Chapter 13

About dawn of May 2, the time the Mulumuluan Guerreros were loading the captured repeat-rifles and machine guns and swivel cannons into the sailing-canoes, Sergeant Peping Barreto was shedding off his pants in his querida’s river nipa-hut. Afterwards, canoes loaded, the Guerreros rowed down the river of Tumaga toward the Fortaleza dela Immaculada Concepciòn in Rio Hondo. In less than that lapse of time, from the loading and lifting of anchors in barrio Mulumuluan, the sergeant had laid his querida    mistress thrice.

It was quite dawn still. He drew his pants up, quickly, but did not put on his shirt rushing out of the room, thinking Must be there before my company leaves without me. If I miss them Lieutenant Fermin will cook me until my skin is redder and more crispy than that of a lechon    roasted pig.

Chinga!    Fuck!

Coquettish, warm from the bamboo bed, the querida tempted him back to bed, saying, ‘Come, come back to our warm bed, amor, querido!’

He ran down the bamboo steps to escape from her clutches, from the warm bed he had just vacated. In one arm he carried his folded shirt and old, unleashed shoes, and in the other his rifle.

Before the river hut was his outrigger canoe. It was tied to a sambuan pole (where the name Zamboanga originally derived, says a legend) stuck into the bed of the river. Into the outrigger vinta    canoe he flung his shirt, unleashed shoes, and his rifle. While unhitching the canoe, he heard his querida calling him from the top rung of the bamboo steps. ‘Come back to bed, querido,’ she cried. He turned his head toward the sound of her voice, and saw her standing in a very light chemise on the steps. On the bamboo rail she laid a hand She called him, pleading, teasing. A gust of wind blew her transparent chemise tightly round her body, pressing the light cloth against her thighs and belly and heightening the contours and landscapes of her warm but fresh flesh. At last , the cold wind diminished, sighing into a wee bit like whispering.

He got into his canoe and  paddled fast down the river. As her cry faded, then vanished, he slapped the wooden paddle in  the water intensely. Faster and faster ‘Sarge Peping Barreto paddled. Images of the lieutenant cursing and tongue-lashing him roared in his head: ‘Puñetero, cabròn! Hijo de cabra!    Son of a goat!’

Against this fearful images and licentious liaison, he shuddered dreadfully. Above his chest his chin quivered. He paddled faster and harder. Mea culpa, but I cannot help what kuan   blank I am! He lifted his chin and looked up at the sky, still heavy and weighed down with carpet-like clouds. ‘Seňor Jesús, tiene lastima con este pobre pecador!   Lord Jesus, have mercy on this poor sinner!’ he cried in Chabacano.

He was sure he had not rowed for a long while. And yet, ahead, there were his comrades in their Mulumuluan sailing-canoes. Maybe just a hundred yards upriver. Obviously, something had stopped them --- what? Not his prayers, nor would Lieutenant Fermin halt in the middle of nowhere just to wait for him. As a cannoneer and chief gunner he was only indispensable in the village of Rio Hondo, with the hateful Spaniards firing their cannons on the fortified area and the ramparts of the Fort. In his head, he could hear the eighteen-cannons of the two orillons going boom boom boom. But in this river Tumaga? Oy, oy.

                ....                

                ‘Puñetero! donde vos estaba?’ swore Lieutenant Fermin in Chabacano. He had not turned round at the swishing sound of the wooden paddle. Sort of knew it was his chief gunner, the irrepressible fornicator, without turning around. Who could sneak behind him like that. ‘Sarge Peping had a way of creeping behind you after his liaisons with his queridas    mistresses. Quite an achievement, since he was nearly a foot taller and shoulders twice wider than the average Indio. But he was so thin, and frame iron-flat you hardly could see him looking from one side? he thinking No less active in fornication than  el General himself, whose active affaire d’amour in time had turned to legend: how he would screw a native girl wherever the desire came to him --- even in the cornfields. Still without turning around, he continued, ‘Fornicating, I presume ... don’t say anything, no excuses, por favor. Because I swear to God I will cut off your cojones  balls myself .... hó, o, so help me Jesús, Marìa, y Josè!

‘Si, si, teniente. Por favor…’ He jutted out his narrow jaw, its muscles taut. When embarrassed or out of words, from his mouth would spout kuan    something like laughter: Hehehehe, the laughter contaminating, infectious like air-driven virus. And whatever you felt for him --- anger, disappointment, desperation disappeared right there and then.

‘We may have to force our way through,’ said Lieutenant Fermin. Straight ahead at the Moro blockade of canoes he stared; he had not looked at his chief gunner still. ‘Make ready with our quick-firing machine guns.’ After a short pause, he turned his head toward the chief gunner, saying, ‘And do not think it is over with us, sabes tu, Peping. You still have to explain to me your being nowhere ... Susmariosep    Jesus, Joseph,  and Mary, in this particular, critical time!’

Hhehehehe, came the kuan    something-sound again, ensuing not so real laughter as suggested by its unimpetuous tone, undistinguished nature And yet, the kuan    something-sound could be anything he thought; especially, non-laughter. ‘Fire only at my command,’ and this time looked back over his shoulders. Directly, sharply, his eyes riveted at his chief gunner. ‘We do not have any quarrel with Datu Hassan’s Moros,’ said Fermin. ‘Do you understand, ‘Sarge Peping?’

‘Si, si, teniente.’

At a silent, discreet signal from the chief gunner, half a dozen sailing-vintas paddled ahead of the other canoes. Three canoes flanked each side of the bank carrying repeat-rifles. In front was Sergeant Peping’s canoe, just alongside the lieutenant’s.

The Mulumuluan Guerreros had luck and nature with them on their side. It was the hour of the morning when the rising el sol was not in their eyes. By noon it would be over their head, and past that hour in front of their canoes. Then, it would be another story, as el sol would be in theirs, not the Moros’ eyes. If Fermin waited too long, when the firing started only multitudinous sunspots and a mass of incandescent whiteness would be in his eyesight --- no Moros tribesmen clearly visible.

Send the first volley of machine gun fire in the center of the line of Moro canoes: open a gap there, rush in, then firing the long rifles, firing at will.

Chinga!   Fuck! to juicy sweet querida mia!

Although Lieutenant Fermin gave no verbal order, his gunner knew exactly what he would do. Since the start of the rebellion, in January, ‘Sarge Peping had been in much worse situation. Months of fighting had honed his gunnery skill and senses, that he could now anticipate his lieutenant’s command.

‘Remember, ‘Sarge, do not shoot until ...but wait for my command,’ he said, thinking Never take your eyes off the Moro chief’s once we get close enough. Must not miss anything, por favor! Bluff: I must bluff, out-bluff these infidels who are well-known and notorious bluffers!

Forward to the Moro blockade rowed the Filipino Mulumuluan Guerreros of the tribus Subanon and Lutao. Sailing toward the Moro blockade, steady, all arms at the ready, approaching: 100, 80, 60, and 50 meters. But the Moro blockade did not budge, not a single canoe moved or inched off the blockade line.

Coño!    Cunt!

Lieutenant Fermin said to himself: If the Moro blockade won’t yield, a command to fire… fuego will be given at thirty meters y mierda con todo    and excrement to all! On, on they paddled, rowing canoes blatantly advancing toward the Moro line of blockade. Behind them, little waves rippling Close enough now, fix your eyes at the infidel datu and don’t loose it At this point, up shot Lieutenant Fermin’s right hand, shaking in anticipation of his command to fire. While at the Moro line of blockade, upriver, the datu stared back at the young lieutenant. But unlike him, the datu’s hand griping his rifle did not tremble: he was rather more confused than ready, vague, to yield or respond, even awed at the daring of the Christian guerrero facing him intrepidly. Now barely thirty meters of empty expanse of water between them. Closer…closer…came the Mulumuluan sailing-canoes.

At the bow of one, Sergeant Peping whirled his head toward his gunners, shouting, ‘Don’t forget ... concentrate all your fire at the center of the Moro line of blockade!’ Seconds went by ... silence still. What is keeping Lieutenant Fermin from giving his order to fire? Less than thirty meters ..., thought ‘Sarge Peping. I am sure we have passed it already. And then, abruptly, the Moro chieftain dropped his rifle to his side, and the Moro canoe blockade line split in half like a sluice breaking. Behind it the mass of canoes parted, opening a way for Lieutenant Fermin’s canoes to sail on upriver, peacefully. Not a single shot had been fired: Fermin’s bluff had paid off.

Vigorously, the Mulumuluan rowers paddled their sailing canoes, and in spite of their load of ordnance, sprung like wild horses through the broken blockade.

Along the western bank of the river was a large population of monkeys. It was yet too early in the morning to be about, even for wild monkeys. But the sudden splashing of paddles in the river rattled and unnerved them. By its ridge they barked and swung from one branch to the next, shaking its foliage. Farther up, underneath the roof of the woods, from one end of it to the other, were almost a hundred monkeys; bustling and shrieking, as insane interns cry in a madhouse, their deadening shriek shook the face of the hill, si. 

Soon the Mulumuluan Guerreros had sailed past the ridge, then through an invisible line binding a town to its name, so too a river. Big or small somewhere vaguely the river Tumaga had become the river Tugbungan, flowing past its former pueblo into Tugbungan. After Tugbungan was Alcalde Artang’s barrio of Cabonegro. The original river Tumaga became Cabonegro River, and winding southwest into Magay River. This we know.

After the river Tumaga, they never again heard the barking wild monkeys.

A slight wind blew. Lieutenant Fermin was already at the border of Tugbungan swampland, and the men unfurled their sails. Yet the sailing-canoes barely made a ripple in the water, as they slowly entered the marshes.

Here the nipa palms were thick. Mangrove trees were huge and tall. Silently and at a snail’s pace the canoes crept on. Always, Lieutenant Fermin kept to the side of the swamp where mangroves and nipa palms shielded them from Spanish patrol which maybe in the vicinity, the same as they.

Will be taking much, muck risk, and also here there are too many inquisitive and curious eyes. Cannot risk being seen, premature discovery will be the end of my mission. Truly, cannot risk it, si, and si.  

About half an hour later, Fermin felt it was safe to leave the marshes. No Spanish patrols, not a single one, were heard going downriver from the old port of Masinloc. Thus, the lieutenant and his Mulumuluan Guerreros emerged from the swampland and mangrove, continuing downriver.

Several hours later, about mid-afternoon of the same day, Lieutenant Fermin’s Mulumuluan revolucionarios’ canoes approached barrio Cabonegro. Right away their spirit rose, although they were hours yet to Rio Hondo, their actual mission and destination, since Cabonegro was a stronghold of the Zamboangueño revolucionarios. No less than Don Laureano Artang was its presidente and alcalde local de rancherias; titles given by the Spaniards to amuse the Indios.

They had not sailed half a kilometer down Cabonegro River, the heart of the barrio, a distance away still. But already Filipino rebels were seen along both sides of the banks. Maybe over two scores … all were silent, hands gripping tight on rifles.

After their near encounter with the Rajah Muda Hassan’s tribesmen, they were elated to see their comrades of barrio Cabonegro. They briskly waved their hands, shouting grand wishes and jokes at them. It did not matter whether one was a total stranger or no.

‘Como estas, hombre? Have you already made judido of those malcriados Españoles!’

‘Hoy, hombre guapo! if only I have a sister... swear to God, I will let her marry you: mio futuro brother-in-law.’

‘Buena suerte a todos los Cabonegros.’

‘We will see you at the Fortaleza dela Immaculada Concepción.’

‘Recuerdos!’

‘Vamonos!’

Et cetera & so forth.

From one end to the other of the small flotilla flowed an inexplicable relief, joy, and excitement. The sort that fills you when very happy. Indeed, the air and sight of the barrio of Cabonegro should be most welcome.

But Lieutenant Fermin and the Mulumuluans were soon puzzled. Because there was no response, no sign of welcome. Only deep silence and gloom.

‘Qué pasa, hoy?’ they asked among themselves.

‘Do the Cabonegros not recognize us, their comrades? Maybe they are just being cautious. Resonáble, but don’t tell me los hijos de cabra are unaware we are attacking the Fort tonight.’

Pues, Fermin vigorously waved his rifle, and his men encouraged by his example pumped theirs over their heads. Again, shouts of greetings, louder now, were rising from the river toward the people along the riverbanks. Simultaneously, broad smiles broke in their faces.

Still no response from the river banks and houses there. Instead, of all things unexpected ... a single, solitary shot roared, split the air and muted the shouts of joy and greetings.

As Lieutenant Fermin searched for its source, a smoke rose over a promontory by the river just ahead. On it, he saw a man holding a rifle held over his chest, and his face half hidden behind the cloud of gun smoke.

‘Puñeta!’ swore Fermin, ‘Què pasa? How can they mistake us for the enemy?’

Behind the lieutenant’s canoe was his chief gunner’s, ‘Sarge Peping’s, who was swearing and cursing, too, and in the same breath, he cried, ‘Be alert, compoblanos, for anything. Alerto!’

 Though much confused and dithered, and pressing his temple with his left free hand as you do to relieve pressure in your forehead, Lieutenant Fermin with the other waved his Remington rifle exuberantly in a gesture of peace and comradeship. Particularly waving it at the man on the promontory, him that had fired his rifle.

Apart from the others, the man stood with the rifle against his chest, obviously leader of the group, el jefe.

‘Susmariosep!   Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!’

‘Amigo! oi, amigo!’ shouted Lieutenant Fermin, waving his arms. ‘We are men of General Tenorio ... we are your comrades.’

Silence. And then, ‘Hó, o,’ said the Cabonegro rebel officer, finally. ‘Compañeros!’

‘We come from Mulumuluan.’

‘We have orders to invite you to el presidente Artang’s headquarters.’

‘We thank you in advance for the alcalde’s invitation, compañero,’ replied Lieutenant Fermin. ‘But we must go on ... muchassisimas gracias.’

‘Perdòna me, compañero, but el presidente “insists” that you accept his hospitality.’

‘“Insists”?’

‘Si, el presidente “insists.” We have orders to take you to his presence when you come by.’

So, Lieutenant Fermin was brought to Alcalde Artang’s headquarters, but alone. It was out there on a plain, east of the river past a savanna and grassland. Quite some distance away that they took a pair of horses, small but sturdy, from horsemen apparently waiting for them under an orchard.

Lieutenant and the man with the rifle made quick time. It was going on to two o’clock in the afternoon. El sol was hot, sweltering, and unbearably hot though summer was over.

Fermin rode in front of the other. His horse started to sweat, its flank dark and wet between his legs. He felt the water sticking to his trousers legs. Coňo I should be on my way to Rio Hondo already, not paying a courtesy call on a vain, glorified self-styled presidente.

Finally they reached the headquarters, on a wee incline in the savanna. But Alcalde Artang was not in. Fermin looking around was told by an adjutant to sit down and wait, then without another word, left Fermin alone, shutting the door quietly behind him. 

Lieutenant Fermin did not sit down right away, expecting Alcalde Artang to come in any minute, he thinking He invited me, not I inviting myself. Why, in a minute he shall be walking into his room. And yet, a quarter of an hour went past, no sign of the alcalde. Fermin reluctantly sat in a chair he recalled the adjutant had pointed to him earlier.

When another quarter of an hour went by, and Alcalde Artang had not appeared, he stood up from his chair, and walked back and forth in the room. Unconsciously, he dropped his arms alongside his flanks, wiped his hands on his trousers, and noticed they were wet with perspiration ... or was probably the horse’s sweat?

No-no, part also from stress and apprehension opening my sweat pores. Jesús! He was worried about his part and the Mulumuluans’ in the big offensive that night. The Zamboangueños would launch it late that evening at half past nine o’clock. But without his Mulumuluan Guerreros, there would not be any surprise attack on the eastern flank of the fortified area.

Surprise? Likely los Espaňoles already knew. A Spanish patrol or sympathizer might have seen him upriver during the Moro blockade and coming and getting out of the swamp; had not been able to take the full, complete evasive moves he had planned. But how about his men now? --- were his men whom he had left at the river bank all right?

Trying to understand but could not what was going on. If another quarter hour or an hour, the alcalde did not come in yet, should he not leave? Would Don Artang, the self-styled el presidente, and his men stop him? he thinking He will not dare! Or will he? Too proud and ambitious, blind, the pretender to the revolutionary presidency has become; we cannot predict his actions. At that moment, a long shadow fell across the room. Fermin did not have to look up; he had not returned to his chair, and was standing there in the middle of the room. There framed in the door was a tall figure: it was the self-styled el presidente himself, Alcalde Artang.

In quick, long strides, Artang approached a table at one side of the room, neither looking here nor there, least of all at the lieutenant. He rather slumped himself in his chair, with a high back, the kind Spanish encomienderos favored in the colony. To complete the picture of a Spanish plantation aristocrat, he only needed a planter’s wide-brimmed top hat on.

The moment his eyes fell on the lieutenant, he started to harangue and shout heatedly. He did not rise from his high-backed armchair, but pounded at the mahogany table top, clenching and unclenching his fist: there was a resounding bang bang bang --- much, much louder than any clenched fist you can imagine as it strikes on wooden planks. His eyes blazed.

Hot words blurted through his lips. Sometimes a spray of saliva sprayed, trailing at the tail of his words. Continuous fist-pounding and heated shouting exploded in the room. Likely were heard by guards and aides outside. Now very red was the alcalde’s face, just as if he had just swallowed a fistful of katumbal, the local hot chili: you know what I mean. But he never got up once from his armchair, contend only at pounding his fists at the tabletop, sometimes with open palms; ranting like a mad man.

Between the fist poundings, palm slappings, and fiery berate, Lieutenant Fermin caught some words: ‘insulto,’ ‘taken for granted,’ ‘nuay respeto,’ ‘embarazoso,’ ‘sin permiso o suplica,’ et cetera & so forth. By joining and filling in the spaces between the hiatus and missing words, was able to understand why Don Artang’s face was so red and his eyes blazing.

Alcalde Artang was demanding why no request was made for their passage through his barrio of Cabonegro. It was a simple matter of courtesy and formality. And yet, this small courtesy was denied him, por que? he asked; was he insignificant, his barrio unimportant? ‘Are we not together in this, to get the Spaniards out of our land?’ he shouted. A hard knuckle-rap on the table. ‘... not informed, not advised that you were passing through my town,’ he screamed. ‘I am made to look inútil y estúpido.’

‘Excusa me por favor, Alcalde Artang,’ said Lieutenant Fermin. ‘I was just following orders. As it is now, I am already very much delayed’; he told him of the Moro blockade at Tumaga River.

This worsened the situation, instead of lessening it. Clearly, the knowledge that Lieutenant Fermin was delayed and put in a tight spot did not change Alcalde Artang’s combative attitude or lessened his injured feeling. On the contrary, increased it more. Again, the knuckle-rap, and open palm on the table top. ‘Si, si, I know.’

Unknown to the lieutenant, though would he suspect this much later when he would hear of the assassination attempt, that the alcalde and Datu Hassan had planned the river blockade?

‘Mira vos,’ said Artang, face now turned dark crimson, ‘even the Moros know that they should be given the proper courtesy when you pass through their land. Did you expect less from me, the alcalde local de rancherias y el presidente of this town … hah? Puñeta!’

Even darker crimson became Alcalde Artang in the face, yet he continued sitting in his armchair while the lieutenant remained standing before it; obviously choosing to give his tirades at the lieutenant while sitting.

He was not going to show any respect to this young fanfarrón    braggart. Not even a shadow of the dignity normally shown to a guest or equal by a host by standing up when speaking. So, the mayor went on ranting seated in his high-backed armchair.

The lieutenant shuffled his feet on the floor, a manifestation of his uneasiness. Awkwardly, he leaned sidewise, looking like he was searching for something. When his eyes fell on his chair, Fermin walked over to it, but did not sit on it and merely rested a hand on its wooden back frame.

His expression had not changed: worried and somber still.

‘Your “Excellency” Mayor Artang,’ said he, emphasizing on word ‘Excellency,’ --- ‘may I ask your permission to leave now?’

‘No-no,’ shouted Alcalde Artang, the self-styled presidente of the barrio of Cabonegro. ‘Who told you can just leave ...whenever you want? That’s the character of General Tenorio’s people, which is really not surprising. Because you people think that you are somebody already.’

He was not through yet. He would show this young braggart, put him in his right place. ‘But listen to me: if the Spaniards believe we are weak and cannot defend ourselves here,’ said Alcalde Artang, ‘... a long time ago they would have attacked General Don Tenorio’s forces. You and the General’s lackeys, alone, like that Captain Morales cannot expect to gain any victory against the Spaniards ... not at all possible without me. The revolution needs me! Have you seen those machine guns and cannons…?’

‘Did not see them, Don Artang, said Lieutenant Fermin, thinking But not a hand, or a finger did he lift to help get those guns. Ay, ahora would you believe how boastfully he speaks ... as if single-handedly he had hijacked those thirteen Spanish gunboats! --- ‘because over there at the other side, where I crossed the river ...’

‘No, no. there, there, are the cannons. There before my headquarters overlooking the Fort, before the boundary of Santa Barbara beyond where Major Marquez has his trenches. And so, those cannons of mine when the proper time comes will decide the war we are waging against the Spaniards. Victory, hó, o.

Lieutenant Fermin was not listening; he was thinking Can you imagine that man, that hypocrito! He lifted his hand from the back of the chair, walked away from it but was careful not to put his back toward the mayor Really, he did not have to listen to all this, and he was in a hurry ‘Excuse me, again, Don Artang,’ he said. ‘Because of this new, final assault ... but of course, I assume you know of this, I really must go already. Have orders from General Tenorio himself that my men and the repeat-rifles from Mulumuluan would be needed ... vital on the east flank. And it is becoming late afternoon already, honorable mayor. I believe, truly, we may not make it on time for the assault tonight if …’

Still the alcalde local remained seated in his high-backed armchair, eyes very wide and pin-pointed. ‘Here, here only you and your men stay until I decide when you can go,’ he said firmly. There was a sort of finality there when Artang waving his hand pointed at the empty chair. ‘Sit, sit on it,’ he ordered Fermin. ‘And you wait.’

Before he had set his rump down comfortably in the chair, and bent his legs to loosen the stiffness there after standing too long, Alcalde Artang abruptly told Fermin could go. Not wholly relieved was the lieutenant, since Artang added, instantly, in almost the same breath, ‘But not to proceed to Rio Hondo yet. Join with your men first, must be waiting for you. They must be restless, thinking Alcalde Artang has held you as hostage already!’ His lips did not even stretch in a smile: laugh most improbable and unfamiliar on them. He went on, ‘I will send my adjutant to inform when you can leave and join the assault of the Fort.’

Already it was late, long past nightfall. Really, quite late even if he were to start immediately when he got back to his men.

He found them waiting for him by the river banks. Many had abandoned their canoes, and were lounging on the slopes; others insensible went off somewhere and he could not call them back immediately. And some dared to go into the houses and chatted with their cold owners.

 Nonetheless, the Mulumuluan Guerreros were much relieved when they saw Fermin; surely they now expected to proceed on with their journey. But when Lieutenant Fermin told them they could not leave barrio Cabonegro, not yet, they grew impatient and agitated. Their restiveness grew until it reached their toes, least to say, this worsened because they did not understand politics.

The most restive wanted to leave Cabonegro immediately. ‘Whether the alcalde permits it or no,’ they said, ‘it does not concern us. We will shoot our way upriver, if we have to; hó, o. por qué no?’

Lieutenant Fermin must have a difficulty time calming them down: tribesmen who had been waiting for hours to go on and create hell on the enemy, the Spaniards, are hard to bridle in. Fight the alcalde local de las rancherias? thought Fermin. Fight him? You don’t bluff and cannot bluff with Mayor Artang, like I have with Hassan’s Moros. Orgullo and pride will get in the way, and swallow all discretion and common sense, leaving only pride and. That’s what will happen, so help me Nuestra Seňora dela Immaculada Concepción!

Lieutenant Fermin knew just how late they were already, and he was very much worried. He had planned that part of their trip upriver to the Fort was to hide in the swamps and marshland, stay there until dark, and then, in the cover of darkness, stealthily materialize like huge rats from the marshes, and assault the Fort. Pounce on those hijo de cabra Spaniards. But he now had to drop that plan and take his chances upriver. Forget about hiding in the marshes that night.

Me cago!    I defecate! He would have to take the chance, undo the entire carefully drawn-out plan. Wish to luck he would not be spotted by the Spanish patrols, or spies, in the river, no-sir, not before launching his attack.

Night and darkness: he would have to depend on it to make him invisible in the river. For what else could he do? It was not his fault, but Alcalde Artang’s whose pride was great and was flatulent with vanity and ambition.

....

About seven-thirty in the evening when Lieutenant Rosendo Fermin was informed by Alcalde Artang’s adjutant that he could now leave Cabonegro. Only had some two hours to make it to the Fort. No way could he make it on the scheduled time now. Unless he could fly. Just the same he had to leave and join his comrades, and throw precautions to the wind. For the assault of the east flank of the Fort was the key to General Tenorio’s surprise attack there.

Immediately, he and his Mulumuluan Guerreros started off upriver. ‘The earliest possible time I will be in Rio Hondo will be about ten thirty in the evening ... a three-hour trip upriver, give or take half an hour,’ he told himself, ‘rowing like crazy all the way. Since there is no wind and will expect none later at night.’

Chapter 14

At this period of time, southwest of the trenches, at the camp of Captain Morales’ Deportados, three gunners were waiting for orders to fire their artillery. One was teasing Simon Centeno, him that we know had overheard his lieutenants, Lamon and Pascual, talk of the conspiracy to assassinate General Tenorio.

‘Ay, you ’Mon,’ said the one, using the familiar nickname of Centeno. You will never be able to see your idol  el General ... will not ever tell him how you idolized him’

‘Idolize …? y por qué no puede!’ replied Centeno. ‘El General is worthy of all our respect and admiration!’ --- his voice in high pitch. ‘Even if it were true, you think I’m crazy, hò, o, crazy enough to go to his camp ... and see him just to say that? I believe you have mistaken me for somebody else.’

‘Ever since we met at bivouac you have been telling us that same tale ... how you have been trying to meet your idol el General,’ the one turned his head on his shoulder toward Centeno, though he could not  see him quite clearly in the half light, even half darkness.

Resting a hand on the hard steel of the cannon barrel, as if to get comfort from it, he continued, 

‘And you will never see the General now!’

‘Never?’ cried Simon Centeno, very much vexed But I don’t care, señor! he was thinking: Thank God, he does not suspect why I have been trying to see el General. But I had to tell them the lie to explain why I have been missing the last times. Besides of course losing my way, this is shameful to admit.

‘Hó, o: never!’ said a second gunner, ‘because when the shooting starts the first bullet will strike you between those two beady eyes of yours ... those same eyes that want to see Don Gueremon.’

‘And to you, cabròn!’ said Centeno, aloud through the half darkness although the second gunner was not three paces from his side, ‘the first bullet will smash your cojones, and then a grapeshot slicing off the helmet of your penis.’

Unlike the one, the second gunner responded by wholly cursing Centeno, ‘Coño de su puta madre! Sinvergüenza!’

This cursing had an unexpected effect on the unassuming Simon Centeno, because the troubled trooper responded furiously. ‘Inùtil! sin bola-bola    eunuch!’ He could not say more, his anger was abruptly cut short. For his head reeled and shoulders shook, even his body from the waist up. He could not control the shaking and was glad it was dark and the gunners could not see him shaking.

Alongside their cannon, the third gunner had not said anything. He turned his face toward the bantering sounds between his two comrades and Centeno, all three across from him. Still he did not say a word.

‘You wait after this battle, ’Mon, oy,’ said the second gunner. ‘Ebos   you!  because you will be the first to loose them. Oo, o. I promise you!’

‘Promise, proo misss!’

A few more tirades followed, no longer loud, rather almost mute, and then silence. The bantering did not lessen Centeno’s determination to see el General, of course. It further increased his willpower and determination. Before the half darkness turned into full night and the assault began, he intended to be on his way to try once more to see the General.

....

Now, until this time, no word of Lieutenant Fermin’s whereabouts was received at the Santa Barbara advance headquarters. Only when an adjutant arrived quarter to ten, fifteen minutes past the hour of the major assault, did el General have any new information: that Alcalde Artang had held up Lieutenant Fermin in his barrio Cabonegro. Denied passage out of Alcalde Artang’s barrio, he was not released until so many hours later. General Tenorio realized he would be assaulting the Fort without a surprise assault on the eastern front.

Coño!    Cunt! that badly fornicated son of a cuckold Protestant.

El General would have to do with what forces he had then, without Fermin’s Mulumuluan Guerreros, you know, and that Lieutenant Fermin would make it yet although later. Cannot postpone it any longer: launch the main assault as planned, though without Lieutenant Fermin’s Mulumuluan Guerreros and his archers.

Coño de su puta madre ‘se si Artang,’ cried General Tenorio, aloud; not concerned if his staff, all present then, both civil and military, heard him cursing.

Back and forth, he walked in front of his camp table, alternately swinging his hands by his flanks or hooking them on his back. He recalled not minutes ago he had mocked his two top officers who had done the same thing, walking up and down restlessly. In spite of the moody air, a grin nearly spread under his cheeks. ‘Maybe there entered feces into the alcalde's head! Is it not madness to hold and delay our own forces, spoiling our plans and strategy?  Chinga   Fuck!’

Just a few meters away from him stood Don Salas, who had been silent, though little emotion marked his face. You would be deceived by it, seeing this almost unperturbed mood you would conclude he was detached, stoic, to everything, to what was going on round them now. A mistake for he was one of our most loyal and sensitive officers of the revolution.

Often times, the General swiveled his head toward the door. Was he expecting the youthful Lieutenant Fermin to come in any moment? Maybe yes, since he had much faith in him. But while no one came in yet, General Tenorio continued speaking aloud. He did not mind whether his secretary general heard him, or anyone at all: his top military officers, Captain Juan Morales and Major Melanio Marquez and his civil revolutionary officials, Administrator Salvador Noche, and other civil  officials like Señores Luis Macrohon, Manuel Tarroza, and Vicente Saavedra.

The wicks of the gas lamps on the camp table were burning out. An aide of the General’s suite raised and lit them. New lamps were brought in by a soldier, followed by his shadow and a frame of light from the old lamps.

When the new gas lamps were lit, it consequently brightened the place and drove away some of the dreariness and gloom.

The General Tenorio pointed at a long, wooden table. Nothing lying there save a map of the pueblo of Zamboanga. After the officers had all gathered round him, General Gueremon Tenorio said, ‘Por favor, sit down, gentlemen.’ The minute the men were seated, except for Secretary General Salas, who preferred to remain standing, he said to them:

‘We already know why Lieutenant Fermin has been delayed ... that is now water under the bridge. Let us not talk about it anymore. There is much to do and more urgent matters that need our immediate attention.’

‘Si, si,’ all together the suite of officials replied.

‘So, what do we do now? Postpone it, our major offensive? Perhaps the only one or the last we will have the chance to fully, and successfully launch!’ he said. ‘You might like to know, gentlemen, that in my opinion ... whether or no Lieutenant Fermin arrives at his designated position, we ought to go on with our major offensive tonight. It is as if nothing has changed ... just this delay, the hour to attack the Fort.’

His Adam’s apple slightly jiggled. as if to clear a nonexistent bone in his throat.

‘Are we all agreed on this?’

Señor Luis Macrohon, a Chinese mestizo, stood up from his chair. Of regular built, dark mop of hair, and eyes a wee bit chinky. One of the two --- the other was Don Barrios --- of the richest Chinese mestizos in Zamboanga, Macrohon was quite outspoken to a fault.

‘If we know what happened with Lieutenant Fermin,’ he began, ‘known is this to the Spaniards also. They also have their spies, heh ... like we have ours. Why, even among us in the organization, there are also those simpatico with the Spaniards … even in our midst, heh.’

He did not look at anyone in the room. He had no wish to antagonize anyone, nor give the impression he suspected anyone there. But General Tenorio was quite sure whom Macrohon meant. Never able really to hold his tongue, he was often heard questioning the loyalty of both Mayor Artang and Datu Hassan. Neither was present at the conference. ‘So, where is our surprise attack at the eastern gate and Rio Hondo without the lieutenant, heh?’ continued Macrohon in the same drab voice.

At that very moment there entered the assistant administrator, Señor Sofronio Bocavieja. No one there trusted the new arrival. All knew his behind-the-back talk and caviling of General Tenorio. Señor Macrohon on one occasion heard him call the general a philanderer, an adulterer: very serious charges in the bien devoto villa Catolico   very devoted Catholic village.

 No one offered him a seat. Embarrassed, Bocavieja walked toward the first empty chair that caught his eyes at the extreme corner of the table.

‘If we do not attack now,’ the Major Marquez was saying, the Norte Americanos might take this as a weakness. Verdad General Otis did not listen to Don Grado last April … and even earlier, to his appeal to help expatriate the Spanish forces here ... pues, he may just listen now. Once the forces of our enemies are joined as one, together, the plaza and the Fort will be very strongly defended, unlike before. We attack now … there should be no more delay!’

‘I fear and do not trust the Norte Americanos,’ said Captain Morales. ‘What if they land their marines Datu Hassan’s village of Magay, there in the southwestern coast of my perimeter? Their warships, the Ohio and Cavite, have very thick iron hulls. Everywhere on those ships are heavy cannons. Because of these superior guns, we all know the Americans had effortlessly crushed the once invincible Spanish Armada … like so many match boxes at Manila Bay, ay.’          

‘Hó, o, do we not all know it well,’ said Macrohon. ‘And we don’t want that to happen to us, por Dios y por santo, heh. I mean, those two American iron ships staring down at us with their huge cannons.

‘My present artillery …’ said Morales, ‘I doubt if they are enough. Those captured Remington rifles and cannons in Santa Barbara and in Cabonegro ... assuming Don Artang would use them are too far away to be effective. We must not give the Norte Amereicanos and Spaniards time to join forces!’

Seated still, Major Marquez merely gazed around. His eyes caught the general’s, and he nodded his head to show he was of the same mind.

‘… Time, we cannot afford to waste it,’ said Major Marquez.

At this point, General Tenorio interrupted both officers, saying,

‘Indeed, Major Marquez ...and Captain Morales, what if the Norte Americanos’ warships Ohio and Cavite were to sail to Magay? not one of our artillery will be a match against their heavier cannons. Forget about repulsing them in the sea ... we have to fight the Americanos on land, gentlemen, where we are sure of victory.

‘That is why we have to strike now ... on land, against the Spaniards. Cripple them before they can join with the Norte Americanos or is it the other way around? --- the Americans to join them?’

Marquez moved to General Tenorio’s side of the long wooden table; his staff and officers either stood at or sat by it.

Everyone now had his attention directed toward our General.

‘We must not lose this initiative ... this offensive initiative if we wish to be victorious,’ said General Tenorio to the staff. ‘We cannot postpone this, I agree with all of you. Delay? --- does it matter now! We must attack. The Spaniards have oppressed us and our people for almost three centuries ... too long for any decent people. Now let them not escape our wrath and our vengeance, by slipping out with the help of the Norte Americanos.

‘These new comers, I am humbly telling you, will be our next masters, hó, o, if we do not stop them from taking the Fort from the Spaniards before we do .… The Norte Americanos cannot take Zamboanga, not from the sea, whatever they will do ... with whatever force. They can use all their cannon shells to bombard it day and night, but they still cannot take it; they have to land their forces to take Zamboanga, and I am sure they know we can take it back and drive them away.’

 ‘Arriba, Zamboanga!’

General Tenorio stood up from the head of the table, noticed Bocavieja whispering something to his chief administrator Noche while the officers were cheering. General Tenorio’s stare fell on him, the eyes though incapable of speech sort of hissing him to shut up. Which Bocavieja abruptly did, shutting his mouth as a bivalve mollusk does its shells.

‘Are our memories so short that we have already forgotten even before a week has passed?’ said General Tenorio, ‘why we had come down from our headquarters in Santa Maria in such haste?’

No longer staring down at Bocavieja, he reminded them of the hijacked artillery pieces just waiting for the order to commence firing. After General Tenorio had spoken, on his right, Major Marquez an incurable optimist heatedly argued for an immediate attack. They should cease behaving, he said. Like they had already lost the battle.

‘The loss of the surprise attack at the eastern gate and Rio Hondo will not change the outcome of our war for freedom,’ said Major Marquez, confidently.

‘I am sure that the Fort before the week is over will be in our hands, also the plaza which had been stolen from our ancestors by the scrupulous and abusive padres. All of this will be in our hands, finally, hermanos y compoblanos.

‘We will drive the Spanish oppressors and the lead-balled padres into the sea ... back to Spain!’

‘You have spoken very well, Major Marquez, heh,’ said the Chinese mestizo, Don Macrohon. Among the General’s civil officers, we have said he was the most vocal and eloquent. But this was a wee tarnished because of his well known weakness: uncontrollably impulsive and volatile. ‘Indeed, let us not forget that we started this revolution to free ourselves from Spanish tyranny and oppression. We have had enough, caballeros! It is time we damp those abusive hijo de cabra of Spaniards into the sea. As for the Norte Americanos, heh … why do you think they have not landed their marines? Because they are afraid of us … los cabrones are afraid to do battle with us on land, as our General had said, that is why! The cowards!’

Both military and civil officers cried,

‘Arriba Zamboanga! Arriba!’

General Tenorio did not fail to notice that just as vigorously had Bocavieja also cheered. Is he a collaborator, worse a spy in our midst! Clenching his fists, he pressed his knuckles against the edge of the table, and sat down in his chair. And then, abruptly, stood up from it, his beardless chin jutting out, though sharp and profound were his eyes. Always there shone a consistent glimmer of density and implacable hope --- never dimming once during all these months of  campaign --- as his eyes fell on the map on the long table. In the glow of the lamps, his finely chiseled profile became sharp and prominent. Evidently, his father’s Spanish blood had overshadowed his native’s features, though plain and unshaven. Examining the positions of his rebel forces on the map, as well as the enemy’s, he swung his head here and there on his shoulders.

In light of all his officers consenting to attack now and not cancel it, he reasserted the attack would be tonight still; but a wee delayed.

‘Pues, ahora de noche...  tonight we shall attack. Though behind schedule!’ he said, compellingly. ‘We may yet have some sort of an element of surprise. General Sophez thinking that we’ve cancelled our siege as it is already too late… will not be expecting a night siege at such late hour ... compensated, that is, a compensation in the absence of Lieutenant Fermin assaulting on schedule.’

‘May the Virgin Mary protect us always, and the Lord Jesus gives us victory!’

‘Arriba Zamboanga!’

‘Bale Zamboanga!’
 

Chapter 15

‘It is tonight,’ said the hero, Ambrocio Almazen. ‘Esta noche will start the big offensive.’ And assured them, saying further, ‘We will know when all the cannons start exploding, from the barrios of Magay, Cabonegro, and our own here in Santa Barbara.’

The complainer Lumalocdoc was skeptical.

‘Who told you that?’ said he. ‘Here we are just getting comfortable ... and now you are talking of attacking the Fort. Have you nothing else to say! What are you ... kuan    something!’

‘I got lost during patrol ... wish I could get back to my company in Magay,’ said Simon Centeno, a very  bothered  soldier. He was a clerk-stenographer in a tobacco company, we learned, owned by the Chinaman Lim when Captain Morales’s men took him to Magay headquarters. Instead of a pen he was given a rifle. Somebody had made a mistake. He had never fired a gun in his life; but give him a pen, he said, and he would show anybody how fast he could take dictation.

‘And so, from putting pen to paper, or is it ink to pen,’ he was saying now to his comrades, ‘serving coffee infinitesimal times before the day ends, the fool Chinaman Lim, you know, is addicted to black coffee, which he grows himself ...‘ he ceased, mind traveling fast-backward.

‘--- and so, here I am, lost, with the same rifle that they gave me then. Which even now I do not know how to shoot still. Dios mio!’

‘You are free to go,’ Almazen sneered. ‘One crabbing soldier is enough to bear. We do not need another …. and stop saying “Dios mio” aqui y “Dios mio” alla.’

‘I am sorry,’ said the bothered soldier Simon, the former clerk stenographer of Chinaman Lim. ‘Perdòn, Señor Almazen. ‘I did not mean any offence.’

‘And stop talking like that,’ warmed Almazen, ‘like you were in a formal social gathering or what … you know what I mean.’

‘What? stop what… señor?’

‘Mira ‘vos, do I have to kuan     something explain it to you?’ he stared at him but only saw a dark blob in the night. He even pictured weird images.

I wish my eyes would shine, like a dog’s, any animal’s, in the dark, just so I can see the expression in his face.

Simon said nothing, and Almazen whose blood pressure was round 180 degrees and boiling was relieved. Another word from the clerk stenographer, the lost soldier,  he said to himself, would make him lose his temper.

 El abanica yo su cara!     I will fan slap his face! if he does not stop.

Almazen was not usually easily peeved, oo, no, he was imperturbable; not easily impassioned. When he shot the Spaniard during the hijacking of the thirteen Spanish steam gunboats, the gun barrel was almost at his chest before firing in self-defense. So he said. It would take blunt steel against steel screeching all day to irritate him.

But the apparent failure of Simon or Singalon to report what Simon overheard before the failed assassination, this had made him surly and dyspeptic. The lost soldier reminded him of the likely treachery of Alcalde Artang, whom they suspected was the traitor. No one had the motive and ambition to plan such despotic plot. Worse,  the assassination’s failure would not stop him.

Assassins are unfazed with failure: history is our witness.

And so, every time he saw Centeno or heard him mention the lieutenants’ conversation, something like a hammer would knock on his head. Or something heavier a smith uses to flatten metal on an anvil. His anger and disappointment would wake up as if from the blow, knock, knock, and knock and so bothered him for not having done anything, hò, o.

But what am I to do now? We are in the middle of a war, and I cannot just leave and walk away and be shot as a deserter! And it is even too dark to feel myself out of these woods here, assuming I myself am going to see el General. Perhaps even before reaching the woods I’ll fall into Tumaga or Santa Barbara river and drown. Muy bien para con migo   Good for you, the hero Almazen wickedly consoled himself.

‘O, si, you are free to go, Simon,’ said the fisherman Singalon, and immediately regretted saying it. Hurting anyone’s feeling was never in his nature, would not give offence intentionally; especially to a compoblano.

‘It is because I am not a soldier,’ said the very troubled Centeno. ‘That’s why I got lost. But give me a pen instead of this awful rifle and I will show you what I can do taking stenography notes and writing correspondence.’ He was trying very hard to explain his predicament to his comrades. It was painful to see it.

‘You will just have to bear it. Almazen is right, we do not need another crabbing soldier in our midst,’ said the filòsofo Tiburcio Brocales. There was no need to mention Lumalocdoc’s name. Obvious whom he meant. ‘Though patience may not be as mighty as the pen,’ he went on.

It was half an hour before 9:00 in the evening in the trenches of Santa Barbara, and moonless, that night of the 10th of May, 1899. Dark cerulean sky was expansive and limitless, there were no stars to gaze. There was just utter darkness beyond and beyond.

The men spoke in the starless, dark night, leaning forward in the trenches. Their rifles crooked in their arms, like drapeless babies. Facing the unseen enemy, not one turned to look at his comrade now, listless, whose faces blurred into vague, vacant look. Their rifles cold and silent, the barrels pointing outward, detached, into the inky darkness.

Sometimes the Indio rebels whispered, at other times spoke aloud to their comrades realizing it did not matter making any clatter. After all, they reminded themselves, the enemy cannot possibly hear them, much more see their faces hijo de cabra! And it was no secret where they were, to them and the enemy.

Some yards away from the cluster of houses were other Zamboangueño Voluntarios, they had also bivouacked across the river in Santa Barbara. Then recalled back to their trenches by headquarters they grudgingly returned there, cursing  their officers’ fickleness. But this was said when no officer was within hearing distance.

Ese la vida.    That is life.

Less than a thousand meters away, after the rebel trenches, were the Spanish soldiers. hunched forward on their own fortifications and the masonry curtain of the fortified area, waiting. The rebels’ offensive, they knew, was tonight.  

Around the fortified area a moat ran and met that of Fort Immaculate Conception, eastward. It was an extra defense and was built almost simultaneously with the Fort’s palisade on the west wall. It was unsure if it was during the rebuilding of the Fort forty-seven years after it was abandoned in 1662; or were reinforced and expanded, as the embrasures, to hold the weight of the additional cannons. With their backs to the Fort, the Spanish soldiers looked down from their high position to the Zamboangueño troops, immobile dark shadows waiting for orders like themselves.

Quietness floated over the trenches, engulfing everyone, silencing everyone: quietness before a storm.

....

At exactly ten-thirty  that evening, from the barrios of Magay and Santa Barbara  roared tremendous unified explosions of cannons and the hijacked high-caliber guns. Followed by additional volleys from Alcalde Artang’s barrio of Cabonegro, all directed at the Spanish trenches and fortifications --- none yet at the Fort which was quite a distance away from any of the guns, and the chief gunners knew that, especially those from Major Marquez’ artillery in Santa Barbara, they that were given orders to move up the swivel guns closer any time. The  Zamboangueño revolucionarios had started their biggest offensive yet against the plaza and all intention to take the Fortaleza dela Nuestra Señora Immaculada Concepciòn itself.

A lot of shouting at the top of their lungs, heart pounding, as the Voluntarios leap-frogged from their trenches.

The rebel assault to take the plaza and the Fort advanced heavily toward the Spanish fortifications: their rifles ready to cripple or kill the coño su nana enemy. In the rush not a few stumbled and tripped on protruding roots in the dark, others slipped in huge giant-crab holes so many along the fringes of the mangrove. Some fell on their faces, struck them against the prop roots, and cursed the dark. And their rifles flying off their hands onto the brushwood, and worse lost in the sludge of the swamp. They anxiously fumbled for them, cursing the dark again.

Chinga!    Fuck!

Overhead the rebel troops in Santa Barbara the cannon balls and grapeshot from barrio Cabonegro whooshed and rumbled past. Seconds later after the crack the earth shook, stones and clods of earth flew. Unfortunately, only little direct hits at the Spanish trenches and the masonry curtain of the fortified area Not yet, said the chief artilleryman; but not very long. Once I get the right adjustment, the Spanish cojones will see. 

To the left flank, west, of the Cabonegro artillery, as minutes passed, more and more exact bombardment came from Major Marquez’s artillery. It was nearly 300 meters closer to the Spanish trenches and breastwork now, as then the artillery chief had moved up his artillery pieces and gauged his targets and adjusted his cannons’ sight.

Without need to swivel up their heads, the advancing rebel troops could tell where the missiles and bombs would (could?) fall, and not a few troopers made it a guessing game. Nearly perfect guesses. But more often than not, they were propelled toward the enemy by an invisible force, fanned by the heat of battle --- as they plunged on, forward, forward, and seldom, if ever, the company remained immobile on a spot for more than a second. 

In these moments, during the artillery bombardment and explosion, was the battlefield ignited and aflame. Under a canopy of brilliant, orange, red, bluish, cardinal incandescent multicolor, the Spanish trenches, breastworks, and the fortified area were lighted. Then, our forces could see the Spanish troops in their trenches and the ramparts of the fortified area and over the palisade; and vice versa, in the same manner, the Spaniards also saw the Zamboangueños. When Major Marquez’s troops got behind the Santa Barbara Settlement, its cluster of native huts and nipa-thatched houses nearly blocked the  enemy utterly from their sight. One moment, they Spaniards were in front of you and the next gone, like the haze over the marshland. It looked  as if the Spanish colonist civil guards and troopers, they must have reflected, never existed before: mere wisps in their imagination.

This now-I-see-you-now-I-don’t happened even if the Zamboangueño insurrectos were firing all their cannons and machine guns. Bursts of light were not enough to see through the tight and confused tangle of spindly huts and nipa-thatched structures all the while.

At this point, the hero Almazen and his company came upon the thickest mesh of native houses in the settlement, and had to stop. They could not go through or around it, since it was a long way around, nearly double the distance, and the houses so tightly pressed together you could not wedge in without getting stuck up.

Pues, the other troops behind and flanking them on both sides also halted, although no cluster of houses obstructed them. Uno dos tres ... they stopped.

Even Major Marquez’s second advancing line of his regular forces, numbering over a thousand men, halted upon reaching the Samal and Subano Settlement. Their shouting and cheering ceased, as they groped in the dark.

A number of soldiers bumped their foreheads against the beams of the huts, cursed aloud the absent Spanish troopers and swore chinga ’vos nana    mother-fucker aloud to unknown objects or audience. Some meters behind a couple of troops fell into a pigsty, louder than the sow’s scream were their cries and curses. 

The rebel guns roared, growled overhead, though the Spanish artillery merely purred and mewed without the order to ‘fire and fire at will.’ Somebody fell into a deep well. Its stench jarred him into recollection of the poisoning of the river and wells, and fearing he might accidentally swallow its water, he held his breath. Holding it far longer than normal, he almost drowned como un atontado   like a fool.

His comrades came to the rescue, among them the filòsofo Brocales, and pulled the man out of the deep pozo. They revived him by pumping the water out his chest.

‘If you do not look out, you will permanently get lost, Simon Centeno,’ said one of Centeno’s rescuers. For it was indeed Centeno who had fallen into the well. Because ever convinced to see el General while on the march he had started off in the dark from Magay, ahead of the rest. As usual with him he lost his way, when already before the camp, turning left instead of right: what jokers would say, he ‘zigged when he should have zagged.’

The crabbing Lumalocdoc jerked his head over his shoulder, and stared behind him. Did he expect to see a sign that which would guide them safely back?

‘We should have halted back there yet,’ he said. ‘Now even I myself do not know where we really are.’

‘There was no order to stop,’ said the hero Almazen. ‘You have to get your order first and then follow it.’ Just then cries were heard from behind them.

‘Halt, halt!’

‘There’s your order now, Iko,’ said Almazen, addressing him by his nickname. Too long, and a tongue-twister was his Christian name: Lumalocdoc.

‘Hò, o, after we have bumps bigger than a peso coin on our head,’ said Lumalocdoc; ‘and Simon here nearly drowned.

‘It was not for the same reason as yours.’

‘Oo, o: because he was lost.’

They heard his deep breathing, from deep his flat chest, louder than Simon’s recovering from drowning.

‘Somebody tell me why Simon is so eager to go back to his camp, when right in front of him are the puta su madre Spaniards. Sabes tu, just eager to blow his head off. Somebody please, please tell me, por favor.’

‘Is he alive?’ asked the complacent Singalon.

Answer a question with a question, thought el filósofo Brocales. 

‘What?’

‘My barrio mate Centeno.’

‘He will live,’ said Almazen.

Overhead the cannonade thundered, fiery streaks of missile flashed in the sky. On an impulse everyone looked up, lifting their heads to the dark dome. They, the front line troopers, were still lost in the maze of the stilt huts and nipa-thatched houses.

In  the fortifications, Captain Calvo was churning his head, unsure. Had the rebels reached the cluster of native settlers’ stilt huts and nipa-thatched houses or gone past it? He decided to wait and hold his fire, giving only meaningless single salvos as distraction.

The moment the rebel force shows itself again, after going through the Settlement, I will immediately give the order to fire, fire at will..

Meanwhile, he would wait.....

In Magay, Captain Morales gazed over the battlefield toward barrio Cabonegro, as great heavy guns rumbled from there, and flashes of barrage from Santa Barbara lit the horizon of the sitios and barrios around. And then, the second explosions as the cannon balls thudded the fields and round the Spanish trenches, those in the foreground of the southern fortifications. From the earthen floor lumps of dirt and turf of grass flew everywhere, and human limbs and flesh pitched out of the trenches.

He could not see all this, not much, since he was on the southwest line, but Captain Morales imagined them as if he were seeing it clearly. It is Alcalde Artang, the windbag … and I thought he would never fire those cannons. Nevertheless, he fired them, he speculated, not by el General’s order, not by anyone but himself, cojones!    balls!

The overall commander of the Spanish ground forces,  General Sophez, was at the palisade of the fortified area, not in Fort Immaculate Conception, which was at background. I will burn the Viejo Poblado and the cluster of houses, together with the cojones Indio rebeldes. Coňo!    Cunt! and fire my guns when I see the white of their eyeballs.

General Sophez meant his cannons on the orillon and embrasures of the west wall.

And then, all of a sudden, for unknown reason the bombardment from Cabonegro stopped. General Sophez was much pleased. It was beyond belief. An unexpected blessing. Here he had not wasted his ammunition, and the Spanish forces, numbering several thousands, had not even flicked a muscle at all; fresh as soldiers could be before their morning calisthenics.

Stuck up among the tight clusters of houses, half blinking in the dark, and without Mayor Artang’s bombardment from Cabonegro ... the rebel attack hesitated and faltered.

Puňeta. Qué pasa?

Back at the advance headquarters, a quarter of an hour later, an adjutant reported to General Tenorio the inexplicable cessation of bombardment from Cabonegro’s artillery. He could not believe it, it was incredible. Everything going perfectly, according to plan, even in spite of Lieutenant Fermin’s ... well! And then wham, wham, it explodes in your face.

But then, curiously, half an hour or so later, just when desperation was setting down --- the bombardment was renewed. Missiles from barrio Cabonegro were once again streaking and rumbling fiercely across the sky. Bombs and shrapnel falling all over the battlefields.

General Tenorio recalled going to a theater in Manila and seeing an opera bouffé, a comic musicale, its distant local cousin known as Moro-Moro, which title he remembered only the first words, Koxinga, the Chinese Pirate … but the farce marked indelibly in his experience and was never lost. The musicale was not only comical but showed that life’s most serious intention could turn into a farce: because the Spanish Governor General Lara had all the Spanish forces recalled to Manila to defend it against the fearful Chinese corsair Koxinga. Nobody left in Mindanao and the Visayas. Lara himself was holed up in Manila’s walled Intramuros; trembling and maybe even pissing into his Estremadura leather boots. But it was all for nothing ... nada y por nada y nada.  Koxinga never even breathed a whiff of the brine air of our Manila Bay. He caught a virus and died while on his way to Manila after his brilliant conquest of Formosa.

....

What really happened there, we mean in barrio Cabonegro? Alcalde Artang was red or rather mahogany-red in the face, his dark, Turko complexion, the pigmentation of which said, Mira!    Look!  By some quirk of nature, he was almost ‘black’ but not really quite so, that was why he was called ‘un Turko’   ‘a Turk’ when he should be a mestizo. Not unlike el General, and Don Salas, and the administrator Noche, because his progenitor was also a Spaniard … pero ansina la vida    but that is life.

At the moment, when the guns became silent, Don Piantong says in Complido Reflejo de los Heroes,  Perfect Mirror of Heroes, that Mayor Artang was reprimanding Gowito Saavedra, an artillery sergeant, sympathizer of Don Tenorio and ‘guardian’ of the hijacked guns in Cabonegro. Saavedra had hesitated before obeying immediately Artang’s order to halt the bombardment until he ordered it to be resumed.

‘Por qué, heh? Tell me why, sergeant,’ said Alcalde Artang, I should not blow your head off for not following my order immediatament, hoy!’ He had drawn his pistol. Its barrel glittered in the light of the torches planted in the field around the artillery, as he waved it recklessly above the sergeant’s head.  

‘Perdón, Alcalde Artang. I did not hear you clearly…’

‘And why, heh?’

‘It was the explosions, the booming of our cannons … drowning your voice, honorable Mayor Artang!’

‘Ah …’ cried Alcalde Artang, looking down at the diminutive sergeant beside his cannon. ‘Was my voice very soft? did it squeak as a rat does that you couldn’t hear me at all!’

‘No-no, Don Artang,’ cried Sergeant Gowito, gazing over the cannon barrel at his co-gunner, him that was saying, wordlessly: ‘Stop, stop talking already,’ pursing his lips, like he were eating his words to retrieve them before Alcalde Artang would hear him and dress him down too.

‘Well, Sergeant Gowito, what do you say ...? why all of a sudden you have lost your tongue? have you swallowed it!’

Sergeant Gowito darted a glance toward the other gunner, who shook his head and pursed his lips more.

What is he trying to tell me, not to say anything? Should I shake my head too or nod in agreement? He decided to nod and did it heatedly, quite vigorously: nod,  nod, and nod.

Alcalde Artang stared down again at the diminutive sergeant.

‘Next time, I won’t say anything,’ he said, ‘but simply put a bullet through your head, comprendes? if you ever hesitate to follow my orders … immediatamente.’

Nod, nod, nod, and nod.

At this moment, Alcalde Artang turned to Datu Hassan’s messenger, him that had been standing listening to the scolding and threats showing zero expression in his face, either he was sympathetic or no. Don Artang looking down at the messenger said,

‘Oo, what are you waiting for? go, go!’

The Moro messenger did not move, instead continued staring at the rolled parchment, the same paper he had just delivered to Don Artang. Again, his attention was drawn to it.

Artang read it again, and his face flushed though this was not obvious in the half dark under the faint torches. But whatever he had read had earlier prodded the alcalde to give the order to cease firing temporarily.

So, considering we were in the midst of battle, and the  content of the datu’s message unknown to the artillery sergeant, it was not surprising that Saavedra hesitated to obey right away. Another reason, and this closer to the truth, surmised by ex-Jesuit Hilario Macrohon in Roots of Zamboanga Hermosa was the Saavedra knew how vital the bombardment could be in the initial assault of any advancing army. To stop it was idiocy. So long as he could keep artillery cover over the Zamboangueños and the Deportados of Captain Morales in Santa Barbara and Magay, he would do it. 

Looking at the parchment still, Alcalde Artang firmly grasped it in his right hand, tight, and both hand and parchment were slightly lit by the torches. Something stirred in him, again, and if there were only more light, Sergeant Gowito and the other gunners would have seen a distraught, dark shadow possessed his eyes What will I do now? he thought. Call off our plan! Follow what Rajah Muda Hassan says? Will we have another opportunity maybe, a ‘healthy atmosphere’? ... he says.

‘No, no … no need of a written reply,’ he said to the Moro messenger, but without turning his face away from the parchment in his hand. Right away, the messenger must return, or there perhaps will be a mess-up, again. He was recalling the botched assassination of Don Gueremon, which failed because of, misunderstood, crossed orders ... it’s just nada, nada  nothing. 

‘Go! And tell your Datu Hassan “dă, dă    yes, yes.” Tell him “Yes-yes.” Ay, no paper or writing material here … in this damned place, just tell him, “yes, yes.” We call it off …’

The Moro messenger did not hesitate this time, running down the field to report to his datu, his lips fluttering the invisible words: ‘yes, yes: call it off’ ... less he forgot them when he got back to his datu in Nipa-an island.

Only Sergeant Saavedra and the other gunner gazed after the Moro messenger. Artang had not even moved from where he stood.

Again, Alcalde Artang had unfolded the parchment, using both hands to spread it before the little light from the torches. In the ground, aqui y alla, round the artillery was studded with these torches; standing like brownish, leafless sun-dried corn stalks. His left hand smoothed the parchment from its rolled form, passing over his open palm gracefully, unhurried, after what seemed like the left had to peel off the fingers of the right, that which gripped the parchment faithfully but had now forgotten the purpose why it had gripped it so hard in the first place.

Slowly, under the flickering light of the torches he read to himself, quietly, detached, but abandoning himself to its fate, again:

‘The warriors I sent to spy on lieutenants Lamon and Pascual and their men’s movement in the barrio of  Magay were briefly held and detained in custody by men of either of the two aforementioned lieutenants. Who, of course, have no knowledge of our kuan    you-know-what, as it should be. But for a estupidó of a Deportado soldier they, my warriors, were released immediately.

‘Still, I wish to take no chances … as you will agree, although they swore on the Koran that none of them had said anything to their captors. May I suggest we call it off, the kuan    blank, I mean, until a more conducive time and healthy atmosphere present itself for its implementation .…’

And a short space below, hurriedly scribbled, ‘Rest assured that the warriors who had been fools will not be a worry to us in the future, permanently: what they heard or saw shall be forever sealed. For I have disposed of them mercifully as possible --- Allah is great!’

After reading the message, the second, third time, Alcalde Artang thrust it into a nearby flaming torch, singeing the tuft of hair in back of his hand as he did so. Before letting the ashes fall onto the ground by his feet, he jerked his head toward the artillery sergeant, gravely.

On his face fell the awesome, grim flames of the quivering torch and the flaming parchment. And turning abruptly toward Sergeant Gowito Saavedra, he shouted at him though the latter was merely a meter or so away; his fiery voice, seemingly,  raising fluttering the implacable flames of both parchment and torch, heatedly, and unrelenting.

‘Resume firing…fuego, sergeant. Fire! fire!’

This time, right away, Sergeant Saavedra obeyed, prodded by his own volition and reason; not by Alcalde Artang’s alone, which he either would or never know, and knowing would still do as he had done, without hesitation now or remorse.

Chapter 16

In Magay, at  a quarter or more of an hour before the bombardment that evening, that is,  before the major offensive, we know that Captain Morales was in a bind.

If he did not burn the Magay settlement, first called Communidad de Zamboanga or Viejo Poblado, how could he see the enemy, the Spaniards at the palisade of the fortified area and on the bulwarks of Fort Immaculate Conception? Rayo, you cannot hit anything, even on the tip of your very nose, without seeing it. The hijacked machine guns and small artillery, all the weapons in the world, were useless, inutile, in your hands.

But Dios mio, if he were to burn the Old Community of Magay, and the blaze a giant torch revealing the enemy, just like in a picture ... his compoblanos in the community would be sizzled to death, hundreds maybe thousands made homeless.

Puñeta! he could not understand why in spite of the warnings, two-three days earlier, many refused to leave their homes. Even the hermit crab knows he has to leave his shell when threatened: he thought,  I do not want to kill my own compoblanos!

Meanwhile, the cannons near the smaller orillon, fifteen guns compared to the nineteen of the Fort’s southwest orillon facing the sea, on  the masonry curtain of the palisade area still loomed as a threat to the Indio rebels.

It was a good thing that not all the cannon of the Spaniards were pointing at Captain Morales and his artillery, as only those on the fortified area did, and even then, less than half of the fifteen,  on the northwest orillon, placed there to protect it partially from land attack.

The cannons of the other orillon, south, the one on the Fort, with four more cannons, and the three bastions, with ten gun embrasures each, pointed toward the sea, southwest, and south, against Moro pirates and foreign invaders, like the British, Dutch, Portuguese: it was assumed that raiders would come not from land but from the sea. Although now we saw the folly of the situation and the grave error of the hypothetical assumption.But there was enough fire power alone from the northwest orillon to thwart any direct land attack of the Fort on that side; ‘but only a small assault,’ says ex-Jesuit Hilario Macrohon y Lim. ‘Nobody ... nuay quien ya pensa    nobody had thought, particularly the builders of the Fort, that the worse attack and most probably succeed to overrun it, would come from the land.’

But Captain Morales had first to see a single Spanish soldier. How can you neutralize, vanquished your enemy unless you see them?

He dispatched a runner to Lieutenant Lamon’s camp before Datu Hassan’s sitio, Magay. He realized he should have sent for the lieutenant much, much earlier. Particularly before the guns of Cabonegro started their barrage. But fifteen minutes or so after commencing, the Cabonegro cannonade ceased, now we know the reason, though unknown to the captain still, and not just him but the other rebel officers, too me cago con mala gana!    I defecate unwillingly! he turned his head toward the direction of the barrio, just in time to hear the last blast, and saw a dark horizon over the barrio and the empty, streakless dark sky.

Gone were the flashes illuminating the sky, and the second explosions, rather thud round him. Everything became quiet, and the cannon greasers and cannoneers who were on standby and talking in whispers stopped completely; their cannons silent too.

His officers, restless, more so now because of the hiatus, the emptiness and silence, awaiting his command to burn the Old Community, turned to look into each other’s face, when the faces could be seen, at that moment barely shadows there through the dark mass, as their, as well as Alcalde Artang’s, artillery, remained mute and their lumpy profiles were heightened dark blobs and were cold, cold as steel is cold.

Captain Morales scanned the sky over Cabonegro, his gaze going past the trees and nearby orchard, invisible to the eye but their silhouette against the unlit sky. He noticed that Major Marquez’s northwest artillery had diminished in power, though not simultaneously with those guns of Cabonegro; but gradually, yielding to the Cabonegro’s mute guns.

Què pasa? Did the major hesitate to fire because Alcalde Artang had stopped firing his guns? Leche de su puta madre!    Milk of his mother-whore!

Around them the cries of night things also fell into the canopy of silence over the artillery field, and became mute, voiceless to all. Under the grass, crickets, and insects, and spidery things, often stamped by soldiers’ boots and furrowed earlier by the wheels of the artillery carriage, ceased all bustle, flurry, and even their night vigil.     

Coño! where is that Lieutenant Lamon?

Captain Morales was bout 500 meters, more or less, from the Old Community and a little farther off from the western masonry curtain of the fortified area. He was completely out of range of the guns of the cavalier, east, though not all the guns of the northwest orillon. From where he was he was quite safe from the other orillon, the bigger one with more cannons, southwest, and those along the bulwarks there; they should not worry him, as mostly were pointing toward the sea.

Footsteps were heard coming up on the turf, and the captain screwed his gaze toward it and the boot-thumping became a shadowy shape before him. It spoke asking if they were to now to burn the ‘viejo poblado,’ the olden name of the Old Community. 

Somehow, he felt he must delay the torching of the Old Community a wee bit more; something might happen, as happens when you least expect it to happen, kuan    blank which would not necessitate burning his own compoblanos ... not a few his own ancestors, who knows.

‘Wait, wait, we’ll wait a minute more for Lieutenant Lamon,’ he said.

‘Is he coming here already, seňor-capitan?’

‘He will be here soon. I have sent for him quite a while ago.’

As the man retreated, the shadowy shape became a dark blob again and then nothing as it melted into the dark. He swore under his breath at the turtle-moving Lieutenant Lamon. He could not delay it much longer, he would have to burn it now and fire his artillery.

Very quiet were the Deportados waiting for his order to torch the viejo poblado.

The first troops had marched here as yearly as a week ago, and the rest of the Deportados followed right behind.  They were on a plain corrupted by little hills here and there, and not much woodland, on the southwest fringe, and the orchard on the slopes of the little hills. Only the woodland and orchard would give them some cover when the Spanish cannons over the west palisade started barking. One assumed this to start after the Old Community had been burnt to the ground, and both sides, the insurrectos and the Spaniards, had a clear view of each other I must burn the Settlement, can no longer wait ... Dios me perdóna. Ay, where is that turtle-moving cabròn of a lieutenant? he thought. Other chief gunner to man the cannons, hó, o? All of a sudden, on the northeast, the 20 or so houses before the palisade of the fortified area rose in flames. It lit the field before them and as far as the rebel trenches in the northwest. Again the horizon there burst in flames and flashes of blinding light, with more brightness than the flashes of the cannons in Cabonegro before.

In seconds, their own sky became bright as day, well almost, with the blaze from the nipa-thatched houses of the Old Community reaching out seemingly toward their position. --- ‘It lit the whole battlefield, or battlefield-to-be, just like Hell,’ wrote ex-Jesuit Macrohon y Lim in his book, Roots of Zamboanga Hermosa.

In amazement, Captain Morales cried, ‘Puñetero! Los hijos de grand puta madre have burnt the viejo poblado.’ Later he must have realized: ‘Ay, we both had the same plan, General Sophez and me, to burn it for a clear view of the battlefield and the enemy! Only he beat me to it.’ Where, where, Dios mio is that tortuga de teniente! Because now he had to fire his artillery.

Then, the guns of the  fortified area started to burst, all fifteen of them in the orillon, northwest, and on the bulwark of the masonry curtain; the former directed at Captain Morales’s Deportados in Magay and the latter, at Major Marquez’s regulars and the Zamboangueño Voluntarios in Santa Barbara.

Minutes later, there followed repeat-rifle fire, increased three folds by the introduction of new guns from Spanish soldiers, whose garrisons in Cotabato and Jolo and the Visayas were besieged by Moros and Filipino insurrectos and had fled to the Fort here.

Along Captain Morales’s advanced line fell cannon balls and grapeshot, and overhead wheezed machine gun and rifle fire, the invisible missiles cutting through the woods and orchard. Captain Morales knew he must return fire before the Spaniards had him in their range, he thinking It won’t be long, General Sophez can see where his shells are falling. Calculate ... adjust … then fuego! like shooting ducks in a lake, that is what we will look like, helpless ducks unless we fire back. Now.

‘Shall we fire our guns now, captain-sir?’ Though he ignored him, the fellow must have read his mind hot with the urgency to fire back, because the trooper repeated his query, the second time with a quality more urgent, desperate now. It was no longer dark, with the sky ablaze and on fire with luminous light. He recognized the young artilleryman from Las Mercedes, he that could man the artillery then, in case el tortuga cabrón de Lamon does not show yet.

Other artillerymen and some riflemen were milling round the artillery ground, eager for some action. Restless men care more for a change of fortune and less a steady one. So, some artillerymen joined the young man of Las Mercedes and the rest went back to their own artillery units before the orchard, while the riflemen expecting eager for scuffle hurried back to their company on the western side of the plain. Both the artillery and the infantry expected some action soon.

Again, Captain Morales looked at the artilleryman, and this time, without further delay, cried, ‘Fuego, fuego    fire, fire at will!’ ‘Si, si, capitan’ the artilleryman replied, and there was a relief and satisfaction in his voice.

Maybe days or immediately after,  the captain likely explained the delayed torching of the Old Community. Because ex-Jesuit Macrohon scribbled in his journal, ‘We know that to the last moment he hesitated to burn the Viejo Poblado.’ Macrohon ascertained, and quite correctly, that the captain arguing with himself said if nothing happened here, neither victory nor defeat, the least that could be said is he did not burn the old pueblo. But delayed it, sabes tu, putting his men at risk and delaying the siege itself. No one could say of him: ‘Is your face so callous that you did not waste time to burn it, the pueblo where you intend to live? Or a part of it, si-si, as a free man?’ without the stamp the Spaniards branded him, political prisoners or common criminals: ‘deportados’ … making no distinction between them.

Was Captain Morales or former Jesuit Macrohon, or both, foreseeing an unkind remark from John Borrows, an American Protestant missionary? In Edict of Mindanao, he nearly a century later wrote: ‘It is unfortunate, that a certain captain of the artillery, pardoned by the commandant of the Fort, committed the unforgivable, ungrateful sin of “biting the hands that feed him” by turning against his Spanish benefactors and joining “the leader of a gang (Don Tenorio, in truth, was a legitimate officer, appointed brigadier general by the Philippine Malolos Congress, 1899),” whose whereabouts was unknown. But the worse sin was his torching his own people in the old Lutao and Subanon settlement.’

In the midst of the bombardment, from both sides, the Spaniards and the insurrectos, he noticed that the cluster of houses in Santa Barbara Settlement was aflamed too, as the Old Community was being consumed in its own fratricidal blaze.

Now the entire sky was no longer visible as a mullion dome; it had seemingly turned itself into a giant, phosphorescent panorama of leaping flames. Under the flaming incandescent sky, the view of the battlefield looked like a great canvass of macabre shapes and mixed colors splashed there with fire and thunder below it.

Now the Zamboangueño rebel artillery on the western front barked and roared, with intensity, heat, at its target: the fortified area behind the palisade, its orillon and embrasures, the Jesuit building, Governor’s Casa, and on its left, northward, rows of structures which were the soldiers’ quarters.

Chapter 17

The Old Zamboanga Community, west of the fortified area, in Magay, as well as the cluster of nipa-thatched houses of the Settlement before the Spanish trenches, up northward, indeed were roaring up in flames.

In the blaze of the conflagration, and the unbearable convulsive heat, the frightened night fled toward its lone escape: the marshes and mangrove swamps and up the hills across the Santa Barbara river, to the border of Santa Catalina, east, where ironically it would shiver with cold. It became almost bright as day amidst the fire and leaping flames of the Old Community and the Santa Barbara Settlement.

Now you could see quite clearly in the background both Fort Immaculate Conception and the fortified area, the flames reflecting on the moat which separated them, and also the cannon on the bulwarks and on the orillons. They jetted fire and smoke puffed out of their steel mouths. Also, you could see Spanish riflemen leaning on the bastions, especially from the masonry curtain, heads peering down, and shoulders hunched, as helter skelter the Spaniards fired their rifles at the advancing rebel troops.

On the bank of the river Tumaga, which cuts through the barrios of Santa Barbara, west, and Rio Hondo, east, in front of the masonry curtain of the fortified area, was Captain Calvo of the apunterias    artillery. Earlier, along here on the west river bank, he had placed small and medium-sized guns, this after debating with himself the night before the pro & con of depending only on the heavy cannons from the orillon and cavalier of the masonry curtain, since they were mostly pointing toward the sea. With this positive decision, he had taken some of the artillery from the almacenes of the Fort, without first getting clearance from General Sophez. ‘As a last resort we keep some of the heavier guns in the almacenes,’ said the general Sophez --- ‘to defend the Fort.’ --- But what use are those guns if the Indio rebels swarm over us at the fortifications?’ Captain Calvo had thought. We will not be able to stop the rebel onslaught from seizing the Fort. All his action, he reminded himself, should exude from reason and pragmatic principles. There was no place for conjecture and intuition in military strategy, saying to himself: ‘Yo no me ando con rodeos en estos asuntos.    I don’t beat around the bush in these matters.’

The roar of the rebels’ cannon from Cabonegro which had been silent a while, for reason then only the alcalde local de las rancherias, Laureano Artang, knew, and kept months, even years after, and never told it even to his co-conspirator, Datu Hassan, now boomed rumbled, again. Seconds later the projectiles from the Indio rebels’ guns in Santa Barbara and Magay crashed round the Spanish trenches and on the fortified area. Missiles scored hits at the soldiers quarters and some of the buildings in the fortified area: Barrung, the Governor’s Casa, actually two-three missiles blew away its front wall, and not a few hijo de cabra fell onto the hospital itself, smashing its west wall, and the door of the Jesuit Residence house, opposite. Those shells came from the eleven high-caliber guns, sabes tu, hijacked from the thirteen gun boats in Basilan Straight on April 7.

As the windows of the Governor’s Casa were shattered and part of the northern and eastern walls collapsed, and anticipating more rebels’ bombardment, Governor General Blas Grado finally abandoned it and took shelter at the Fort.

As Don Grado moved out to the Fort, several cannon shells fell into the moat ringing the fortified area, splashing buckets of water, aqui y alla, making a sound you hear when a big object falls in the middle of a basin of water. Some gunners there on the banks around the moat and the cavalier of the fortified area were doused with buckets of water, not sparing Captain Calvo.

‘Caramba! Me cago... ’ he swore.

In the same breath, the captain ordered his gunners to fire intense volleys of missiles into the town of Cabonegro, the camps of Major Marquez in Santa Barbara and Captain Morales along the fringe of Magay. So, the gunners quickened their shell-loading and seconds later there were heard rapid explosions in the distance; but the Zamboangueño rebels’ shells and grapeshot kept pouring down upon the trenches and the fortified area undiminished in intensity and torrent of bombardment.

At this point, the head of engineering Señor Jimenez came up to Captain Calvo and told him they were receiving too much fire.

‘Perhaps we won’t be able to see another day,’ he said, observing that midnight was only an hour or so away.

The captain Jimenez was an engineer by profession, not a soldier. Nevertheless, Governor General gave him the command of the Spanish soldiers fleeing the besieged garrisons, since there was no other ranking officer at Fort Immaculate Conception. . If he could have refused, say no to the Fort commandant, he would certainly have done so. Because he would rather stick to his profession, though unglamorous compared to a warrior, si, es verdad. However, early as March General Sophez had given him the command of thousands of Spanish soldiers fleeing other parts of Mindanao and a new rank: Señor Ingeniero Capitan Jimenez. He was uncomfortable then, as he was uncomfortable now in his new command. Rayo!  Thunder!

Bombs continued exploding all over the plaza and the fortified area, and he was desperate. Puňeta! It was madness even to try to repair the recent damage to the palisade, the projections of the cavalier, masonry curtain, and breastworks while missiles were falling everywhere.     

‘Why do we not move our artillery down closer to the trenches?’ he said to Captain Calvo. ‘Now that we have burnt those huts we will have clearer sight of the rebel forces there.’      

‘The Indios not only outnumber us in man power but outgun us as well,’ cried Captain Calvo, harried and distraught by the fierce bombardment. ‘Ay, our men are demoralized!’

‘No, no ...,’ cried Señor Jimenez above the shelling. ‘Demoralized!  How can you say that of Spanish soldiers!  Be sensible, capitan. Many of our men, whom we mistakenly call “reinforcements” ... why, they came from Jolo and Cotabato and Tawi-Tawi from garrisons besieged by the infidel Moros and Indio Filipino rebels.

‘Why, they fled from them, scared and frightened they would lose their heads or have them displayed on top of a pole. And they thought once they reached Zamboanga they would be promptly expatriated to Spain. Instead, here they are fighting an enemy, and for the first time much more armed ... than themselves, no longer with just kris or spears but with new long Remington rifles and machine guns!’

‘Si ,si,’ said Captain Calvo, noting he had to agree with Ingeniero Capitan Jimenez. He was just too distraught when he had given to such careless, discriminate expression. He added to emphasize his agreement, to lessen his reckless appraisal: La situaciòn ha llegado hasta tal punto que están pasando las de cain.    The situation has reached such a point they are going through hell.       

Señor Ingeniero Jimenez, quietly ignoring what the capitan de apuntaria had previously said, went on:

‘It is not our Spanish troops ... but the conscripted Indios with our troops, they that are fighting without any heart to it …. You have to support us with your guns,’ said the capitan-ingeniero Jimenez ‘Move them further away from these banks, and closer to our trenches. Because the demonio-rebeldes will come upon us like mad dogs when the nipa-thatched houses in the Settlement stop burning .…’

‘All right, all right, Engineer Jimenez, muy bien, muy bien,’ said Captain Calvo, looking away across the battle field toward Rio Hondo. ‘Maybe it is just rumors… that a group of rebels, barbarians from Mulumuluan, what I heard, will come down rivers Tumaga and Masinloc and try to outflank us from the east.’

‘Rebels … from Tumaga and Masinloc river?’

Engineer-Captain Jimenez, more distraught than ever, did not wait for a reply, but strode off quickly back to the parapet of the masonry curtain and the fortified area. Captain Calvo watched him trot hurriedly, his fluttering shadow against the flashes of light moving ahead of him … wavering as the remaining flames oscillated in the wind. He and his shattered shadow were gone in a minute, and Captain Calvo did not move his artillery closer to the trenches but kept them where they were before.

On the rampart of the masonry curtain, when General Sophez noticed that the engineer captain Jimenez was back from the artillery grounds, he returned to the palisade and the west wall; which was now being harassed by Captain Morales’s infantry and his artillery.

Below, Captain Calvo, left with his artillery, was thinking, What if the rumors are true?  that a rebel force will come down from the rivers Tumaga and Masinloc and attack our eastern flank! I leave this ground, and who is going to protect our eastern flank, hah?

He walked off toward the edge of the bank, and the river danced with the reflections of the flames from the burning huts. He peered up the river, and there was not a single rebel war canoe, although he could see clearly up river Could he be wrong? Maybe it’s just rumors.

Captain Calvo did not move his artillery closer to their trenches still, just in case the rebels might come down Tumaga River and he would need the pieces of artillery on that spot of the riverbank to foil them. Hunching his shoulders, a thrust heightened by habit, when baffled and dithered, he walked over to the orchard nearby.

He leaned his back on a tree trunk, the backbones reacting to the hard scabby barks, as bombs and shells burst closer and closer to the trenches and the round artillery grounds fifty meters away. In fact, something carrummed behind him and crashed on the buildings inside the fortified area. Madre mia! he exclaimed. Now shells were falling everywhere. He did not leave the orchard, and heard the sergeant of the artillery, between the firing and the re-loading, shouting at his gunners to fire. 

 ‘Fuego!’  and again, carrummed and the cavalier received a nearly direct hit on one of its projections.

An isolated cannon missile fell crashing on the crater-scarred ground much farther than the rest, crash! but widely missing the Fort itself. He could tell by the sound, an artillery officer could when steel meets steel and that unmistakable crack, short, quick, heavy as steel --- he told himself that he was sure was the impervious, unmistakable sound.  

How long can the men in the trenches and masonry curtain take it, their nerves taut as a violin string, all that bombardment and fusillade from the insurrectos’ heavy guns.

If the rebel canoes come down the river now I can still see them, but what if they come down later when the flashes from the bombardment quiet down and night becomes full? I will not be able to see them in the dark, and even if I do ... Jesùs, Marìa, y Josè!    Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! with all the cannonade and volleys of missiles from the rebel guns and the rebels rushing down upon us from their trenches, everywhere, with all they have got firing ... will I also be able to stop them coming down the river from outflanking us on the eastern wall, even if I place some of my guns there?

Captain Calvo left the safety of the orchard, and just then a shell struck a nearby tree and broke its branches, and leaves and wood splinters flew and fell down around it and upon its gnarled roots. He cried, ‘Caramba! but did not leave the orchard still.

Inside the Santa Barbara Settlement, the last flames were jerking clumsily, and they ran faintly upon the burnt post and beams in sparks and small icons and dying slowly. Around the slow dying flames darkness was repossessing the light. Only at the Old Community was the fire not half-hot, half-big as before; since a number of wooden houses were still burning, flames leaping into the air as if to catch their breath before succumbing consuming themselves.

It was taking there a little longer to burn, the majority of the houses there being of hardwood rather than purely of nipa fronds like those in the Settlement built by Samals, cousin-tribe to the Badjaos, Sea Gypsies, before the masonry curtain of the fortified area. But the glow from the flames of the Settlement was diffusing faster, quicker than, before reaching the trenches. He knew that even before the fire could wholly destroy all the nipa huts and some wooden structures the Zamboangueño insurrectos would be swarming down on them not for long.

There used to be many houses in the Santa Barbara Settlement, ay, ten-folds more, as in the Old Community or Viejo Pueblo, then the main settlement, of the first Subano and Lutao emigrants from Dapitan, an older barrio at the southern tip of the peninsula than Zamboanga itself. The Fort itself was built a score of years earlier, June of 1636. In time it became large as the viejo pueblo community. ‘But the settlement did not continue to grow unlike the old original poblado,’ wrote Pedro Piantong. ‘Since the Samals, the land people not their cousin sea gypsy Badjaos, could not erase from memory the brine and smell of the sea, their former habitat since ancient time. They preferred the viejo poblado in Magay, being at the fringe of what was known as Barrios pantalan and by the sea fronting the twin islands of Santa Cruz, the bigger one the burial grounds of the Samal tribe. Most of the Samal tribesmen returned to the old community. Hó, o.’ 

Why did we burn down the settlements, anyway? thought Captain Calvo, now. ‘So that we and the rebels can see each other and shoot and be shot at and kill each other! But too soon the night and darkness ... why burnt them at all?

I am not thinking correctly… we had to clear the area so we can use our artillery from the masonry curtain and embrasures effectively. But likewise also the rebels’ guns have become accurate, especially those swivel-guns in Santa Barbara and the boundary of Magay.

He watched the incredible blaze still, until finally, in a mournful chant, the last big flames of the cluster of nipa-thatched and wooden houses died, and with only the glow from the cinders and the smoldering coals of fire it abruptly became quite dark again.

Alarmed that in such half darkness he would not be able to see the rebels’ canoes if indeed they would come down the Rio Hondo River --- Captain Calvo walked fast back to the edge of the riverbank, peering into the dark waters again. He did not see or detect any approaching rebel canoe; he thinking Maybe the rumors are what they are: just rumors! but again they could be true ... still the artillery guns were not moved any closer to the trenches as Señor Captain Jimenez had so heatedly suggested, reasoned, and argued with him. On the same spot of scarred grounds the artillery remained, where they had moved since the start of the assault But if the rebels attack, he thought: I can still fire at them with the smaller swivel guns. But how is that possible if I have to take cover under those trees every time a shell comes booming?... A wry smile fluttered on his lips. Boom, boom! boom!

....

The rebel bombardment from Major Marquez and Captain Morales, and even farther north from Alcalde Laureano Artang in Cabonegro, intensified, even doubled … cre tu  would you believe when the three officers learned that Lieutenant Fermin with his Mulumuluan Guerreros had entered Rio Hondo.

But it was not the Zamboangueño rebel commanders who learned first of the appearance of Lieutenant Fermin there, oo, no. For the first ones to know were Captain Calvo and Señor Captain Jimenez; both caught the first flak of projectiles and cannon missiles.     

Señor Jimenez was repairing the torn embankment of the breastworks, since nothing would stop him, not even missiles, from doing his first profession as engineer. On the other hand, Captain Calvo was encouraging more cannonade from his artillery. Abruptly, from nowhere, heavy mixed gunfire of repeat rifles, machine guns, and three-four swivel-cannons poured upon them.

They pounded the Spaniards in their trenches and fortifications, the artillery along the riverbanks, the north masonry curtain and its cavalier. A Spanish high-caliber gun was silenced at the first salvos completamente.

Oi!  Listen!

This was what happened: apparently, later, Lieutenant Fermin changed his mind. ‘He must have had second thoughts,’ said Don Piantong in his booklet Complido Reflejo de los Heroes. ‘Because that is the only reason we see why he was even further more delayed.’ Indeed, he chooose to delay his assault of the east wall and intermittently sought the sanctuary of the swamps, rather than to sail straight upriver and be surely ambushed by Spanish patrols. So, it was already around midnight, Lieutenant Fermin and his Mulumuluan Revolucionario Guerreros had disembarked on the wet bank east of the Spanish trenches, just before the cavalier of the masonry curtain.

With his machine guns and small artillery pieces, Fermin immediately fired upon the Spanish defenses, who had relaxed a bit, not expecting a midnight assault. But Lieutenant Fermin did not attempt to cross the moat farther down to the south, oo, no, since he had no wish to engage with the cannons of the east wall and its orillon. There were enough fire-breathing Spaniards in the trenches, and artillery in the foreground of the fortified area to tangle with. Furthermore, he was to avoid the eastern area, further down where the image of the Immaculada Concepciòn was embossed on a coral block wall; recalling the General’s warning Never, never put in danger the niche of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception!

Cannoneer Peping Barreto wheeled his swivel-guns up on an incline of the east bank, and several times had to push it back up after they slid down the wet slope. They groped in the dark, during the gap between the flashes and silence of the artillery from both camps.

There were no stars still, not to say anything of the moon, sabes tu, over the Spanish and Zamboangueño camps.

 And then, the Lieutenant Fermin, fearless, an eager beaver, you know what I am saying, had quickly chosen twenty-thirty of his best Mulumuluan bowmen, Subano natives of Mulumuluan and Cawa-Cawa, a little swampy village along the west coast, the ancestral land of the General Tenorio’s concubine’s grandmother. Ready with their flaming arrows were the Mulumuluan Guerreros. ‘Listen to me, Subano warriors of Mulumuluan and Cawa-Cawa,’ he shouted above the cannonade. ‘You shoot those flaming arrows at those buildings there, inside there into the fortified area! And burn them all: the Jesuit compound, especially the Governor’s Casa, the soldiers’ quarters ... hoy!’ 

The twenty-thirty of the Subano Guerrero bowmen dipped the rag-tipped arrows into a bucket of oil, lit them from torches stuck into the embankment of the river, and launched the flaming arrows into the fortified compound. Folk around in those days said the flaming arrows were like shooting stars streaking  through the linty dome of the bruised dark sky.

Like children also were these young warriors, they that had grown up too soon, playing with their arrows, shouting and cheering, and fire watching. Until the game, fanfare, you may even call it frolicking, was cut short by the guns of the cavalier and Captain Calvo’s machine guns just after the moat and behind the trenches.

But lined up like that along and down the river bank with their torches and flaming arrows, the bowmen were silhouetted against the inky sky. We can almost hear the old folk say, ‘Lieutenant Fermin ... he that failed to see this, that the Subanos silhouetted figures were easy targets.’

Indeed, his bowmen had framed and outlined themselves ironically by their own torches and  flaming arrows. Chinga vos nana!     Fuck your mother!  The Subanos would all have been shot like wooden ducks in a shooting gallery, but for chief gunner Barreto who had moved the small artillery and machine guns ahead of the riflemen and bow-and-arrow warriors. So that the instant the lieutenant needed the weaponry, ‘Sarge Peping was ready and able.

Exactly when the lieutenant saw that the Guerrero bowmen were in imminent danger, we are not sure. But just in time he must have seen it and in that same instant shouted at his chief gunner: ‘Sergeant Peping, fuego, fuego ... if you wish to live to fornicate mañana!’ For the flaming arrows continued to streak like shooting stars over the dome of the bruised sky that linty night.

....

Unable to finish the repairs on the breastwork under heavy rebel fire, Engineer Jimenez rushed down to the trenches. Up and down the embankment he trotted encouraging the Spanish besieged troopers not to give up hope. In his right hand, he held his sword and did not point this up in the sky but kept it close to his flank only. He was not used to waving it around in his real profession as un ingeniero.

All around missiles were falling and turning up the turf and throwing it up in the air, and a few rifle slugs wheezed by, and he did not crouch to avoid those hissing closely. He was bareheaded.

I do not know why we have to fight these Indios, he thought. This forsaken land no longer belongs to Spain or the king. The Norte Americanos should come in and help us get out of here. We cannot just leave the plaza, wish this were so. The moment we turn our backs and go to our expatriation ships, coňo ... the Indios will attack us from behind.

Why did those two American man-of-war ships, the Ohio and Cavite come at all? Just to show off? --- posturing   posturing only. Are they not supposed to relieve and protect us as we sail for Manila, from where we are to be expatriated to Spain?  Me cago con mala gana!    I defecate unwillingly!

By this time, much of the flames had died, and only a few wooden houses still stood And minutes from now, the Indio rebels will be attacking, thought he. Just soon after the fire dies and the rebels will not get singed anyway (most Indios are beardless and hairless, Captain Jimenez must have sourly concluded), getting through the burnt huts, like rats they will jump out of their trenches and rush upon us. Pues, where are they? Come on! The projectiles and missiles from the Santa Barbara, Magay boundary, and even Cabonegro high-caliber guns whooshed and rumbled overhead, and once more cracked upon the walls of the fortified area, its bastions and even the northwest orillon was hit again.

More and more missiles came rumbling, and there was a louder crash against the soldiers’ quarters and the eastern capilla, and Engineer Jimenez winced as though he were hit, not those buildings; he thinking Stupid are these Indios. They cannot even build a good casa, living on treetops before we civilized them ... and what do they do? destroy what we had built for them! If we won’t be able to stop the cojones, mal criados, they will destroy everything and leave nothing for their progenies and the future: including the Fortaleza dela Nuestra Señora Immaculada Concepción, which we are leaving them as their inheritance and identity as a people.      

‘La Fortaleza! we must make our last stand there!’ he cried out aloud, suddenly realizing the futility of keeping the Spanish defense line from crashing, and the extreme danger to life he was in --- his voice drowning in the horrendous artillery fire. A Spanish trooper said, ‘Què? What is it, engineer-sir?’

This time, closer and closer, slugs from the repeat-rifles and machine guns whistled by. Meanwhile, as Engineer-Captain Jimenez had anticipated, the Zamboangueño rebels had minutes ago sprung from their trenches past the cluster of burnt-down wooden houses of Santa Barbara Settlement and now were on the open field, firing from their advance position. Needless to say, these guns were part of some 400 Remington rifles captured from the thirteen Spanish steam gunships in Nalisao, the ancient name of Basilan Straight.

There were several conscripted Indio Visayan and Tagalog (a tribe in the North region) soldiers and not a few Spanish marines struck by bullets from the Remington rifles.

Ironically struck by their own hijacked Remington rifles, the conscripted Indio Visayan and Tagalog troops and Spanish marines fell dumbly in their trenches, screaming and squirming in pain. A number of shrapnel- or bullet-struck troopers slid down to the bottom of the trenches, others slung backward banging the back of their head against the banks, and still others slumped forward, hard, jarring their jaws or cheeks against the earthen embankment.

‘To the Fort, you fools! estúpidos!’ cried Engineer Jimenez, desperately, as more rifle slugs and projectiles fell all around them, and onto the masonry curtain, close about where the engineer had stood earlier, intrepid, and grapeshot on the empty lot before the moats, sprinkling the earth as if with rain shower of stones, making these sounds thud, thud, thud, and heavy cannon shells again bursting all around the trenches. Though slow to reply, the trooper said, ‘Si, si, Señor Ingeniero Jimenez.’ ‘We must stand there at the Fort to the last men,’ shouted Señor Jimenez, ‘before the ignorant, lazy Indios destroy everything we built: Casa del Governador, compound of the Jesuits, capilla, hospital, and the fortaleza itself!’ ‘Si- si,’ said the marine trooper, again, a bit faster, catching a few words amidst the explosions, but not a complete sentence at once to make sense of the lament. ‘But you must take cover, Engineer-captain, before a bullet from those Indios mal criados will ...’

A presentiment, or only apprehension from a common trooper? Because at that very moment, the captain engineer Jimenez sort of slipped down to the bottom of the trench, his back scraping the side of it. Looped legs and his knees came up jarring his jaws, knocking out many of his teeth from his mouth. Awkwardly, he sat on his rump there in the dark. Darts of light from the smolders and cannon fire flashed occasionally. In these moments, they showed the captain-engineer shaped like a sack of scrap cloths, which had collapsed and been carelessly left there forgotten.

The Spanish marine bent forward, and with his eyes roving over Captain Jimenez’s face, said, ‘Sir ...? Anything wrong, sir?’ --- sometimes, seeing the officer as a dark blob, a shapeless frame, in the recurrent darkness.

Ingeniero Jimenez had not wanted to be a soldier, both ex-Jesuit Macrohon and Seňor Piantong reminded us in their chronicles; but there he was now, squatting there, irreconcilably, unprofessional-looking even as an engineer in the trench, which he had supervised and built himself. Unspeaking, incapable of words with some teeth knocked out, twisted legs salient of motion and life; finally, expiring unexpectedly, as soldiers expire in battle.

¡§Philippine Copyright "¶ 2006 by A. R.  Enriquez¡