“To-morrow morning,” Colonel Martinez added, “we shall leave the village and march inland. I have already sent to notify our leader that I have successfully arrived. I think for your own good it would be wiser for you to remain on board here until we start. I do not trust the temper of the people. Americans are not just now in favor.” He finished with an amused smile on his face. After their captors had left them, the three terribly disappointed men sat bemoaning their fate. “We might just as well make the best of it,” Sydney philosophically assured the others. “There certainly isn’t any way to escape that I can see. After all, we’ve been in just as tight places and have come out of them; we don’t make matters any better by crying over spilled milk.” “If that girl hadn’t betrayed us,” Phil moaned, “we would have been on board the ‘Albany’ this minute.” “Mr. Perry,” O’Neil broke in apologetically, “it ain’t like you to be unfair to anybody, most of all a woman. These are her own people--Colonel Martinez must be a friend of hers, or otherwise we wouldn’t have been living to see the ‘Albany.’ If she had only been an ordinary native girl, these ladrones wouldn’t have stopped and bowed and scraped and then given us the freedom of the after deck of the ship. No, sir, she’s a person of consequence. She saved our lives and then afterward she saved the lives of Colonel Martinez and his band of cutthroats, for if they had fallen into the hands of the crew of the ‘Albany’ they would have all been shot or swung at her yard-arm. Seizing this merchant ship and killing her captain is piracy.” “I think O’Neil is right,” Sydney exclaimed patting the sailor on the back enthusiastically. “The girl’s all right--I’ll take my hat off to her every time.” “It was my own stupidity, I suppose,” Phil declared, his face sobering slightly. “I thought she was too frightened to know what was happening; in fact I really didn’t believe she would understand what I intended doing.” “Who do you suppose she is?” Sydney asked eagerly. “Isn’t it queer she has never told us her name?” “It probably wouldn’t aid us if she had,” Phil replied; “she’s probably the daughter of some rich Filipino, who holds a fat position under our civil government. By the way she talked when we first met her I thought she was dead against war, yet she appears to know and welcome these cutthroat Tagalos with open arms.” “There you go, Phil,” Sydney admonished, “unfair again. She has so far shown herself willing to help both sides. In your heart, when you’ve recovered from your disappointment and humiliation at being handled so roughly by a girl, you’ll see that she acted in a way that was just to both the insurgents and ourselves.” The next morning at daylight the Americans were up and dressed, ready for the march with their captors.