Basil went down to Ah Lung’s store and saw his prisoners safely ironed, then ordered from the Chinaman sufficient stores to last his men for three days, and sufficient cigarettes for a month, and after that sent for the old serjeant. “Serjeant,” he said, “I am going into Manila, taking Serjeant Reyes and ten men as guard for the prisoners. You will take command of the rest, and start at dawn for the stockade at Silang. Ah Lung will give you supplies for the journey. Also some cigarettes. Have the ‘Assembly’ sounded. I want to speak to the men.”
Perhaps it was not entirely by accident that they fell in opposite the Bushes’ house, though for that the old serjeant was responsible. Mrs Bush, sitting as usual on the balcony, behind the matting blind, could hear every word of his short speech, a little broken when he came to thank them for their loyal devotion of the night before, but ringing out clearly when he expressed his conviction that, during his absence, they would take every order the old serjeant gave as coming direct from himself. Two months previously, when they were just raw tao from Samar, they would have ended by breaking ranks and clustering round him; now there was nothing more than a murmur, which swept along the line, and was infinitely grateful both to him, and to the woman who, unknown to him, was listening from the balcony behind.
This time, there were no Scouts clustering in the gateway of the barracks, making disparaging remarks on “dam’ Constabulario.” They were all inside, wondering how they would explain matters to the girls of Igut. There was to be a fiesta, and, of course, a cock-fight on the following day, which meant that many questions, awkward to answer, would be asked.
As Basil dismissed his men, the expected coastguard steamer came in sight round the point, greatly to his relief. True, she would not go out until the morning, but, once his prisoners were aboard, he knew they would be safe. He waited on the quay until she had come to an anchor, then went off to her, calmly taking the Presidente’s own boat, and explained matters to her skipper. Half an hour later the Presidente, watching from his window, saw Juan Vagas and his comrades marched down to the quay, bundled, none too gently, into a boat, and taken aboard the coastguard. He drew his hand across his forehead, and found it damp with a cold sweat. If one of those four, young Pablo for instance, turned informer to save his own neck, how many other necks would be in danger?
After seeing his prisoners aboard, Basil walked back slowly to the Bushes’ house. He had to say good-bye to Mrs Bush, and, for all he knew, it might be many months before he saw her again. At the back of his mind there was still that haunting sense of resentment against Fate for allowing Bush to escape. The ethical side of the question, the morality or immorality of it, never occurred to him, as was but natural in a district where the Law of the Bolo was the only code which had any force. He hated the Scout officer because he knew what sort of man he was, and he would have welcomed Bush’s death, because he believed it would take a load of misery and humiliation off Mrs Bush’s shoulders; but, in justice to him, it must be said that he had never thought of gaining any personal advantage from the disappearance of the Captain. Mrs Bush had never given him any reason to suppose that she regarded him otherwise than as a chance acquaintance, whom the accidents of life, as represented by the insurrectos, had raised to the level of a friend.
Rather to his surprise, he met Bush himself at the doorway of the house; and, even more to his surprise, the Scout officer treated him with rather sheepish cordiality. “Come in, Hayle,” he said. “Glad you called back before you went. I hear you sent your prisoners aboard the coastguard. You’re a wise man. The Presidente wanted me to rescue them for him, and I told him to go somewhere hotter …. Have a drink? My wife will be down in a few minutes.” After he had mixed the cocktails and finished his at a gulp, he seemed to get a fresh grip on his own nerves. “I’m sorry if I was a bit short this morning,” he said, “but the thing upset me, the suddenness of it; and I thought at first that you might have sent me warning. Now, I hear that there was no time for anything of that sort. Eighteen hours from Silang, most of it in the darkness! It was a thundering good march.” For a moment, the soldier in him—and he had been a soldier of no mean quality—got the upper hand of his more recently-acquired personality. “I wish I had had the chance, and I wish I had been in the fight.” For a space he stared out through the window, then he faced round again. “Look here, Hayle, what are you going to tell them in Manila about me?”
Basil flushed. It was an awkward question, one not to be answered off-hand. Had he believed that Bush’s absence was due to anything in the nature of cowardice he would have spared him nothing; but, so far as that point was concerned, he had gauged the man accurately. Sober or drunk, Bush was brave enough. And the real reason was ugly, horribly ugly; moreover, if it came out, it would give the natives just cause for scoffing at the white man, and, what was of infinitely greater importance in his eyes, it would deal a deadly blow to Mrs Bush’s pride.
“I shall report what my men did,” he said at last, “and say that your Scouts were fully occupied with those who tried to rush the barracks. If they ask me concerning you, I shall merely say I had no time to speak to you until it was over. On the other hand, I want you to make a deal. If I do that for you, you are to say nothing of Felizardo being here.”
Captain Bush stared at him with wide-open eyes. “Felizardo! Felizardo here! What do you mean, man?”
“Felizardo was at the lower corner of the plaza this morning. It was he who sent word to me at Silang, his men who cut up the insurrectos as they fled. We’ve got to thank him, and no one else, that Igut wasn’t burned.” But Captain Hayle said nothing of Mrs Bush and the promise to Juan Vagas. He himself was going to see to the settling of that score.