The next day the Captain remained in the village whilst I went on with the Lieutenant and a few guards in a prahu down the coast, where we made further captures, and returned in three days. During our journey in the prahu the wind was so strong that we resolved to beach our craft on the seashore instead of attempting to get over the shoal of the San Juan River. We ran her ashore under full sail, and just at that moment a native rushed towards us with an iron bar in his hand. In the evening gloom he must have mistaken us for a party of weather-beaten native or Chinese traders whose skulls he might smash in at a stroke and rifle their baggage. He halted, however, perfectly amazed when two guards with their bayonets fixed jumped forward in front of him. Then we got out, took him prisoner, and the next day he was let off with a souvenir of the lash, as there was nothing to prove that he was a brigand by profession. The second leader of the brigand gang was shot through the lungs a week afterwards, by the guards who were on his track, as he was jumping from the window-opening of a hut, and there he died. The Captain of the Civil Guard received an anonymous letter stating where the brigand chief was hiding. This fact came to the knowledge of the native _cuadrillero_ officer who had hitherto supplied his friend, the brigand, with rice daily, so he hastened on before the Captain could arrive, and imposed silence for ever on the fugitive bandit by stabbing him in the back. Thus the _cuadrillero_ avoided the disclosure of unpleasant facts which would have implicated himself. The prisoners were conducted to the provincial jail, and three years afterwards, when I made inquiries about them, I learnt that two of them had died of their wounds, whilst not a single one had been sentenced. The most ignorant classes believe that certain persons are possessed of a mystic power called _anting-anting_, which preserves them from all harm, and that the body of a man so affected is even refractory to bullet or steel. Brigands are often captured wearing medallions of the Virgin Mary or the Saints as a device of the _anting-anting_. In Maragondon (Cavite), the son of a friend of mine was enabled to go into any remote place with impunity, because he was reputed to be possessed of this charm. Some highwaymen, too, have a curious notion that they can escape punishment for a crime committed in Easter Week, because the thief on the cross was pardoned his sins.