Basil Hayle was sitting in his quarters within the stockade, reading, when he caught the sound of a boudjon—faint, two miles away perhaps, but perfectly distinct. He put his book down quickly, and went out on to the platform of the stockade, where he found the Serjeant of the guard listening intently. A minute later, another boudjon sounded, very loud and clear, within a few hundred yards this time, evidently answering the other.
Basil and the Serjeant exchanged glances. This was the first hint of anything in the nature of hostilities they had received since Mr Gobbitt’s adventure with the head-hunters.
“Pretty close, that,” the Captain said.
The serjeant nodded. “Yes, Senor. But it does not mean an attack. They would not warn us beforehand in that way. Possibly, it means a message. We shall see.”
A quarter of an hour later, his prediction was justified, for a native, an ordinary tao by his dress, strolled up to the gate of the stockade, announced that he had a letter for the Senor in command of the Constabulario, delivered the envelope to the corporal of the guard, then, without another word, strolled back into the bush.
The corporal lingered a few moments, until the expression on Basil’s face told him what he wanted to know. “The cooks might hurry on the dinner,” he said, as he got back to the little guard-house; “we shall be going out. It was from Felizardo. I recognised the messenger. He was in the fight on the hillside.” And, having the first information, he set to work to borrow as many cigarettes as possible, so as to be well supplied for the march.
Basil read the note once, rapidly; then re-read it very carefully, and immediately made up his mind. It ran:—
“The Senor Felizardo, Chief of the Mountains, sends a greeting to the Chief of the Constabulario. This morning a band of a hundred men, all formerly of the foolish insurrecto army, started from the neighbourhood of San Francisco. At dawn to-morrow morning they will burn Igut. They wish it to be thought in Manila that the Senor Felizardo has done this thing, so that the Government will send an army against him, and, meanwhile, they will be able to prepare another rebellion, unobserved.
“If the Captain of the Constabulario marches quickly, he may take them in the rear. His stockade at Silang will be safe, on the word of Felizardo.
“They wish to kill all at Igut, save the Senora, who is promised to one Juan Vagas, the leader, brother to Enrique Vagas in the Customs.”
Then followed a brief supplementary note on the way in which the rifles had been introduced.
Basil Hayle did not hesitate. Had it been his first experience of Felizardo, he would have feared a trap. As it was, however, no suspicion of that kind entered his mind. All he thought about now was to be in time, to take those insurrectos in the rear, just as they were attacking, and himself to kill Juan Vagas. He was more like a wild beast than a man when he thought of what Felizardo really meant—but a dangerously quiet wild beast, one which means to kill. The Law of the Bolo had come into his life now, fully, absolutely displacing all other rules of conduct. There was to be no quarter this time, as he told the serjeant, who grinned in great appreciation.