It appears that the misbehavior noted here by Rizal consisted of the seduction of the sergeant’s wife by the officer, and the tying up of the officer was the sergeant’s revenge. It is an interesting side-light on the prevailing code that the officer was dismissed from the service for allowing himself to be tied but not for dishonoring the poor sergeant, whose recompense was to be shot. The privates were to be punished for laying hands upon an officer, although they were but obeying orders. [174] I ate in my state-room, the food being the same as the officers had. I always had a sentinel and a corporal on guard. Every night Captain Delgras took me for a promenade till 9 o’clock. We passed along the east coast of Mindanao and the west coast of Panay. We came to Dapitan on Sunday at 7 in the evening. Captain Delgras and three artillerymen accompanied me in a boat rowed by eight sailors. There was a heavy sea. The beach seemed very gloomy. We were in the dark, except for our lantern, which showed a roadway grown with weeds. In the town we met the governor or commandant, Captain Ricardo Carnicero. There was also a Spanish exile, and the practicante, [175] Don Cosme. We went to the town hall, which was a large building. That is all there is of this laconic narrative. Under the conditions it can hardly be equaled for philosophical phlegm. “The beach seemed very gloomy”; “As no one came to get me, I went to sleep.” It sounds like casual notes on a holiday jaunt. In point of fact, he was in danger at all times of assassination and knew it well. He must have rather wondered at his fortune when he saw the beach at Dapitan and realized that he had arrived without being murdered. [176] It was a little town on the border of a savage country, known to be unhealthful, and at that time so difficult of access from Manila that he might have been nearer at Yokohama. It is charitable but hardly necessary to believe that the men that consigned him to such a place were unaware of its repute. With so little concealment they had sought in other ways for his life, we have no reason to think now of a sudden they had acquired mercy. To a thousand places more salubrious he might as easily have been sent; none would satisfy them but this. At Dapitan were a military station, a convento, and several priests. Rizal was informed that if he would make a declaration of sympathy and admiration for Spain he could reside at the convento with the priests. Even for that privilege, dear to an intellectual man, hungry for the company of his educated fellows, he would not lay perjury on his soul. [177] Strange as the temptation seems to us in these days, the tempters knew well what they had in view. With such a declaration they could nullify much of Rizal’s influence upon his countrymen and possibly allay something of the spirit of revolt that on all sides was rising in the colony.