Boy Scouts in the Philippines; Or, The Key to the Treaty Box

by G. Harvey Ralphson

  CHAPTER VI.

  THE LOW CALL OF A WOLF.

  When Jimmie left the _Manhattan_ he thought it would be perfectly easyto follow Ned into the jungle. Before leaving Captain Godwin's chargethe boys had been provided with bolos, and the youngster slipped oneunder his jacket before leaving the motor boat. This he used to goodpurpose, though with great caution, as he crept through the thickets.

  As is well known, it is almost impossible to make headway in aPhilippine forest without chopping down creepers and tangled vines. Thebolo is always in use by parties hunting or exploring. It is a short,heavy sword, or knife, similar to the machete of Cuba, and is frequentlyused in warfare. In the hands of an expert it becomes a very effectiveweapon.

  Gaining the thicket, Jimmie stood still and listened for some indicationof the presence of his patrol leader. But the patter of the rain, therustling of the great leaves, the scolding of the wet and alarmedmonkeys in the trees about him, served to shut out any other sounds.

  He walked as fast as he could through the jungle toward the center ofthe island, or in the direction which he believed to be the center.Always his way was uphill, and now and then he was obliged to drawhimself up some acclivity by pulling, hand over hand, on a creepertrailing from a tree.

  Certain that he could find his way back, he did not blaze the way. Hereand there he hewed down a thorny limb which tore at his clothes, or cuta creeper from a tree, but he made no effort to mark his path.

  Occasionally he came to a little glade, a space clear of trees buthemmed in by the eternal jungle just the same. Here the way was chokedwith rank cogon grass, growing from eight to twelve feet high. He foundthis as mean a growth to pass through as any briar patch or cane-brake.

  Cogon grass seems a useless parasite on the bosom of old Mother Earth,and yet it presents a compensation in its gorgeous white bloom, for,like the poppy, the cogon is a show-piece of nature, and she flaunts itin places where beauty is needed, too. Jimmie had never seen a field ofbuckwheat in blossom, or he might have compared the cogon stretches tofields in the United States at certain seasons of the year.

  Even in his haste, in the uncomfortable day, the boy stopped to gaze inwonder at the wonderful balete tree, which is a representative of thefig family. This tree begins life as a parasite, at least it springs tolife in a crotch of some other tree. Here it thrives on the humus anddecayed vegetable matter and sends long, winding tendrils down to theground.

  These tendrils take root and grow with such vigor that the supportingtrunk is rapidly enveloped in a coalescing mass of stems, while its ownbranches are overtopped by the usurper, which kills it eventually asmuch by stealing its sunshine as by appropriating the soil at its base.When very old these trees possess a massive trunk, usually, with a largecavity in the middle where the trunk of the other tree rotted out. Someof the younger trees, however, seem to stand on stilts.

  Jimmie saw many things to marvel at, for a Philippine forest is not atall like a forest in the states of New York or Illinois. In the gladeshe saw plants of enormous size, with leaves seven feet long. He cameupon rattan or bejuco thickets, where thorns, pointing down the stemslike barbs on a fish-hook, snatched at his clothes and clung to themtoo.

  A variety of this plant has a stem, trailing on the ground, five hundredfeet long. This stem is hollow and divided into compartments bydiaphragms at the joints, like the bamboo. Each compartment containsabout a mouthful of pure water.

  Jimmie climbed upward for half an hour, thinking every moment that hewould come upon some trace of Ned, but Ned, as the reader knows, was atthat time waiting in the cabin of the _Manhattan_ for the return of hisfriend. Unconsciously he wandered off to the right, or north, andpresently came to an elevation from which he could overlook therain-splashed waters of the China Sea.

  By the time he reached this position Ned was also in the forest, hopingto meet Jimmie as well as to learn the meaning of the signals from theunknown launch and the firing on the island. Ned, however, for a longtime kept to the left, and when at last he came to an elevation he wasat least a mile away from that to which Jimmie had ascended.

  From the hill--it could not be termed a mountain, though it was ofvolcanic formation--Jimmie looked into a glade from which the smoke of afire ascended. He would have observed the two columns of smoke which hadbeen seen from the motor boat had he reached the position earlier, or ifhe had not been surrounded by the thicket when the Boy Scout signal roseto the sky.

  He could see people moving about the fire, which was partially protectedfrom the storm by a heavy canvas on the windward side. A crude sheltercomposed of great leaves and canvas was also seen, and in this hethought he saw several reclining figures. By this time the boy had givenup all hope of coming upon Ned, and also of finding his way back to the_Manhattan_ without a careful study of the location.

  From the place where he stood he could look over a large portion of theisland. He could see a river running to the east, and wondered if thebay in which the motor boat was lay not near the mouth of the stream.Still, there were many indentations in the shores of the little isle; hecould not discover the _Manhattan_ in any of them.

  He studied over the situation for a time and then arrived at theconclusion that he could best find his way back to the boat by followingthe line of the coast. That, however, necessitated a long journey and,perhaps, the swimming of streams which would doubtless take him far intothe night, and a Philippine jungle is no place to travel in thedarkness. Besides being decidedly uncomfortable, such a trip would bedangerous. Even if there were no wildcats on the island, there wereplenty of reptiles. Then he caught sight of a launch off to the east andchanged his plans.

  His idea was to circle the camp and gain a position between it and theplace where the launch had made its appearance. If the people on theboat were planning to land he wanted to see them before they reached thecamp. If they were enemies he thought he could avoid them readilyenough; if they were friends they might assist him in releasing theprisoners.

  "Of course they're in with the game that's goin' on, though," he mused,as he made his way around the hill. "If they wasn't, what would they becomin' to the island for? There's no one here to visit--or wouldn't beif this party of dagoes hadn't landed. The men in the launch are here tomeet the others, and that's all there is to it. I'm goin' to see whattheir business is!"

  It was growing dim over the forest when Jimmie gained the position hesought, and there were lights in the launch down in a little bay andlights in the camp halfway up the hill. The rain still came downheavily, driven with considerable force by the wind, and the boy was, ofcourse, soaked to the skin and suffering from the stings of the insectswhich swarm in Philippine forests, but still he waited patiently forsome signs of communication between the people on the boat and those inthe camp.

  There was no stir in the thicket which lay between the two, and Jimmieconcluded that he had arrived too late to witness the meeting of the twoparties. The next thing to do was to get as close to the camp as hecould without danger of detection and observe what was taking placethere. It might be even possible, he thought, to get near enough to hearsomething of the conversation.

  With this object in view he moved as stealthily as possible through thejungle, up the hill, toward the fire, shining dimly in the rain. Much tohis surprise he found no guards posted about the camp. When fifty yardsaway, concealed from any possible view of those about the fire by a massof creepers, he saw that the inhabitants of the camp were hustling aboutin the work of building a good-sized shelter of the huge leaves whichgrew about. The reclining forms in the shelter he had first seen werenow only partly in sight.

  "They are tryin' to keep the prisoners dry, anyway," the boy thought.

  The shelter last spoken of was at the right of the fire, and Jimmiecircled off so as to reach it from the rear, his purpose being to learnif the persons lying there were really the men who had been carried awayfrom the island where Captain Godwin had his headquarters.

  Presently he came upon a gr
oup of four people, standing, somewhatprotected from the storm, under a great tree. He drew as close as hedared, even risking discovery, and listened. He could hear voices abovethe wailing of the wind and the patter of the rain, but could notunderstand what was being said. The conversation was being carried on ina tongue with which he was unfamiliar.

  "Three of them are Chinks," he mused, when, in moving about, the mencame between his line of vision and the slow flame of the fire. "Theywear their shirts outside their trousers and have their hair done uplike the Chinese in Pell street!"

  Directly the fourth man of the party, who seemed to be an American, or,at least, an Englishman, asked:

  "And the treaty? Will they sign?"

  The others nodded and chattered away in their own tongue.

  "When will they be here?" he then asked.

  More chattering followed, and then the four hastened to the shelterwhich was being constructed. Jimmie gathered from the two questions hehad heard that the island had been chosen as a meeting place, and thatthe shelter was being built for the accommodation of those expected.

  He had heard something of the purpose of the government in sending Nedto the Philippines, and remembered now that there had been talk of apossible organization of the native tribes against the United Statesgovernment. Now he suspected that the chiefs were to meet there toexecute the treaty which was to tie the tribes together and bring aboutan armed revolt against American occupancy.

  "It looks to me," he thought, "like the Chinese were at the bottom ofthe trouble. I guess China would like to get a foothold here!"

  There was nothing more to be learned from the position he occupied, andso he moved on, always keeping to the right of the campfire, blazingdimly in the rain and requiring constant care, until he came out in athicket close to the rear of the shelter where the men he believed to beprisoners lay. In five minutes he was at the canvas wall of the refuge,listening.

  All was still inside, and it was evident that the conspirators did notsuspect that they had been followed to their retreat. Looking about, hesaw that most of the men of the party were still busily engaged inconstructing the shelter and that no one was near the place he wished toinvestigate, so he cautiously lifted a corner of the canvas and lookedinside.

  The men there were four in number, and all seemed to be bound hand andfoot! The captors were not taking any chances on escape, although theyevidently believed themselves to be in full possession of the littleisland. All was still inside the shelter except that the rain descendedsteadily on the leaf roof and now and then a low moan came from thefront of the place.

  "That must be the man they cut up," thought the boy. "I wonder if it isLieutenant Rowe who is wounded?"

  While the boy waited, uncertain what course to pursue, another signalcame from the shore and was answered by another pistol shot.

  "Another bunch of Chinks!" he thought.

  The signals brought considerable excitement to the camp, and Jimmieconcluded that the new arrival must be a person of some importance. In ashort time nearly every person in the camp rushed away down the hilltoward the bay where the first launch was anchored, as if to welcome thenew arrivals.

  "Now's my time!" thought the boy, and in an instant his inquisitive headwas thrust under the canvas, and then the low, snarling call of a wolfpenetrated the shadowy place where the men he believed to be prisonerslay.

  The effect of the signal was instantaneous. A figure half arose anddropped back again, only to roll over and over in the direction fromwhich had come the Boy Scout signal used by all members of the WolfPatrol. As the bound figure came awkwardly rolling on, Jimmie saw, withwhat joy may be readily understood, a red head shining in the firelight!Never in all his life had any color looked so good to Jimmie as thatbrilliant red did at that time!

  "Pat Mack?" he whispered.

  The figure wiggled and twisted vigorously, but there was no verbalreply.

  "I'll bet dollars to doughnuts they've put a stick in his mouth," saidJimmie, and this whispered observation was answered by another musculardemonstration.

  "Sure," muttered the boy, "it is Pat an' he's tryin' to talk to me withhis feet, an' them tied up plenty!"

  Bolo in hand he crept into the shelter, although the sound of voicestold him that the people who had gone down the hill were now returning.He could not see the cords which held the still struggling man, but hefound them with his fingers and cut them, not quite certain that he wasserving a friend, but willing, under the circumstances, to take therisk. First the cords which held the feet were severed, then those whichheld the wooden gag in place, then that which confined the hands.

  When this last cord was cut two muscular arms flew up and seized the boyabout the neck, drawing his head down until his nose was buried in thewet clothes of the man he had released.

  "Let up!" he muttered in a smothered voice.

  Still the powerful arms drew him down, and the boy was beginning towonder if he had not better use his bolo when a voice whispered:

  "Jimmie! Is it dead we both are?"

  "We will soon be if you don't let up!" answered Jimmie.

  "Jimmie from the Bowery?" demanded the other.

  "Sure!" was the reply. "What is this, anyway, a catch-as-catch-can? Ifyou don't let up I'll take a rib out with my bolo."

  With a spring which almost keeled the boy over the figure sprang up,ducked under the dripping canvas, and crouched in the thicket from whichJimmie had observed the tent. Jimmie's first thought was to follow, thenhe thought of the remaining prisoners and turned to cut their bonds.

  But he was too late. As he turned three men came to the front of theshelter and bent low for the purpose of entering. To have hesitatedlonger would have been to invite capture, and so, with a sigh of regret,the boy shot under the canvas and joined the other in the thicket.

  "It's leg bail for it!" came the familiar voice of Pat Mack, and theboys poked their faces into the thicket and kept going, regardless ofthe thorns and creepers which tore at their garments and tripped theirfeet. It was so dark now that they could not see a hand held two inchesfrom their eyes, but they kept on, making as little noise as possible.