I am certain that there is no braver soldiery in all the world than ours.  But I am equally certain that when war is a man’s profession, on which all his chances of honor, pay, and promotion hinge directly or indirectly, the wish in his mind is father to the thought, and unconsciously he scents danger because he wants danger.  Of an officer it may be said, as of Thisbe’s lion, that his trade is blood, and “a lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing,” But nothing pleased me more than to hear the officers tell tales of the old campaign and speculate on the possibilities of a new one.

Our Supervisor had been a captain of volunteers in a Minnesota regiment.  He was a thoroughly interesting talker, and an inimitable story-teller, a man who did not lose his sense of humor when the joke turned on himself.  I heard him tell one or two stories well worth repeating.

Our valorous Supervisor was stationed in Antique province, while in Capiz was a detachment of the regular army.  And in full sight of both on the top of a precipice, an insurrecto flag flaunted its impertinent message.

The Supervisor said he waited a decent length of time to give the regulars a chance to pull down the flag, as it lay in their province, but when they failed to act, he went out, full of hope and good United States commissary valor, to destroy the insurrecto stronghold and to give an object lesson in guerilla warfare to the regulars.  His men hacked and hewed their way through the jungle and cogon grass, with never a shot from the insurrectos.  Then at the last they came to a clear slope, and when they were about half-way up this, the insurrectos opened fire, not only with rifles but with great boulders.  The Supervisor said it took them over two hours to get up, and they went down in less than twenty minutes.  One little Dutch private was in so much of a hurry that he punched him (the officer) in the back with a gun butt and said, “Hurry up! get out of the way.”  Most of the shots flew high, however.  The flag came down later, but it required four hundred men and a battery of artillery to bring it down.

On another occasion the Supervisor, his wife, a constabulary lieutenant, and I were out on the playa (beach) when we came to a little hollow almost hidden by grass, so that I stumbled in crossing it.  This started the two men into retrospect of a day’s fight over on the beach of the west coast.  The insurrectos at last took to flight, and the Supervisor started after one whom he had noticed, on account of the beautiful kris, or fluted bolo, which he carried.  As they ran, the Supervisor stumbled over such a grass-hidden hollow, and without his perceiving it, his revolver flew out of its holster.  He kept on gaining slightly on his quarry, who glanced apprehensively over his shoulder now and then, expecting to see the big Colt come out.  At last, when he thought the range was good, the officer reached for his revolver.  He described the sort of desperate grin with which