Page:The Campaign of the Jungle.djvu/96

76 "A prisoner is it?" said one of the natives, coming forward and holding up a torch of pitch. "A mere boy. Bah, Lanza, cannot you do better?"

"He was with the soldiers who took Santa Cruz, and he wears the cap from a warship," replied Lanza. "It may be we can get more out of him than out of somebody older."

"Well, perhaps; but I would rather you had brought in a man," was the brief response.

The conversation was in the Tagalog dialect, and consequently Larry did not understand a word of it. The boy was made to march into the cave, which he found to be much larger than he expected. It was fully forty feet broad by sixty feet deep, and at the farther end a bright fire was burning, the blaze mounting high up in a natural chimney and rendering the surroundings as light almost as day.

On coming to his senses, the youth's hands had been bound behind him, and now he was made to sit down with his back against a fair-sized tree trunk which had been dragged into the cave for firewood. A rope was passed around the log and this in turn was fastened to the cord about his wrists, thus making him a close prisoner.

For several hours the rebels paid but scant