“If you give your daughter to Bantugan we shall fight forever or until we die.”

Then the Sultan sent for Bantugan and said: 

“We must deceive the Spaniard in order to get him to go away.  Let us tell him that neither of you will marry my daughter, and then after he has gone, we shall have the wedding.”

Bantugan agreed to this, and word was sent to the Spaniards that the fighting must cease since many women and children were being killed.  So it was agreed between the Spaniard and Bantugan that neither of them should marry the Princess.  Then they both sailed away to their homes.

Bantugan soon returned, however, and married the Princess, and on the way back to his home they found his son and took him with them.  For about a week the Spanish general sailed toward his home and then he, too, turned about to go back, planning to take the Princess by force.  When he found that she had already been carried away by Bantugan, his wrath knew no bounds.  He destroyed the Sultan, his city, and all its people.  And then he sailed away to prepare a great expedition with which he should utterly destroy Bantugan and his country as well.

One morning Bantugan looked out and saw at the mouth of the Rio Grande the enormous fleet of the Spaniards whose numbers were so great that in no direction could the horizon be seen.  His heart sank within him, for he knew that he and his country were doomed.

Though he could not hope to win in a fight against such great numbers, he called his headmen together and said: 

“My Brothers, the Christian dogs have come to destroy the land.  We cannot successfully oppose them, but in the defense of the fatherland we can die.”

So the great warship was again prepared, and all the soldiers of Islam embarked, and then with Bantugan standing at the bow they sailed forth to meet their fate.

The fighting was fast and furious, but soon the great warship of Bantugan filled with water until at last it sank, drawing with it hundreds of the Spanish ships.  And then a strange thing happened.  At the very spot where Bantugan’s warship sank, there arose from the sea a great island which you can see today not far from the mouth of the Rio Grande.  It is covered with bongo palms, and deep within its mountains live Bantugan and his warriors.  A Moro sailboat passing this island is always scanned by Bantugan’s watchers, and if it contains women such as he admires, they are snatched from their seats and carried deep into the heart of the mountain.  For this reason Moro women fear even to sail near the island of Bongos.

When the wife of Bantugan saw that her husband was no more and that his warship had been destroyed, she gathered together the remaining warriors and set forth herself to avenge him.  In a few hours her ship was also sunk, and in the place where it sank there arose the mountain of Timaco.

On this thickly wooded island are found white monkeys, the servants of the Princess, who still lives in the center of the mountain.  On a quiet day high up on the mountain side one can hear the chanting and singing of the waiting-girls of the wife of Bantugan.