The woman with a stone heart : $b A romance of the Philippine WarCoursey, O. W. (Oscar William)
History
The woman with a stone heart : $b A romance of the Philippine War
Coursey, O. W. (Oscar William)
Philippines -- History -- Revolution, 1896-1898 -- Fiction
At San Isidro, from which place Aguinaldo had been driven, she
saw some American soldiers administering the water cure to some
Filipinos in order to make them reveal the whereabouts of their wily
general. Marie was angry. She yearned to shoot, but she was no longer
on the aggressive; she was now a fugitive from justice. At this
place she inspected the old Filipino prison and on its walls found
the names of Gilmore and his party, whom she had helped to capture at
Baler, who had been imprisoned there, and who were still alive when
Aguinaldo was driven from the city of San Isidro by the approach of
the Americans. She determined to take her revenge on them for this
water cure punishment, if she ever found them. But the opportunity
never came. So journeying on toward the northern part of Luzon she had
many experiences, and she came in contact with tribes whom she had
never seen before and whose dialect was foreign to her. Many things
combined to retard her progress. Often she grew very weary and would
have turned back, except for fear.
Following up the valley of the Pampanga river and thence on northward
along the Barat, she passed through the province of Nueva Ecija,
crossed the Caraballo mountains which form its northern boundary,
and then entered the province of Nueva Vizcaya, where she came upon
the head-waters of the Rio Magat river.
In crossing the Caraballo mountains she made her way through a deep
gorge at night. It was now about the middle of February. A full moon
shone at its best. The weather was ideal. Journeying was abnormally
pleasant. Under favorable conditions, during times of peace, the trip
she was taking would have been a delightful outing. Just now things
were different. Small garrisons of American soldiers had crowded
forward and were occupying the largest cities along her route. As yet
she had not gotten beyond them. "A guilty conscience needs no accuser";
everywhere that she went she imagined herself to be under suspicion.
Far up in the Caraballos she came across a little mountain torrent
which leaped down over the mountain side from one rocky ledge to
another at quite regular intervals in a series of waterfalls until it
beat itself into a turbulent spray in the bed of the chasm below. The
laughing moon filtered its beaming rays through the thin sheet of
shimmering water as it danced down its course from precipice to
precipice, and seemingly converted it into a great silvery stair-way
connecting earth with heaven. Marie's heart throbbed with emotion. The
dashing of the falling water on the rocks below in the bed of the canon
made a hollow sound as its echoes reverberated through the gorge above.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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