68 



THE SULC ISLANDS. 



[chap. 



ment, from which we congratulated ourselves on ha\'ing escaped 

 with whole skins. 



Our friend the Panglima we never saw again. In the war of 

 succession in 1885 he was one of the first to fall. AYliile leading 

 his men he received a spear-wound in the left eye, and thus Sulu 



A NATIVE OF SULl'. 



was rid of one of the most unmitigated scoundrels that ever trod 

 its soil. 



On rejoining the yacht at Jolo we found a Manila man on 

 board who had escaped from the town. He spoke a few words 

 only of Spanish, but complained of being cruelly treated by the 

 Spaniards, and begged most piteously to be allowed to remain. It 

 is a most difficult thing to judge of such cases. From our own 

 observation, and from our constant intercourse with the Spanish 

 officers, — whom we invariably found to be, as far as we could judge, 

 gentlemen in the widest sense of the term, — we were inclined 

 entirely to disbelieve his story. The fact, however, remains that 

 the convicts, possibly weary of the monotony of the life or in 

 dread of the fever and dysentery that carries off their comrades 



