The Chief Collector had come out from the United States full of ardour for the cause of the Filipino victims of Spanish tyranny. When I said he had ideas, perhaps I was wrong; certainly, I understated the case. He had obsessions, the chief of which was the doctrine of Racial Equality, which may be quite harmless when practised in a small American city, where there is no native problem, but becomes positively and actively dangerous when preached in the Tropics. Another obsession of his, a very strange one in the eyes of his colleagues, was his objection to all forms of corruption, a doctrine which is admirable everywhere, and practised in very few places.
Mr Sharler had not been in the Islands long before he showed his faith in the first of his theories by marrying a mestiza, the sister of Enrique Vagas, then one of the junior clerks in his office. It cannot be said that this practical demonstration of his principles was welcome, even to those other heads of the Civil Service who had been the loudest in their praise of the “Little Brown Brother” policy of the Governor-General. It made things awkward with their own wives, they said; whilst, as for the Army, orders were given to the porters of the Military Club that no one was to be permitted to bring Mr Sharler into the building again as a guest. The result of all this was that the Chief Collector went more and more into the society of his wife’s own people, and became more and more rabid on the subject of Racial Equality, discovering in his new relatives virtues which they themselves, even in their wildest moments, had never imagined they possessed—such as truthfulness, for instance.
The other white members of the Customs staff encouraged their Chief in his obsession, and all those who had not actually got their white wives on the spot went through forms of marriage with mestizas; moreover, the Chief’s earnestness on this question left him less time for translating his other theory, his objection to graft, into practice, so for a time things went very smoothly, and bank balances grew at a most pleasant rate. Then, one day, Enrique Vagas, having been soundly and deservedly kicked by an irate white chief assistant, suddenly remembered many instances of corruption, and straightway related them to his brother-in-law and superior officer. After the enquiry, there was a considerable number of vacancies, and what was more natural and fitting than that Enrique Vagas, and those other incorruptible Brown Brothers who had helped him track the offenders, should be promoted to the posts? From that time onwards, whatever the importers might say, matters went smoothly in the office. The Chief Collector heard not a single rumour of graft now, save from interested parties outside, and, so convinced was he of the integrity and loyalty of everybody, that more than once, at the suggestion of Vagas, he attempted to secure the withdrawal of those officious and useless military detectives who were detailed to watch for smuggled arms. But on that point he failed signally. “We have had some before,” the General answered curtly. “Good-morning.”
By a curious coincidence, the Bertha Helwig happened to arrive early on the morning of a public holiday. It was equally curious that Senor Vagas had arranged an outing for that day. One of the large Customs launches was to convey a party, of which the Chief Collector was to be a member, to a charming spot some fifteen miles away, where everybody would land and have lunch, and afterwards talk of Equality and the Rights of the People.
When the other guests assembled on the quay, they found Senor Vagas in the highest spirits. “Congratulate me,” he said. “My fiancée has returned on that steamer, the Bertha Helwig. We will fetch her, and some other friends of mine who are aboard, and take them with us.”
The Chief Collector beamed through his glasses. “It was a good idea,” he said, and ordered the launch to go alongside the German steamer. As they went out—the Bertha Helwig was some distance from the shore—they passed close to the police boat, whose captain, seeing the Chief Collector in the other craft, paid no more attention to her and her doings, as was but natural, and very convenient for Senor Vagas, who would have been watched had he been alone, and would have been stopped had he headed away up the bay when he left the Bertha Helwig.
As it was, there was plenty of time to transfer all those cases and crates, which the discreet Chinaman in Hong Kong had shipped, from the steamer to the launch, whilst the Chief Collector was in the little saloon, going through a series of introductions, and drinking the beer of the Fatherland with the skipper. By the time he came on deck again, everything had been stowed out of sight on the launch, which then made her way to the appointed landing place. The next transfer of those cases took place a couple of hours later, whilst the party was lunching in a charming little banana grove, about half a mile away. This transhipment, like the other, did not take long. Two large dug-outs appeared from out of what was apparently an impenetrable mangrove swamp, took the cases aboard, and in the space of a few minutes had vanished again down the narrow passage from which they had emerged. Later on, when their crews opened those cases and crates in the moonlight, they unpacked a hundred small-bore rifles, and many thousands of rounds of ammunition, a fact which goes to prove the statement that Mr Sharler’s views were a danger to the community.
Neither Basil Hayle nor Captain Bush had any system of Intelligence worth mentioning; and, as their official reports were the only source of information the authorities had, it follows that the latter knew as little, less perhaps, than they did of what was happening in that part of the Island. True, each of the officers did his best according to his lights—rather dim lights in the case of Captain Bush—but the results obtained were quite out of proportion to the trouble taken, because nineteen statements out of every twenty collected were untrue, and the twentieth was usually valueless. Practically every native in the district was in sympathy with the old insurrecto party, or else was one of Felizardo’s agents; consequently, it was absurd to blame either of the officers for not hearing of the landing of the guns, or for not being forewarned concerning the schemes of Senor Vagas and his fellow-patriots.
On the other hand, Felizardo heard about the guns, and sent fifty of his best bolomen to try and borrow them; but they were just too late, for when they reached the town of San Francisco, which is some fifteen miles inland from Igut, the weapons were already stored in the house of the Presidente, who was a former member of the Provisional Government, and a cousin of the wife of Chief Collector Sharler. Felizardo had forbidden his men to make an attack on any of the towns, so they were compelled to leave the guns alone; but they had a little compensation, for they came on two ex-members of the band, who had deserted to the insurrectos, and these they hanged during the night, on the great timber belfry in the middle of the plaza, facing the Presidente’s house.
Felizardo paid well for information, and he usually eliminated those who played him false; consequently, he was not long in obtaining an insight into the plans of the patriots. Men of his, who had been with him for years, said they had never before seen him so angry. Even Dolores Lasara was unable to calm him down. For half a day he sat alone, smoking innumerable cigarettes, and thinking out schemes of revenge; then suddenly he came back to the camp, apparently calm, and gave his orders. There were to be outposts all round San Francisco and its neighbourhood, and a chain of boudjon-blowers to pass any alarm back to the mountains, and another chain across the pass, up to Basil Hayle’s stockade at Silang, where the last man was to have a letter ready to deliver to the Constabulary officer as soon as he heard the warning notes on the horns. Then the old chief himself, with fifty of his best men, all of whom had rifles as well as bolos, shifted down to the outpost nearest to Igut, and waited patiently for the maturing of the scheme of Senor Vagas of the Customs, and Senor Guiterrez the secretary to Mr Furber, and Senor Talibat the judge, each of whom would probably have taken the first steamer to Hong Kong, had he known of the plans of this Enemy of the Sovereign People.