Chapter XVI The Attack on Santa Cruz
Written by Sub-Lieutenant William Wilson, R.N.
Ten days after the crippled old Hector had crawled away from Princes’ Town, we heard of her arrival at Bermuda, and very glad we all were to know that she had reached there safely.
I heard from Gerald once or twice, and he wrote that the departure of his expedition from San Fernando was still delayed, owing to the difficulty of obtaining transports for the troops, but the Provisional Government now had an Agent at Princes’ Town, who was chartering any steamer which would take the risks—a pretty penny they were charging—and he hoped to be ready in a fortnight or so to put to sea and effect a junction with the troops from the northern province in front of Los Angelos.
It was rather monotonous waiting, all this time; but at last one of the local steamers came in from San Fernando with the news that the expedition was on the point of departure, and we immediately weighed anchor and steamed across to Los Angelos, anchoring once more off the white breakwater and lighthouse at the foot of the gloomy mountains of Santa Cruz.
On shore they must have known of the imminent approach of the insurgents, because we could see them working like ants on the breakwater and wharves, piling up sand-bags to form breastworks for rifle-fire and emplacements for field-guns. Once I felt sure that I recognised Zorilla, tramping among the men and encouraging them.
That night half-a-dozen steamers, of sorts, came down the coast from the northern province of San Juan, and anchored outside us, and outside the range of the guns in the forts. How President Canilla must have raged when he saw them, and cursed his Navy for having deserted him!
They waited there till morning, then got up their anchors and stood out to sea. We guessed that they were waiting for Gerald, and, sure enough, by mid-day, the four insurgent men-of-war and the two torpedo-boats appeared from the south, escorting seven steamers; they joined forces with the other transports and steamed towards us.
‘There, lad!’ the Skipper said, chuckling and pointing his telescope at them. ‘There’s an illustration for you of the value of sea power. If those four miserable cruisers still flew the yellow and green flag, not one single transport could have moved.’
It really was a very striking example of how the possession of the cruisers and the ‘Command of the Sea’ had entirely altered the chances of the two sides.
If La Buena Presidente had been allowed to destroy those cruisers, whilst they flew the green and yellow flag, the same thing would, of course, have happened, but if, after she had been sunk, they had not revolted, Gerald would still be wandering about the forests, and the insurgents from the northern province would still be confined to their plains, and San Fernando and every town along the coast would still be liable at any moment to bombardment or capture by any expedition President Canilla chose to land there.
The transports anchored before they came within range of the guns above Los Angelos, but the men-of-war and the two torpedo-boats stood boldly inshore, and immediately came under a very heavy fire. We had to ‘weigh’ and steam off, so as not to interfere with it, but you can imagine that we stayed as close as we could, in order to see all that was going on.
The firing was very rapid, and very badly directed, the shells striking the water anywhere but near the ships, and what we noticed chiefly was the peculiar noise the long dynamite shells made—there were two dynamite guns in the forts, you remember—hissing through the air like enormous rockets, though they did not make much more noise when they struck the water than the ordinary shells. I and the rest of my mids. aboard the Hercules were, of course, authorities on shell-fire now, and most of them gave themselves tremendous airs, although Bob and one or two others changed colour, and got very white every time a shell burst anywhere near the ships—that wasn’t often—and I knew pretty well that they were still suffering from nerves, and hadn’t recovered from those fifteen minutes which wrecked the Hector.
The cruisers never took the trouble to reply; they knew the weak spot in the defences of Los Angelos; steamed right inshore, where the big guns in the forts, high up above their decks, couldn’t touch them, and began blowing the sand-bags about in fine style.
The torpedo-boats darted in along the wharves and inside the breakwater, firing their machine guns, at point-blank range, into the crowds of troops there, and the amount of ammunition expended was enormous.
A good many rifle-bullets and a few shells from field-guns came our way, but no one was touched.
Late in the afternoon, when the firing was slacking down, one of the torpedo-boats came buzzing along quite close to us. She was on her way to the transports, and as she passed us, we saw that her funnel and some boiler-plates she’d built up on deck, round her machine gun, were pitted with bullet-marks. They looked, for all the world, like the inside of a nutmeg grater. Two bodies were lying close to the machine gun, but the rest of the crew were coiled down, resting, and not taking the least notice of them.
She went alongside one of the transports and came hurrying back. Standing just for’ard of the funnel was old Gerald, smoking his pipe. He was still in the same rig—brown boots and gaiters, white duck riding breeches, white duck Norfolk jacket, and white polo helmet—and José, with his scarlet sash, was squatting on the deck at his feet. He looked up as he went by, and nodded cheerfully as I waved to him, and he saw who I was. He was then taken alongside the flagship.
Firing did not cease till dark, but none of us thought that the green and yellow flags would be flying in the morning, and we were quite right. Los Angelos itself was deserted, and white flags as big as table-cloths were hoisted above the forts up the mountain-side.
The transports immediately went alongside the wharves and began to disgorge their ragged little brown troops; the cruisers and gunboats took up their old moorings behind the breakwater, and we anchored again outside it and just clear of the lighthouse.
You can imagine how keen we were to go ashore and see what was happening; but Captain Roger Hill was as strict as he was prim, and refused to give any leave whatever.
‘If we had your Skipper—“Old Tin Eye”—here, Billums, I bet every soul would be ashore by now,’ Ginger said; but I don’t know, he had had a bit of a fright when our mids. fought those 4.7’s, and had been much stricter ever since.
We could only hang about on deck with our telescopes and watch the little insurgents pouring out of Los Angelos, and crowding along that road, up the mountain-side, towards Santa Cruz. A long way up, at a place where it curved sharply, the yellow and green flag was still flying, and we could make out trenches and could see the wheels of some field-guns half hidden among the trees. The trenches were continued up the mountain-side, and it looked, from where we were, as if a hundred brave men, behind them, could stop a thousand.
Before nightfall Gerald’s people were swarming below this line of trenches, and during the middle watch desultory firing went on continuously, but in the morning the yellow and green flag still flew there, and when we could see the little white-shirted insurgents dodging in and out among the trees, they hadn’t got any nearer to the guns. Next night there was still more firing; the field-guns were booming every few minutes, their shells bursting, with a vivid glare, lower down on the mountain-side. It was most fascinating to watch, but, as Bob said, gave us a ‘crick in the neck’ looking up all the time.
The flags and the field-guns were still there in the morning.
‘Your brother will find that a pretty awkward road to Santa Cruz,’ Captain Roger Hill said, speaking to me, off duty, for the first time since I joined the ship. I bridled up and got angry at once, for he said it in such a tone as to imply, ‘What the dickens can a mere rubber-planter know about war?’
‘He’s beaten General Zorilla once, sir; I expect he’ll manage it again somehow,’ I answered, as he stalked away, smiling in his superior way. I’d jolly well like Gerald to meet him and take him down a peg. He’d sized up Captain Grattan, my own Skipper (‘Old Tin Eye’), and put him in his place quick enough—good chap though he was—and he’d have an easy job with Captain Roger Hill.
The Captain went over to the insurgent flagship that afternoon to see about some complaint which our Consul at Los Angelos had made, and I slipped a note for Gerald into his coxswain’s hands, hoping it would get to him.
‘Hope things are going all right. For goodness’ sake, get Bob and myself ashore—I’m sick of this ship. Get my chum, Hood, ashore, too, if you can.—BILLUMS.’
By a bit of luck he actually was aboard, and sent me back an answer scribbled on the envelope.
‘Will do my best—things are humming.—GERALD.’
The coxswain brought it back when the Captain returned, and I’d hardly read it when I was sent for.
‘Ha! Hum! Mr. Wilson, I met your brother on board the flagship. He seems to be the head of the revolutionary army, and will—Hum! Ha!—be a very important man in the country if it is successful. He’s asked me to let you accompany him in the advance. Ha! Hum! I’ve no objection. If you want to get killed, you can.’
‘Thank you very much, sir,’ I answered, though I jolly well wanted to kick him.
‘Did he ask for Hood or my cousin, Bob Temple?’ I asked, putting in a word for them.
‘Ha! Hum! he did, but Mr. Hood is a valuable officer, and Mr. Temple too young. Good-morning!’
He was an irritating chap, if you like, and the amusing part of it was that he thought every one was fearfully impressed with his importance.
And Gerald sent for me too-sent the same little harbour launch which had brought me on board the Hector, after I’d been released from San Sebastian—sent it fussing out from behind the breakwater, and it waited alongside whilst I shifted into plain clothes.
‘I’ve done my best for you both,’ I said, as Ginger and Bob watched me ‘change,’ ‘but it can’t be done—very sorry—the Captain says you’re a valuable officer—meaning that I’m not—and that Bob is too young.’
I filled my baccy pouch, shoved the mater’s last letter into my pocket to show Gerald, and went ashore, feeling as happy as a bird and jolly important.
How the chaps did envy me!
José was waiting for me on the wharf, smiling all over his honest ugly face, and took me along with him, though it was pretty awkward ‘going’ because of the sand-bags scattered everywhere. The shops and warehouses along the front were simply riddled with bullets and shell marks, and some men, with a mule-cart, were searching round for bodies and dumping them into it.
We tramped along—it was so hot that the place was like an oven—and found Gerald inside an office kind of place with the black and green flag flying over it, and I knew he was happy by the way he puffed his pipe. There were a great number of officers there, many of whom I had seen before at San Fernando, and they bowed and smiled in the most friendly way; I almost felt one of them.
‘Hullo, Billums! Just in time! Go inside and get some grub—you’ll get no more till to-morrow,’ Gerald sang out, looking up from some papers.
‘Your next meal will be in Santa Cruz—with luck,’ he said, coming in when I’d got through a ‘fid’ of tinned meat.
‘Not in San Sebastian, I hope!’ I answered, stuffing down the last bit.
‘Don’t be an ass!’
‘You’re not making much headway along the road, are you?’ I asked presently.
‘No, we aren’t, and we don’t mean to. That’s not the main attack. I’m going over the mountain to-night—hope to be above Santa Cruz at daylight—you’ve got a pretty stiff climb before you.’
‘But won’t all the paths be defended?’ I asked, jolly excited to think of what was going to happen. ‘Surely old Zorilla would do that?’
‘He’s left one open,’ Gerald winked, ‘one that chap you call the ‘Gnome’ knows. He’s going to lead us, but you’ll have to wait here till it’s dark.’
‘What became of that black horse?’ I asked him, as he was going out of the room.
‘Brought it round from San Fernando, and sent it up to Zorilla yesterday. He’s awfully grateful. I can’t stop any longer; I must go up that road and show myself, below those trenches, before it gets too dark, or Zorilla will begin to imagine we’re not intending to attack that way.’
Then I had to tramp up and down and wait for the sun to set, thinking of Gerald riding up the mountain road towards Santa Cruz, till he was close enough to those trenches we had seen to be recognised and be potted at.
At last it was dark—rather too dark, because a tremendously black thunder-cloud came sweeping in from seawards—and José came for me and took me away through narrow steep streets which were almost pitch-dark because the electric light from Santa Cruz had been cut off. There were bonfires at the street corners, but they only seemed to make the darkness greater.
We got up past the houses, well above the town, and came to a flatter piece of ground, and although it was pitch-dark, and I couldn’t see anything, I knew, by the smell and the murmur of voices and rattling of rifles, that there were thousands of the little brown men all round me. We found Gerald at last, the ‘Gnome,’ in a great state of excitement, with him.
‘We’re just going on. We’ve a five-hour climb before us,’ Gerald said—he didn’t seem excited.
‘It’s going to be a beastly night,’ I whispered—I could not help whispering, because I was so excited.
‘So much the better,’ he said cheerfully. ‘We shan’t be heard.’
Then he gave some orders very quietly, said, ‘Come along;’ and we four, the ‘Gnome’ leading the way, began climbing. I was in pretty good training, but it was all I could do to keep up with them; I hadn’t nails in my boots, either, which made climbing all the more difficult.
‘Hold up, old chap; you can’t afford to slip,’ Gerald said, clutching me as I stumbled, a few minutes after we had started, ‘it’s a long way to the bottom.’
I told him about my boots.
‘Boots are a nuisance,’ he answered; ‘those little chaps of mine looted an army boot-store yesterday; they think boots make them look more like real soldiers. They’ve never worn boots before, and will be footsore in an hour, but they will wear them. I can’t prevent them.’
I could hear them slipping and sliding behind me in the darkness. To make matters worse, after we’d been climbing for a couple of hours, the rain came down in bucketsful, drenched us to the skin, and made everything more slippery than ever.
‘I’m going to take mine off,’ I told Gerald when I had slipped badly again, and so I did, hanging my boots round my neck, and stuffing my socks inside them.
Presently we heard a sliding noise behind us, a rifle went bounding and clattering down, a man gave a scream, and then, far below, we heard a crash, as if the body had fallen into dry bushes.
‘That’s one gone over the edge,’ Gerald said, quite coolly, ‘I wish the others would do as you’ve done and take off their boots. Keep well to the right.’
I didn’t like it at all, and you bet I put each foot down jolly carefully before I trusted my weight to it.
We were walking, or scrambling, up a rock path, and I knew that on our left the mountain-side sloped down very precipitously, and far below, under my feet, could hear the noise of a rushing stream; it sounded thousands of feet below.
Noise! Why, it didn’t much matter what noise we made! For, although the rain had ceased nearly as quickly as it had commenced, the night and blackness was full of the noises of mountain torrents, splashing down the rocks above and below us—all round us, in fact—sluicing stones along with them, and making a great rattle.
We knew that the ‘Gnome’ was still plodding on ahead, for he kept calling softly back every few seconds. Then a great black gap seemed to open right out at our feet—it looked like the end of the world for blackness. My nerves were pretty jumpy—they hadn’t yet recovered from that fight with La Buena Presidente—and I clutched at a rock and shivered in my wet things. We had stopped, and the ‘Gnome’ was taking off his boots.
‘You’ll have to be careful here,’ Gerald said. ‘Lean well to the right and get a good grip before you put your weight on your feet. Come on!’
I heard the ‘Gnome’ scrambling round something, sending stones flying down into space, Gerald disappeared, and I followed with my heart in my mouth.
‘Dig your toes in and get a good grip,’ he sang out, and I stuck them into a ledge and a little crack I felt, skinning them, I know, and worked my way along. My shoulders were hanging over that black pit below, and I had that awful feeling that I wanted to let go and fall down. I dare not move hand or foot, but just as I was beginning to sweat with fear, Gerald caught me by one hand and pulled me round.
‘That’s the worst bit, Billums; we shall lose some of them here.’
I couldn’t answer—my jaws were chattering so much. I was trembling all over.
No! I certainly hadn’t quite got over that terrible fifteen minutes while the poor old Hector was being shattered.
I followed him in a second or two, but we had barely gone twenty paces before we heard some one slipping at that corner we had just passed; there was a scream—it sounded again hundreds of feet below us—then absolute silence, while I waited, with my ears tingling, for the crash.
At last it came up to us out of the darkness, just like the noise a plum would make if you threw it on the ground. I dug my bare heel among the stones and clutched some bushes.
‘Come along!’ Gerald whispered nervously, but stopped again because there were more screams from that awful corner. He groped his way back. ‘I’ll make them join their belts together and form a line round there,’ he said, as the ‘Gnome,’ José, and I waited shivering for him.
‘Don Geraldio, mucho bueno,’ the ‘Gnome’ muttered under his breath.
My brother’s voice sounded again after what seemed like half an hour, ‘I had to go round that blessed corner place, Billums, but I’ve got a dozen belts fixed together and men holding them on each side, so it’s pretty safe now.’
I myself wouldn’t have gone round that corner, or whatever it was, for anything in the world.
We scrambled on, and the rain came tumbling down; in five minutes the path we were in was a raging torrent, and my naked feet slipped back one step for every three I made. They were getting tender now—very tender.
‘We’re past the worst part, put your boots on again,’ Gerald sang out, and I tried to do so, but they were so wet and my feet so swollen that they wouldn’t go on, so I had to do without them.
‘What’s the time?’ I asked Gerald presently, when we’d halted to let the column close up. ‘Is it safe to light a match?’
‘My goodness, no! Zorilla’s people would see us for miles; he has watchers all over the hills. Whatever time it is I’m afraid we shall be late.’
We were late too, and by the time it was light enough to see my wretched feet—and wasn’t I jolly glad to begin to see anything—it was half-past two, and we still had a long climb before us. But we went much faster now, and began edging away to the right, bearing round a tremendous mountain shoulder that loomed up over our heads.
‘On the other side is Santa Cruz,’ Gerald whispered. That was exciting enough, if you like. He was busy hurrying on his men, who now began slipping past us, going on ahead. They looked pretty well exhausted, and most of them had done as I had done—hung their boots round their necks; but in spite of their being soaked to the skin, and in spite of their tremendous climb, they were cheerful enough, and their eyes were flashing all right—at the prospect of sacking Santa Cruz, I expect. The officers looked much more weather-beaten than they did.
Then we went on again, and I asked Gerald whether we had lost many men during the night, but he didn’t know. We were walking through coarse grass that cut my feet and made them smart like the mischief, so I stuck my socks on. That eased things a little.
‘We can see Santa Cruz from here—in daylight,’ Gerald whispered presently, as we reached the top, and I knew by the waver in his voice that he was—at last—excited; I know that the blood went tingling to my ears at the mere thought of being so near the city.
The men were thrown out in a single line; we stopped to get them into something like order, and as they marched into position they threw themselves down on the wet ground, clutching their beloved rifles feverishly, and looking down through the gloom and the mist to where Santa Cruz lay at our feet. That long line of little crouching men with their glittering eyes all trying to pierce the dim light and see the city they’d heard so much about and come so many miles to capture, was the most extraordinary sight.
As I looked at them I couldn’t help thinking what an awful fate was waiting for Santa Cruz if they should get out of hand and sack it. They were more than half-savages, and their officers, standing there among them, didn’t look as if they could control them once they began to see ‘red.’
‘Is everything all right?’ I asked Gerald, who had come back out of the mist from where the far end of the line extended, out of sight, and he nodded cheerfully, so I didn’t mind being wet through and hungry, and longed for him to give the signal to rush down to the city below us. Poor old Zorilla! I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.
Presently he did give a sign, the officers drew their swords, and the whole crouching mob sprang to its feet, and we began scrambling and sliding downhill. It was a jolly sight easier work than scrambling up, but we made the dickens of a noise.
In a quarter of an hour we could smell the city, and then the faint outlines of the old cathedral tower showed up, the fierce little men drawing in their breath with a hissing sound as they pointed it out to each other. Suddenly, right under our feet, I recognised San Sebastian—we were looking down on top of it and on those short saluting guns along the parapet.
As I pointed it out to Gerald there was the crack of a rifle and then another, then hundreds of bullets came flying past, hitting the ground in front of us and whizzing overhead. Gerald’s men sank to the ground behind us, and I could hardly see them among the brown rocks.
The ‘Gnome’ came waddling along—out of breath—Gerald told me to lie down, and he and the ‘Gnome’ and about a hundred men crept forward to reconnoitre. I crawled after them, and caught up with my brother just as he was looking round a big boulder.
‘Look there!’ he whispered, ‘down to the left!’
I peered through the dim light, and there, drawn up between us and San Sebastian, on some level ground, I saw several regiments of regulars. A few companies, already extended, were lying down and firing up at us, some were deploying as rapidly as they could, and others were crowding into San Sebastian and lining the walls. Four field-guns came bumping along out of the mist and began unlimbering and a little group of horsemen galloped up behind them.
‘There’s old Zorilla!’ we both sang out. You couldn’t possibly mistake him and his black horse.
‘He’s too late,’ Gerald whispered excitedly. ‘We’ll rush ‘em.’
He got up and back we climbed to where we’d left our men. Bullets were spluttering and splashing all round us, but no one was hit. Gerald collected some of the officers and jabbered away to them in Spanish. I saw their tired eyes begin flaming.
‘Look here, Billums!’ he said, turning to me. ‘Would you mind hurrying down in front of those chaps on the left? I’m going to take the right of the mob—I’m going straight for the guns—but you cut along to the left and try and get into San Sebastian. Shout, wave your arms, but keep going, and they’ll follow all right. Here, take my polo helmet, that’ll make you all the more like me. It’s all right; Zorilla won’t get his chaps to stand when they see we mean things.’
Off he ran to his part of the line.
My aunt! that was fun, if you like. I went across to the left and began halloaing; the officers began shouting, ‘Viva los Horizontales!’ and before I could say ‘Jack Robinson’ the whole of those little brown chaps and I were scrambling down the mountain-side straight for San Sebastian, yelling blue murder.
My old boots were knocking up against each other and against my back, but I jammed Gerald’s polo hat firmly on and slid and scrambled, and ran and slid again. The field-guns fired once or twice, there was an appalling triumphant shrieking noise behind me—you couldn’t call it a cheer, it was much too savage for that—and Gerald was right. Zorilla’s infantry could not stand the torrent of brown forest-men dashing down the mountain-side on top of them, and, just as I was wishing that I had a stick or a stone—anything, in fact—in my hand, they fired a volley and began running and racing back to the town and behind the walls of San Sebastian.
The mule-drivers unhitched the mules from the guns and galloped madly along after them—helter-skelter—dodging behind the walls, and then streaming along the road towards the city itself.
We were after them like smoke, and just as some of them dashed across the drawbridge and tried to close the heavy iron doors, we rushed in.
They didn’t show fight, I should think they didn’t; it was only the backs of them we saw as they tumbled over themselves to escape, throwing away their rifles and clambering through the embrasures of those saluting guns.
Well, that was how I paid my second visit to San Sebastian—a bit of a change from my first visit, wasn’t it?
I dashed out again to help Gerald and, as I turned round the walls, along he came and old Zorilla with him. The poor old chap was mopping some blood off his forehead, and though he did look so forlorn he bowed to me in quite a friendly way. I gave his hand a jolly good hard grip.
It turned out that only a very few of his men round those guns had made any stand, and that Gerald had simply swept through them, driven them back under the walls of the fort, and the old man had surrendered. The little brown men were rushing like a pack of hounds after the retreating regulars, and Gerald’s officers were trying to stop them. They did manage to bring some back, but couldn’t stop the rest, who went careering along towards Santa Cruz, till fifty or sixty regulars, braver than the others, or perhaps unable to run any farther, faced round, formed up across the road, and began firing at them, when back they came grinning and smiling like spaniels who have been ranging too far ahead and know they deserve a hiding. A lot of them scrambled up the mountain-side to fetch their beloved boots, which they had dropped before they began charging down.
‘The revolution is finished,’ Gerald said quite quietly, and began loading his pipe; but his fingers shook a little, and I knew that he was fearfully excited, although he did his best to conceal the fact. He had the field-guns brought into the fort, and stuck them through some vacant embrasures, where they could command the road leading down to the city. Then he began to get his chaps into some kind of order again.
‘Would you like to hoist the flag, Billums? You can if you like,’ he said; and you bet I would. Some one—the ‘Gnome’ it was—brought along a roll of black and green bunting; we climbed up to the flagstaff on top of the walls, and hitching it to the halyards I hauled it up, hand over hand. You should have seen Gerald’s chaps yelling and dancing about, and heard them shouting, ‘Viva de Costa!’ ‘Viva los Horizontals!’ and ‘Viva Don Geraldio!’ I need hardly tell you which were the loudest shouts, but old Gerald never moved a muscle, and took them all as a matter of course.
I stood on top of the wall and smiled down on them, and never had had a jollier spree. It was quite light now—a most beautiful calm morning, the air crisp and fresh—and the top edge of the ridge we’d just climbed down was a rosy red.
Whatever the weather had been it wouldn’t have made much difference to me; I felt simply glorious, and thought of old Ginger, down aboard the Hercules, keeping his morning watch and trying to prevent the men from making too much noise over the Captain’s head and waking him.
It was grand to be alive! I managed to get on my boots, though they wouldn’t go on over my socks, then I took my coat off and shook some of the water out of it, for I was still as wet as a rat. Any number of weird noises were coming up from the city.
‘They’ll come and attack us, I suppose; won’t they?’ I asked Gerald, but he only smiled and said something to General Zorilla, who smiled too, rather sadly, and shook his head.
Then I thought of that room place with the barred iron door where I’d been shut up, and took Gerald over to have a good look at it, but he’d had it opened already, and quite a number of ‘plain clothes’ people were standing about, not quite knowing what to do, but highly delighted with themselves. They had just been released. I showed him those three graves, although they were not very distinct now as grass had already grown over them. It was a happy time if you like, and I was getting more hungry every second.
Half an hour later a carriage came driving furiously up the road towards San Sebastian, and two civilians and an officer jumped down. They came up very humbly to Gerald and spoke to him. I knew their news was good, because Gerald’s face twitched so much, and directly he called out something in Spanish, every one inside and outside the fort began shouting and yelling with delight.
‘Canilla has vanished,’ he told me; ‘the place is empty, and they’re going to hoist the black and green flag over the cathedral tower as soon as they’ve sewn one together.’
‘Then it’s all over,’ I said, just a little disappointed that there was to be no more excitement.
‘Yes! we can march in now, but——’
‘But what?’ I asked, seeing Gerald look a little anxious, and he swept his hand round to where the little half-savage men were cheering and shouting, dancing about like children.
‘——but if I took them in now, Santa Cruz would be in flames in an hour.’
I rather guessed that that was the trouble.
The carriage drove back again, and General Zorilla went in it, little José went as well, sitting up with the driver and looking very important.
Gerald told me that he’d appointed old Zorilla Commandant of the city, and that he’d sent him in to get together as many regular troops as he could find to guard the streets and keep order. Funnily enough, it never even occurred to me that old Zorilla could not be trusted; nobody who’d seen the old man could possibly doubt his honour.
‘D’you know what the troops will be doing for the next half-hour?’ Gerald smiled.
‘No! what?’
‘Twisting round the yellow and green badges in their hats till the stripes are horizontal, and blacking out the “yellow” part.’
‘What’s José gone for?’ I asked him.
‘He says that I left a clean pair of riding breeches and a new helmet at the Club, and he’s going to see if they are still there.’
I must say that old Gerald wanted them badly; we both looked pretty disreputable. Just then the bells in the cathedral began ringing, and the great cracked bell banged out with its jarring clang. Bells began ringing, from one end of the city to the other, till the whole place seemed nothing but bells, and in half an hour a big black and green flag was hanging down over the old tower.
‘If they don’t send food out pretty soon for my chaps, there’ll be no holding them,’ Gerald said presently, and looked worried again; but old Zorilla must have hurried up the townspeople considerably, because very soon carts came out with bread and fruit and rice cakes, and the fierce little fellows were soon filling their stomachs.
José came back from the city, his eyes glittering with pride; he’d found Gerald’s room at the Club quite undisturbed, and brought him a complete change of clothes and some shaving tackle. We went into one of the living rooms in the fort and made ourselves look more respectable, José coming with us and polishing Gerald’s boots and gaiters till you could see your face in them.
All this time the men were round those carts stuffing themselves contentedly; but don’t think that old Zorilla had forgotten us, rather not, he had sent us out some breakfast, and you may guess we were ready for it by the time we had cleaned.
‘First meal in San Sebastian! I said so!’ and I laughed.
‘So it is! Well, here’s luck to it!’ Gerald answered; ‘and thanks very much, Billums, for coming along with me.’
‘My dear chap, don’t be an ass!’ was the only thing I could think to say.
‘I wish I could make my little chaps give up their rifles,’ he said, ‘but I can’t; they’re too proud of them.’
‘But surely if you disarmed them the regulars might attack them?’ I asked, but Gerald only smiled.
‘Of course not! My dear Billums, didn’t I tell you that they are busy blacking out the yellow stripes; they’ll obey my orders now as cheerfully as they’d have shot me an hour ago. Now Canilla has vanished Zorilla only takes orders from the New President—and that means me.’
‘Oh!’ I said, and, like the sailor’s parrot, thought a good deal.
Then I gave him the mater’s last letter, and, after he’d lighted his pipe, he sat back in a chair and read it, stretching his legs out in front of him whilst José knelt down buttoning up his gaiters and giving them a final polish. I did wish that the mater could have seen him.
Officers with green and black badges in their caps and helmets came backwards and forwards from the city for orders, and some of them, I saw, had done just as Gerald had said, simply turned the badges round and inked out the yellow stripe. It made me laugh, but he kept a face as sober as a judge, and sent them flying here, there, and everywhere, and they clicked their heels, saluted, and rushed off, as if he had always been their Commanding Officer. I don’t expect they would have dared come among our little chaps without blacking out the yellow stripe, although now, with their stomachs full, they were quite peaceful and contented, and went to sleep on the slope below the fort or sat drying themselves in the sun, and forgot, for a time, about looting the city.
Mr. Arnstein, the German Minister, came out during the morning to arrange for the safety of European property, and as he was an old friend of my brother, was jolly pleasant. Whilst they were yarning together de Costa’s Secretary drove hurriedly across the drawbridge, to say very excitedly that the New President and the Provisional Government were coming up the mountain road from Los Angelos, and wanted to see Gerald. Gerald sent him back again as quickly as he’d come.
‘I’m hanged if I’m going down there,’ he told me. ‘For one thing, I daren’t leave these chaps of mine. I’ve told him that it’s simply impossible for me to leave San Sebastian, and told him to warn de Costa to bring along as many regulars as he can get hold of—as soon as they’ve shifted their badges.
‘We shall have them here as soon as they can come,’ he added, smiling. ‘They’ll be so frightened lest I seize the palace and become Dictator before they can get hold of it, that they’ll come along like “one o’clock.”’
He was right too. An hour later de Costa and the whole of the Provisional Government came rattling across the drawbridge, and simply threw themselves on old Gerald; they would have kissed him if he’d only taken his pipe out of his mouth, but as they’d got hold of both his hands he couldn’t. They shook my hands, too, till they ached, and then went away to take up their quarters in the palace, feeling more easy in their minds, I expect, about that Dictatorship.
I wished that they had never come, for one of them had a note for me from the Commander of the Hercules, ordering me back on board as soon as possible.
I showed it to Gerald. ‘Confound the ship, I’ll have to go back at once.’
He got me a horse, and sent the ‘Gnome’ down with me in case there was any trouble on the road, shouting out, ‘Good-bye! Hope to see you up again before long,’ as we clattered out of San Sebastian. I shouted ‘Buenos! Buenos!’ to the little brown chaps, a great number of them jumping up and giving me a fine ‘send off’ as we cantered down to the city.
Regular troops were at every corner—their badges twisted round and blackened—and it really was ludicrous to see the attempts the townspeople had made to show their loyalty to the New President; for at nearly every window there was some kind of an attempt at a black and green flag with the stripes horizontal.
A great number of people thought I was Gerald himself, so I came in for quite a royal reception, but we cantered rapidly through the square, field batteries at every corner, past the front of the cathedral, with that huge bell still jarring overhead, and as we passed the Hotel de l’Europe I looked up at the window from which Bob and I and the poor little ‘Angel’ had seen the funeral procession and tried to escape that beastly little ex-policeman. I wondered what had become of him, and whether the stumps of his fingers had healed.
It was a long and tedious journey down the road to Los Angelos, because at many places barricades, thrown up to prevent Gerald’s troops advancing, were being lazily pulled down, and the litter on the road made it impossible to get along quickly.
However, I did not want to be caught in the dark, so we made our horses hurry whenever the road made it possible, and we managed to reach Los Angelos in two hours and a half. One of the boats belonging to the Santa Cruz flagship happened to be waiting alongside the wharf; the ‘Gnome’ said something to the coxswain, and off I went in her, in great style, to the Hercules. Good little ‘Gnome,’ he was pretty well worn out by the time I wished him good-bye, and he went away with our two horses.