out an inch yielded? And were not Paco, Santa Ana, and San Pedro Macarti in our hands, with the enemy's lines anywhere between those places and the sea? They were bubbling over with tales to tell of how Company A of the Washingtons had been shot over all night by the natives with a flank fire impossible for them to return in the dark for fear of killing their own inen; how they had held their position in spite of twenty-six killed and wounded; being an average of one man disabled in every four; how, when gray dawn ap

ingtons. Some were sporting the feathered toques of the long-haired Ygreto hill-tribe, whom Aguinaldo beguiled by promise of easy conquest and much looting. Their chief, wounded and captured, complained bitterly as to the manner in which he had been beguiled, and how he and his men had been thrust forward in the van and left to shift for themselves, though they had never before heard the report of a gun. When his wound was healed he was given work to do at the hospital, and soon became a general favorite

peared they had charged the enemy out of their trenches; how M Company of the Fourteenth had lost still more heavily but in spite of all opposition had dislodged a band of rebels from out of a blockhouse at the point of the bayonet; how after the line had swept by, Paco Church had been attacked by two companies of the Californians, under cover of two pieces of the Sixth Artillery in face of the sharpshooters, who fired at them from its stone protection; and how, unable to take it by assault, they had poured oil upon the structure and set it on fire.

Many more were the stirring tales that circulated from mouth to mouth. Hardly anybody returned without some souvenir. Many were brandishing Mausers or Rem

on account of his good-nature and easygoing disposition.*

It was hard to realize that so many of those stalwart men, who had marched out of our barracks but yesterday so full of life, would never see another sunrise or would thereafter live as cripples. Such is the fortune of war! The ambulance wagons began to disgorge their living freight. Poor fellows unable to move were assisted or carried out by rough but tender hands. Gaping wounds and sitattered limbs were borne without a murmur, though the cold perspiration bursting out on their foreheads would very

*Here is a curious item for ethnologists. This Ygreto chief and a soldier acquainted with the Cherokee Indian language were able to converse with each other.

often tell a tale of suffering. The doctors' operating-tables were kept busy without intercession. As soon as the case of one man had been attended to, there was always another ready. The Red Cross nurses were continually on their fect, ministering and assisting and cheering the wounded.

I can relate some little episodes that jcisonally came under my notice.

A nurse asked the driver of an abulance if she could accompany him to the field. "It's dangerous," he answered dubiously, not caring to refuse a lady point-blank. "I don't care," she retorted; and on she jumped and rode away.

An ambulance rolled in bearing a load of wounded natives. The men loitering around the hospital looked at it askance. It seemed hard that so much valuable time should be monopolized in looking after natives, when there might be still some more of our boys dyeing the ground with their blood. Passions assert themselves over ethics in moments like this, however commendable the latter may be from a humanitarian point of view.

He

Poor Joe Maher was brought in, shot over the heart. Everybody knew him as the Quartermaster-Sergeant of Company M. Physically, he was one of the finest men it has ever been my lot to see. stood over six feet, beautifully proportioned, with the outlined muscles of an athlete. Although at one time the champion amateur boxer of the Pacific Coast, his good nature prevented him from abusing his strength. With him were buried, with military honors, the following day, Private Duar, of Company K, and Private O'Brien, of Company H.

Gradually the firing slackened that night till it ceased altogether. Next day, with two friends, I stole out to see the crop that had been reaped by the grim Harvest

er.

There they lay thick along the trail from Paco to San Pedro, in the trenches from which they were driven, and across the rice-fields where they had fallen as they had run, up to the block-houses from which they had been dislodged by the Americans. The very Pasig tossed and whirled their bodies into the sea. Their blue uniforms were dabbled with blood that oozed from out ghastly rents which

the Springfield bullet tears in its victim, or else drilled with the small hole that marks the work of the Krag-Jorgensen. Their stiff limbs were twisted and gnarled into all sorts of fantastic attitudes. One was smiling. He had been shot through the body, and his arm was dangling by a thread. Another was stooping, as though about to pick up a cigar, which still lay beneath his outstretched fingers. His puckered lips betraying his red gums, inade him grin sardonically. Not so a man lying near him. A bullet had carried off the top of his cranium, laying bare his glistening brain. Three had met their death in close proximity, with the natural inclination of men to herd together in the moment of danger.

Walking along the road from Paco, after passing by the church that had been gutted by fire, among the débris of which a woman was diligently poking for souvenirs, there was evidence from all sides of the fierceness of the struggle. All the houses of the friendly natives had been spared; very often, to our detriment, they would hang out the white flag, and as soon as the backs of our troops were turned open fire upon them. The major portion. of the houses left only heaps of ashes, in which pigs and chickens were disporting themselves. All that remained of the officers' headquarters was one solitary smoke-blackened set of uprights.

It had never entered the Insurgents' heads that the Americans could push them so far; and when once on the run, they had fled from village to village leaving all their belongings behind them. A house was found with its cellar stacked to the ceiling with knives. These were intended for the women who were to follow behind and administer to the wants of the wounded Americans. Another room was replete with Insurgent flags, purple and crimson, with the sunburst. These were the flags which were to render Manila gay when Aguinaldo was eating his dinner within the walled city.

About four miles up the road we pass by another cluster of burned shacks. The trail is thick with soldiers. Some are on guard, others are resting after their exertions and fighting their battles over again. The pigs and chickens are having a bad

time of it. They are being chased all over the country to form a welcome addition to the Government pork and beans. Perhaps more of them escaped than were captured, for the chickens can fly like eagles and the porkers run like greyhounds. There is a group of Philippine damsels flirting with a couple of soldiers as they boil their eggs over the hot embers of a shack.

Santa Ana Church, a large two-storied, oblong building at right angles to the road, is used as a temporary barracks. A shell or so has struck daylight through the roof,

rice-fields on the right. Curiously enough, the bells bear the trade-mark of a New York firm.

Cutting over the rice-fields, bearing to the right, we encounter some chickens picking at a rice-bag the contents of which are half-spilled. Their abandoned condition seems to appeal to the sympathy of the friend with me more than did the earlier scenes.

At length, after a weary up-hill drag, we reach San Pedro Macarti, which is as yet the limit to which our troops have

and the walls are pitted with rifle-bullets. Many of the sacred images have been knocked out of their niches, and there is a pitiful supply of wooden arms and legs lying loose around. But the altar has not suffered to the same degree. Around the different galleries of the extensive edifice all the chests and cupboards have been burst open and their contents, mostly of theological books and records, are tossed pell-mell on the ground. The organ is a shapeless mass of twisted wires, stove-in pipes, and crushed beams. From the belfry, which is escaladed by a bamboo ladder, can be seen at a stone's-throw the Pasig River on the left and the undulating

pushed. The orders are to dispose of every native on sight. But the order is superfluous, as they have taken especial care to put many a mile between them and our forces.

The buildings erstwhile the headquarters of the Insurgent officers are now the residence of Colonel Smith. The furniture and belongings indicate that whatever the condition of their men might be, the officers knew how to make themselves comfortable. The rooms are spacious, and have the usual allowance of clocks, mirrors, chandeliers, carpets, rugs, etc., which the white man generally considers is his perquisite alone. These quarters are sit

uated on the Pasig River, which laps against the whitewashed outer wall. No cascoes or sampans are gliding on its desolate surface. But little knots of soldiers are indulging in their first ablutions for two days, and laughing and chatting as though at a Saturday or Sunday picnic.

We wandered over to Company E. The boys were bivouacking in San Pedro Macarti Church, on the summit of the hill. This church is of a hoary old age. Both by situation and massiveness of outline, it can be easily surmised that its builders

hind her. Just then everybody gave vent to his feelings by a cheer, for General King, the hero of the hour, was trotting up the hill with his staff. It was he in person who had ridden along the lines and headed the charge. In physical appearance he would not have posed as a poor model for one of Sir Walter Scott's knights of old. He has a well-rounded, patrician head, with somewhat heavy features, though clear cut. His crisp hair betrays signs of whitening. But on horseback his erect, well-knit, alert figure seems gifted with a

intended it to be capable of repelling attack. It had been terribly knocked about by our artillery, and then was taken by Company E at the charge. In its basement was a gloomy dungeon, with a torture-chamber attached, though to give the former occupants their due, the crumbling iron spikes eaten into by rust and the rickety old rack showed that its day of usefulness had long since been a thing of the past.

Some of the members of Company E were roping a cow. She appeared by no means eager to submit peaceably to American rule, and caused considerable diversion by scattering her assailants and rejoining her calf, with the lariat still trailing be

second youth. He acknowledged the good feelings of the boys with no pretense or affectation.

A good story was going the rounds concerning General King and Captain Robinson. Captain Robinson had reason to give orders to his "ratters" in King's presence, and wound them up with a few expletives not included in the manual of tactics. "Captain Robinson," suavely said the General, "will not your company obey you without those unnecessary appendages?" A few minutes later Captain Robinson had reason to give the order "Cease firing!" which he did in the gentlest of tones. It was as though he had not uttered a word. Immediately General King

caught on to the joke. "Cease firing!" he yelled, adding one or two well-rounded oaths. At once every gun was silent.

The task of burying the dead Filipinos had already begun. Prisoners were employed for this purpose, under the supervision of a corporal, with a detail of men. Broad trenches, but of shallow depth, ou account of the dearth of shovels and pic' were dug. In them were laid the dead bodies collected within a convenient radius. The prisoners apparently regarded their fallen comrades with supreme indifference, and would occasionally stamp down with their feet any obtrusive arm or leg. At the base of a knoll fronting blockhouses 14 and 15, there was a narrow dyke with at least sixty dead, contained in so small a space that they lay piled one on the other. These were quickly buried by detaching the side of the bank and slipping it in on the top of them.

Just as we were taking ourselves off, one of our party stumbled across a Remington rifle. Not many steps away we discovered its owner lying face downward in the long rice-grass, overlooked by the search-party. He was an old man, and had evidently been hit in the back when running away. His countenance bore on it a look of horror that would have furnished a novelist with a whole week's write-up. I possessed myself of his bayonet and belt, with scarcely a cartridge missing from its pouches.

In writing these details of the battle of Santa Ana, I have inadvertently omitted thus far the names of Major Sime and Captain O'Neil of Company M. If it had been left to the boys themselves to decide who had encouraged them and spurred them on amongst the officers, their names would have probably headed the list in very large type.

The town of Pasig on the other side of the river, had surrendered, and was garrisoned by Company L, and Guadalupe had fallen into our hands. But our lines had become so thin in advancing and our men so far apart on the skirmish-line, that it was deemed wise for them to be recalled. Meanwhile we had been ordered to relieve Company E which badly needed a rest. We ascended the river in cascoes towed up by a launch. The banks were lined by the

Washingtonians engaged in every pursuit from swimming and fishing to grappling for Mausers with impromptu hooks hammered out of any old scrap of iron.

On our arrival at San Pedro, we were quartered in the graveyard attached to the church. There was a generous collection of old bones and skulls scattered around. From the matting of cocoanut fiber lying about and the bamboo and thatching filched from the dismantled shacks, we rigged up rough shelters against the heat of the sun under which we unrolled our blankets. The only drinking-water available was from the river, and was packed up by the prisoners, and then boiled. Those who were too impatient to await the boiling and cooling process, and drank the water in its original condition, very often paid the penalty of stomach troubles.

There were fifty-four prisoners locked up in a vestibule of the church. They had formed the rear-guard of the retreat, and their sprinting powers not being equal to the demand on them had been captured by the Californians. These prisoners appeared to be rather cheerful than otherwise, and laughed and joked among themselves. They had bettered their belief that they were to be shot without mercy, as their leaders had led them to expect on falling into our hands, and they had plenty of rice to eat, which was more than they had in their own army. Their opinion of the "peerless, bullet-proof Aguinaldo" appeared to be bitter. They accused him of too careful a consideration for his personal safety, a common error of judgment among soldiers. For it is not in the rôle of the commander-in-chiefwho is the thinking part of the army, and not the fighting part-to play the brave hero act under fire with his men. The prisoners were very useful at first in packing up wood and water for the kitchen and policing around quarters. Later on, however, an order was promulgated by General Otis forbidding the working of the prisoners, thus putting them on the usual footing of prisoners of war among the civilized.