Between herself and a few Filipino leaders she concocted a scheme that would be hilarious, avenge the death of him whom she had briefly mourned, as well as the deaths of Rizal and thousands of other Filipinos who had been shot or strangled by the Spaniards, and satisfy the longings of her innermost nature. It was this: a pit twenty feet in diameter and ten feet deep was to be dug on the higher ground a few miles southwest of Cavite. Each morning twenty of the captured Spaniards were to be marched out to this pit and made to slide down a bamboo pole into it. The Filipino soldiers, armed with their newly-captured rifles, were then to stand around the brink of this pit and use these half-starved Spaniards for living targets. Marie gloated over her new enterprise. What sport! How she enjoyed it! The Filipino's marksmanship was poor and many of their unfortunate prisoners were shot over a dozen times before they were stilled in death. This bloody practice was kept up until over two hundred Spaniards had been slain. About this time rumors of what was being done reached the ears of General Anderson. He ordered it stopped, and sent food ashore, under American escorts, for the Spanish prisoners. These prisoners, before being led to the slaughter, were housed by the Filipinos in an unfinished portion of the old convent at Cavite, and in some large stone buildings without floors and with only a few windows, heavily barricaded with iron bars, formerly used by the natives for storage purposes for various cargoes of raw materials, preparatory to exportation. These buildings were dark, damp and infested with a multiplicity of insectivora. The Spaniards, imprisoned therein, were fed by the Filipinos on a very small ration of uncooked rice. This they had to pound into meal, and eat it out of their hands. Water, although plentiful, was denied them, except in small quantities. They had no beds, but slept on the bare ground. Many of them were practically nude. They had staid by their guns on the Spanish fleet until their ships began to sink; then they had jumped overboard and swam ashore, taking off most of their clothes before making the attempt. The Filipinos had little clothing to give them and no disposition to share what they did have.