Part 6

We headed straight inshore, and then made a wide sweep round the lighthouse and the end of the breakwater.

As we turned, the white forts about the town came into view, and we tried to get our gun to bear on them, but though we gave it extreme elevation, cocking it up in the air, we couldn't elevate it nearly enough.

Mr. Bigge, the lieutenant in charge of my turret, was very angry about it, but of course nothing could be done. That was why the _Hercules_ was steaming backwards and forwards, far enough outside the breakwater for her guns to bear.

As we crept up to the town, I kept my telescope glued on the forts, but couldn't see any sign of life in them.

'They aren't going to fight, sir, are they?' I asked Mr. Bigge, and he didn't think they were, which was very disappointing--one doesn't mind being fired at when one is inside a turret.

On the port side--the breakwater side--we were now right alongside the Santa Cruz Navy--miserable dirty little ships when you saw them close to us. Their people were awake and on deck, but hardly bothered to look at us, and were fishing over the side, smoking cigarettes, and spitting in the water, some of them washing clothes and hanging them up in the rigging. They did hoist their colours--the vertical green and yellow stripes--after a time, but that was the only thing they did. Not very exciting, after all we had been hoping for, was it?

Just before we got up to the end of the breakwater we'd dropped a kedge anchor made fast to our biggest wire hawser, and as we went along we paid the hawser out astern. Then when we'd got just beyond the landing-stage we dropped an anchor, and there we were in a pretty close billet, not enough room to turn, but our kedge ready to haul us out stern first, and everything as snug as a tin of sardines. We were not a hundred yards from the wharves where that guard of honour had been yesterday, but only a few people and some mules were moving sleepily about, and a lonely-looking sentry leant against a great pile of cocoa bales and yawned.

Well, we'd taken them by surprise right enough, and there was nothing to do but to wait till noon and see what happened. It was a jolly long wait, and I don't really know whether I wanted most to see Billums come off, or to capture the cruisers if he didn't. I know that all the other chaps didn't want him to come off. Outside the breakwater the _Hercules_ still steamed backwards and forwards, with her guns trained on the forts in case anything happened, and during the forenoon got down her top-masts and wireless gear. This made her look all the more ferocious, and our Commander began bellowing and cursing 'that he'd have to do the same and spoil all his paint-work.' It took us a couple of hours, but it was much better than doing nothing, and later on in the morning crowds of people came down on the wharves to look at us, and watch us working. My eye! but it was appallingly hot in there.

At about ten o'clock the forts began to show signs of life, hoisting yellow and green flags and training their guns round and round. They had two dynamite guns in one of them--so the books said--and we felt as though they couldn't possibly miss us if they had fired. That sounded far too exciting--dynamite seemed rather unpleasant---but the Gunnery Lieutenant's 'Doggy' brought the news that none of the guns in the fort could be depressed enough to hit us, which was rather a relief--really--though the others didn't think so. The cruisers, too, began to get up steam, let down their gun ports, and ran their guns out. We could see them being loaded, and then they were trained on us, which was very exciting when you remember that they were only fifty yards away.

Directly they had the cheek to do this our port guns were trained on them--the foremost 9.2 on one, the port for'ard 9.2 on another, two of the 7.5's on a third, and so on, with orders to fire directly the Santa Cruz ships fired.

Of course these poor little things wouldn't have stood a chance, but they kept their crews at their guns, and if they'd only been able to let off one broadside it would have swept our decks. This made it jolly interesting for all of us who were getting down the topmasts and had to work in the open.

I had never thought about how Billums or the Ministers were coming off, and when at seven bells the first and second barges were called away, you can imagine how excited I was, because the second barge was mine. They lowered us into the water, planked a Maxim gun in the bows, revolvers and cutlasses were served out to the crew, and I had my dirk and revolver.

The Commander bellowed down that we were to go inshore, lie off the steps at the landing-place, and wait for Billums or the Ministers.

I was in white uniform with a white helmet, and it was so boilingly hot that, though the men only had on straw hats, flannels, and duck trousers, they sweated under their cutlass belts before they'd pulled half-way inshore.

As we got close to the wharf it was more exciting still, because the people crowding there and the soldiers began shouting and jeering at us, shaking sticks and throwing stones--not to hit us, but to splash us. They weren't brave enough to do any more, because they could see all the starboard twelve-pounders on board the _Hector_ trained on them. I felt jolly important, and when Blotchy Smith--the midshipman of the first barge and a pal of mine--sang out for me to 'lay on my oars,' we bobbed up and down only about ten yards away and pretended we didn't see them.

We waited and waited; eight bells struck aboard the _Hector_, there wasn't a sign of any one coming, and the black ruffians on the wharf became more irritating than ever. Several lumps of mud and dirt had been thrown into the boats, and one had struck my clean helmet, but I still pretended not to notice anything. It got so bad soon that Blotchy Smith sang out to me to train my Maxim on the crowd, and you would have laughed if you'd seen the brutes clearing away.

Then the _Hector_ signalled across that carriages could be seen coming down the road from Santa Cruz, and after another long wait we heard the mob ashore groaning and hooting, and a lot of cavalry and several carriages came clattering and rattling along the wooden wharves.

You can guess how we wondered whether it was Billums coming or only the Ministers. It wasn't Billums, for we saw all the foreign Ministers, and knew that they would not have come with him.

Some soldiers made a way for them, and then we had to pull backwards and forwards, taking them and a lot of Europeans--Mr. Macdonald among them--off to the ship, and afterwards go back for their luggage.

'Well, we'll have a bit of a "dust up" after this, sir,' my coxswain said, and that was about the only comfort.

The Angel told me afterwards that when the Ministers got on board their wives came up and made asses of them, they were so jolly pleased to see them, but they'd all been sent below by the time my boat had been hoisted in. Then we had to collar the cruisers.

Well, even that was disappointing, because they never made any resistance, the officers simply shrugged their shoulders when we hauled their colours down and hoisted our own white ensigns, and ordered their men to pull ashore. You couldn't really blame them, because our 9.2 shells would have blown them to smithereens; but, for all that, it was very tame.

By half-past one we'd got hawsers aboard their flagship, the _Presidente Canilla_, and by three o'clock hawsers had been passed from her to the others, and we simply went astern, hauling on our kedge anchor till we were clear of the breakwater, and then steamed astern with the whole of the Santa Cruz Navy coming along after us like a lot of toy ships on the end of a string. It looked perfectly silly, and the last one--a gunboat as big as a decent Gosport ferry-boat--fouled the end of the breakwater till our chaps aboard of her shoved her off, and along she came after the rest of them. By five o'clock we and the _Hercules_ had anchored, and all the prizes as well.

It was a jolly tame ending to all the excitement, and we all wondered what we should do next to make them give up Billums. The A.P. said that we should probably land and take possession of the Custom House.

He bucked us up a good deal, but not even that came off, because before we finished making everything shipshape for the night, out puffed the port launch, flying a huge white flag in her bows and the yellow and green ensign in the stern, bringing out our friend the Governor and his two A.D.C.'s. They came along to make complete apologies, and say that Billums should be given up next morning. He brought a letter from the President simply grovelling to the various Ministers and imploring them and the merchants to come ashore again. Wasn't that grand, although, you know, we couldn't help feeling that we'd been rather playing the bully?

When it got dark, the Angel, and I, and Mr. Bostock, the Gunner, with half-a-dozen hands, were sent aboard one of the ships, the _Salvador_, an old torpedo-gunboat kind of affair, to keep watch through the night. We had revolvers served out to us in case any chaps from shore tried to play the idiot; but they didn't, and we simply sat down under an awning with our coat-collars turned up, and took it in turns to keep watch, or, if we were all awake, got Mr. Bostock to tell us tales of Ladysmith.

In the morning we all went back to the _Hector_, and at five minutes past ten o'clock old Billums came along in the port launch, the Governor bringing him off and making more apologies. Billums _was_ glad to get back again--he wanted a shave and a clean collar most awfully--and you can guess how jolly glad we were to have him. The Commander bellowed at him that he'd make him pay for all the paint-work which had been spoilt by clearing for action, but it was only his way--he couldn't help it--and the _Hercules_ gun-room sent a signal, 'Sub to ditto. We are all jolly glad to get you back,' which was nice of him, though his beasts of mids. didn't join in with the signal--just like them.

Well, the Ministers and the merchants went ashore jolly pleased with themselves, but they left all the ladies on board, as they thought it wiser for them to go to Prince Rupert's Island with us till things had quieted down in Santa Cruz.

We gave Billums a rousing good sing-song, till the Commander ordered us to chuck it, and was appallingly rude to him; and next morning we left the Santa Cruz Navy for its own people to take back behind the breakwater, and shoved off for Prince Rupert's Island.

You should have seen the Angel looking after the Minister's two daughters! It was too asinine for words, and I told him so. He said I was jealous, and we jolly nearly came to punching each other's heads about them.

*CHAPTER V*

*Gerald Wilson captures San Fernando*

_Written by Sub-Lieutenant William Wilson_

Those thirty-six hours in San Sebastian are over and done with, and I shouldn't care to go through them again. They were the longest hours I have ever spent, and they, at any rate, taught me what it does feel like to be a prisoner, and to look through an iron gateway and envy everything outside it, and everybody. The other chaps--_insurrectos_ they all were--had been jolly decent to me, although I could not understand their lingo, and the way they settled down and took things as a matter of course was simply extraordinary. Even when two more were dragged out the morning I was released, and shot against that parapet, the others only shrugged their shoulders and simply smoked cigarettes all the harder. You could only imagine that they were but half-civilized, had known no other way of carrying on the politics of the Republic, and were so used to violence and murder that, when their turn came to go 'under,'they simply bowed to the inevitable, their only consolation being that probably in another few weeks or months, if luck favoured their party, that same stuffy room would be crowded with President's men, and quite possibly the same villainous-looking firing-party would just as cheerfully prop them up against that wall and shoot them down. These same miserable-looking convicts, whom I'd seen with chains round their ankles, would almost certainly be there to dig fresh graves.

Of course, all those hours I wondered what our chaps were doing to bail me out, but didn't worry much--I knew things would come right in the end--and of course they did.

But I did worry about Gerald and what his hare-brained adventures would lead him to. He had always been getting into trouble at home, and that was why the pater and mater had shipped him out to Santa Cruz, though they little thought that he'd take a leading part in a revolution, and the poor old mater would be fearfully worried when she heard about it. It was jolly to know that an Englishman, and my own brother, was such a boss among these fierce, blood-thirsty, half-Spanish people, but that wouldn't be much comfort to the mater if he was stuck up against the parapet of San Sebastian, which would certainly be his fate if he ever fell into the clutches of the President.

It was my chum of the cigarette case who actually fetched me down and took me aboard the _Hector_. Even whilst I was trying to thank him, the Commander began bellowing that 'He'd make me pay for the paint he'd spoilt clearing for action and housing the topmasts.' He was as rude as it was possible to be, but every one else--'Old Tin Eye' included--was all right, and Ginger signalled congratulations from the _Hercules_.

Of course my adventure was known all over Princes' Town before we'd anchored more than an hour or two, and reporters from the local papers and Reuter's Agent came bustling on board for more details, but were told nothing, except that I'd been arrested by mistake, and that, as a hint to the President to let me out again, 'chop, chop,' one or two of the Santa Cruz gunboats had been seized. We had all been ordered to give no political information to anybody, but you may imagine that their ears were rigged out for something more exciting than that, and you can jolly well guess who gave it to them--the Angel backed up by Cousin Bob. They saw their way to getting a cheap 'blow out' at the Savannah Hotel, and actually had the cheek to tell the two local reporters that if they'd stand them a dinner there, they would tell them all they knew about it.

They had put their names down in the leave book for the late boat and went ashore, but of course I had no idea what their game was. I had turned in early, and they woke me, by knocking at my cabin and asking if they could come in.

I switched on my light, and there they were, in their best blue suits, grinning from ear to ear.

They both began talking twenty to the dozen. 'We've given you such a "leg up"--we've had a topping feed at the Savannah, and you'll see all about it in the papers to-morrow!'

'All what?' I asked.

'All about you fighting dozens of soldiers, knocking them over, and of our trying to rescue you.'

'We put in a lot of extras to make it look better,' Bob squeaked.

'We told them all about knocking over the rotten _Hercules_ mids., and about you being so like Cousin Gerald.'

'What!' I sang out, sitting up in my bunk. 'You blessed idiots, what rot have you been up to? You know you had orders not to speak of it.'

'We didn't say a word about politics, not a word,' Bob said rather nervously. 'It's quite all right; we never mentioned politics.' The Angel added, 'We didn't tell them the real way you escaped.'

'Out with it! What did you tell them, you fools?'

They were backing out of the cabin--rather sulky--but I yelled for them to come back. 'Now, none of your tomfoolery. What did you tell them?'

'Well, we gave ourselves a bit of a leg up too,' the Angel began, looking down his nose as good as gold.

'It really was all a joke,' Bob interrupted, 'it was their fault if they believed it. We told them that we waited till night under the walls of San Sebastian, wriggled over the parapet, and found your dungeon.'

'We told them that we'd whistled "Rule, Britannia!"--very softly--till--we--heard--you--whistle back,' the Angel stuttered out, choking with laughter, 'and that the sentry was asleep, and we only had to knock him down--and gag him--steal the key--open the door--all of us crawling away again over the walls and tramping it on our flat feet down to Los Angelos.'

'You don't mean to tell me that they believed all that rot?'

'We think they did--wasn't it a joke?' Bob said--he was beginning to see that I didn't think it a joke. 'We gave them the key of the dungeon--an old brass key we'd found on the armourer's bench before we went ashore.'

'It was the key of the bread-room that was broken yesterday,' the Angel gurgled, when he could stop laughing. 'And we said we'd all swum off to the ship in the dark.'

I wasn't in the humour to see how it was funny, and sent them out of it. 'If anything does come out in the papers, I'll beat you both,' I told them.

'Well, the feed was worth a hiding, and the joke too,' Bob mumbled, as they went away--thank goodness the Angel was no relation of mine and had no mother or sister who could write snorters to me, so he didn't dare to be rude.

You can guess how angry I was next morning, when the wretched local papers did come aboard, and saw in big letters: 'Romantic Escape of British Naval Officer--Plucky Middies effect Rescue,' and underneath it was the silliest nonsense you could possibly read. Honestly, even now I don't know whether it was put in as a joke, and whether, instead of Bob and the Angel pulling the reporters' legs, they were pulling ours. Angry! I was too angry to speak!

They described me as Sub-Lieutenant William Wilson, the celebrated United Service half-back, and the brilliant naval officer, specially appointed to command the _Hector's_ gun-room by the Lords of the Admiralty as a mark of their appreciation of my services! Angry! My blessed potatoes! I sent for my dear cousin and the Angel and gave them six of the best over the gun-room table--as hard as I could lay it on--the first three for making their Sub look a fool, and the last three for disobeying the Captain's orders. I know which were the hardest whacks, and I didn't care a biscuit what Bob's sister, Daisy, thought or wrote. They went away muttering that the dinner was worth it--every time--which was meant to be rude, because they both had got it into their noddles that they'd actually given me a 'leg up,' and couldn't see that they'd only made a laughing-stock of me.

First of all the Commander sent for me on the quarterdeck. He had Perkins there as a witness, and before I ever had a chance of saying anything, bellowed out, 'You're the "brilliant naval officer," are you? You're a fool, and an idiot, and a useless idiot. You can't keep order in the gun-room, and the sooner you get out of the ship the better.' He bellowed till the maintopmen, painting masts and yards up aloft, left off painting to listen to him. He didn't ask me to speak, so I didn't--said not a word--which made him almost apoplectic with rage, his ugly red face getting perfectly crimson. Every time he stopped for breath, Perkins kept on trying to tell him that perhaps it wasn't my fault, which sprung him off again, and at last he turned round and cursed him for interfering.

Perkins twisted round on his heel and hobbled off, but the Commander called for him to come back, and he did, his jolly face all tightened out.

'Did you hear the Commander curse me on the quarterdeck?' he asked very quietly.

'I did, sir,' I said; and he turned to the Commander, 'Very well, I shall see the Captain about it. I'm not going to stand any more of it.'

You should have seen the Commander's face. His mouth opened, and he looked as if he would willingly have murdered the two of us, then he bounced off the quarterdeck, and into his cabin just inside the battery, and banged the door, like the childish bully he was. As he didn't come out again, I went below.

Then the Skipper sent for me. He was grinning all over his face: 'Those two boys have made a fool of you, Wilson; tut! tut! stop their leave--whack 'em both.'

'I've beaten them, sir, already,' I told him, 'and given them six apiece--as hard as I could,' and explained to him that I had no idea why they went ashore.

'Tut! tut! no harm done; they got their dinner all right; tell 'em to lunch with me, tut! tut!--if they can sit down--I'd have done it myself for a good dinner--thirty years ago.'

Old Ginger and I had arranged to go for a walk together that afternoon, to shake up our livers, and I was not particularly keen, after what had happened, to ask leave from the Commander, but I screwed up my courage and did so, and was flattened aback when he said, 'Very good, Wilson. Come and have "chow" with me in the ward-room to-night--celebrate your release.'

That was the rotten, or rather the irritating, part about him. After he'd been as rude as a fishwife, and long before you'd got over bubbling with anger at the sight of him, he'd come up as if nothing had happened and take the wind out of your sails.

Of course I had to say 'Yes,' although at the time I'd have much preferred to take him on with bare knuckles and punch his head to relieve my feelings.

Old Ginger met me at the Governor's steps, where we landed, and we had a fifteen-mile walk as hard as we could go--tearing along till we hadn't a dry rag between us.

Fifteen miles in that climate takes more out of you than twice the distance in England, so you can guess we were pretty well 'done' by the time we got back to the landing-steps.

Whilst we waited for our boats we sat under the shade of the fruit market and watched the niggers--all as cheerful as sand-boys--unloading a cargo of cocoa-pods from a small schooner. The washer-ladies were coming ashore, too, from the _Hector_ and _Hercules_, cackling like hens because of the huge bundles of clothes they'd got. Perkins's friend, Arabella de Montmorency, was the first to waddle up the steps, grinning from ear to ear, and carrying a huge bundle. 'The good Lo'd be praised,' she sang out to a buck-nigger waiting for her, 'Massa Perkins pay Arabella the three shilling and tuppence--Massa Perkins know Arabella good vash-lady--no black trash for Massa Perkins. I pray de good Lo'd keep Massa Perkins in His strong hand.' She went back into the boat for more washing, but the other washer-ladies had bagged it, and there was a fine row. All their men friends joined in shouting, and yelling, and shaking their fists at each other, and we hoped to see a good free-fight, but the Sikh policeman on duty stepped majestically forward, said a few sharp words, and they all burst out laughing, Arabella waddling away with her man carrying the disputed bundle, and trying to look dignified, telling everybody: 'Arabella no black trash--Arabella vash for de British naval officah.'

It was too funny for words, Ginger and I were simply doubled up with laughter, when I felt some one touch my shoulder, and, looking round, saw a thick-set native chap, as brown as leather--like those soldier chaps we'd seen on the wharf at Los Angelos--in a blue striped cotton vest, which showed his lumpy chest muscles through it, and a pair of loose cotton drawers, his brown legs and feet naked. He was bowing and holding a broad Spanish grass hat in front of him with one hand. 'William Wilson,' he kept on saying.

'What is it, old cock? me William Wilson--all light--belong ploper. What's your game?'

His face beamed, and he pulled a dirty crumpled letter from under his vest and handed it to me.