IX.
Life Among Hostile Moros in the Jungle of Mindanao
A Trip to the Sulu Archipelago—New Year’s Eve on Board the Zafiro—A Royal Bit of a Time in the Cabin of McDonald—Blowing the Siren—New Year’s Dinner at 1.00 A.M.—Isabella de Basilan—Prang Prang—Dancing Girls of the Nippa Villages—Roasted Grasshoppers—Outpost Duty—Nearly Converted to the Darwinian Theory—Experience with a Boa Constrictor while Hunting Wild-Boar—Rescued from Hostile Moros—Relief of the Outpost.
Two men were caught in a Moro trap, and the Datto’s guns sang near,
And one wore an officer’s shoulder-strap, the other a private’s gear;
One was a black of the Twenty-fourth, and one was a Southern man,
And both were caught in a dark defile by the line of the Moro clan.
Oh, wonder it is, and pity it is, that they send the scouts alone
To die in the silent jungle paths with never a word or groan;
Wonder it is, and pity it is, but the two stood back to back,