to their fate, without food or firearms, and with half of the number ready to drop from sickness and exhaustion. It took the abandoned ones three days to gain the bank of the stream, in the meantime living on nothing but berries and the meat of a lame horse which one day came straying toward them. At the river they constructed rafts, but the savage natives confronted them, and all they had to defend themselves with were stones and clubs, while the natives wounded several of the party with arrows and spears. The exhausted ones would surely have been killed to a man, but just then some shots were heard in the natives' rear, and into view burst the party under Colonel Hare, speedily putting the Filipinos to flight.
But though rescued, the ex-prisoners were by no means safe and free from sufferings. The rescuers were also out of food, and to move across the country was now becoming impossible, on account of the heavy rains. Rafts were constructed on the river, and all hands embarked for a trip full of perils, for the current ran swiftly and more than one raft was overturned in the rapids through which they had to pass. When the party finally got back to the coast and among friends, every man was more dead than alive.
