“There go their colours up!” cried Fitz excitedly, as the national flag was run up to the head of the flagstaff that had been raised during the night. “I hope they’ll win, Captain Reed, for the Don’s been very plucky, and I suppose he is in the right.”
“If he hadn’t been in the right I wouldn’t have helped him as I have,” said the skipper gruffly.
“No,” said Poole firmly, as if to endorse his father’s words. “But don’t you think, father, that if you brought all our chaps ashore to set these men by the guns at liberty and leave our lads to work them, they’d manage them much better—fire more regularly and twice as fast?”
“Yes, that they would,” cried Fitz excitedly. “There’s hardly one of them who doesn’t know his gun-drill.”
“How do you know that?” said the skipper grimly.
“Oh, I asked them,” replied the lad, flushing. “They all talk to me about their old life on board different Queen’s ships. It was because I was a midshipman, I suppose. Why,” he continued, growing more excited by what he saw, “our Chips—I mean, your Chips,” he said, hastily correcting himself—“would make a splendid captain for one of the guns; Mr Butters another, of course; and the Camel, though he’s cook now. Oh, I could man all those guns easily.”
“Like to do it, perhaps,” said the skipper dryly, “and fancy that battery was the broadside of a ship?”
“Yes, of course,” said the lad; “I mean—” he stammered—“that is— Oh, it’s nothing to do with me.”
“No,” said the skipper quietly, as he stood looking critically at the preparations Don Ramon had made, while the scene around seemed to have had the same peculiar exciting effect upon his son as it had upon the midshipman, for Poole said suddenly—
“Why, father, if you were to do that it would make all the difference, and be like turning the scale to Don Ramon’s side.”