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Some of those vessels are large, and fitted out with fifty, a hundred, and sometimes two hundred men. The shots of their scanty and defective artillery are very uncertain, because they generally carry their guns suspended in slings; but they are to be dreaded, and are extremely dexterous in the management of the campilan, or sword, of which they wear the blades long and well tempered.
One case was filled entirely with fine specimens of that once-dreaded weapon, the Moro "campilan." This is a straight sword, usually, with a very heavy blade, which gradually widens towards the end. This is a heavy cutting sword, and one that was placed in Sergeant Hal's hands, though Cerverra claimed that it was two hundred years old, had an edge like a razor. "How much is such a sword as this?"
Every man there was armed with at least a barong stuck into his broad sash, and many of them boasted a kris and campilan as well, while the brilliant colours of their costumes, and the still more gaudy sarongs of the women, made them resemble a gathering of strange tropic birds, our European apparel looking singularly dull and sober beside their scarlets, greens, and purples.
Suddenly the boy jumped up, dashed into the crowd, and yelled: "Juramentado!" A tall Moro, without any warning, had begun to shriek and whirl, cutting to and fro with his terrible campilan, and before any one could prevent, he had felled two troopers.
Words told him that his captors, only two in number, meant him to march, hobbled as he was, along a path which they pointed out; but it took several sharp pricks from a "campilan" which one of them carried, to make him start. For the path led away from the river, away from Pasi, from Ilo Ilo and the Utica, which he would have given his life itself rather than fail to reach in time.
Without a thought for the helpless boy, the women dropped the torches and fled screaming through the night, leaving the campong in darkness. Only Piang came to the none too popular mestizo's assistance. He hurled himself at the reptile's head, campilan raised to strike, but instead of falling upon the mark, his knife severed the one remaining cable and set the monster free.
Hal inquired. "Forty dollars," replied Cerverra. "Gold!" "No; Mex." Hal felt almost staggered with the cheapness of things here, as compared with the curio stores in Manila. Forty dollars "Mex" meant but about twenty dollars in United States currency. "I have some cheaper ones," went on Cerverra. "Here is one at eighteen dollars." "I'm going to have one of these campilan," Hal told himself.
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