. The priest would come out at a certain hour, meet the Presidente, and they would then make their way together to the spirit shop next to the Chinaman’s. A little later, the Supervisor and the school teacher—white officials these—would come round the corner and follow the others to the same place, where presently her own husband would join them. Then, just at sundown, a squad of Scouts would loaf across the plaza to perform what they called mounting guard at the gaol. With that, the day’s activities would end, and the long, sweltering, breathless night, when the mosquitoes and the heat, and perhaps, as in her case, your own mental torment, would not allow you an hour’s real sleep. On Sundays the only difference was that every small boy in the place was allowed to jangle those terrible bells in the plaza to his heart’s content, and the white officials went to the spirit shop earlier in the day.

So much for the town. If you looked seawards—and from that balcony you had an almost uninterrupted view—it was equally monotonous. The palm-fringed bay, with its multicoloured coral bottom, and the vast expanses of mangrove swamp, which, almost closing its entrance, rendered it a safe anchorage, even when the monsoon was booming in its fiercest, always seemed the same. True, every now and then, at irregular intervals, a Government launch would come in with mails or stores. More rarely still, a trading steamer, with rust-streaked funnel and sides, a veritable maritime curiosity which would have been condemned to the scrap-heap anywhere else, would wheeze and cough her way up to the rickety wooden jetty in quest of a cargo of hemp; but save on these occasions, the waters were disturbed only by the dug-outs of native fishermen, who seemed to put to sea merely for the sake of avoiding the flies on shore; at any rate, they always dozed off to sleep the moment they had dropped the stones which served as anchors.